#Supporting independent wikis is EXTREMELY important

[crowputer]

Hello! May I ask how you took the excerpt directly from the ULTRAKILL terminal entry? I couldn't figure out how to do it and it made me a bit curious

I assume you're talking about the excerpt from the mannequin terminal entry that I added onto Afonya's post. Short answer: I didn't. I could't taken a screenshot and edited it to be face-on, but instead the mannequin terminal excerpt was taken from ULTRAWIKI on miraheze (cross-referenced with the game to ensure that the text was game-accurate).

[dailymeruem]

Royal Guard Nomenclature

You might know the Royal Guards for having some creative names, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably read HxH Wiki trivia on where the names came from. However, I haven’t seen any comprehensive post getting right into it, so lets have some fun research time and look into the origins of the Chimera Ant Royal Guard’s namesakes and how they might have affected Togashi’s characterizations of them! 

While i’m trying to keep everything as brief as I can, this will be a longer post so if you want to gain some knowledge and kill some time, read on! I’ve linked sources throughout the post for further research!

Naming Origin Sources

All three of the Guard’s names - Neferpitou, Shaiapouf, and Menthuthuyoupi, respectively- were chosen by the Chimera Ant Queen prior to their birth in the story. They are mashups from two sources - Ancient Egyptian mythology, specifically the pantheon of traditional gods and goddesses, and a French children’s book series entitled Caroline et ses amis (Caroline and her Friends) written by Pierre Probst. 

The Guard x Egyptian Gods

In Ancient Egyptian life, people worshiped a large number of deities which represented natural forces and phenomena (sunlight, life, childbirth, etc). The people regularly offered sacrifices and performed rituals to please the gods so that these forces would continue to function according to divine order (ma’at). Each god or goddess had complex relationships, characteristics, and symbolism associated with them. {x}

Neferpitou x Nefertem

The first half of Neferpitou’s name, “Nefer-”, is derived from the Egyptian deity Nefertem. A very ancient god by Egyptian mythos standards, this god is associated with the lotus flower, as he was believed to have emerged in a water lily from the primal waters at the creation of the world. He also represented the first sunlight and the lovely smell of the Egyptian blue lotus. Nefertem is usually depicted as a young, beautiful man, and sports titles such as “He Who Is Beautiful” and “Water Lily of the Sun”. {x}  {x}

In HxH, Neferpitou is the first Royal Guard to be born, which ties in nicely to Nefertem’s being a very early god born from the creation of the world as well as being associated with the first sunlight. As for the beauty aspect, Neferpitou’s androgynous appearance could play into this factor, as some gods in the Egyptian creation myths were depicted as androgynous.

Nefertem’’s mother is often credited as being Bast/Bastet, the guardian goddess of cats, or Sekhmet, the warrior goddess of healing (both goddesses are often considered to be two aspects of the same goddess). These goddesses are both depicted with cat or lioness heads, and so Nefertem is often depicted with a lion’s head or as a lion. I needn’t say more about this tie to Neferpitou! Aside from the cat aspect, Sekhmet’s being a goddess that both goes to war and heals is reflected in Pitou’s dual nature- both a ruthless killing machine in their own right and with their Terpsichora ability making instant armies, and a reliable healer using the Doctor Blythe ability, showcasing a compassionate side. {x} {x}

Shaiapouf x Shai

Shaiapouf’s Egyptian name component comes from Shai, which, interestingly, is not so much an entity as it is a concept- the deification of the concept of Fate. The name Shai is usually translated as “that which is ordained”. This god was said to determine the span of each person’s life; he was with each person at their birth and remained with them through their life until their final judgement in the underworld (duat). Shai would offer the true life story of the individual at their judgement, and could either protect or damn them. This deity has so much power in the Egyptian mythos that even pharaohs and other gods were subject to it.  {x} {x}

Now, although Shaiapouf as a character doesn’t have an omnipotent power over fate, the concept of fate runs really strong in Pouf’s characterization. Pouf, along with the other Royal Guards, was present at King Meruem’s birth, and intended to stay at his side throughout his whole life, guiding and protecting him. This is a role that Pouf seemed to take to heart, almost to an extreme. As we know, Pouf saw the King’s destiny of becoming the ruler of the world and dominating all other species as being absolute, and began to actively work against the Guard and even the King himself when he began to stray from the fate that Pouf had “preordained” for him. Going so far as to attempt to kill Komugi, who was the most important person to the King, Pouf’s actions, although out of a motivation to protect the King, would have been damning for the King had he succeeded.

Shaiapouf’s nen ability, Spiritual Message, gives us a hint as to his namesake as well. The god Shai hid nothing from Osiris (god of the underworld) at the final judgement of that person’s life, and so does Pouf’s ability allow him to see the absolute truth about a person’s emotional state by reading their flow of aura. This gives Pouf the ability to come to conclusions about that person’s personality, thoughts, and possible course of action, seemingly allowing him to predict their “fate”. {x} 

Also, this may be a trivial fact, but Pouf has the habit of ending his sentences with, “That’s all there is to it”. A very final and fateful statement indeed.

Being a concept, Shai is neither male nor female, but is more often depicted as being male. In this form, he is often said to be married to Renenutet (cobra goddess of child rearing who gave newborn babies secret names), or Meskhenet (goddess of childbirth). These three are often depicted together which gives us a definite picture of the cycle of birth and death. {x}  {x}

In HxH, after Meruem is mortally wounded by the Miniature Rose Bomb, we get the lovely and terrifying experience of seeing Pouf and Youpi feed themselves to the King in order to revive him. In this scene, both guards are ecstatic as they have ascended to the level of a Chimera Ant Queen and are filled with an unconditional motherly love for their King. The ties here between this occurrence and these trifecta of gods associated with birth and life are pretty strong.

A few final small factoids: The Greek people associated Shai with their god Agathodaemon, a god of fortunetelling that was considered to be a serpent. As well, the word Shai was also an Egyptian word for “Pig”. Thus, Shai was sometimes depicted as a serpent-headed pig, also called the Shai animal. I am reminded of the time Pouf was shown to be able to rearrange his cells to impersonate a certain blind Gungi player.

Menthuthuyoupi x Montu

The final Royal Guard, Menthuthuyoupi, bears the name of Montu, a very powerful and ancient god in the Egyptian pantheon. Montu (also written as Monthu or Menthu, the latter which Youpi uses in his name) originally was a manifestation of the scorching effects of the sun (Ra), but over time this was modified to mean destructiveness in battle, which led to Montu being known as a god of war. He was said to attack the enemies of cosmic order (ma’at).Montu is usually depicted with a falcon head or a bull head. Falcons were a symbol of the sky, and bulls symbolized strength and war. {x}  {x}

Montu was often linked with other gods and is depicted as a fusion of those gods. For instance, because of his association with Ra, he often appears as Montu-Ra. Occassionally he is linked to Atum (another creator god) and Set (god of scary natural phenomena and deserts). Over time, Montu was also linked to Horus, a god associated with the pharaoh, and therefore Montu is sometimes seen as being a symbol of a Pharaoh as a ruler and conqueror.

In HxH, Menthuthuyoupi definitely embodies the warlike aspect of his namesake. Being the only guard not made from human genetic material, he is able to act on instinct and devote himself completely to being a soldier for the King, attacking anyone who threatened the King’s divine rule. Being immensely powerful, Youpi was capable of immense damage with his Rage Blast and Rage Incarnate nen abilities. As well, just as Montu gradually evolved over time to represent more complex aspects of life in Ancient Egypt, so too did Youpi evolve over the course of the Chimera Ant Arc, which gave his life new and more complex meaning.

The many forms Montu can take reminds us of Youpi’s unique Metamorphosis ability, which allows him to change any part of his body at will to suit his needs. Youpi’s Rage Incarnate form, in which his body takes the worm of a winged centaur, is a callback to Montu’s two most common depictions; as a Falcon (Youpi’s wings), and as a Bull (Youpi’s hooves). {x}

One of Montu’s wives was thought to be Tjenenet, another goddess of childbirth, which has ties to the event of Meruem’s rebirth discussed in Shaiapouf’s section above.

An interesting tidbit of info is that Montu was sometimes though to be a guardian of family life. He is sometimes mentioned in marriage documents to enforce commitment; infidelity is described as “the abomination of Montu”. While this doesn’t really have anything to do with Menthuthuyoupi aside from maybe reflecting in his loyalty to the King, the next time you feel tempted to cheat on your significant other, imagining a frowning Youpi may dissuade you.

One thing that each Royal Guard has in common with all of their Egyptian namesakes is that all strive to support what they see as the Divine Order using their individual strengths, even if their methods of supporting this order greatly differ.

The Guard x Caroline et ses amis

The Caroline series is a series of French childrens picture books, or albums, written and illustrated by Pierre Probst. There are 44 books in the series, which were written from 1953 to 2007. They follow Caroline, a little blond girl who is independent and active, and her 8 mischievous animal friends, who talk like humans. The series was adapted into an animated TV show titled Caroline et ses amis in 1994, which is most likely the source Togashi got the names for the Royal Guards from (and you can find on youtube!)  {x} {x}

Neferpitou x Pitou

Pitou is one of the 8 animal characters in Caroline. Pitou is a panther, and he appeared in a collection called “Les Albums roses” (The Pink Albums) in 1952, which were a precursor to the Caroline books, thus making Pitou the first character of the future Caroline series. Pitou is characterized as being lazy and cunning.

In HxH, our Neferpitou was the first of the Chimera Ant Royal Guard to be born, just as Pitou was the first character that began the Caroline series. Both of them being a cat is also a very obvious connection that both share. While there are other cats in the Caroline series, Pitou being a panther harkens to Neferpitou’s wild nature. Caroline’s Pitou being both lazy and cunning are character traits that show up in HxH’s Pitou as well; we see them exhibit extreme intellect in science, military strategy and manipulation, but at the same time they are the most playful of the Guard and get distracted very easily.

Shaiapouf x Pouf

Pouf is a white kitten that wears a blue bowtie. He is characterized as being elegant, snobbish, and eccentric. He is prone to going on rants about his dreams of greatness, much to the annoyance of everyone else, and he has little quirks such as hating water and the cold.

If it weren’t for the physical description, you might have thought I was describing HxH’s Pouf- he too is elegant, snobbish and eccentric and often goes on long, intellectual rants, which are mostly never followed by the rest of the guard. Shaiapouf is also always wearing a flowy white dress shirt that features a bowtie-like collar which is reminiscent of Pouf’s white fur and bowtie. While Shaiapouf isn’t known to hate water or cold, he does manifest peculiar quirks such as melodramatic monologues and playing his violin when he is upset.

Menthuthuyoupi x Youpi

Youpi (also spelled Yupi), is a cocker spaniel dog. He is naive, turbulent, and a little bit grumpy, but also generous, devoted and affectionate. He can be fearful and prefers staying home to going out on adventure. He really likes being cuddled by Caroline, the main character.

Menthuthuyoupi in HxH displays a lot of similar characteristics to his namesake: naive, turbulent, and devoted are all adjectives you could use to describe him. Because of Menthuthuyoupi’s lack of ego, he is solely devoted to the King and his divine destiny, not bothering to give a thought to other courses of action, which could be a reflection of Caroline’s Youpi prefering to remain in the safety of home. After Meruem’s revival, when Youpi and Pouf share a affectionate spiritual bond with him, Youpi is shown to cherish the new bond he has with his King, just as Caroline’s Youpi is affectionate towards Caroline.

~~~

One thing that all the Royal Guard share with their Caroline namesakes is that both sets of characters unquestioningly follow an independent leader character that they love and support. As well, in the case of Neferpitou and Shaiapouf, their manner of dress is a homage to Caroline- Pouf dresses in a very elegant and frilly ensemble, very French of him, in my opinion- and Pitou’s outfit is reminicent of both an old school French military uniform and a child’s school uniform.

A bonus Caroline homage in HxH: The titular character Caroline is famously depicted with her pigtail hairstyle. A certain blind Gungi player is also famously shown sporting a similar hairstyle.

Bonus Section: Meruem’s Name

Although not containing as much lore as his Royal Guard, the King’s given name can give us a few fun tidbits in keeping with the etymology of the Guard.

As you know, in-universe, the Chimera Ant Queen states her son’s name, Meruem, to mean “the light that illuminates/shines on everything”. His name is very close to the common Arabic name, Maryam (مريم), which has multiple romanized spellings. The most notable use of this name is in Biblical history as a form of the name Mary, who was the mother of Jesus, and Miriam, who was the sister of Moses. 

It is thought that the name might have roots originating in the Egyptian language; the words “mry” (beloved) and “mr” (love) are thought to have been derivatives of the name.This root meaning would work in portraying the love that the Ant Queen had for her son, even before birth.

Other scholars have thought that the Hebrew root words “mr” (bitter) or “mry” (rebellious) were the basis of the name in the case of Miriam, as she was born at a point in history when the nation of Israel was subject to bitter slavery by the Egyptians. “Bitter” and "Rebellious” might be words you could use to describe Meruem, at least when he is first introduced to us. {x} {x}

Other fun tidbits: Meruem’s characteristic “neutral” face expression, young and feminine facial structure, and characteristic “cat eyes” is very reminiscent to a lot of ancient Egyptian art. One that stands out in my mind is the famous Head of Nefertem statue, found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, which depicts the Pharaoh in question as a child in the form of the god Nefertem (remember him?). Interestingly, both Meruem and Tutankhamen were kings that ascended the throne (and died) very early in their lives. I’ll let you look at the piece and notice the similarities yourself!

~~~~~~

And that about does it for all the conclusions I’ve drawn. I hope you enjoyed reading through this and that it prompted you to do some reading and research of your own! Togashi chocked HxH full of fun little references to things in our real world, and it’s so much fun to do a deep dive to find all this trivia. If you think of/find any other fun things too add to this post, feel free to reply/reblog with additions. Cheers!

[ljandersen]

Do you think Kaidan also went through N training at some point? I've seen fics where he's apparently gone through it, but couldn't find anything in canon about it.

Hi, anon! Ooh, a question. Fun! Thank you for thinking of me.

Do I think Kaidan is N-trained?  In short, no.

There isn't evidence disproving that he's N trained, but there isn’t evidence suggesting he's N trained either. If anything, the lack of any indication he has N training is proof in itself.

For one, none of the characters associated with N training ever include Kaidan as if he’s a member. James goes to Shepard with his N questions. He never mentions or refers to Kaidan's experience. Neither Anderson nor Shepard mention Kaidan being N trained.

It's not mentioned in his background anywhere. It's said he has over a dozen special commendations. He does get involved in special operations, even leading the first Special Operation Biotic Company, but this doesn't require an N designation.  Unless he failed out before qualifying as a N1, it seems like something that would be included in his history.  

