#Spend data analysis

[smithlee1221]

Advanced Procurement Data Analysis - Methodologies That Drive Results

Master procurement data analysis techniques and methodologies. Learn spend data analysis strategies for cost optimisation and supplier performance improvement.

[gwydionmisha]

Atlanta Fed shock sounds 'Trumpcession' warning: McGeever

Trump is deliberately tanking the economy and then trying to cover it up with more firings and cooking the books. If no federal economic data is reliable then no one can trust it for things like investments, business decisions, government planning for economic downturn, etc.. This is yet another essential step in the Republican plan to ruin the economy for the benefit of Vladimir Putin and a hand full of Billionaires so rich they benefit if there is stagflation, or even worse deflation.

There is no non-sinister reason to do any of this.

Trump administration disbands two expert panels on economic data

Trump Advisers Want to Strip Public Spending From the GDP Tally. Why It Makes No Sense.

[mythicalartistx]

Why is the Jorunal's Form Exactly Riku?

Discussion/Recoded Novel analysis of Riku

It's funny how the journal choose Riku as the form because he must have been that important.

Riku stated at the end how everything Sora does was reflected in the journal and that he was the center of it. When he grew, so did the heartless. So the journal probably picked someone with that much of an impact or importance to him.

I noticed in recoded novel it states this,

"Of all the vessels to protect the data, I was chosen from the journal’s pages. The full set of memories was transferred inside me to shield them from corruption.”

It could have chosen anyone but it chose Riku. Why? He must been very important to Sora and important part of something.

The novel then states, So this Riku was Riku, but also not Riku? A vessel that stored the set of memories within the journal? For a vessel, though, he sure seemed to have a will, a purpose—a mind. Did it come from Riku himself? Or was it the “mind” of the scattered memories inside him? Or maybe it was even the mind of someone connected to the memories within the journal…?

Therefore he isn't the Riku they know but someone similar who has the thoughts and feelings of him but also has the knowledge of the events within the journal.

And that's basically all the explanation on who the journal is and why he is Riku.

I mean going through all the games you can tell how much they care and impact the other. Several times they sacrificed for the other and have a deep complicated relationship. It's no wonder Riku is that important to Sora. Riku even states to call him "Taisetsunahito" which is translated as the things that matter, but a better translation would be precious person or most important person.

Later in the Novel when Riku's voice is heard in basically the intercom, he stated “Is that…? Riku, is that you?” Sora called excitedly.

He heard a little chuckle from Riku before he asked a question of his own.

He is excited that it's Riku. Riku even laughs/smiles at his words. They both have a care for the other so it makes sense why the journal choose Riku.

Earlier before realizing the mysterious cloak person was Journal Riku he wondered where Riku was.

The novel states,

Dewey looked up at Sora and said while they walked, “You’re pretty tough, huh?”

“Not really. I’ve got a friend who’s even tougher.”

Actually, what did happen to Riku…?

And this shows he still is thinking about him.

And it kinda makes me think is journal Riku memories + journal knowledge the merged into one being?

Unless it's part of the glitches?

But most people that are missing were shown in another way or form. The only one that isn't really shown is Kairi and I wonder if it's because Naminé made him forget her along with parts of Riku and the journal is still recovering from that. Because not only did he forget who he was trying to find in COM and Repliku realizes it, but he then believed it was Naminé he was trying to find instead.

Is that why Riku is also not shown except through the Journal because of the events of COM?

Now Kairi is mentioned once in the castle oblivion portion by an (illusion) Riku and shows him with Kairi when he was trying to find her heart.

However some people seem to think Sora and Kairi have a more romantic relationship now if you think that you're completely valid and I'm not going to debunk the ship. But if that is the case, why was Riku chosen? Shouldn't be Kairi if they have a greater connection?

Maybe it's cause Sora and Riku also have a greater history and relationship as we're shown through the games. They spent more time with the other, even thinking about the other.

Sora at the end of kh1, the first thing he does is he wants to find Riku and during KH2 he wants to find Riku... He missed him.

He goes on his knees crying when he sees him again

Later during the novel, Riku gets captured after defending Sora and Sora says this once he encounters Pete:

"Not so fast! First, hand over Riku…or else.” Sora readied his Keyblade, too.

Sora is here ready to protect and save his friend. He sees him as his friend— not just a journal full of data like him— and his memories clearly show the Riku he knows. He acts like Riku does and they clearly have a deep connection to each other.

The novel states this:

"Stay back, Sora! Hrrrngh!”

Sora was about to run over to him, but he stopped at Riku’s warning. His friend’s face was twisted in agony.

“Riku? Wha…what’s wrong?”

Sora refers to him as his friend. And everyone calls him Riku despite not being really the Riku from data, he among some others are gone. He's only there because the journal decided to take form into the one thing that's probably important. Pete was trying to force Riku to fight Sora and he doesn't want to. In fact he is afraid he could hurt him or anyone so he tells Sora to destroy him.

After fighting Riku this happens,

"Sora! Riku!” Mickey and the others appeared from the beam. “Well, if the bugs have taken over Riku…then that means…he might not ever wake up—unless we get rid of the bugs first,” the king explained, gazing at Riku in concern.

“So if I debug him, Riku will come back to us. Guys, I gotta go inside to look,” Sora said with unwavering determination as he knelt down beside his friend.

Sora is that concerned for his friend. He is everything to him. They have a deep connection. His determination to help is right there. He doesn't care if it may be dangerous, he wants to anyways. Riku having the journal data within him gets bugged as they put it. And the way to reconstruct and figure out the mysteries of the journal is to restore the glitches and bugs within the deep data inside of him.