In ME1, he specifically says he’s been holding back up to this point in using his biotics offensively.  Jenkins is the first soldier he’s lost to hostile action.  None of these suggest to me someone who’s undergone rigorous N spec ops training, where holding back would probably limit being accepted.  Some N operatives may not have seen someone die due to hostile action, but it’s at least more likely with a N trained operative than a general marine.  It seems like Kaidan is still coming into his own in biotic combat in ME1.

If anything, I wonder if health concerns over his L2 implant may not disqualify him.  N operatives frequently lead high-risk, high-priority missions either independently or in charge of a small groups. The whole mission hinges on that one person. Having a serious pre-existing health condition, especially one triggerable on the field (light, sound, stress, etc.), would be a serious concern. 

 While he may function well on a team or even in a leadership position commanding a unit, I think special forces may rely heavier on single-person performance under high-strain situations.  Conditions on those high risk N missions maybe be more likely to trigger an attack than typical combat.   Alone, disabled, and with the whole mission riding on him achieve a specific task, it could be disastrous.

Even if was accepted to apply, I don't know if he could pass N training with his health condition. If Wiki is correct, it says this about N1 training:

"If this is their first time at the school, trainees participate in scenarios experienced by the elite units of most land-based armies; a typical candidate may be in training more than 20 hours a day, leading small units into combat over hostile terrain with little sleep or food. Trainees who do well are awarded an internal designation of N1 and are invited to return."

While Kaidan is obviously a tough person, who's gone through basic and performs well as a marine on the field, I don't know if he could push himself to operate with 4 hours of sleep a day and hardly any food. My sister has terrible migraines, and she has to careful judge her sleep cycle and the timing of her meals. If she doesn't get enough sleep or oversleeps, she gets a migraine. If she misses a meal, she gets a migraine. 

Obviously, Kaidan would face those issues while on the field as a general marine, but I don't think it would be to the same extent as here.  If on the field in these conditions, a migraine could be dealt with, either supported by his team and medication.  Or, if extreme, by evacuation.  As a N candidate under these conditions, a bad migraine affecting his performance would simply disqualify him.

It also says about higher level N training:

"The highest grade of training, N6, provides actual combat experience in conflict zones throughout the galaxy. From day one, invitees are given basic gear, then separated and stranded on an asteroid with no nav data. The test ends when the last person runs out of oxygen. The first few are out of the program. If the trainee survives these scenarios in "admirable and effective fashion," they finally receive the coveted N7 designation."

I imagine every N operative enters training with the intention of becoming a N7. No one thinks, "Yeah, I'll join, but I only want to be a N4." Everyone is shooting for the top. In that case, if Kaidan wanted to become a N7, that means he'd be stranded alone on an asteroid and rationing oxygen. I think the hypoxia alone could be a huge trigger for a bad migraine.

Overall, I don't think there's any evidence to suggest Kaidan entered N training. Moreover, I suspect he may not qualify due to health concerns. If he did qualify, I don't know if he'd get pass the extreme conditions to get even a N1 designation.

Now that sounds like I'm looking down on Kaidan and what he can do having a migraine condition, but I'm really not. He obviously has found a way to function effectively as a marine. He assures Shepard he won't be a burden on the crew, if Shepard was worried.   He received all those commendations and jumps up the ranks fast.  He obviously functions well and deserves his position as a marine.  But the military is strict with health limitations, and I think N training may be the point where the line is drawn.  It’s just too risky for him and the mission.

I think what opportunities Kaidan lacks due to his L2 implant, he makes up for with his outstanding leadership skills, level-headed resourcefulness, and intuitiveness for politics and tact.  Through ME1, he is frequently dissecting Council and Alliance motivation and power-plays.  He’s open minded, fair, and progressive in the larger picture, long-term goals of the Alliance.  He takes time considering all of the political players involved and giving the benefit of a doubt to aliens in their actions toward humanity.  

To me, he makes an excellent candidate for Spectre for his political saavy in addition to his leadership skills, lack of racial bias, self-accountability, determination, and independent decision making.  He thinks for himself beyond blindly accepting orders.  He is willing to take those convictions to the level of breaking rules and confronting superiors.  Those are important for a Spectre, and his moral self-accountability will ensure he has proper discernment in how he uses his powers.  He obviously has good fighting skills and ability to lead on the field despite his health condition, because he jumps so many Alliance ranks.  He learns to Reave and is teaching other spec op biotics.  He’s very capable both on a political intellectual level and physically with skills and ability.

While he may not, in my opinion, match well with the rigors and high-intensity of N training, he’s an exceptional option for a high leadership positions within the Alliance and for promoting galactic interests as a Spectre.  

Thank you for the ask!!!

[dwellordream]

“...Where the show had sensibly added yurts and merely forgot to have any way to move them, Martin has the Dothraki live in “palaces of woven grass” (AGoT, 83) which I assume the show did not replicate because the moment someone described doing that everyone realized what a bad idea it was and moved on to something more sensible like a yurt covered in leather. Grass and reeds, of course, can be woven. However, as anyone who has done so will tell you, the idea of trying to weave what is essentially a grass basket the size of a tent in a single day is not an enviable – or remotely possible – task.

Trying to move such a giant grass basket without it coming apart or developing tears and gaps is hardly better. And at the end, a woven-grass structure wouldn’t even really be particularly good at controlling temperature, which is its entire purpose! It is rather ironic, given that unlike the show’s Dothraki, Martin’s Dothraki do seem to use at least some carts, because Viserys is forced to ride in one (AGoT, 323) and so could bring yurts with them. They just don’t.

More to the point, it is very clear that Martin imagines the Dothraki subsistence system to consist almost entirely of horses. The Dothraki ride horses, they eat horses, they drink fermented mare’s milk. The Dothraki – as in the show – are presented as eating almost entirely horsemeat. They eat horsemeat at the wedding (AGoT, 84), and Daenerys’ attendants are surprised that she asks for any kind of meat other than horse (AGoT, 129), although Daenerys herself seems to have access to a more agrarian diet (AGoT, 198) and other characters observe that the Dothraki prefer horsemeat to anything else (AGoT, 272). There is no mention of herds of anything except people and horses moving with the khalasaar.

There is also no sense that the Dothraki are hunting big game like one would in the Great Plains; Drogo kills a hrakkar – a sort of lion, apparently – as a display of bravery (AGoT, 495) but there is nothing that would suggest the kind of bison-based subsistence system (at the very least, if that was the system, Daenerys would be well aware of it, because the camp would be awash in bison-products). I found no references to larger game and the Wiki only offers, “packs of wild dogs, herds of free-ranging horses, and rare hrakkar” which is, needless to say, not enough to make up for the absence of large herds of bison, especially for trying to feed Drogo’s camp of perhaps a hundred thousand people (or more!).

They clearly do not herd sheep. This becomes painfully obvious with the raid on the Lhazareen village. The Dothraki – Khal Ogo’s men – in raiding a sedentary pastoralist settlement, kill all of the sheep and leave them to rot. Dany sees them “thousands of them, black with flies, arrow shafts bristling from each carcass” and only knows that this isn’t Drogo’s work because he would have killed the shepherds first (AGoT, 555). And we are told that the people there “the Dothraki called them haesh rakhi, the Lamb Men….Khal Drogo said they belong south of the river bend. The grass of the Dothraki sea was not meant for sheep” (AGoT, 556).

We are told that the Dothraki have “vast herds” but this can only mean herds of horses, given that they apparently take offense at any other animal being grazed on the Dothraki and look down at shepherds in general (AGoT, 83). To be clear, for a nomadic people moving over vast grassland to spurn the opportunity to capture vast herds of sheep would be extraordinarily stupid. At the very least, thousands of sheep are valuable trade goods that can literally walk themselves to the point of sale (we’ll get to this idea that the Dothraki also don’t understand commerce a little later, but it is also intense rubbish; horse nomads in both the New World and the Old understood trade networks quite well and utilized them adroitly). But more broadly, as I hope we’ve laid out, sheep are extremely valuable for subsistence in Steppe terrain.

But Martin does not even do horse-string logistics right. While Daenerys eats cheese (AGoT, 198), we never hear of the Dothraki doing so. The Dothraki do have an equivalent to qumis, but no qulut, no yogurt. Even the frankly badass bit about drinking the horse’s blood as a source of nourishment does not appear. The horses themselves are also wrong. First, Daenerys and Drogo each have one horse they use, seemingly to the exclusion of all others. If you have been reading this long, you know that is nonsense: they ought to both (and Jorah too, if he intends to keep up) be shifting between multiple horses to avoid riding any of them into the ground. Moreover, Martin has imported a European custom about horses – that men ride stallions and women ride mares – into a context where it makes no sense. Drogo’s horse is clearly noted as a red stallion (AGoT, 88) while Daenerys’ horse is a silver filly (AGoT, 87). But of course the logistics of Steppe raiding revolves around mares; in trying to give Drogo the ultimate manly-man horse, he has actually given him the equivalent of a broken down beater – a horse only able to fulfill a slim parts of its role.

Finally, the group size here is wildly off. For comparison, Timothy May estimates that, in 1206, when Temujin he took the name Chinggis Khan and thus became the Great Khan, ruling the entire eastern half of the Eurasian Steppe, that the Mongol army “probably numbered less than a hundred thousand men” (May, The Mongols, (2019), 43), though by that point his army included not merely Mongols, but other ethnically distinct groups of steppe nomads, Merkits, Naimans, Keraites, Uyghurs and the Tatars (the last of which Chinggis had essentially exterminated – next time, we’ll get to the nonsense of the Dothraki being a single ethnic group).

That is, to be clear, compared to the armies of sedentary empires of similar size (which is to say, huge) a fairly small number! We’re going to come back to this next week, but the strength of Steppe nomads was never in numbers. Pastoralism is a low density subsistence strategy, so the steppe nomads were almost always outnumbered by their sedentary opponents (Chinggis himself overcomes this problem by folding sedentary armies into his own, giving him agrarian numbers, backed by the fearsome fighting skills of his steppe nomads).

Khal Drogo’s khalasaar, which moves as a single unit, supposedly has 40,000 riders (AGoT, 325-6); Drogo is perhaps the strongest Khal, but still only one of many. With 40,000 riders, we have to imagine an entire khalasaar of at least 120,000 Dothraki (plus all the slaves they seem to have – put a pin in that for later; also that number is a low-ball because violent mortality is clearly very high among the Dothraki, which would increase the proportion of women and children) and probably something like 300,000 horses. At least. Of course no grassland could support those numbers without herds of sheep or other cattle. As noted above, Isenberg’s figures suggest much lower density in the absence of herding – just under 70,000 nomadic Native Americans on the Great Plains in 1780 (and less than 40,000 in 1877), including women and children! But more to the point, no assemblage of animals and people that large could stay together for any length of time without depleting the grass stocks.

Even if we ignore that problem and even if we assume that the Dothraki have Mongol-style pastoral logistics to enable higher population density on the Dothraki Sea, my sense is that the numbers still don’t work. Even before Drogo dies, we meet quite a few other independent Khals with their on khalasaars – Moro, Jommo, Ogo, Zekko and Motho at least and it is implied that there are more. Drogo’s numbers suggests he should be roughly at the stage Chinggis Khan was in 1201 or so – with Chinggis controlling roughly half of the Mongolian Steppe, and his old friend and rival Jamukha the other half. But Khal Drogo has evidently at least a half-dozen rivals, probably more. It is hard to say with any certainty, but the numbers generally seem too high. Having that entire group concentrated, moving together for at least nine months (long enough for Daenerys to become pregnant and give birth) would be simply impossible inside of a grazing-based subsistence system, sheep or no sheep.

In short, no part of this subsistence system works, either from a North American or a Eurasian perspective. This isn’t actually much of a surprise. Martin has been pretty clear that he doesn’t like the kind of history we’re doing here. As he states: I am not looking for academic tomes about changing patterns of land use, but anecdotal history rich in details of battles, betrayals, love affairs, murders, and similar juicy stuff.

That’s an odd position for an author who critiques other authors for being insufficiently clear about their characters’ tax policy (what does he think they are taxing, other than agricultural land use?). Now, I won’t begrudge anyone their pleasure reading, whatever it may be. But what I hope the proceeding analysis has already made clear is that it simply isn’t possible to say any fictional culture is ‘an amalgam’ of a historical culture if you haven’t even bothered to understand how that culture functions. And it should also be very clear at this point that George R. R. Martin does not have a firm grasp on how any of these cultures function.”

- Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part II: Subsistence on the Hoof.”

[fauzhee10069]

JoJolion: What actually happened in Mamezuku Rai's past? (with some villains’ theory & motivation)

The X-Files theme is playing... (& TL;DR at the bottom post)

Back in chapter 75 during Ozon Baby arc, we got a glimpse of of how Mamezuku Rai's past happened.

JJL chapter 75: Ozone’s Baby Pressure – part 3

When he was a child, his parents grew prized high-class pears which would sell for millions of yens. However, because their techniques were leaked, a competitor tied to money-lenders ravaged Rai's parents' orchard, ruining their crop and forcing them to sell the land. Unable to forgive his parents' incompetence, Rai secluded himself on a mountain slope and managed to cultivate fruits in spite of the harsher climate. He was found by Norisuke IV and then he was appointed in secret as his personal fruit grower and appraiser.

However, in recent chapter (99) of JoJolion, we’ve been told that Rai’s father just passed away.

In the flashback, Rai told that he found his parent's orchard infested with insects. After informing them, his father rushed out of the house to deal with it, but was killed by a landslide caused by a typhoon. He then attended his father's funeral. However, there was also Akefu as one of the guests in the funeral, though it seemed that no one know him (including Rai).

Back to the present time, Head Doctor Akefu as Tooru’s Stand revealed his name as “Wonder of U”. He also revealed that he was the real cause of the death of Rai's father.

JJL chapter 99: Endless Calamity – part 5

He told Rai that his father had accidentally triggered the pursuing when he rushed out to deal with the insects, causing him caught in the flow of calamity.

Therefore, in these two chapters (75 & 99), it seems that Araki retcons Rai’s backstory. In the Ozon Baby’s arc, it was told that what damaged Rai’s pear orchard was the act of sabotage by the usurpers who were connected with local money lenders to cut the pear branches. The chapter also said that it was because Mamezuku’s cultivation techniques had leaked to other people in the industry. However in this chapter 99, we’ve been told that it was the work of rock insects and “Wonder of U”.

It is as if the story has changed, but the JoJo fandom page (wiki) actually considers it as if the two events took place at different times in a row. But does this mean that Rai's pear orchard had been destroyed twice?

Rai and The Rock-Humans

Wise Anon in 4chan also suggested that the usurpers who destroyed Rai’s pear orchard could be the rock-humans as well.

Then what was the motivation of those rock-humans to destroy Rai's pear orchard, twice?

JJL chapter 99: Endless Calamity – part 5

I think it's still quite difficult to be able to really tell the motivation of Akefu/”Wonder of U”/Tooru as major antagonist lately. But what Akefu said here sounds like a declaration of war between silicon-based & carbon-based humans.

We have just been shown that Tooru is indeed a rock-human. Urban Guerrilla had also implied that the goal of the rock-humans is to be superior being and reach the peak of society (compared to those ordinary carbon-based humans).

Then in this chapter 99, we’ve been told about the reason the rock-humans are created, it is as the backup for those carbon-based being in case their existence fails. But if so, why were they created together and living together at the same period?

There is also an interesting idea by u/Mamezuku from reddit:

What if rock-women no longer exist anymore? We have never seen any rock-woman (besides the flashback), only groups of men so far. What if the Doctors are trying to use the Locacaca in order to create a legacy, a rock-baby? That's why the perfect New Locacaca is very important to the Head Doctor’s gang. Notice how the narrator specified in this very chapter how normal men can make babies with rock-women, but not vice versa. The growth process that a rock-human has to go through is extremely harsh and difficult, hence why there's not many rock-human alive. What if no rock-women survive in this generation and only rock-men are left now? This would be an awesome motive for the rock-humans (Tooru) and so far it looks like it's heading this way.

Rai and Higashikata

Another interesting thing that I saw in Rai's flashback was the Higashikata family as funeral guests.

We see that Norisuke IV along with Jobin and Hato came to the funeral, we did not see Joshu and Daiya, probably because they were too small at the time. But clearly we don't see Caato here, even in panels when Norisuke IV and Rai were having conversation. I mean, she did not appear in this flashback at all.

This implied that Caato might have been in prison by then, which means that the equivalent exchange in her infamous flashback with Jobin already happened. Jobin and Hato also seemed not much different compared to them in the moment just before Caato got arrested.

Then according to Rai’s old backstory in Ozon Baby arc, he got hired by Norisuke IV as his plant appraiser when he was around 17 years old. Let’s do a little math, JoJolion took place in 2011, Mamezuku Rai is 31 (as his name & age were written in the chapter of his first debut). 31-17 = 14 years ago, 2011-14 = 1997, it was the year Norisuke IV have recruited Rai.

Then the time when Caato got arrested, in present time, she just finished her prison term and was released from prison. She was sentenced for 15 years of incarceration. 2011-15 = 1996, it was the year Caato was caught by the police.

Therefore, the time of Rai's father's death and the destruction of his pear orchard occurred around a year after Caato was jailed. At the funeral, Norisuke IV consoled and gave him his support, he also expressed his concern regarding Rai's pear orchard and the fate of his family. It seemed that Mamezuku family was in a real trouble at that time.

Norisuke IV is the man who is able to see someone's talents precisely. Seeing Rai's talent and the trouble faced by his family at that time, he also helped Rai by inviting him to work together as a plant appraiser in his family business.

The relationship between them turns into mutualism, Norisuke IV saved Rai from poverty due to his family's bankruptcy, while Rai helps Norisuke IV advancing his business further until Higashikata family becomes more successful and prosperous.

So what did Caato have to do with all this? This brought me back to her confusing and mysterious statement during her family reunion:

JJL chapter 58: Dawn at The Higashikata House

This out-of-nowhere claim have been causing those Caatofags to speculate and support the theory regarding her involvement with the cooperation between Higashikata and Damokan Group to the extent that they set aside Jobin’s role as an active player in this shady business. Of course, I believe that Jobin was the only one who initiated the cooperation with Damokan Group secretly (outside his mommy’s influence).

But what if instead of working with Damokan Group, Caato has actually cooperated with Head Doctor’s gang? I think HD gang might have made contact with Caato. It is possible that a contact was made when Caato was in prison (given the interval from her arrest to the destruction of the Rai’s pear orchard) or maybe even prior to that.

What motivated Caato?

Perhaps to prosper Higashikata family business and get rid of their potential business rivals, including Mamezuku family. With Rai's expertise, it is very likely that one day his family will be able to rival or even surpass the success of the Higashikata family. However, by (indirectly) bringing Rai to work for Higashikata family, their business will increasingly prosper. Basically, two birds in one stone.

I always love to see Caato as a foil for Holy: if Holy is a woman who is into scientific matters, Caato could be a woman who is more into business matters. Even her design gives a little hint about that:

Caato is already considered an outsider for Higashikata family, but it is quite interesting to see her wearing one of the attributes of the family on her clothes. However she prefers to use the fruit seller mark rather than the family crest symbol, kinda implying that she no longer cared about the family but still cares about their business.

What motivated The Head Doctor’s gang?

Answering this one is quiet trickier, maybe because it’s still hard to really read their motives. I want to return to the theory of procreation above, but what is already clear is that “the rock-humans really need New Locacaca” and we already knew that the formula of New Locacaca is to plant regular Locacaca on Higashikata’s land that has the property of “equivalent exchange”. However, this formula has just discovered after the birth of Josuke as a fusion-human.

Even so, according to Makorin, the issue regarding the ability of Higashikata’s land to do equivalent exchange has long been known by the citizen and most likely the rock-humans also already knew about it. Besides, by blending with society, it is highly likely that rock-humans (particularly the HD gang) have found out about Rai's talent in horticulture. Perhaps those HD gang (Tooru) have intended to direct Rai to the Higashikata’s land and make him cultivate a whole new type of Locacaca there.

Just like Holy, the HD gang is into scientific matters too. So HD gang has devised a plan to bring Rai to the Higashikata family, namely by eliminating Rai's family’s business and making him work under the Higashikata. HD gang may have used Caato to make this happen.

How did Caato (Higashikata) and Head Doctor’s gang work together?

Seeing the contrast of their motives and the relationship between those Higashikata and the rock-humans all this time, I can’t see their relationship as in a boss/the head and subordinates. They might have worked mutually just as how we have seen Jobin and Damokan Group working together. On the rock-humans’ side, both HD gang and Damokan Group already have their respective bosses (Tooru/HD & Damo), whereas I think Caato had worked independently like Jobin.

You are right, I cannot accept the concept that is often believed by other readers, that there is a single top leader among them (especially the Caatofags). What is most appealing in JoJolion is that each individual has their own situations, motives, and needs, they also have different characters and backgrounds that shape them. However, all of that leads them to one objective: the Locacaca fruit, leading to the race of the New Locacacaca that involving various factions.

How did they meet and who initiated it first?

Because this is still purely a theory, I cannot really answer who started this cooperation. So I will answer how this could be most likely played:

Caato

If Caato was really the one who initiated it, assuming that she made contact with HD gang before she went to prison. She could simply make a call or go to wherever the HD gang was at the time.

But what if it started after she was already in prison? At this point, this will be mere speculation and hype (as a result of the limited information we have about her). The big question is how can she interact with the outside world? Caatofags often hold the idea of how OP her Stand is, mostly by comparing her Stand to D4C. The assumption that she was able to make contact with the outside world happened at the moment when Caato was able to take out her newly released cellphone despite her 15 year-long incarceration.

But since when did she have that phone? Has it been several years before (time travel)? Or did Caato always hide her cellphones in prison and replace them with the latest model every year? Assuming that in the first year of her incarceration, she was able to smuggle her phone. Of course the possibility that he could communicate with HD gang was simply by calling them.

Another bigger question is how Caato knew about Head Doctor’s gang? Could it be just a flashback that hasn't been told to us? Another speculation and hype by Caatofags is that Caato herself is a rock-human, particularly a rock-woman. This theory is also being widely discussed again after the most recent chapter 99 gives brief information about the rock-women. For me, this theory is too far-fetched (and almost bullshit).

Moreover, while this theory is still unconfirmed, those Caatofags have already made up a further theory that Caato is the top leader above all existing rock-humans (including Tooru/HD). I really wonder why Caatofags are so delusional… (and this one really sounds bullshit).

Head Doctor/Tooru

I also don't really know how Tooru got to know Caato or the other Higashikatas (or even Rai), we also need to look further into his background and backstory about it. However, being a rock-human he is, this is more possible for him. We all know that rock-humans (which are silicon-based) generally have longer lifespan than carbon-based humans. Rock-humans can live for up to 240 years. Rock-humans also grows by transformation, which causes them to be much older than what they look (example is Wu Tomoki who looks 33 despite his actual age being 70).

Therefore, Tooru himself might be much older than we think. We have seen the birth of Tooru in chapter 99, but we don't know exactly when he was born. But judging from the flow of panels, during the explanation of how a rock-woman gave birth to her baby until the baby grew up as Tooru. We can say that Tooru was born around Meiji era (1868-1912) or even 1901, the year in which Johnny died. The same year Rina was stricken with the rock-disease.

Whatever it is, this makes it even more likely that Tooru knows the history of the Higashikata family, especially if he knows the ability of equivalent exchange on their land. As a long-lived rock-human, he has many opportunities to learn many things and get as much information as possible. Also keep in mind that Tooru knows about “the saint”.

Then how did he make contact with Caato? With his Stand 「Wonder of U」, I am sure that he is able to do it, even if Caato was already in prison at the time. WOU can move through reflective surfaces while manipulating objects around it, it can also move in 2D and 3D alternately. In chapter 96, we’ve also seen that WOU is indeed capable to enter a prison as it was shown when Rai was in jail. 

With the possibility of Caato's ability to hide a phone with her Stand and WOU which is capable to move through cellphone, of course it's very possible they can communicate. Caato didn't even need to have a phone at the time, because WOU is able to move through any reflective objects not limited to cellphones. And as we have seen in the latest chapters (98 & 99) that WOU/Akefu is able to converse with Josuke and Rai.

Though I'm more convinced that Tooru is more likely the initiator, I don't really see him as the boss who's ordering Caato... or vice versa.

This is the difference that I felt when talking about Caato and Tooru (the two main villain candidates): talking about Caato is like composing a fiction where we only get a couple of sentences to develop into a few paragraphs, or even a story. Whereas talking about Tooru really feels like I'm doing an actual analysis based on some factual data, using the pictures, dialogues and information, comparing and linking several related events.

Then, what had HD gang/Tooru and Caato done to Rai and his family?

The key players who had ruined Rai's family (according to both chapters: 75 & 99) were the money lenders, the unknown usurpers/competitors, the insects (which is likely rock-animals) and The HD/WOU itself.

The insects and WOU were nothing but the work of HD/Tooru, therefore the money lenders & competitors could be the work of Caato.

However, the problem is...

It still feels strange if Rai's pear orchard have to be destroyed twice. Also, according to the chronology on his wiki page, the sabotage by money lenders happened first (because in that chapter 75, Rai's parents were mentioned as "father and mother"). After that, Rai's father died by calamity when he went to deal with the pest insects.

This chronology does not support the idea that Caato and HD gang had worked together, as if they had worked independently in ruining Rai's life.

If so, is that really what actually happened?

There is still hope, considering that Caato was in prison, which means that she had limited mobility. Therefore, the first incident of the damage to the Rai's pear orchard could have been done by Caato with the help of HD gang.

Then seeing that Rai's family was able to recover again, HD/Tooru took second action which eventually caused the death of Rai's father.

But the other last problem is why did Caato still care about helping her family business when she had been jailed (and abandoned by them)? As I said before, there are two possibilities: the cooperation happened either “before” or “after” she was jailed. Perhaps Caato already planned it before she was jailed. Whatever it is, it means that Caato had committed two sins and hid them from Norisuke IV: “murder & sabotage”, all for the sake of her family.

Perhaps the first event with money lenders happened before she went to prison whereas the second event with insects & WOU happened after that. Surely, they ruined Rai’s life twice because their main objective was "to get Rai into the Higashikata family."

Another interesting trivia is that Rai's age had actually been retconed from UJ release to the tankobon release. Originally, he was meant to be 32 years old, but Araki changed it into 31. If he was initially to be 32 years old, then he would be 17 around 15 years ago! The same year as Caato's prison sentence and what she claimed that she has role in the 15 years success of Higashikata business. No wonder she thinks that she deserve her compensation.

Also, take a note that the Caato said her controversial claim in chapter 58 whereas Rai was first mentioned in chapter 59 and debuted in chapter 64. Perhaps Araki had originally intended to involve Caato in Rai's past (although I wonder why he changed it for some reason).

I dislike the hype Caato as the main villain, therefore I often try to debunk any far-fetched theory from her supporters. But that does not mean that I shall disregard Caato’s potential role as long as the theory that support it makes sense.

TL;DR Caato might have been involved in Rai's past, she could have worked with Akefu or did it personally. This could be the answer for the "15 years" claim she said about helping Higashikata business back during the family reunion in chapter 58.

That's all I can think about Rai's past and Caato's claim, which are both confusing af.  Though it's also quite odd, if Caato is the person behind the goal of making Rai work under Norisuke IV, why didn't Jobin know Rai's identity as their family plant appraiser? Why didn't Caato tell him?

Read further:

Mamezuku Rai's past and Caato’s missing potential (invalid)

Caato’s potential role in Rai’s past

[plantaardigegezichtsverzor-blog1]

How to grow a Home Health Care Nurse

Plantaardige gezichtsverzorging

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How to grow a Home Health Care Nurse

House Health Care Nursing Information in addition to Overview

Home health care will be allowing the patient and their loved ones to maintain dignity and freedom. According to the National Association intended for Home Care, there are more as compared to 7 million individuals in the us in need of home health care midwife services because of acute health issues, long term health problems, permanent handicap or terminal illness.

Residence Health Care Basics

Nurses training in a number of venues: Hospital options, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health care. Property health care nursing is a increasing phenomenon as more people and their families desire to obtain care in their homes. The of home health care is a result of Public Health Nursing where public welfare nurses made home trips to promote health education and offer treatment as part of community outreach programs. Today academic courses train nurses in household care and agencies spot home health care nurses together with ailing individuals and their family members depending on the nurse's experience as well as qualifications. In many cases there is a distributed relationship between the agency plus the academic institution.

Many adjustments have taken place in the area associated with home health care. These include Medicare health insurance and Medicaid, and Longer term care insurance reimbursement and documents. It is important for the nurse and also nursing agency to be aware of the countless factors involved for these foibles resulting from these organizations. Human population and demographic changes take place as well. Baby boomers getting close to retirement and will present brand-new challenges for the home health-related industry. Technology and amounts in hospitals has cause shorter inpatient stay plus more at-home rehabilitation. Increases with medical outpatient procedures may also be taking place with follow-up house care. This has resulted in typically the decrease of mortality rate coming from these technologies and chunks of money has lead to increases within morbidity and chronic condition that makes the need for home medical care nursing a greater priority.