This next scene shows there care for each other again,

It was like the energy had been sucked right out of him. What just happened?

“Sora! You okay?” Riku came running up.

“Riku! What about you? Are you all right?”

Sora was still worried for his friend, though his legs were so wobbly he could barely stand.

Riku gave him a small nod in reply. “You shouldn’t be here. I can fight the bugs off a little longer…but they’re spreading. Pretty soon they’ll take over all my data.”

Despite how it hurts Sora, he is still caring for Riku. He put his own needs of wanting to help Riku above his own. The bugs are taking over his data of the journal. Here he refers to that as my data. However, it is vague. He could be talking about his general data as a data Riku— not the journal part of him, but he also could be referring to the journal parts of him. The next time when he mentions the journal knowledge he doesn't say my.

In fact it shows another thing I've been wondering. He gives Sora an item that can help him escape. It is extra data. Riku then explains it as,

“Data I found on my other partition. It doesn’t belong in Jiminy’s journal. Somebody added it after the fact.”

Riku refers to the journal as another entity that isn't himself unless he's talking in third person. He acts like he is two beings when he says my other partition and says Jiminy's Journal.

The novel continues, “The same person that hid the journal’s contents inside you?”

Journal Riku is in fact regular Riku but merged with Journal information and data. Some unknown force hid the contents of the journal inside himself that means because of the missing memories of Castle Oblivion had affected it in some way.

DiZ or Naminé could have chosen Riku because they saw how much he wanted to bring Sora back, but that person also hid some extra data too. But we know that DiZ hid extra data of himself in DDD within Sora.

However, this game is about Naminé and she appears at the end as a data form. It would make the most sense that her real form probably put this data version of her inside the journal along with added extra data. She is probably the other who put the journal's contents inside of Riku.

Riku then wants to sacrifice himself and he believes doing that will be fine because it won't affect the journal data if Sora figures out the mystery of the extra data.

Riku doesn't want to leave him behind, he sees him as his friend.

Sora grins as he shows a solution where he can save his friend. This almost surprises Riku as he flinched like it wasn't what he had in mind. Sora had a long face as if Riku always try to do things by himself and is tired of it.

This makes Riku then smile.

They hold hands together and it helps show their connection is strong. Their friendship is complicated and they mean so much to the other. He didn't have to offer his hand, but he does. They're friends who mean a lot and he wants to be there with him to share the moment.

However Riku says something else.

“That light over there leads deeper into my data. Inside is a world from my memories…”

“Your memories?”

“Yeah, that’s right. The memories of the data version of me. And some of the bugs that stole your data. Get the data back, get your powers back. It’s simple. Then you can worry about me. Be careful.”

Earlier he stated he wasn't Riku, he was just zeros (probably referring to data) and was the journal. Then it was stated someone put the journals info inside him. And now it shows memories of a data version of him. Like there is actually another Riku from data out there. It says all these different things.

So what exactly is this Riku?

But he is clearly a mixed of the two. He has memories of Riku and his personality is like him, he just has all the journal's data inside him and it is as if someone put it there.

Unless by data version of him, Riku means a data version that gone through the events of what he did in kh1? The scene also shows that Riku wants Sora to gain his strength back and worries about him more than himself being fine.

"I can access this world now that you’ve weakened the bugs. It’s our island…” Riku took in the view of the sea.

Riku says this like it's a memory for him that he shared with Sora. It is like he is a Riku who did experienced growing up there and probably have the memories of KH1 inside him and what he did.

Another point he says this,

Sora let out a heavy sigh. Some things never change. “Riku, you always try to take everything on by yourself,” he said, and Riku looked up. “But I like getting dragged into your messes. Donald and Goofy said the same thing to me—"

He sees how Riku is always trying to do things by himself. He cares for him and wants to help. He wants to protect him too so he doesn't have to face it alone, but together.

I know Riku didn't have anyone to help him deal with all this complicated stuff back then, but he's not alone anymore. That's why it makes me sad to hear him talk about doing everything by himself. I mean, it kinda starts to feel like I'm the only one who thinks we're friends.

At this part, I think he is referring to how Sora didn't know back then when Riku was trying to figure out everything himself. However, I also think it could also refer to what Riku did during kh1 events. But Sora is sad how Riku is because he really wants to help him and Riku is almost not letting him.

Sora then tells him to stop saying sorry,

Even after all this, Riku was still downcast.

“Can you blame me? I shouldn’t have let the bugs in like this. Every time it’s me against some outside force, I give in and—” Riku gazed at the palm of his hand.

What makes this scene so good is that he seems to have knowledge of all the events to happen like maybe what happens in kh1 and is reflecting on what he did. But like in kh2 he doesn't care he just wants his friend and he wants to stop apologizing for every little thing.

I also noticed he looks at the palm of his hand when thinking about something important. Here he is sad about it, but in 3 he looks at his hand when he thinks of important Sora is to him.

I added this section because I liked how they talked about going through the worlds together. Unlike any of the other games they actually go through some of the world together. Even if it brief and in these little moments of restoring his strength, they still do it.

Sora thinks his Riku being worried is unlike him— probably because he has the cool facade in the first game where he tries to act better than Sora but in fact he actually really cares and is worried for him.

Oh now they're just flirting. They have a strong connection with other. They are just teasing and messing with the other. Sora helps him feel better about everything— how he was almost taken over by bugs or perhaps how the real Riku got taken by darkness? (Not sure if he knows that or not??).