Household Health Care Nurse Job Information

Through an array of skills along with experience, home health care nursing staff specialize in a wide range of treatments; mental support, education of affected individuals who are recovering from illnesses in addition to injury for young children as well as adults, to women who have seen recent childbirth, to the older who need palliative care for long-term illness.

A practicing health care worker must have the skills to provide treatment in a unique setting like someone's home. The health professional is working with the patient along with the family and must understand the connection skills for such design. Rapport is evident in every nursing positions, but employed in a patient's own liveable space needs a different level of talent and understanding. There is independent decision making as the nurse is not really working as a team with other rns in a structured environment, yet is now as a member of often the "family" team. The web host family has cultural ideals that are important and are distinct for every patient and please note00 with extreme sensitivity. Additional skills include critical pondering, coordination, assessment, communication, and also documentation.

Home health care nurse practitioners also specialize in the proper care of children with disabilities that will require additional skills such as endurance and understanding of the needs on the family. Children are living with ailments today that would have triggered mortality just twenty years before. Genetic disorders, congenital bodily impairments, and injury are only a few. Many families understand managing the needs of the baby, but still need expert attention that only a home health care registered nurse can provide. It is important that a residence health care nurse is aware of the assistance of the family about the child's situation for proper care of the little one. There are many complexities involved, most important, a positive attitude along with positive reinforcement is most important for the development of the child.

Treatment coordination between the home healthcare nurse, doctor, and pharmacologist, ensures proper management with the exact science behind offering the patient the correct dose, moment of administration, and combos. Home health care nurses must be familiar with pharmacology and coached in training about several medications used by patients inside the clinical setting.

Many innovative practicing nurses are familiar with treatment regiments. They have completed masteral level programs. Home medical agencies believe that a midwife should have at least one year regarding clinical experience before going into home health care. Advanced training nurses can expedite that will training by helping completely new nurses understand the home health-related market and teaching.

Career and Salary

According to the Usa Department of Labor, there was 2 . 4 million healthcare professionals in America, the largest healthcare job, yet many academic in addition to hospital organizations believe we have a gross shortage in breastfeeding staff. The shortage of nursing staff was 6% in 2050 and is expected to be 10% in 2010. The average salary to get hospital nursing is $53, 450 with 3 away from 5 nursing jobs are located in the hospital. For home medical care, the salary is $49, 000. For nursing health care facilities, they were the lowest from $48, 200.

Training as well as continuing education

Most home healthcare nurses gain their education and learning through accredited nursing educational institutions throughout the country with an connect degree in nursing (ADN), a Bachelor's of Science degree in nursing (BSN), or a master's degree in nursing (MSN). According to the United States Department involving Labor, in 2004 there were 674 BSN nursing programs, 846 ADN programs. Also, in year 2004, there were 417 master's qualification programs, 93 doctoral packages, and 46 joint BSN-doctoral programs. The associate level program takes 2 to 3 yrs to complete, while bachelors diplomas take 4 years to finish. Nurses can also earn customized professional certificates online inside Geriatric Care or Existence Care Planning.

In addition , for anyone nurses who choose to follow advancement into administrative postures or research, consulting, and also teaching, a bachelor's education is often essential. A bachelors degree is also important for transforming into a clinical nurse specialist, health care worker anesthetists, nurse midwives, along with nurse practitioners (U. S i9000. Department of Labor, 2004).

All home health care rns have supervised clinical knowledge during their training, but as mentioned previously advanced practicing nurses maintain master's degrees and as opposed to bachelor and associate qualifications, they have a minimum of two years connected with post clinical experience. Classes includes anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and biology, microbiology, nutrition, psychology, in addition to behavioral sciences and open-handed arts. Many of these programs have got training in nursing homes, public health division, home health agencies, as well as ambulatory clinics. (U. Nasiums. Dep. of Labor, 2004).

Whether a nurse is lessons in a hospital, nursing center, or home care, training is necessary. Health care is transforming rapidly and staying abreast with all the latest developments enhances affected person care and health treatments. Universities, continuing education programs, and also internet sites, all offer training. One such organization that provides training is the American Nurses Relationship (ANA) or through the Us Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).

References Health care https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

According to a narrative that’s currently popular in the mainstream media and the more lowbrow end of academia, the recent surge in popularity of the American nationalist right was caused by the radicalization of nerds. Dweeby white manchildren, so the story goes, retreated into video games, the science fiction fandom, and anonymous online forums like 4chan, and formed misogynistic, resentment-fueled subcultures within them. These neckbearded neo-Nazis gradually coalesced into the ‘alt-right,’ an internet hate machine that contributed greatly to Toupee Hitler’s otherwise inexplicable rise.

There are many versions of this narrative. The common feature is the ascription of Trump’s electoral victory — and, in some cases, the surge in right-populism all across the Western world — to the vile machinations of movements of fascistic, internet-based nerds; but the details vary. One version, laid down in a popular Tumblr post (at the time of writing, it has over 22,000 notes), ascribes the rise of the alt-right to a successful campaign by Stormfront to turn 4chan Nazi. Another version blames it on Gamergate, allegedly a hate campaign born out of a misogynist’s attempt to “punish his ex-girlfriend” that served as a breeding ground for far-right extremism, and as the petri dish that they organized in before taking over America. The Z-list Youtube celebrity Zinnia Jones has described Gamergate as “one of the worst things ever to happen” because it “enabled Trump” — apparently, a piece of fandom drama ranks up there with the Spanish flu pandemic, the Mongol conquests, the Black Death, the invention of the nuclear bomb, the post-Columbian plagues that depopulated the Americas, and the unfortunate events of the 1940s.

Deployments of the narrative abound. A popular Medium “32-minute read” bears the headline, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump.” Politico insists that “the Trump campaign … paid rapt attention to meme culture from the start.” CNET helpfully explains that “what began as a backlash to a debate about how video games portray women led to an internet culture that ultimately helped sweep Donald Trump into office.” Chris Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon, complains that “the overlap between Gamergate and Trump(ism) is astounding. GG was like the trial run for this whole mess.” The Independent, a British paper, speaks out against the “very geeky” Trump supporters of the alt-right, and claims that “The uncomfortable truth, that should worry anyone praying for a Trump defeat, is that the Alt-right following he has tapped into are more numerous and unpredictable than traditional political commentators understand.” And so on. And for every article that explicitly draws a connection between internet-based youth countercultures and Trump, there are a dozen more that simply make a point of mentioning them in the same breath, and let the reader work out the connection for himself. Trump… Gamergate… Trump… neckbeards… Trump… 4chan… Trump!

At this point, it’s worth taking a step back from the phenomenon of heavy internet users failing for the first time to line up in lockstep behind the Democrats, and looking at the bigger picture. Trump’s electoral success was not driven by the alt-right; it was driven by the usual factors. To make a long story short, Trump won because Clinton ran a bad campaign and took unpopular positions on the issues. Insofar as the election was unusual, it wasn’t because Trump posted a picture of a cartoon frog — Clinton made her own bids for pop-cultural relevance, as did her husband when he took out his saxophone on Arsenio Hall’s show in 1992 — but because Clinton, in violation of a long-standing norm, directly insulted large swathes of the voting population with her “basket of deplorables” line.

Trump’s success is also not unusual in a global context. In recent years, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz won a supermajority in Hungary and proceeded to rewrite the Hungarian constitution to declare Hungary a Christian nation and ensure the electoral dominance of Fidesz for the foreseeable future. Britain voted to leave the European Union, and politicians like Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and Andrzej Duda became household names among the set that pays attention to international politics. Trump is not a uniquely American phenomenon; if anything, he’ll likely prove to be a more moderate parallel to the trends sweeping Europe, just as FDR paralleled the European extremists of the Depression years. Of course, these trends are not just sweeping Europe, as is proven by the victories in Asia of politicians like Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte.

This global trend simply could not have been caused by an obscure piece of American fandom drama. Gamergate and 4chan cannot have contributed to the rise of the right, because the rise of the right happened to approximately the same extent in countries outside the Anglosphere and outside the cultural reach of Anglosphere nerd culture. Even Vox, which once described Trump as “the first Republican nominee whose ethos owes more to 4chan and Gamergate than it does the Bible,” has found that “polarization is accelerating fastest among those using the internet the least.”

Nor could Trump’s rise to power have been substantially helped along by pictures of cartoon frogs. A full analysis of Trump’s victory is beyond the scope of this article, but it borders on delusion to believe that Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were flipped by 4chan trolls, rather than by such ordinary factors as Trump’s more popular positions on the key issues of immigration and trade and Clinton’s failure to run a functional campaign.

The internet has, however, reshaped American politics; just not in the way pundits say it has. The main effects have been on the left, not the right.

The most obvious effect is that leftists, especially those in the fields that shape and promulgate leftist doctrine, spend a lot of time online. Journalists spend less time cultivating networks of sources and more time ‘building their brand’ and interacting with other journalists; academics network on Twitter; and so on. Connection matters more than ever, and the internet has weakened local scenes and replaced them with placeless ones. Indie game developers from all over the world, for example, can compete for the attention of the largely U.S.-coastal ‘mainstream’ games journalism industry, whose writers are of course all on the same mailing lists, not to mention following each other on Twitter. Journalists, academics, political advisors and the like disappear into their own world — a world where it’s acceptable to wage war on large parts of one’s own audience, or to lead a mainstream presidential candidate to insult a large part of the voting population. And the scenes that are best able to capture the attention of this world will gain power, influence, and the propagation of their norms.

One scene that has been markedly successful in capturing the attention of the journalistic world is the one that developed from the pay-to-post forum Something Awful. Originally a humor site, it became one of the most influential sites on the internet — you probably know that 4chan was created by a Something Awful regular, and that its initial userbase drew heavily from SA. Its influence on politics, however, extends far beyond 4chan. Buckle up, folks: you’re in for a long, confusing, and terrible ride.

In the essay “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” Mark Fisher, who was roundly condemned for writing it and killed himself three years later, attacked not only the identitarianism that has metastasized in academia since the ’60s, an identitarianism in which “the sheer mention of class is now automatically treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of race and gender,” but also the “paralysing feeling of guilt and suspicion which hangs over left-wing twitter like an acrid, stifling fog” and the “kangaroo courts and character assassinations” that are, as anyone who has observed the state of the left today, overwhelmingly common. This guilt and suspicion, these kangaroo courts and character assassinations, need not have anything to do with politics; in one memorable instance, a once-popular Tumblr communist blogger with the sadly real URL of “fuckyeahmarxismleninism” was dogpiled and laughed into irrelevance for admitting to watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with his daughters. This was seen as a far worse faux pas than even his support of North Korea. I am, unfortunately, not making this up; I saw it all happen firsthand.

These aren’t the kangaroo courts of Stalin. What they are is the schoolyard courts of Helldump, a Something Awful subforum created for the strange purpose of being a schoolyard court. The Something Awful wiki speaks for itself here: “The official birth of Helldump 2000 spawned a new creative outlet for pedophiles, racists, bigots, Ron Paul supporters, gun zealots, defenders of anime and otherwise crap posters to be outed in a thorough, convincing manner by an astute civilian task force. Essentially, it checks and balances the stupidity that seeps its way into the forums as a whole, although (unfortunately) it does not function as a preventive treatment (shit posters still propagate at an alarming rate). Rather, the modus operandi of Helldump is to profile and insult the (assumed) poor goon for his questionable views, and in turn function as a virtual tourniquet in an attempt to stop the bleeding, as well as force said shit poster into online anonymity and/or reclusiveness.” In practice, most of what Helldump did was dogpile furries.

As a side note, internet lore has it that the population of Helldump regulars itself skewed furry. This is not terribly out of the norm for Something Awful, the admin of which employed Shmorky for ten years before firing him on the sensible grounds that he was “secretly into pedophilia incest diaper shitting roleplay” and allegedly “would get way too excited over [SA admin Lowtax’s kids] coming to the office.” (Shmorky has also been reported to at least have once been friends with Rebecca Sugar, the creator of the TV show Steven Universe, which has a remarkably Shmorky-like art style and has as its target demographic the same Tumblr crowd that Shmorky fell in with.)

Zoe Quinn herself was a SA member under the username Eris, and participated in at least one Helldump dogpile. It’s often believed that Gamergate began when her ex-boyfriend posted a ‘callout’ of her abusive behaviors, cheating, and so on — the “Zoe Post” — on 4chan, but he actually joined Something Awful to post it there first. He was quickly banned for it, and the ban message reads: “Thank you for joining the Something Awful Forums in order to post a giant loving psychopathic helldump about your ex-girlfriend in the forum about video games.” (The original phrasing was “giant fucking psychopathic helldump,” but SA has wordfilters.) The belief in a connection between Helldump and ‘callout culture’ is held by the SA moderators themselves.

Helldump was closed after two years, and many of its regulars migrated to a different subforum, Laissez’s Fair, “the original Dirtbag Left.” The SA wiki entry for LF helpfully explains that it was “opened up to put all the Ron Paul shit” and became a “refugee holding bay” for Helldump after the latter was closed. “Over time people started making effort posts about such things the nightmare that is our criminal justice system, social justice in general, as well as the ideas of Karl Marx. The lack of moderation was made up for by basically shouting people out of the forum who were stupid MRAs and concern trolls. Gradually the complexion of the forum shifted from liberal to socialist.” Eventually, LF was closed, because “LF posters went internet detective on mods and posted death threats,” including several to then-President Obama.

At least two regulars on Helldump and LF went on to get careers in journalism. Jeb Lund, who wrote a vague and rambling essay about his posting career for Gawker, went by “Boniface” and “Mobutu Sese Seko” on Something Awful. Under the former pseudonym, he threatened a Helldump victim: “how about you promise never to post here again on pain of being permabanned, otherwise there’s no reason for all the posters here with lexis-nexis to stop at just your email addresses and not go straight for driver’s license photos and info, tax records… the list goes on and on.” Sam Kriss was (or at least was widely believed to be) Dead Ken, as well as Red Ken, Dub Mapocho, Agenbite Inwit, Dead Skeng, and presumably other accounts. After LF was removed from SA, its regulars established and migrated to explicitly Communist forums offsite; he was a regular on one such forum, “tHE rHizzonE”, which was later given some sort of contest by the leftist magazine The Baffler, whose editor was “a fan” of said forum. (Sam Kriss has written for the Baffler.)

Many people from the more leftist parts of SA went on to become “Weird Twitter,” which was puffed by outlets like Buzzfeed. John Herrman and Katie Notopoulos, the authors of the linked piece, gravitated toward LF superstars on Twitter and tried to replicate their style. Some of them, such as Lund, Kriss, David Thorpe (who had a regular column on SA and is now a music journalist), Virgil Texas, Jon Hendren (who was, as docevil, once an admin of the “Fuck You And Die” (FYAD) subforum, but was shamed off the site after a bizarre incident involving a charity event featuring Smash Mouth and Guy Fieri), and Alex Nichols, parlayed those connections into posting careers.