He helps him see how everything makes Riku stronger no matter what— we all need a Sora in our life. I also love their joking and laughing here, it's cute.

And they're just both smiling and the way Riku said thanks like "th-thanks" he's probably blushing. He teases Sora about being short and Sora confidently assures him he will be taller than him one day. It's cute. They're so close. They have an unbreakable connection and to each other and they clearly are each other's precious person.

Once he back out of the deep data in Riku, Sora instantly wondering where Riku is. He is thinking he better made it back or none of it would have been worth it.

He is that important to him and it makes sense why the journal or whoever choose him as the form.

Riku even offers him his hand. I love these two. They're so connected on do many ways.

Finally near the end of the game Riku asks Sora what does he and Kairi have in common, he says it's hurt.

He tells him that Sora always try to help and make things better.

But Riku and Sora seemingly have a stronger connection and it's probably the reason why Riku had the journal information put inside him. Even after data Sora forgot everything, Riku still remembers because of this factor.

So to answer the question Why is the Journal data and form Riku—

That's because they have a deep and complicated connection filled with so many feelings and memories. And the time Riku was with Naminé and DiZ, they both could see that and inputted this into the Journal's data somehow.

Post Note: I personally don't like him forgetting even though he says memories may be gone but the heart will still remember. For me if he forgets the memories, the feeling of hurt is worse when you don't know. Sometimes remembering can help even if it may be painful. I feel like it would have a better affect. But the whole reason it is that way is to mimick both kh1 and com.

[curiosity-killed]

I know like we all know we’re processing a ton of information all the time but every once in a while it does actually hit like. my brain is so tired from Beholding Things

[antlerknives]

currently working on the early stages (ie. user research) of a spotify user interface redesign as a personal portfolio project and i am ridiculously excited about it

[ko-eko-ev-go-ms]

It continues to trip me up how much human brains are just weird organic computers

[bobblestheninja]

There is a bigggg difference between medical/scientific AI and the stuff techbros are trying to push.

For example, in my field, biology. We've got massive databases of thousands or even millions of genomes for hundreds of thousands of species. Thousands of scientists working 24/7 for their entire lives probably wouldn't be able to make a dent, given the rate at which new genomes are being uploaded to the NBCI databases. Using AI to analyse these genomes would make it so the scientists could spend less time on picking apart these massive sequences, and more time doing the associated research, which could be in treating or identifying genetic conditions, or any number of other works. There's an AI for screening of mammograms that can help detect breast cancer, and they're working on some for analysing other images. One of the things AI is good at is recognizing patterns when it's fed a whole bunch of data, and for following rules. So it could be used for things like the aforementioned protein folding (something that takes forever to figure out, so much so that there are games like foldit that are used to help, with people competing to get the most accurate representation of a protein folding)

It also has possible uses in identifying things in slides, like using a neural network to help identify the differences in cancerous cell lines, and perhaps in the future to identify cells from biopsies. There is an entire field called bioinformatics, that is about using computer technology in association with biology in order to do things like track outbreaks for epidemiology, and to otherwise process the massive amounts of raw data that can come out of a study.

AI "art" and other "creative" uses like chatbots and that are nonsense, but AI is a powerful tool for scientific analysis, and definitely has its place in the realm of science.

(Source)

[financia012]

Why Investors Should Focus on Jobs Reports Amid Market Volatility

As October kicks off, many investors grow anxious about potential market turbulence. Historically, this month has seen notable market downturns, fueling fear among investors. However, rather than succumbing to market speculation, a more grounded approach involves analyzing key economic indicators. One of the most significant reports to watch is the U.S. jobs report, which offers crucial insights…

[exopelagic]

I love my degree I love my department I love my uni

[evilvillain123456789]

Im aalmost wholly assured that a lot of you harlots / nagging harpies dont care about the sensitive, VERY IMPORTANT data analysis i spend most of my day on but if any of you would care enough to stop talking about such inane things as "him bouncing on it and moaning"-- My recent models and predictions show that moist criticals hairline has receded to about a norwood scale 3.5, ahead of my recent projections. I believe this is a rwsult of a new semen retention regimen and perhaps the end of his Keeps sponsorship however when i went to the Moist Critical fan subreddit to confirm my hypothesis i was told to "kill myself"

[luvo27]

in case we were wondering figuring out how to do the overdue data science assignment did remind me exactly why I don't actually collect or analyze data for fanfic stats. I do as a matter of fact find wrapping my head around the type of logic necessary to be quite difficult. The good news is that I have an assignment turned in!!

once I figure out how to do this (overdue) data science assignment for my class it is so over for fanfic stats prepare for me to be so annoying

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Often when I post an AI-neutral or AI-positive take on an anti-AI post I get blocked, so I wanted to make my own post to share my thoughts on "Nightshade", the new adversarial data poisoning attack that the Glaze people have come out with.

I've read the paper and here are my takeaways:

Firstly, this is not necessarily or primarily a tool for artists to "coat" their images like Glaze; in fact, Nightshade works best when applied to sort of carefully selected "archetypal" images, ideally ones that were already generated using generative AI using a prompt for the generic concept to be attacked (which is what the authors did in their paper). Also, the image has to be explicitly paired with a specific text caption optimized to have the most impact, which would make it pretty annoying for individual artists to deploy.

While the intent of Nightshade is to have maximum impact with minimal data poisoning, in order to attack a large model there would have to be many thousands of samples in the training data. Obviously if you have a webpage that you created specifically to host a massive gallery poisoned images, that can be fairly easily blacklisted, so you'd have to have a lot of patience and resources in order to hide these enough so they proliferate into the training datasets of major models.