Herrman also profiled a Weird Twitter poster, @CelestialBeard, whose claim to fame was tweeting a lot, and being followed by Herrman on Twitter. @CelestialBeard has since become a transgender brony.

From Weird Twitter, which attracted and assimilated people who weren’t active in SA’s leftist cliques (such as Felix Biederman and Virgil Texas, who just lurked), came Chapo Trap House, darling of every obscure Slate clone from Brooklyn to Queens. Chapo has featured several SA regulars, including Alex Nichols (@Lowenaffchen), who was active on LF as Golden Lion Tamarin (his Twitter username used to be @GLDNLNTMRN), and Dan O’Sullivan (@Bro_Pair), a now-banned former SA moderator whose username is now Fat Curtain Dweller. It’s interesting that a podcast heralded for ‘actually giving a shit’ comes from a subculture that began as pure trolling.

Providing a precise accounting of the impact of Something Awful on the Anglosphere left is difficult, as it would be with any subculture. The history is oral, largely lost, deliberately obfuscated, and shrouded in irony. It is likely that nothing will come of it, and that, in the end, it will be the farce mirroring the tragedy of neoconservatism: an insane political movement that developed out of a bizarre and insular clique in a world where having the right connections matters above all else, writing things that very few people care about but doing a great deal of damage along the way. It seems that the norms of Helldump have become callout culture, SA users’ trolling of the libertarians corralled in LF have become the dirtbag left, and some of those responsible have written for not only Gawker and Buzzfeed, but also The New York Times.

At the very least, the overlap in population is clear and suggestive. Someone can go from being repeatedly banned from a pay-to-post forum for something involving the word “nigger” to writing for the Guardian, the Atlantic and the New York Times, largely on the dubious strength of his Twitter account and forum fame. There are few lessons that can be drawn from this; the obvious one is that perhaps the media rewards expertise less than connectedness.

I’m told that this is what Gamergate was about. But there are many things I’ve been told Gamergate was about. The internet is something awful indeed. And it’s only going to get worse.

[anthonypaphitis-blog]

The greatest (internet) show on Earth...

It’s been the talk of the town for the last month or so - taking the entire world by storm. A battle between two of the biggest heavyweights of internet history; a climb to the summit to be crowned the chief of content creation. This, is PewDiePie vs T-Series...

As how things go on the internet, this entire saga happened out of the blue, and pretty quickly. A race to hold the most subscribers out of ANY channel on YouTube - a very prestigious bragging right to hold. And no wonder this bout drew in a tremendous volume of traffic from all four corners of the world. 

Felix Kjellberg, the Swedish gaming mastermind behind powerhouse channel “PewDiePie”, has established himself as an internet father-figure to many for a long while now - a profile who young, budding content creators should look up to. From his comedic, nonsensical creations, to the nitty-gritty “get-down-to-business” type of gaming walk-through videos, Kjellberg quickly developed a unique style of content creation, which made his persona and content attract a shed-load of attention, hence going viral. The numbers are actually mind-boggling and actually quite scary - as of today, PewDiePie holds 91.6 million subscribers, quite a distance more than the entire population of Germany. The Swede’s channel actually held the most subscribers on YouTube for a total of SIX YEARS (spanning between 2013 to February 2019), where another competitor was bold enough to step up to PewDiePie’s plate. Introducing T-Series. 

T-Series took the approach to YouTube much differently, and it is safe to say that it has been a revelation - particularly for fans of Indian music and Bollywood. It aqctually has multiple smaller channels that it runs, however the main one picked up speed. It quickly became one of YouTube’s most viewed channels, and has since racked up over 91 million subscribers, you can see what will happen next. Both had similar numbers, and realistically there’s not enough space at the top of the YouTube summit for the both of them. Let the e-battle commence...

Both took this extremely seriously - pulling out all the stops to be crowned king of the video world. In PewDiePie’s corner, he sought the backing from other large YouTube personalities such as Logan Paul and Mr Beast, guys with over 36 million subscribers combined. In fact, the exposure was brought into the real world, with Mr Beast wearing a t-shirt printed with “Sub 2 PewDiePie” in the front row of Super Bowl 2019 - with the camera panning to him, exposing almost 100 million global viewers to his quest to help Kjellberg to victory. Just the other day, the UK Independence Party actually posted out a tweet in support of PewDiePie’s figjht to the top, showing that no matter the occupation, everyone has been picking sides for who they want to conquer the internet. 

T-Series took a similar approach - seeking the support from celebrities much closer to home in comparison to PewDiePie’s massive spread. The subscriber counts became rocking back and forth, with the first, but brief dethroning of PewDiePie occurring on 9 March 2019. The battle started to heat up, with T-Series right on Kjellberg’s heels, a dedicated Wikipedia site with a comprehensive timeline of movements and overtakes was devised - mentioning the details such as the time of the day it occurred between and how many subscribers were gained or lost. This just shows how what seemed as a bit of a joke has turned into an ever-escalating bout that people are taking seriously for - they don’t want to see their favourite lose out. The biggest change happened on 27 March 2019 however, with the battle seemingly taken hold of by T-Series, who had held the lead for 3 straight days, taking over a 60,000 subscriber lead. As of the date of this post, it appeared that T-Series had run away with it.

While it seems to be all fun and games to attain the biggest subscriber count possible, there have been many implications and problems as it comes. Trolling has become a massive factor which has been suffered by both creators. Fans of PewDiePie have been labelled “the 9 year old army” because his style of video has attracted a youthful audience, which has been mimicked and deteriorated. The comments sections of both creators hold a spam of hate-fuelled replies and trolls who have seriously immersed themselves in what has been a relatively sound battle for the internet. “Diss tracks” that are music creations that seek to demoralise and humiliate one another had been released back and forth, which gives a sense that morals went completely out the window for this. Clickbait on YouTube from other content creators had become rife as people knew it would attract attention to gain views. All in all, it became an absolute mess.

So, with the battle apparently over (or so some think), it amazes me how much attention and interest events such as these can grab. It really does show the power of the internet when everything and everyone comes together (even if it to support a specific person), which goes to present its power and influence on people’s lives. But, I’d question whether this virality, albeit extreme, isn’t always so beneficial. I feel as if it’s events that aren’t serious and that important such as this one go absolutely everywhere, whereas the more crucial events that should be looked at, actually get swallowed and overlooked as they aren’t as internet worthy. 

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PewDiePie_vs_T-Series

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Menura

Superb Lyrebird, by Fir0002, GFDL 1.2 

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Genus Name: Menura 

Status: Extant

First Described: 1801 

Described By: Latham 

Classification: Dinosauria, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Neoaves, Inopinaves, Telluraves, Australaves, Eufalconimorphae, Psittacopasserae, Passeriformes, Eupasseres, Passeri, Menurides, Menuridae

Referred Species: M. novaehollandiae, M. alberti, M. tyawanoides (extinct) 

Here we are - the Lyrebird, one of the most fascinating songbirds out there. Both living species are distinguished by their ability to mimic sounds - not just other birds, but things like car alarms and chainsaws and camera shutters - during their mating dances. They are also notable for their extensive plumage, especially the males, that are used as display structures during these mating dances. They also have a notable extinct species, Menura tyawanoides, known from the Riversleigh fauna of Queensland, Australia. It lived about 23 million years ago, in the Aquitanian age of the early Miocene of the Neogene, meaning that this genus has been around for at least that long. 

M. tyawanoides by Ashley Patch on @palaeoshley

M. tyawanoides also indicates that passerines underwent extreme diversification in Australia - if not originally evolving somewhere in Oceania specifically, given the presence of very early derived Passeriens, the New Zealand wren, in New Zealand to this day. M. tyawanoides was a part of a large, complex community of mammals, reptiles, and birds, all showing a sort of intermediate stage in Cenozoic evolution - between the early forms of the earlier part of the eon and the modern forms we see today. M. tyawanoides shows an intermediate step in the evolution of the distinct Lyrebird from the general small perching passerine form - it is smaller than living lyrebirds, indicating that it evolved from smaller ancestors, and large size was a hallmark of Lyrebird evolution. Whether or not it could mimic like its modern relatives, however, is difficult to tell from the current fossil evidence, which is just part of the wing. It probably was around 60 centimeters or so long. More modern-esque Lyrebirds are known from as old as 15 million years ago.

Superb Lyrebird, by Melburnian, CC BY 2.5 

Modern Lyrebirds were, indeed, thought to be weird pheasants, given their extensive tail plumage, poor flight ability, and large size. However, when the first chicks of the Lyrebirds were found, they were found to be altricial - meaning helpless ugly lint dinosaurs, rather than the puffy cute chicks found with pheasants and other fowl. Currently they are thought to be near-Oscines, so close to the group containing Corvidans and Passeridans, but not actually in that group. Their closest living relatives are the Scrubbirds, which look like normal passerines - and they’re extremely rare birds in Australia, so it’s difficult to study them. There are two modern species of Lyrebird - M. novaehollandiae, the Superb Lyrebird, and M. alberti, Albert’s Lyrebird, which is much rarer. 

Superb Lyrebird by J. Gould and E. Gould, in the Public Domain

The Superb Lyrebird is found in southeastern Australia, from Victoria to Queensland, feeding mainly on small invertebrates, and it is thriving throughout its range, making it “least concern” in terms of environmental conservation. The males are about 100 centimeters long and the females are about 76 to 80 centimeters long; only certain types of ravens are heavier and only the black sicklebill is longer. The long, distinctive tail has sixteen feathers, with the outermost ones looking like the shape of a lyre, lending the bird it sname. The male inverts the tail over its head during courtship, in order to display the plumage. Females and juveniles, on the other hand, blend in more with the forest floor. 

By fir0002, GFDL 1.2

The Superb Lyrebird breeds mainly in the winter, living solitarily otherwise during the year, though young birds live in small groups. Males sing half an hour before sunrise and mimic a huge variety of sounds, though female Lyrebirds can sing as well. They can mimic things such as chainsaws, car alarms, camera shutters, dogs barking, music, ringtones, and even voices. This has made these birds an interesting lesson in the vocal capabilities of birds across both the passerine group and the parrot group - where mimicry is found the most. It is important to note, however, that most of the extreme mimicry of manmade objects tends to happen to birds in captivity. 

From BBC Wildlife 

The Superb Lyrebird mates promiscuously - adult females and males defend separate territories and females care for the young alone, trying out so to speak several males before picking one to father her young (though it’s possible that female Lyrebirds mate more than once). They lay one egg and then build domed nest over the eggs, camouflaging with ferns and moss. The chick takes nine months to reach independence, during this time it is rather helpless. The birds forage in the eucalyptus forests, which help to reduce litter and reduce the frequency of forest fires, making the lyrebirds important parts of the environment. 

Albert’s Lyrebird, by Tony Castro, CC BY-SA 4.0 

Albert’s Lyrebird lives in a much smaller range, along the state border of New South Wales and Queensland, in a small subtropical rainforest. It doesn’t have lyre-shaped feathers found in its cousin, and it is unfortunately near threatened in terms of its conservation. In fact, it has one of the smallest ranges of any bird in Australia. The male does have a different tail, with a central pair of long ribbon like feathers, more filamentary feathers along it, and a webbed pair of feathers on the outside as well. The female is shorter and simpler, with juveniles once again most similar to the females. 

Female Albert’s Lyrebird by Peter Ellis, CC BY SA 3.0

Albert’s Lyrebird is also able to mimic, though its mimicry range is much more reduced than the Superb Lyrebird, mimicking a smaller range of bird species. It can make a wide range of deep and high pitched and harsh sounds, and even mimic the dingo, and it sings for many hours of the day during the breeding season. The birds also call to each other with a shriek when alarmed. The males also make little stages with a mound of ground, in order to display to females while mating. The females nest beneath the canopy of the forest, and the females make dome-shaped nests like their cousins, that look like lumps of debris, housing once again a single egg. Unlike their cousins, the young are mostly independent at about five weeks of age. The species feeds mainly on insects found in moist leaf litter, scratching and pecking around their rainforest habitat. All in all, an extremely fascinating group of birds. 

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menura_tyawanoides 

https://spinops.blogspot.com/2018/02/menura-tyawanoides.html 

http://fossilworks.org/bridge.pl?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=182710 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superb_lyrebird 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert%27s_lyrebird

[wallpaperpainter]

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We analysis articles independently, but we may acquire associate commissions from affairs links on this page. Terms of use.

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PCs accept been about for decades, but changes in Windows versions and CPU architectures beggarly today’s PCs can’t calmly run amateur fabricated for ’80s and ’90s machines. Sure, it’s simple to install and run amateur now acknowledgment to boundless and adequately accepted cartoon accelerators, all-encompassing multimedia support, and automated disciplinarian setup, but those allowances alone administer to amateur that can booty advantage of them. Back back mice and keyboards acclimated PS2 and consecutive connectors, and complete cards and optical drives were advised high-end gaming hardware, you had to battle to get amateur running. Now, with accouterments so avant-garde those amateur ability as able-bodied be cavemen staring at UFOs, it’s alike harder to get them running.

Fortunately, you accept several choices for arena beforehand PC games. Some accept been adapted or remastered and can artlessly be installed calmly on your avant-garde PC. Some crave a bit of a workaround. Some crave an all-encompassing workaround. Here are your options for arena archetypal PC games. And if you appetite to comedy archetypal animate games, we accept a adviser for that, too.

The Internet Annal charcoal one of the greatest collections of agenda media on the internet, and that extends to software. The armpit catalogs and food bags aloft bags of archetypal amateur for DOS, aboriginal Windows, and alike beforehand computers like the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. Many of these amateur can be played appropriate on the web, acknowledgment to browser-based emulation. Best of all, everything’s chargeless as allotment of the basic accomplishment to annal software as allotment of our cultural and agenda heritage.

You can additionally additionally download disc images, abounding versions of games, and alike demos (though you’ll charge to apperceive how to get them to assignment on your avant-garde PC by bribery with affinity settings or application an adversary like DOSBOX). The Internet Annal has tens of bags of CD-ROM images from decades past, if you don’t apperception putting the assignment in to get them to run on your computer.

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Outside of the Internet Archive, assorted “abandonware” sites additionally accommodate beforehand software for chargeless beneath the acceptance that the developer and administrator no best abutment it. This tends to be a accurately gray area, though, and files downloaded from these sites ability be beneath safe than Internet Annal downloads.