The main use case for this as suggested by the authors is to protect specific copyrights. The example they use is that of Disney specifically releasing a lot of poisoned images of Mickey Mouse to prevent people generating art of him. As a large company like Disney would be more likely to have the resources to seed Nightshade images at scale, this sounds like the most plausible large scale use case for me, even if web artists could crowdsource some sort of similar generic campaign.

Either way, the optimal use case of "large organization repeatedly using generative AI models to create images, then running through another resource heavy AI model to corrupt them, then hiding them on the open web, to protect specific concepts and copyrights" doesn't sound like the big win for freedom of expression that people are going to pretend it is. This is the case for a lot of discussion around AI and I wish people would stop flagwaving for corporate copyright protections, but whatever.

The panic about AI resource use in terms of power/water is mostly bunk (AI training is done once per large model, and in terms of industrial production processes, using a single airliner flight's worth of carbon output for an industrial model that can then be used indefinitely to do useful work seems like a small fry in comparison to all the other nonsense that humanity wastes power on). However, given that deploying this at scale would be a huge compute sink, it's ironic to see anti-AI activists for that is a talking point hyping this up so much.

In terms of actual attack effectiveness; like Glaze, this once again relies on analysis of the feature space of current public models such as Stable Diffusion. This means that effectiveness is reduced on other models with differing architectures and training sets. However, also like Glaze, it looks like the overall "world feature space" that generative models fit to is generalisable enough that this attack will work across models.

That means that if this does get deployed at scale, it could definitely fuck with a lot of current systems. That said, once again, it'd likely have a bigger effect on indie and open source generation projects than the massive corporate monoliths who are probably working to secure proprietary data sets, like I believe Adobe Firefly did. I don't like how these attacks concentrate the power up.

The generalisation of the attack doesn't mean that this can't be defended against, but it does mean that you'd likely need to invest in bespoke measures; e.g. specifically training a detector on a large dataset of Nightshade poison in order to filter them out, spending more time and labour curating your input dataset, or designing radically different architectures that don't produce a comparably similar virtual feature space. I.e. the effect of this being used at scale wouldn't eliminate "AI art", but it could potentially cause a headache for people all around and limit accessibility for hobbyists (although presumably curated datasets would trickle down eventually).

All in all a bit of a dick move that will make things harder for people in general, but I suppose that's the point, and what people who want to deploy this at scale are aiming for. I suppose with public data scraping that sort of thing is fair game I guess.

Additionally, since making my first reply I've had a look at their website:

Used responsibly, Nightshade can help deter model trainers who disregard copyrights, opt-out lists, and do-not-scrape/robots.txt directives. It does not rely on the kindness of model trainers, but instead associates a small incremental price on each piece of data scraped and trained without authorization. Nightshade's goal is not to break models, but to increase the cost of training on unlicensed data, such that licensing images from their creators becomes a viable alternative.

Once again we see that the intended impact of Nightshade is not to eliminate generative AI but to make it infeasible for models to be created and trained by without a corporate money-bag to pay licensing fees for guaranteed clean data. I generally feel that this focuses power upwards and is overall a bad move. If anything, this sort of model, where only large corporations can create and control AI tools, will do nothing to help counter the economic displacement without worker protection that is the real issue with AI systems deployment, but will exacerbate the problem of the benefits of those systems being more constrained to said large corporations.

Kinda sucks how that gets pushed through by lying to small artists about the importance of copyright law for their own small-scale works (ignoring the fact that processing derived metadata from web images is pretty damn clearly a fair use application).

[probablyasocialecologist]

Adopting rightwing policies on issues such as immigration and the economy does not help centre-left parties win votes, according to new analysis of European electoral and polling data. Faced with a 20-year decline in their vote share, accompanied by rising support for the right, far right and sometimes the far left, social democratic parties across Europe have increasingly sought salvation by moving towards the political centre. However the analysis, published on Wednesday, shows that centre-left parties promising, for example, to be tough on immigration or unrelenting on public spending are both unlikely to attract potential voters on the right, and risk alienating existing progressive supporters.

[...]

One of the key lessons was that “trying to imitate rightwing positions is just not a successful strategy for the left”, he said. Two studies in particular, looking at so-called welfare chauvinism and fiscal policy, illustrated the point, the researchers said. Björn Bremer of the Central European University in Vienna said a survey in Spain, Italy, the UK and Germany and larger datasets from 12 EU countries showed that since the financial crisis of 2008, “fiscal orthodoxy” had been a vote loser for the centre left. “Social democratic parties that have backed austerity fail to win the support of voters worried about public debt, and lose the backing of those who oppose austerity,” Bremer said. “Centre-left parties that actually impose austerity lose votes.”

[...]

The data strongly suggests centre-left parties can build a coalition of voters who believe a strong welfare state, effective public services and real investment, for example in the green transition, are essential,” Bremer said. “But doing the opposite – offering a contradictory programme that promotes austerity but promises to protect public services and the welfare state, and hoping voters will swallow such fairytales – failed in the 2010s, and is likely to fail again.” Similarly, said Matthias Enggist of the University of Lausanne, analysis of data from eight European countries showed no evidence that welfare chauvinism – broadly, restricting immigrants’ access to welfare – was a successful strategy for the left.