Plenty of classic PC games have been remastered or contrarily ported to avant-garde PCs, and are readily accessible on Steam and added agenda administration services. These amateur accept been overhauled to run calmly on your Windows 10 PC after any processing band or emulation. Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Grim Fandango Remastered, and Resident Evil HD Remaster booty 15-plus-year-old amateur and accomplish them assignment on your avant-garde computer, with avant-garde adviser resolutions.

Some of these amateur are beeline ports with college resolution settings, but some check cartoon and interface elements to attending and comedy better. Some alike accept iOS versions, so you can comedy your admired archetypal RPG or chance bold on your iPad. Remastered amateur are usually actual affordable, too, with prices about amid $10 and $20.

If the aboriginal administrator doesn’t feel like remaking or remastering a archetypal PC bold but you can’t calmly acquisition it for chargeless from a accepted site, there’s a acceptable chance GOG.com will be able to get the aboriginal to work. This agenda administration account takes DOS and aboriginal Windows amateur and performs all the front-end assignment all-important to accomplish them comedy on a Windows 10 PC with DOSBOX, a DOS PC emulator. DOSBOX is abundantly able and flexible, but accepting anniversary bold to run requires PC ability and a alertness to agreement with altered settings and commands, generally advancing up adjoin runtime errors, audio glitches, and above controls until it works properly.

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GOG.com does all that assignment for you. Every archetypal PC bold that’s old abundant to charge DOSBOX is preconfigured with all of the commands and settings bare to run properly, so all you accept to do is achieve the book and double-click on the game. GOG.com additionally generally throws in lots of account with anniversary title, like agenda versions of its book manual, wallpapers, and alike soundtracks. Not bad for $6 to $10 for best archetypal games, including Fallout 2, Crusader: No Remorse, and SimCity 2000.

If your bold is from an aboriginal adaptation of Windows, you ability be able to run it natively in the appropriate affinity mode. Acquisition the executable book for the game, appropriate bang on it, and bang Properties. The Affinity tab will action several options that will acclimatize how Windows 10 tries to run the program, by assuming an beforehand Windows environment. You ability accept to battle with the altered modes and affinity isn’t consistently certain, but it’s a acceptable alpha for pre-Windows 7/10 games.

If you can’t acquisition the PC bold you appetite to comedy preconfigured and accessible for you, you can still comedy it. You aloof charge to acquisition the bold yourself and set up DOSBOX to run it. I wasn’t badinage back I said DOSBOX is a able emulator. GOG.com offers hundreds of titles that assignment through DOSBOX, but that’s aloof a atom of the thousands of DOS games confirmed to be playable through the emulator.

You charge to be able to assignment with command lines, because DOSBOX doesn’t accept abundant of a graphical interface. A DOS adversary requires a DOS mentality, and that requires accounting things like “MOUNT D D: -t cdrom.” The PC Gaming Wiki is a actual advantageous ability for this, and it can let you apperceive if the bold you appetite to comedy is accessible on GOG or has any array of application that makes it easier to run.

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Besides DOSBOX, there are a array of emulators for added types of beforehand computers. You can acquisition Commodore 64 emulators, Atari ST emulators, Apple II emulators, and more. The Internet Archive’s The Old School Appetite Center (TOSEC) is a abundant abode to start.

This one is a little extreme, and requires alike added abstruse ability than DOSBOX. Aloof acquisition an old computer, alluringly Pentium or earlier. Install Windows 95 or 98 on it. Battle with the disciplinarian conflicts, IRQ errors, consecutive connections, and all the little frustrations you absolutely forgot about in the aftermost two decades. Wonder how you anytime managed after USB peripherals. Spend hours accepting aggregate to work, again bold like it’s 1998. You can comedy annihilation this way, but compared with application avant-garde PCs, it’s a slog.

And if all of this seems too bulky for you, you can consistently aloof aces up a aboriginal gaming desktop or laptop and comedy one of our admired PC amateur accessible now.

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[because-its-important]

2017: a year of courage 🦄

If 2016 was a year of opening doors, 2017 was a year of walking through them. This year demanded a lot of courage.

First, the fun things!

Programming.

I’ve been talking about this quite a bit already, so I don’t want to linger too much. This was my first year working as a programmer (heyo) and I learned a whole lot very, very quickly. Building a data-heavy webapp for bar associations and their member lawyers from scratch is no joke! I’m also real proud to be capping the year off in the midst of a batch at Recurse Center. About a year ago I kept thinking about how good it would feel to be “ready” for something like RC, and it does, it feels good.

“what are u doing rn?” selfie circa mid May.

Zines and indie book sellers.

I encountered a lot of zines this year, exponentially more than all the years of my life prior. I went to a zine reading, multiple zine fairs (including one I volunteered at), I assembled a zine at the Bushwick Print Lab, I brought friends to Quimby’s. And, ofc, I bought a bunch too.

I purchased all the zines above at Pete’s Mini Zine Fest.  From top left to bottom right, they include: a parody science zine about “fracking”; a zine about a woman’s experiences riding the subway when she was pregnant; a zine about the history of animals that have been sent to space; a holographic bookmark that isn’t a zine but reminded me of a femme version of the robot in FLCL; a zine someone made about remembering her recently deceased father and how they’d go mushroom hunting; an art zine full of sketches of demons. I also asked every artist to sign the copy I bought, because I am a huge dork. 🤓

A beautiful zine I found in the library at the Recurse Center. Zines are everywhere! Keep an eye out. 👀

I also spent a lot of time browsing and buying books (often used, sometimes not) from independent bookstores and sellers. I picked up books from BookPeople in Austin, from the Oakland Book Festival, from a library sale in Syracuse, from Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights 1, from Autumn Leaves in Ithaca, from the Verso loft in DUMBO, from Borderlands in the Mission, from Powell’s in Portland. I even scored Invisible Cities and Frankenstein from a stack left outside my neighborhood coffee shop.

These were all purchased for like $3 from a library sale held in the garage of a old fire station in Syracuse, NY. Includes: a book about stream of consciousness novels; a book about how to make poisons written by this dude; a book of poetry about the devil. Must’ve been a real moody day.

Interference Archive and Church Night.

I visited a lot of new places in 2017, so I wanna talk about two places that I found myself coming back to again and again.

I first visited Interference Archive or went to events where they tabled roughly a dozen or so times this year. I remember spending snowy days in winter doing a bit of cataloging for a big archive they’d received of counter culture newspapers from the 70s. I participated in two reading groups hosted by IA, one on different social movements from the 60s to today and another on race and mass incarceration following The New Jim Crow2. Interference Archives annual block party was also killer, with free screen printing, radical button-making, a used book sale 😏, free tamales served out of a trash bag (they were so good!!), and a live Yiddish queer punk band.

I blew up and tied these balloons for IA’s block party all by myself! Very important work! 

One of the issues of The Berkeley Barb that I cataloged. I also cataloged about half of The Black Panther newspapers in their collection. You can check out Interference Archive’s catalog here.

I also went to church service four times! 😋 Church Night is a comedy show that features three standup sets, a burlesque show, and a 90s rock sing-a-long, all rolled up into a evangelical sketch. Each service is also topped off by a real-ass sermon, with positive messages that have made me cry multiple times. It is a really perverse good time and the folks who run it are extremely friendly and hardworking. They travel to Brooklyn every couple months or so and are based in Washington DC, so if you near live in either of those areas, I fucken implore you to check them out.

Another great service at Church Night!

Puppet shows and films.

I attended two puppet shows this year, which is two more than any year in adult memory and certainly two more than I could have expected! The first puppet show played after a few live bands on a rooftop in Bushwick on a hot summer night - I drank cold canned beer and graciously accepted when some generous stranger passed around a bowl.

The second puppet show was a performance at a banging housewarming party in a living room in Bed Stuy, and a friend was one of the central performers. At one point during the show an iMac in the living room fell four feet to the hardwood floor below and the audience - a room full of friends and friendly faces - gasped. THE SPECTRE OF FAILURE!3 I thought very loudly in my head while my face contorted into rapt, waiting concern. Of course the show Went On, the moment of danger transformed, transcended. Holy shit! This is real! This is real life! I thought over a swelling-swooning heart, and it set the tone for the best night of my year.

I managed to catch a bunch of rad shorts including the IFC’s showing of Academy Award-nominated animated shorts, Rooftop Films’ non-animated “uncanny” shorts as well as their animation block party, and a round of alternative horror shorts presented by the Bushwick Film Festival. Respectively, my favorite shorts from each of these collections were: Blind Vaysha, about a girl with an eye that sees the past and an eye that sees the future4, See A Dog, Hear A Dog which explores how we train non-humans (particularly 🐶 and 🤖) to respond to us as if they understand us, My Man (octopus) about the stickiness of a toxic relationship (or, from the same night, Pittari, about a v cute demon), and GREAT CHOICE, which is a hilarious horror short about being stuck in an infinitely looping Olive Garden commercial from the 90s.

If you enjoy films and live experiences generally, I can’t recommend Rooftop Films enough. They’re a long-running NYC nonprofit that supports diverse, independent filmmaking and their summer series is truly unique and wonderful; each screening is hosted in a dope outdoor location in NYC and is preceded by a musical act fit to the theme of the film. I saw films on the roof of the Old American Can Factory and backlit by the eponymous sunset of Sunset Park. The ticket-price also includes an open bar after each screening, and you can chat with the folks who worked on the films. These are the kind of events that make living in a city so special, so take a friend, take two, and go!

It was a chilly the night at the Old American Can Factory where we saw Rat Film, a documentary about Baltimore told through the measures taken to control the rat population. Eugene (left) is wearing a towel I bought in LA. Bailey (right) is wearing a NASA sweatshirt.

Big music, living room music, radio music, discos Good and Bad.

Unlike last year, I didn’t go to any music festivals, but I did hit up a couple biggish shows. I saw Chastity Belt at Williamsburg Hall of Music (what a great venue 💚) and Yaeji at Elsewhere.

In a surprise display of social aptitude and luck, I managed to pull together folks from no less than four disparate friend groups to go see Chastity Belt with me in June.

I’ve been getting good at identifying proper communal experiences and boy, AcouticQ really hits the nail on the head. It’s such a friendly, intimate setting that you can’t help but wonder, is this not the perfect what to share tunes about heartache and triumph? If that compelling to you and you’re a good person who enjoys folky music and supporting queer artists, starting following AcoustiQ and hit up one of their events! Bring snacks, bring booze, bring a cash donation. 💵

I saw Julia Weldon first at AcoustiQ in September…

…and then again in November at PIANOS. 😊🎸

I started listened to radio programs - I think perhaps when looking for tunes for my daily bike commute? Anyway, I found myself tuning in pretty regularly to Radio Free Brooklyn. Bushwick Garage is probably my most listened to station, and I haven’t really tried any of the more talk show stuff. I suspect there’s something for everyone, especially if you live in NYC. You can check out their schedule here, though I’ve been relying on their Mixcloud channel for the most part.

Continued to do a fair bit of dancing in 2017 and saw a few new-to-me venues. I’ve decided that I really hate most any dance club on a Friday or Saturday past midnight; the situation nearly always devolves into Basic Dance Beat while straights get sloppy all over the place. There is nothing more distracting and vibe-killing than pretending not to notice some baseball cap bro who keeps desperately dancing at you in a crowded space, especially when you know he’s “working up the courage” to say something that will inevitably be heinously stupid. Like, I did not come here to build empathy for mediocre dudes hoping to ~get lucky~ at the club, I came here to dance myself clean!!! 😤

So when I tell you that I’ve had nothing but positive, glowing experiences the last two times I’ve been to weekend events at Magick City, let me tell you, this is high praise! What a great DIY music venue. The first event I went to there was a record listening party, where a roomful of people laid on blanket on the floor and quietly listened to an album - had a break to talk about it, pee, get another beer - and then listened to another. The second event was a set by these folks in a thick fog with a great light show and yet room to dance and breathe! The drinks were cheap and there was a whole table of delicious free snacks that had been prepared onsite.

Look at this rad setup by Drippy Eye Projections!

A communal fifth of whiskey left in the bathroom at Magick City. Just in case you needed a lil, y’know? What a phenomenal discotheque!🕺✨

Biking.

Through 2017, biking has been my main form of commuting. I spent winter and spring using Citibike5 until finally buying my own in early June. Deciding to own a bike for the first time in the city, let alone picking what to buy, was a pretty challenging experience. I went with a lightweight matte-black hybrid with an internal hub for its 3 gears. 

My bb is decked out with cleated neon-chartreuse pedals, green and yellow spoke beads (not pictured), and a purple-teal bluetooth speaker. 💜💚

And a word, if we might, about my speaker: this speaker is tough as shit! I’ve dropped it off my bike multiple times, and once I looked back only to watch it get run over by a car, twice. It’s also survived rain, sailing, and being dumped roughly into airport bins.6

I have plenty more to say about biking, but to cut to the chase: biking is clearly a superior mode of urban transit if you are able-bodied, have the nerves to deal with cars, and don’t mind arriving at your destination kinda gross. In the last 18 months or so I’ve gone from someone who Never Goes Out to someone who Goes Out More Than Your Average Bear and I’m prepared to credit biking as a major enabler. If you want to learn more about your city, see your friends more often, and make new ones - start biking!

This is a video I shot while riding my bike home from a 4th of July party. I nearly got nailed with a Roman Candle, lol.

Traveling.

I also did a greater-than-expected bit of traveling again this year, again all within the United States. I went to Austin in April, visited Oakland and Berkeley for the first time in May, visited both Ithaca and Vermont for the first times in July, drove to Kentucky to see the TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE with my cousin in August, drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles for Indiecade in October, and capped off with a half-work half-play visit to Portland, OR in November. I suspect this isn’t a sustainable amount of traveling, but it’s incredibly hard to regret - especially when it allows you to see friends who live far away or experience unique bonding moments with friends who live nearby - so who knows what next year will look like.

One of the most special places I’ve been this year was Lothlorien, a student coop at Berkeley where a friend lived in undergrad. It was an inspiring intentional community - so much art on the walls, a tree house with a perfect view of the sunset, a dream library. So magical! 💖

The cabin trip in Vermont was also really special. We did so many appropriate summer camp activities, like sailing, tubing, visiting cows, taking walks under a sky full of stars, building a blanket fort, putting together puzzles, and playing with fire.

We made this at the beginning of the day and boy oh boy did it come in handy for organizing ourselves! And gee, look at how well hydrated we were. 💦🌈💦

Now, the less easy stuff.

Sex.