10 January 2024

[nneiljostenn]

i need to talk to you guys about the colors of the Cattons (Felix specifically) and Oliver. the clothes they are wearing are telling the story of Oliver taking over and leaving his mark throughout the whole movie, with Oliver's failures and successes and a final triumph. holy shit. get in. this is long and ends in ancient greek culture trivia. let;s talk please.

disclaimer: am starting from Oliver's arrival at Saltburn. before that the outfits are also very intentional, but it's a lot more complicated and it has been discussed before. the world distorts once we are at Saltburn and the story gets truly gothic there, and every detail—including color!—is enhanced in meaning. also, special thanks to @kivlaro for doing this with me, the thoughts on this specifically and the Saltburn craze on the whole. pics and detailed analysis under the cut!

let's start from the beginning. here is Oliver at the door. simple, blue shirt.

the shirt is sort of its own character. logically it makes sense as Oliver's suitcase is small and he spends the whole summer there, of course he'll rewear stuff a bunch. but it is blue.

in contrast to Felix, in yellow. yellow is one of Felix's colors (he is the sun, which i've talked about here btw, so this makes sense).

same to Pamela, in blue. first time we see her, she is next to Elspeth, wearing the color that is Oliver's, taking the place that he takes right away, in this very scene. the only other time she is physically present on screen is at dinner, in black and white, and black and white are a blank slate. she is stripped of color and gone very fast.

a bit of crucial data for later: Oliver, in blue, and Felix in pink. pink is very important on Felix. this is their first morning together. they are separate and opposite, solid, contained.

where it starts to get good is the morning after the vampire strike.

Venetia is a Felix extension, just as everyone in the house is to Oliver. i will eventually rant about Saltburn as a whole entity and Cattons as aspects of one self, and Oliver as psychosis, but not here. so, yes, Venetia is a pink riot, a euphoria of self-containment because Oliver gave her a piece of something she felt she lacked to feel whole (validation, attention, care), not a piece of blue, of himself. Oliver is expectedly solid blue. Felix is incredibly interesting and something i didn't pay much attention to at first: predominantly blue, incredibly upset at Oliver for ditching him, with a tile of bright red (on the left! close to heart! over-reaching here but like still!), which still tracks. i mean, really, if i had so much foreign color bleed into me and then abandoned, i'd be pissed, too. nice little touch is sir James' beloved hydrangeas, behind Felix, also pink, very pink, always pink; i don't think i've seen them blue in the movie, although the sort exists.

Farleigh. sweet baby Farleigh i love you. I'm not dead-set on my interpretation of this specifically but i think multiple things are happening with Oliver and Farleigh here. like Rent, which is their song, blue is their color of outsiders and the triers to fit in. Farleigh points out the favoritism and preference of Oliver to him and his mother here, so it may also be appropriation of color to draw attention to Farleigh as almost (but never quite) Oliver. it may also be as simple as that Farleigh, as much as he denies and resists, still retains Oliver's influence, which bleeds into him very slowly.

a nice little moment of Felix wearing blue swim shorts with just tiny specks of a pink pattern. Oliver's shorts also have a bit of pink, but less than Felix's. Oliver is pretty good at remaining unaffected and uninfluenced overall.

and we're getting to where it all clicked and started for me. the Quick family house, the failed reconciliation, and the immediate aftermath. oh it's so good.

on the drive there, Oliver is blue, Felix has a pink polo shirt with a solid blue pullover over it. this is the most blue Felix has ever been (this is the most blue he will ever be!), this is trust. however shaky and toxic it is, Felix loves Oliver and accepts him into his world. as a side note, Oliver's parents are also very blue, mom more so than dad. nice!

and then it crashes. immediately after, it's the evening of the same day, but Felix is not wearing the blue pullover anymore. this is very, very important. this is rejection. it's the end for Oliver in Felix's world and with his trust. Felix, again, in solid pink, Oliver in solid blue. Felix successfully rips him out with the roots and everything. ouch.

daddy. sorry. is that highlighter? sweat? fuck. let me- daddy. SORRY

no i actually have a point about this.

the clothes are replaced by the lights, but we roll with it. Oliver basks in the blue-green light, while Felix is on the other side, in pink and purple and red. sure, blue shines through, and Oliver also walks through the slashes of pink, but it is mostly pretty separate, Oliver watching Felix's pink in his own blue from a distance.

the morning after palette is deep. the wine color that is so prominent in these scenes is fascinating to me. if i were to over-reach again i'd say it's the Oliver in Felix's attributes and in his place that requires the robe to be so dark, not usual definite pink, because deep blue has leaked into the color itself, mixed with it, made itself integral to the shade. but it's also just a nice color, and it is pink in its core. the flowers (with sir James in the background) i think are also this specific shade for the same reason. you look at what remains of Felix everywhere here, and it is his color.

and finally oh the lunch scene. the last supper. the judgement day. the who's afraid of virginia woolf madness.

i think we've established what's up with Oliver, but i also think it's important that he is his own color at lunch but in Felix's pink/wine right before and after. lunch is where he attacks, whereas before and after is where he grieves and enjoys. Farleigh is almost completely blue save for a strip of the same deep pink, and he is soon cast out, and Venetia is striped, blue and pink/salmon, affected deeply by Oliver yet still clinging on to the Catton pink with grief, probably, but also love for Felix.

and after all this, Oliver leaves himself.

no, like, actually, literally himself. sure, he'd got a taste of the Cattons and the pink, but he is a monolith, a solid blue when he leaves Saltburn. he has not been affected by the house, he has taken what he wanted but stayed true and whole. what a power move, honestly.