One of my goals this year was to “learn more about sex.”

me: when you said we were going to be learning about sex, i didn’t realize there’d be so much reading involved, i thought it might be less of a mental and more of a physical edu- also me: lol don’t front

When I first cracked open Bataille’s Erotism: Death and Sensuality, I remember being absolutely floored by how much it was not whatever I had expected it to be - and that that was a helpful starting place. Erotism is an examination of the function of taboos and their sites of transgression, how the act of transgressing is subject to its own social rules and tends to be ritualized7, and how as conscious mortal beings we’re compelled towards moments of transgression because they seem to imitate what we imagine the great continuity of death feels like without having to, y’know, die. I liked his analysis of de Sade’s writing and the irony of sadism - that the promise of transgression is greater self-awareness, but the violence it requires necessarily also erodes that same awareness. I both appreciate and am wary of how aggressively Bataille dislocates sex from a bodily endeavor to a psychological compulsion. He had also some real undercooked shit say about women and was clearly terrified of sex, so I’m kinda disinclined to treat his opinions as functionally valuable to lived experience.

The Persistent Desire, on the other hand, was easily the most personally important book I read this year. It’s an anthology of generations of lesbian femme-butch relationships, told through stories from women’s lives, interviews with queer scholars, and some extremely hot sex poems. My primary inner-dialogue with gender has been “ugh” and “this shit again” and “if I pitch my voice and play Nice Girl this unbearable interaction will be over faster.” I had never spent so much concentrated time thinking about the performance of gendered sexuality in queer relationships, and wow, I have been missing out on some much better thoughts!

Like, Q: Does gender performance ever feel sexy to me, not just hostile? Under what circumstances? A: Yes, but generally only so long as a) the performance is fluid, eg. you’re the boy, I’m the girl, now you’re the girl, now we’re both boys, and b) power, however gendered, doesn’t rest in one place for too long. Gender is fun to play with as long as it feels like playing, where the heteronormative script is really only referenced insofar as it’s being subverted, shredded up by contact with a reality that unequivocally de-legitimizes it.

Like, Q: how much better would my life be if I approached sexual relationships from a place of radical honesty and expected the same from my partners? A: PROBABLY A LOT.

Like, Q: how do I make space in my life to form romantic-sexual relationships with people who aren’t cishet dudes? A: idk bitch, but you’re apparently a pro at lifestyle changes! Keep going to queer events, keep reading, keep processing. I believe in you.

This is a cute fire safety map at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which I visited for the first time on a very wet snowy day in November. The archives had been mentioned frequently in The Persistent Desire and I was so excited to find that they were still around (44 years!), located in Brooklyn, and having an annual book sale.

Depression, denial, and death.

At one point this year I remember having an entirely normal hang out with my sister and partner in our Bed-Stuy apartment. I turned to the both of them and said, “You know, I think I might be real sad. I think I might depressed.” I wasn’t worried when I said it, though I do remember the words feeling strange. My sister and my partner of 7 years looked at each other, something like ‘Uh, do you want to take this one?’ or ‘Does she really not know?’ and eventually someone said, “Yeah, Nicole, that sounds right.”

If you had told me last year that I’d be spending so much time with Freud and Camus I would have rolled my eyes very, very exaggeratedly.

The most frightening thing about mental unwellness, imo, is that a good personal quality which is otherwise healthy and worth cherishing can become catastrophically distorted. So, say, an extremely deep capacity for enduring pain and discomfort, especially in service of others, becomes proving your worth by how much you’re willing to suffer, how much energy you’re willing to give away without expecting reciprocation. Worse still, let’s say, is being trapped in a cycle of denial about your own nature.

Denial takes lazy, irrational, harmful patterns of thought and elevates them to Gospel. You can’t be a generous and giving person because you can so clearly recall all the moments when you could have given more. You can’t be getting taken advantage of because you obviously would not abide exploitation in your presence. A friend wouldn’t repeatedly use you, to your loss and their gain, so that’s impossible by definition. If what you’re doing was really that painful and exhausting, you would have stopped already. _If you were depressed, you’d know it._8

I took this photo in Austin on a night when I was feeling decidedly not good at all. In fact, I was feeling so not good and so ashamed of not feeling good that I went out and bought The Myth of Sisyphus.

Last month the opiate epidemic rose up and swallowed my estranged uncle. Though we weren’t personally close, I’d spent my childhood within a ten minute walk from his house and had lots of memories of him. Death leaves a vacuum, always. It’s also an effective invitation to re-examine your life and the people in it. My uncle was provided with endless love and support from his family - and yet. Self-delusion sure is captivating.9

This was a year where I decided that I valued truth over self-delusion, and more importantly, a year where I affirmed that decision with concerted effort. It is extraordinarily challenging to reckon with the blind-spots in your perception of reality, especially whenever those blind-spots were constructed By You to cope with past pain and avoid it again in the future. Maybe everyone doesn’t need to do this? Maybe most people live comfortably with the given state of their ego? But internal delusions are a barrier to conscious clarity, and to the extent that living consciously feels the most like Actually Living and not Waiting To Die, I am determined to clean that shit up.

Lessons, imperatives!

So it’s late afternoon on Dec 31st and if this is going to be a 2017 recap, I’m really coming down to the wire. Here are the most important lessons I learned this year.

I luv this demon, because they sure got the right idea. ❤️🖤 

AESTHETICS MATTER.

I’ve often caught myself feeling bad for identifying with a community or culture that I didn’t feel like I’d “earned” my place at yet. This happened with biking, it happened with programming, it happened in queer spaces. imo, the best way to handle impostor syndrome is to kill it where it sleeps. I sure am! I am a devious impostor! Let’s see how far I can get before someone reveals me, exiles me! Turns out you can get all the way to Being The Thing, especially if your intentions are true. Your attraction to the thing is the first signal of your belonging, so get busy belonging!

LOVE THYSELF, AND GET GOOD AT IT.

Most of the psychological friction I’ve come up against in my search for The Truth Please has been caused by a very stubborn refusal to see and accurately assess my own self-worth. Very classic, very boring. I have only just begun to internalize what it might mean to love myself, to care for myself with even a little of the generosity and kindness and specificity that I happily devote to other people. The psychic backbending I’ve had to do to accomplish this goes something like, what if we loved ourselves the way we wished someone else would, like, idk, as a joke or something? Wouldn’t that be funny, at least? 🙃

That worked pretty well, but when it didn’t, I used brute willpower: hating yourself is a coward’s game, and whatever I may be able to lie to myself about, I will not pretend that I’m a coward.

Ultimately, though, the best way to learn how to love yourself is to watch how your friends do it and to actively resist the urge to interrupt them.

SPEAK, BITCH 🗯

Earlier this year I was walking with a friend, and I was very ashamed of myself when I told her I was thinking about writing something. I immediately walked it back, waffled, recoiled from myself. She was bewildered. “You should! I feel like you have things to say!” My reaction to this was sharp, panicked fear.

Because she was right. Because self-articulation and knowledge-sharing are fundamental human endeavors and if I think I’m somehow exempt from that, that I somehow uniquely Haven’t Got Anything Worth Saying, then that is delusion. Because if the real thing holding me back is a fear that my skill won’t measure up to the things I want to express, then the brave and honest thing to do is to try anyway.

So when I went to Recurse Center, I started this blog. I named it Because Its Important just so that every time I started doubting myself and asking “Why oh why am I doing this?” I would have the answer right there. 🐙

👋 Thank you for reading! Here is a silly-glasses bathroom selfie.

I read Donna Haraway’s CYBORG MANIFESTO for an outdoor discussion group at Unnameable books this summer. It is so amazing. I could only barely keep pace with it and I can’t wait to read it again after some time. ↩︎

I consistently arrived late, but bearing coffee by way of apology. ☕️🙏 ↩︎

I read Theatre of the Unimpressed, a book recommended to me by a friend after we saw an indie play earlier this year. The book talks a lot about what makes theater captivating, about the necessity of the possibility of failure, about the tendency for people to see see one boring-ass play and decide that they Just Aren’t Into Theater. The play we saw together wasn’t memorable, save for the fact that it was performed in a loft that hosts semi-regular makeout parties, which I’ve attended on half a dozen occasions. They are largely terrible. ↩︎

In one of the scenes Vaysha is courted by suitors, but they appear as child in one eye and an old man in the other. Fucking chilling. ↩︎

I remember a conversation earlier this year where a guy said that he “couldn’t imagine what it takes” to ride a heavy Citibike over a bridge in NYC. “Willpower, mostly” I replied. He ignored me, repeated himself: “Gee, but I just don’t get it!” If someone doesn’t want to understand, they don’t want to understand. ↩︎

You can buy one here. ↩︎

In fact, a taboo ain’t even a taboo if it can’t be transgressed! ↩︎

A possibly less upsetting example of a denial! In September I was walking to brunch with my sister and her boyfriend the morning after a party at my bff's apartment. "Nicole, you really brought the party!" He said to me. My immediate emotional response was anger at how 100% wrong he was. The night before I had brought glowsticks, mini shark toys, and a Gingerhead House kit to the party. I was going to a party that night for which I'd purchased a tank of helium and large tropical balloons. But my desire to argue, my certainty that He Had Erred was complete. I've very rarely experienced moments where my subjective experience is so strongly misaligned with objective reality, but now that I'm in the business of noticing this crap, it happens pretty regularly whenever anyone says anything nice about me, to me. ↩︎

Drugs, too. ↩︎

[globalcommunitybuzrush-blog]

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[plantaardigegezichtsverzor-blog1]

How to be a Home Health Care Nurse

Plantaardige gezichtsverzorging

How to be a Home Health Care Nurse

House Health Care Nursing Information as well as Overview

Home health care is actually allowing the patient and their family members to maintain dignity and self-reliance. According to the National Association with regard to Home Care, there are more compared to 7 million individuals in the usa in need of home health care health professional services because of acute sickness, long term health problems, permanent impairment or terminal illness.

Residence Health Care Basics

Nurses exercise in a number of venues: Hospital configurations, nursing homes, assisted living centres, and home health care. Property health care nursing is a developing phenomenon as more sufferers and their families desire to get care in their homes. A brief history of home health care comes from Public Health Nursing where public well-being nurses made home appointments to promote health education and supply treatment as part of community outreach programs. Today academic applications train nurses in house care and agencies location home health care nurses along with ailing individuals and their households depending on the nurse’s experience and also qualifications. In many cases there is a discussed relationship between the agency and also the academic institution.

Many modifications have taken place in the area associated with home health care. These include Medicare insurance and Medicaid, and Ltc insurance reimbursement and records. It is important for the nurse along with nursing agency to be aware of the numerous factors involved for these regulations resulting from these organizations. Populace and demographic changes take place as well. Baby boomers nearing retirement and will present brand new challenges for the home medical care industry. Technology and health care in hospitals has result in shorter inpatient stay and much more at-home rehabilitation. Increases within medical outpatient procedures will also be taking place with follow-up residence care. This has resulted in the actual decrease of mortality rate through these technologies and medical treatment has lead to increases inside morbidity and chronic disease that makes the need for home healthcare nursing a greater priority.

Household Health Care Nurse Job Explanation

Through an array of skills in addition to experience, home health care nurse practitioners specialize in a wide range of treatments; psychological support, education of individuals who are recovering from illnesses as well as injury for young children and also adults, to women who have observed recent childbirth, to the seniors who need palliative care for persistent illness.

A practicing registered nurse must have the skills to provide treatment in a unique setting for example someone’s home. The midwife is working with the patient as well as the family and must understand the conversation skills for such aspect. Rapport is evident in most nursing positions, but doing work in a patient’s own living area needs a different level of ability and understanding. There is independent decision making as the nurse is not working as a team with other healthcare professionals in a structured environment, however is now as a member of the particular “family” team. The sponsor family has cultural beliefs that are important and are various for every patient and take note00 with extreme sensitivity. Some other skills include critical considering, coordination, assessment, communication, along with documentation.

Home health care nursing staff also specialize in the proper care of children with disabilities that needs additional skills such as persistence and understanding of the needs from the family. Children are living with afflictions today that would have led to mortality just twenty years back. Genetic disorders, congenital actual physical impairments, and injury are only a few. Many families know about managing the needs of the kid, but still need expert attention that only a home health care health care worker can provide. It is important that a property health care nurse is aware of the help of the family about the child’s problem for proper care of the youngster. There are many complexities involved, but important, a positive attitude in addition to positive reinforcement is very important for the development of the child.

Medicine coordination between the home medical nurse, doctor, and druggist, ensures proper management in the exact science behind providing the patient the correct dose, period of administration, and mixtures. Home health care nurses ought to be familiar with pharmacology and trained in training about diverse medications used by patients within the clinical setting.

Many superior practicing nurses are familiar with medicine regiments. They have completed scholar level programs. Home health-related agencies believe that a health professional should have at least one year regarding clinical experience before getting into home health care. Advanced exercising nurses can expedite which training by helping fresh nurses understand the home medical care market and teaching.

Work and Salary

According to the United states of america Department of Labor, there have been 2 . 4 million rns in America, the largest healthcare profession, yet many academic as well as hospital organizations believe there exists a gross shortage in medical staff. The shortage of nurse practitioners was 6% in 2150 and is expected to be 10% in 2010. The average salary regarding hospital nursing is $53, 450 with 3 from 5 nursing jobs happen to be in the hospital. For home healthcare, the salary is $49, 000. For nursing health care facilities, they were the lowest in $48, 200.

Training and also continuing education

Most home medical nurses gain their schooling through accredited nursing colleges throughout the country with an relate degree in nursing (ADN), a Bachelors of Science degree in nursing (BSN), or a master’s degree in nursing (MSN). According to the United States Department involving Labor, in 2004 there were 674 BSN nursing programs, 846 ADN programs. Also, 7 years ago, there were 417 master’s level programs, 93 doctoral plans, and 46 joint BSN-doctoral programs. The associate education program takes 2 to 3 many years to complete, while bachelors levels take 4 years to accomplish. Nurses can also earn specific professional certificates online throughout Geriatric Care or Living Care Planning.

In addition , for all those nurses who choose to go after advancement into administrative jobs or research, consulting, along with teaching, a bachelor’s diploma is often essential. A college degree is also important for being a clinical nurse specialist, registered nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, in addition to nurse practitioners (U. H. Department of Labor, 2004).

All home health care healthcare professionals have supervised clinical encounter during their training, but as previously stated advanced practicing nurses keep master’s degrees and in contrast to bachelor and associate certifications, they have a minimum of two years connected with post clinical experience. Classes includes anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, nutrition, psychology, as well as behavioral sciences and generous arts. Many of these programs possess training in nursing homes, public health divisions, home health agencies, and also ambulatory clinics. (U. T. Dep. of Labor, 2004).

Whether a nurse is learning a hospital, nursing service, or home care, training is necessary. Health care is altering rapidly and staying abreast using the latest developments enhances individual care and health methods. Universities, continuing education programs, along with internet sites, all offer training. One such organization that provides training is the American Nurses Organization (ANA) or through the United states Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).