but it's an even bigger deal that 16 years later, Elspeth runs into Oliver wearing all white and a blue scarf. oh, she's not let this go, alright; it was a long time ago, "but not to me," she says. What Oliver has been up to in that time is a great question, without a doubt he's been keeping tabs on the remaining family as much as he could; but Elspeth has never moved on, either. She has held on to Oliver's blue and the pink is not important at all now. Oliver, of course, is invariably, unwaveringly blue. welcome back to his show.

and welcome back to his triumph.

the only color (except for, again, white and black) we see him wear in the flashback about Saltburn inheritance is the all-too familiar deep pink. wine. bright pink mixed with deep blue.

now i will take a liberty and step back, over-reach, over-interpret and go insane. here's a fun bit on ancient greek culture trivia for you.

this is an interesting and complicated historiographical and linguistic debate that i will not even attempt to relay here, but the essence of it is this: for us, the sea is conventionally deep blue. historically, one of the most prominent civilizations considered "deep wine" to be the descriptor for it (not necessarily the color but the property. highly rec to look this up it's so fascinating). what it gives me here is that Oliver has changed color, but not his self. he has integrated, mixed, but persisted, completely winning over, triumphing. long live the king!

in conclusion, i would just like to propose "colors" by halsey as the next cattonquick anthem. thank you for your attention, please let me know your thoughts. yours, yes, you. cheers. god. peace out

[burins]

kroger shoppers and butch4butch: failures of categorization, failures of desire

(originally published in 2023’s yaoi zine 2: the analysis issue and I realized I never crossposted. you Should check out the full pdf. it slaps.)

I. Survey Fatigue

The year after graduating college, I spent about six months filling out online surveys. In between sending out job applications, I trawled r/beermoney and r/workonline for survey clearinghouse websites, where I could (ostensibly) earn money by giving various nebulous corporations a large amount of information about my preferences on everything from TV to deodorant.

Unfortunately for the me of 2016, survey clearinghouses are not actually a great way to make very much money. Most surveys with low barriers to entry don’t pay very well, unless you happen to stumble on a well-funded academic researcher. Even in a more naive era in which there was still an expectation that consumers should be paid for their data, the ecosystem of survey-based consumer demographics collection is deeply exploitative, with most surveys on public clearinghouses that aggregate many different companies together paying well below minimum wage for the amount of time they take to fill out. (We’re talking, like, $1 for 20 minutes.) Which makes sense, as their ideal candidate is middle-aged, upper middle-class or higher, owns a home and at least one car, has multiple kids, is considering upgrading every category of possession imaginable, and is taking this survey in her free time because she feels deeply passionate about shaping the products of the future. (Many surveys are aimed at women, because, you know. Women be shopping.)

What survey clearinghouses are, instead, is a fantastic way to spend a lot of time thinking about how others might categorize your identity. Marketing research focuses on particular demographic categories, and survey clearinghouse sites overwhelmingly use screeners to make sure that only people who fit that category take the survey. If you’re a marketer interested in the grocery habits of northeastern women with multiple kids, you don’t want some single guy in California’s data. But if you’re a single guy in California, or (just as an example) a nonbinary recent college grad in the south, trying to make some extra cash, and you know you won’t get paid for the time you spent taking the screener, it’s in your interest to try to figure out exactly what the marketers want from you, and adapt your profile accordingly. And this is the internet, so every survey clearinghouse has its own subreddit full of advice for newbies.

(Bear with me; I promise we will get to the yaoi.)

Of course, the posts assure you, you don’t want to outright lie. If you say you’re a retired white midwesterner with two grandkids on one survey, and on another you tell them you live in Seattle in an apartment making tech money, eventually the survey clearinghouse is going to figure it out, and they will ban you. But, the posts continue, it is in your interest to stretch the truth. After all, aren’t the survey companies exploiting us? Shouldn’t we get to, just a little bit, exploit them back?

So I put down the total household income of everyone I was living with, even though we paid bills separately; my kid siblings, who lived multiple hours away, suddenly became residents of this same household, as did my parents’ newly acquired dog; and I became interested in every possible purchasing category imaginable. Sure, I was planning to purchase a vacuum cleaner in the next six months. Yes, I considered myself a power beverage drinker. Yes, that one hookah session did mean that I smoked tobacco regularly, and also I drank a lot, and I was planning to buy a car soon, and a toaster oven, and I made business decisions at my place of employment (my bedroom), and also, also, also, I was a woman.

Back in 2016, very few marketing surveys allowed you to select any category except male or female on the gender question, which was usually the first question asked. I’m not sure if this has changed, but even when surveys did offer nonbinary as an option, I usually selected female.

As of 2021, 1.2 million adults in the US identify as nonbinary. This is a big number; it is also vanishingly small from a marketing perspective, especially when you begin further population segmentation, and especially because 68% of those 1.2 million adults report not having enough money to make ends meet. The majority of us aren’t exactly splashing out on vacation homes. Which means that very few surveys target us, which means, as a nonbinary person trying to make ends meet, I said “oh yes I’m a woman! please let me into your survey” all the time.

I could make an argument that this is an inherently transgender thing to do, that my choice to create a survey identity who crossed as many categories as I could feasibly claim was an act of transcendent self-creation and boundary-blurring. My drag persona, Kroger shopper [oldname] Shipyrds, created for a world that did not have a category for me. If I was writing this essay for Vox or something, maybe I would make this argument, and the essay could end here, on a vaguely triumphant note about the ways trans people manage to exist under capitalism.

But I don’t find the closet liberatory. Mostly, it felt kind of depressing, and also pretty futile, because– much like actually being a woman– I wasn’t very good at it. To make surveys into a successful career– well, first, I’m not sure it’s actually possible, unless you get hired by one of these firms to do blind shopping or focus groups, and even that’s pretty precarious. And second, you have to do it all the time, and you have to install a whole host of scripts and add-ons written by other members of the community to help you grab surveys quicker, to auto-input your pre-loaded information, to tell you which firms are reputable and which ones will trap you in endless screeners before kicking you out without pay after you’ve already given them the info they want. There was a kind of arms race happening between the marketers and the survey takers, because of course the marketers don’t want people who are doing this full time taking their surveys, because we’re not a normal representation of American society, and also because we lie. And I wasn’t particularly good at lying, and I didn’t want to put in the unpaid time to install all of these add-ons and tweak them to my exact specifications, and so as soon as I found other work that paid better, I laid Kroger shopper [oldname] Shipyrds to rest.

II. Lesbian Male Homosexual Sex

Now on to the yaoi. A few months ago, a quote floated across my dash, from Gayle Rubin’s “Of Catamites and Kings: Reflections on Butch, Gender, and Boundaries,” an article in the 2006 collection The Transgender Studies Reader.

“Although [butch-butch eroticism] is not uncommon, lesbian culture contains few models for it. Many butches who lust after other butches have looked to gay male literature and behavior as sources of imagery and language. The erotic dynamics of butch-butch sex sometimes resemble those of gay men…Many butch-butch couples think of themselves as women doing male homosexual sex with one another.”

As you may imagine, I found this delightful. And I think it is also applicable to the eternal question of why lesbians read yaoi. There’s been a tremendous amount of writing and handwringing on this elsewhere, both on social media and academically. Are lesbians who read yaoi fetishizing gay men? Are we betraying our lesbian identities by not reading yuri instead? (As we all know you can only read one kind of content.) Lesbians who read Kirk/Spock slash fiction popped up in 1980s-era writing during the pornography wars; Akiko Mizoguchi has been writing on lesbians who read yaoi (in the specific, not the generic) since 2003.

Lesbians who read yaoi is a thorny question from the outside, but from a butch perspective it seems very simple. A number of the arguments imply that lesbians read yaoi because we want to be men, which for a lot of (I would even go so far as to say most) lesbians is so untrue as to be offensive. The other side of the argument is equally bad: Joanna Russ’s 1985 Kirk/Spock essay has a lot of loving descriptions of the inherent tender and nurturing nature of K/S slash fic, which for anyone who has ever read pon farr fic is. Kind of laughable. The fic is nurturing, she argues, because K/S fans are writing Kirk and Spock as women, and thus the porn is actually fine to read, because it’s two women having beautiful life-affirming sex, in a way where everyone’s boundaries are respected and no one ever gets hurt. (As we all know lesbians never fuck nasty.)

The argument about the morality of pornography aside– that’s another essay– I don’t think either of these arguments are actually true, or at least, they’re not true for me, which after all is the only perspective I can give without doing some survey design of my own. I read yaoi because I enjoy it, because of the tropes and the angst and the stupid bullshit plot machinations, and yes, also because I’m not a woman, and I’m not a man, but I am a dyke and also a twink and when I have sex it’s gay and lesbian at the same time, and so sometimes I want to read (and write!) about gay male sex. (One of the joys of being trans is that you get to feel like the meme about the School of Athens just by moving through the world.)

III. Yaoi and Categorization

These are two different essays, sort of, but they are also the same essay, because ultimately both the entire field of market research and the question of lesbian yaoi readers are failures both of categorization and of desire.

Marketing research, much like gender identity, is an attempt to fit the vastness of human experience into a series of small boxes that can be easily quantified. This is by necessity: if your job requires you to analyze data, your data must be manipulable, comparable across categories, vaguely replicable. But you are also asking people questions about what they want. How much do they want a bottle of iced tea over a can of Coke? Does adding a leaf to the label change the intensity of that feeling? How do you put numbers on desire? How do you put labels on it, so that it can be compared to other types of wanting?

Desire in the world of marketing research is a deeply beige, wan emotion, limited to the constraints of the capitalist imagination. But it is the only emotion in that world, and marketers want nothing more than to make it stronger. They want you to feel the same kind of overwhelming lust when you see an ad for chicken wings that you feel when you see someone you want to fuck. They want your desire to be very strong, and they want it to be about consumption and possession, and they want you to feel it all the time. And also, they’d like you to answer some questions about it, please, and in exchange they’ll enter you into a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card.

This desire is impossible. There is nothing less sexy than a survey; even surveys about things like alcohol or makeup place their product designs on white backgrounds, devoid of all of the surrounding drivers of want– the hot butch at the bar drinking the green-bottled beer, the person wearing the maybe it’s Maybelline lipstick. We live in a society! Desire doesn’t exist in a vacuum!

And for that reason, the more ungovernable and uncategorizable my desire, the better it feels. There is no place on the survey for butch dykes having male homosexual sex; there is a place in the research for it, but always as a sort of curiosity, a quandary that requires explanation, because this type of desire exists outside of the researcher’s imagination.

And increasingly, I am unsure that I want a place in either locale. There is an argument to be made that by allowing ourselves to be studied, we normalize and cement our place in the world. To some degree, this is true. It is hard to accept something you do not believe exists. But also, I don’t believe that the answer to the unfulfilling and exploitative hunger of the marketing survey is to spend our energy advocating for more categories so I can be more accurately sold toothpaste. I feel more and more resistant to the idea (ironic though it may seem several thousand words into this essay) that I should categorize my desire at all. In the end, the best way to articulate my desire– to myself and to others– is to live it. And also, to go read some yaoi.

--

1 Some of these posts also advised fudging your race, as survey slots for more common (read: white) demographic categories tended to fill up faster, or at least the posters seemed to think they did. This was a line I was not willing to cross, but the prevalence and comfort with which some of these posters talked about racefaking for pretty minimal amounts of money could be an essay of its own.

2  The entirety of Russ’s essay is pretty interesting, not just for the Gender of it all, but also because towards the end she almost gets there: “Until recently I assumed, along with many other feminists, that ‘art’ is better than ‘pornography’ just as ‘erotica’ is one thing and ‘pornography’ another; and just as ‘erotica’ surpasses ‘pornography,’ so ‘art’ surpasses ‘erotica.’ I think we ought to be very suspicious of these distinctions insofar as they are put forward as moral distinctions.” 

--

Sources:

Bauer, C. K. (2013). Naughty Girls and Gay Male Romance/Porn: Slash Fiction, Boys’ Love Manga, and Other Works by Female "Cross-Voyeurs" in the US Academic Discourses. Anchor Academic Publishing.

Meerwijk, E. L., & Sevelius, J. M. (2017). Transgender population size in the United States: A meta-regression of population-based probability samples. American Journal of Public Health, 107(2), e1–e8. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303578

Mizoguchi, A. (2003). Male-male romance by and for women in Japan: A history and the subgenres of “yaoi” fictions. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, 25, 49–75.

Rubin, G. (2006). Of catamites and kings: Reflections on butch, gender, and boundaries. In S. Stryker & S. Whittle (Eds.), The Transgender Studies Reader (Vol. 1, pp. 471–481). Routledge.

Russ, J. (1985). Pornography by women for women, with love. Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts, 79-100. Crossing Press.

Wilson, B. D. M., & Meyer, I. H. (2021). Nonbinary LGBTQ Adults in the United States. Williams Institute.

[blackwidownat2814]

Steal My Thunder (T.Owens)

Pairing: Tyler Owens x female reader, Tyler Owens x shy!reader, Tyler Owens x insecure!reader

Word Count: 462

A/N: Welcome to my first Tyler Owens fic! I was throwing fic ideas around before I even saw the movie. I watched several interviews and other stuff on YouTube and took notes even. Then after seeing it the third time, I started working on this story. I don't anticipate this being a real long story, but I also will be a little slow to update because of work or writer's block or working on a crochet project I really need to finish. What I'm really saying is please be patient with me. Secondly, like in my other works, I'd planned to make this with a plus size!reader in mind, but I decided to go with insecure because I want to try and be a little more inclusive. Also, unless otherwise stated, my readers are always female readers. Lastly, I'm already working on Chapter 1, so keep an eye out for that. However, if you really like this, please let me know and I can tag you in future updates. And as always, I will be crossposting this to AO3. If you see this story anywhere besides AO3 or Tumblr, it's stolen Kthxbye! PS: Thanks to KJ & Jordyn for their help in beta-ing and title/chapter ideas! Love y'all!

Prologue

You were a Lead Meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  You should not be handling school age tour groups.  You were just about DONE with being treated like a secretary.  The rest of them thought that just because Kate was gone that they could go back to treating you like they did before her.

You were quiet, shy, and someone whose love language was acts of service, so you loved to help people out.  The problem was that your co-workers abused that part of you.  They asked to lead the school groups, bring everyone coffee, put together packets for meetings, etc.  Complete nonsense…and you were done.

It was then, as you mentally typed up your resignation, that you received a serendipitous call from Kate herself.

“I believe the sayin’ is ‘No man left behind’.”

“You’re not an US Army Ranger, B.”

“Yeah, well…”  You trailed off, not wanting to burden your friend with your issues.  Kate always told you that it was okay to talk to her when you needed someone, but you were stubborn.  You were very much of the ‘friends aren’t therapists’ mindset.

“Talk to me B.”

“I’m happy for you, ya know?  You’re back to doing’ something I know you loved.  I can see it in your eyes with each video or stream I watch.”

“Okay, keep your secrets…and thank you.  I am happy.”

“So…what can I do for ya?  Why are you botherin’ me on my lunch hour?”

“Damn!  Sorry about that B.”

“You know I don’t actually care.  Tell me what’s up.”

“I’m callin’ with a job off-”

“I’ll take it.”

“Woah, I haven’t even said what it-”

“I don’t care.  Ever since you left, and because I’m a huge push over, everyone’s been walking all over me.  You know I had to do three tours today?”

“We’ve talked about this.”

“I know Kate.  Just…what’s the job anyway?”  Your friend was silent for a moment, before you heard her exhale.

“It’s storm data analysis really.”

“Elaborate.”

“We’re trying to really get down to the nitty gritty with the data from the EF-5 we got to dissipate last season and see where to improve, how to catalog it in our info database, etc.”

“I’m in”, you said.  “Y’all won’t treat me like some secretary, I’ll be close to home again, and I’ll get to spend all my time with you.”

“We most definitely will not treat you like some secretary.  We’re equal opportunity storm chasers out here.”

You tossed your empty sandwich bag into the trash and pulled up Word to start drafting your resignation letter.

“Say, what are the benefits as a Tornado Wrangler?”  Before Kate could reply, you heard Boonie baby! Woo! in the background.

With that enthusiasm, what could possibly go wrong?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tagging: @buckysdollforlife @13braincellsonly