References Health care https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care

[simplythetest]

TestNG Not For Me: Why I Cannot Recommend TestNG Any More

When I was working with Selenium for the first time, the tool stack I learned with was Java-based. The test runner that my team used at the time was TestNG, and we made pretty liberal use of its functionalities. I also got to know TestNG pretty well. Although I liked Java, I loved TestNG. It was a powerful test framework that was well-suited to building a Selenium-based test harness. While I've worked with different languages and tool stacks since then, my fondness for TestNG remained.

Until now.

During the past few months, I've seen enough issues with Java-based test frameworks to see TestNG (and other libraries) from some different perspectives. And based on these experience, my love for TestNG has faded and I can no longer recommend TestNG as a "default" choice for Java-based test projects. The main reasons come down to characteristics of good test projects and what really matters when writing good test harnesses, Selenium-based or not.

In my experience, the most critical criteria of successful test automation frameworks are the following:

Running all tests in a test harness on a regular basis. This may mean quarantining some tests temporarily and/or deleting tests permanently.

Writing independent and stable tests that can be executed at any time during the development cycle.

Realizing that long-term project maintenance is far more important than short-term test writing.

TestNG, for all of its merits, eventually fails at supporting these three points. While there may be some helpful features that TestNG provides in the short-run, in the long-run there are simply better choices.

TestNG: The Good Parts

Before I write about the downsides of TestNG, I feel like I should mention why I was drawn to it in the first place. One thing that I've become acutely aware of in the past years is that user experience in test automation tooling is critical for both tooling adoption and day-to-day work. If a tool is nice to use and solves real problems, not only am I more likely to use it but it's more likely other people will use it as well. This creates communities and shared knowledge which can move the needle forward in general. Test automation is no exception; being able to write code that can test specific circumstances and solve key problems is important and tooling that help in a neat and tidy way will get some attention.

After working with TestNG for a while, I found it had good developer UX. There were underlying conventions in TestNG that I could get a "feel" for after some experience using it. Although there was a lot of functionality and surprisingly large number of annotations, after a while I could guess what I needed to use and was often correct. If I needed a particular annotation, I could often deduce which one I needed based on experience and logical thinking and voila, the tests would run as expected.

As well, TestNG provided some functionality to - for lack of a better term - paper over some shortcomings that Java had for test automation. For example, Java notoriously does not have default/optional method parameter values, so TestNG implemented this feature. This is extremely helpful for Selenium tests where default browser types or configuration values are commonly used. TestNG also allowed for grouping and organizing tests in sophisticated ways and provided listener functionality to perform particular actions not just on test success or failure but other events too. At the time, these features were vital for writing good test harnesses that did more than evaluate class instances as in unit testing.

Based on this, TestNG should be applauded for solving some gnarly issues in designing good test automation. But even these beautiful features have faded from glory as time went on.

Getting It All Together: Running All Tests Regularly

When I worked with TestNG, one of the draws to using it over JUnit was the ability to organize tests into different groups or suites. On my team we had acceptance test suites for each product, and on the product I worked on this was a subset of all the automated tests that were written. Additionally there were regression suites and some additional suites for more specific functionality for security or specific features. Specifying a new suite was pretty easy since TestNG tests were executed using a specific testng.xml file. In such a file we could include or exclude tests by package, class or test method name and even pass in additional parameters needed per suite. Each test suite was executed using an Ant script on our Jenkins instance. It all worked wonderfully.

Except it didn't.

I realize now that breaking down these tests into such suites was a slippery slope toward instability and extra work for us. Each new test class needed to be carefully added or removed from existing testng.xml files, and the number of Jenkins jobs executing tests became unwieldy. Eventually some suites were run regularly, and others were not run regularly and instead run "on demand" - meaning basically never. This increased complexity in maintaining existing suites and adding new tests to suites.

Test code is production code, and like production code it experiences its own form of rot. In the case of automated tests, the application under test changes and updates, along with the test framework tools and language. In the case of Selenium tests, locators, URLs, application screens, and flows change leading to broken tests. Tests that aren't exercised regularly start to rot, and when they are run it is painful to try to update them to work which in turn lowers and information or value those tests produce for teams. It leads to frustration with the whole test automation enterprise and reduces confidence overall. This is a bad scene.

The problem with TestNG is that it makes it too easy to divide up tests into such suites in the first place. With some foresight, building test suites that are designed to run all tests regularly pays dividends over time in avoiding rotting test code. Regularly can mean whatever works best in a team's context - nightly, hourly, on every pull request, on every commit, on every merge to mainline, or similar. Even dividing up tests in to two or three groups (smoke/regression or smoke/acceptance/regression, for example) can be done with a bit of planning and low overhead. Maven and JUnit are essentially designed from this perspective; find all test classes in the src/test package following a basic naming convention and run them. The TestNG grouping approach leads to suites that are too finely organized, and running tests via testng.xml files can facilitate this issue.

Standing On My Own: Why Writing Independent Tests Is Important

Another problem more applicable to web-based browser testing is designing tests that execute well independently of each other. For many teams, this is no small task. Often with enterprise applications there are limitations in creating and using test data and application instances. A team may have to share a server instance with other teams, such as other QA teams or development teams. Also there may be long or complex workflows that need to be tested that cannot be easily executed concurrently or repeated.

Here again TestNG has some easy solutions that turn out to be terrible.

TestNG allows for tests to depend on other tests or set conditions. For example, TestNG has the @dependsOnMethod annotation where you can specify a method that must execute before a given test method can execute. I've used this as testA must run and succeed before testB can execute. This means I can be assured that any side effects from testA are in place that may affect testB which was helpful working in environments as mentioned above where there were limited application instances to test again or test data was difficult to create. There's also ways to set a priority of tests in TestNG where tests of priority 1 execute first, then tests of priority 2 execute, and so on until all priorities are executed.

These capabilities are great workarounds. But to really succeed, tests should be run independently and in any order without such workarounds. This means arranging for stable test environments dedicated to test automation, managing test data as best you can, using hooks to setup test data without relying on a (G)UI layer by injecting data at the database or API level. And certainly tests should be designed to be executed independently from the start. Again TestNG seemingly provides good tools to solve hard problems but ends up making matters more difficult than needed.

The Little Things: Thinking Long Term

The most important costs for any test automation project are maintenance costs. Writing a test - even a complicated one - often takes much less effort than maintaining that test over time. This is also true of test infrastructure such how a test is run, when a test is run, what happens before and after test runs, and so on. Little things like how a test gets executed can make a big impact.

TestNG typically leans on the testng.xml for selecting tests to run. This is fine or even desirable in an development or IDE setting. Running a set of TestNG tests from Eclipse or IntelliJ is pretty straightforward. Running testng.xml files on a continuous integration (CI) server is slightly more complicated but can also be accomplished but will also look different from running tests locally. Where running testng.xml-based tests are often a right-click-select-Run operation in an IDE, continuous integration services like Jenkins will need something else. This could be an Ant script, using a TestNG-based plugin or some edits to the pom.xml for using Maven. This is true even if there's a single testng.xml with a single suite.

In contrast, executing tests directly using Maven is identical even if using TestNG as your sole test framework in code. Adding the Maven Surefire plugin even allows for running specific tests or subsets of tests both from a development environment and CI environment. It also removes the overhead managing an additional XML file. This may seem like a slight improvement, but over time the lower maintenance costs and unified approach to test execution will pay off.

It's Not You, It's Me

I really don't want to sound like TestNG is terrible (or that Maven is amazing). TestNG is a well-built library and many teams have found success using its functionality. But over time, I find that the downsides outweigh the benefits.

I'll always remember TestNG as a good first step on my journey, but it is no longer the tool I reach for first in my Java toolbox.

[projectanagement1]

10 Free Tools For Effective Project Management

OpenProj is a free, open source desktop alternative to Microsoft Project. The OpenProj solution is ideal for desktop project management and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. OpenProj is a complete desktop replacement of Microsoft Project and even opens existing native Project files. OpenProj shares the most advanced scheduling engine in the industry with Projects On Demand. The OpenProj solution has Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more.

dotProject

dotProject is a web-based, multi-user, multi-language Project Management application. It is an open-source software and free for any uses and is maintained by an open community of volunteer programmers. Key features include:

Projects and Tasks

Companies, Departments and Contacts

ToDo lists

Resource Allocation

Forums

Gantt Charts

Reporting

Calendar

GanttProject

GanttProject is a free and easy to use Gantt chart based project scheduling and management tool. Major features include Task hierarchy and dependencies, Gantt chart, Resource load chart, Generation of PERT chart, PDF and HTML reports, MS Project import/export and WebDAV based groupwork management.

PHProjekt

PHProjekt is a free open source modular application for the coordination of group activities and to share informations and document via the web. Components of PHProjekt include Group Calendar, Project Management, Time Card System, File Management, Contact Manager, Mail Client and many other.

ConsultComm

ConsultComm is a small, lightweight, platform-independent program written in Java that allows anyone managing multiple projects, clients or tasks to effectively keep track of exactly how long they’ve worked on each project. Key features include:

Easily integrated into your existing time management or billing system; JDBC support is included so you can instantly upload all your times and projects into most JDBC and ODBC compliant databases

Platform-independent, so you can unify all your OS X, Windows, Linux and Solaris workstations with a single application

Released as open source, so you don’t have to worry about vendor lock-in or customization problems.

Quickly extensible by utilizing plugins created using the standard JavaBeans framework. Users and other developers can easily create their own plugins to quickly add custom functionality to ConsultComm

Customizeable to uniquely fit your own personal style preferences

TaskJuggler

TaskJuggler is a modern and powerful, Open Source project management tool. Its new approach to project planing and tracking is more flexible and superior to the commonly used Gantt chart editing tools. It has already been successfully used in many projects and scales easily to projects with hundreds of resources and thousands of tasks.

TaskJuggler is project management software for serious project managers. It covers the complete spectrum of project management tasks from the first idea to the completion of the project. It assists you during project scoping, resource assignment, cost and revenue planing, risk and communication management.

TaskJuggler provides an optimizing scheduler that computes your project time lines and resource assignments based on the project outline and the constraints that you have provided. The built-in resource balancer and consistency checker offload you from having to worry about irrelevant details and ring the alarm if the project gets out of hand. The flexible “as many details as necessary”-approach allows you to still plan your project as you go, making it also ideal for new management strategies such as Extreme Programming and Agile Project Management.

Collabtive

Collabtive is a modern Web application that allows teams to collaborate on projects, manage tasks, milestones, and files, and send instant messages to each other. It is multilanguage capable, supporting more than 20 languages. Collabtive integrates with other webservices via an XML API. It also provides importing functionality for data from other applications.

OpenGoo

It is a complete online solution focused on improving productivity, collaboration, communication and management of your teams. Key features include:

Mange tasks, documents, contacts, e-mail, calendar

Manage project progress, track time, and bill your customers.

Access all information from a single and elegant dashboard.

Communicate with co-workers, clients and vendors.

ProjectPier

ProjectPier is a Free, Open-Source, self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams through an intuitive web interface. ProjectPier will help your organization communicate, collaborate and get things done. Its function is similar to commercial groupware/project management products, but allows the freedom and scalability of self-hosting.

Redmine

Redmine is a flexible open source project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database. Key features include:

Multiple projects support

Flexible role based access control

Flexible issue tracking system

Gantt chart and calendar

News, documents & files management

Feeds & email notifications

Per project wiki

Per project forums

Time tracking

Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users

SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)

Issue creation via email

Multiple LDAP authentication support

User self-registration support

Multilanguage support

Multiple databases support

Conclusion

Project Management is one of the most important processes in designing and development of any project and selection of project management tool is sometimes critical. It entirely depends on your requirements as to whether you want to go for a web-based solution or a desktop one. Hence you need to consider the tool that is providing enough functionalities to cater your needs of project management.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Aratinga

Jenday Conure, by Dick Daniels, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Genus Name: Aratinga

Status: Extant

First Described: 1824

Described By: Spix

Classification: Dinosauria, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Neoaves, Inopinaves, Telluraves, Australaves, Eufalconimorphae, Psittacopasserae, Psittaciformes, Psittacoidea, Psittacidae, Arinae, Arini

Referred Species: A. solstitialis (Sun Conure), A. maculata (Sulphur-Breasted Parakeet), A. jandaya (Jenday Conure), A. auricapilla (Golden-Capped Parakeet), A. nenday (Nanday Parakeet), A. weddellii (Dusky-Headed Conure), A. vorohuensis

It is difficult to really pick a favorite genus of modern day bird to do on my birthday - so many parrots, passerines, and penguins to choose from! But I think I have to go with Aratinga, a genus of Conures that includes the charismatic Sun and Jenday Conures. This genus has a fossil record, with A. vorohuensis being found in Argentina. It was discovered in the Vorohué Formation, a location on the coast of Northwestern Argentina, and it lived about 3 million years ago, in the PIacenzian age of the late Pliocene of the Neogene. Whether or not this is when Aratinga evolved as a genus is uncertain, as the bird is not particularly interesting or unique; in fact, it resembles A. nenday extensively, so it’s difficult to pin point when this genus first evolved - but, at the least, it was no later than the Pliocene, and it probably originated in South America.

Sun Conure, by Wayne Deeker, CC BY 3.0

The Sun Conure, A. solstitialis, is arguably the most famous species of the genus, being often kept as a pet bird. However, it is endangered, due to loss of habitat and excessive catching for the aforementioned pet trade (making it very important that, if you want a pet Sun Conure, you get it from a shelter!) Bans imposed that stop the importation of parrots into the USA has lead to more breeding in captivity, however illegal trade still occurs, and capture of wild birds is still a serious threat, leading to its endangered status. Captive breeding does, however, ensure the continuation of the species. They are yellow birds, with red around the face and belly, and green and blue feathers on the wings. Juveniles are mostly green, with the other coloration attained as it grows. They’re usually around 30 cm long. 

By Chris Williamson, CC BY 2.0

Curious and brightly colored birds, they live in a small region of North-Eastern South America - Braizil, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname. There have also been sightings of it in Venezuela. They live in tropical habitats, mostly humid tropical forests though they will cross savannah and coastal forests in order to get from habitat to habitat, and they inhabit fruiting trees and palm groves. They are social birds, living in large flocks of 20 to 30 individuals, and will squawk and scream loudly when separated in order to return to the flock. They’re quiet when feeding, but vocal in flight, and travel many miles in a day. They also have a variety of physical displays with one another, and they feed, rest, preen, and bathe during daylight. They can use their beaks to move through the trees as well, and they use their feet to examine the world, like we do with our hands. 

By Brian Gatwicker, CC BY 2.0

Sun Conures nest in palm cavaties, and when they’re molting, they’re uncomfortable and irritable. They thus bathe and seek out rain and humidity in order to allow the feathers to come in more easily. They feed on fruits, flowers, berries, blossoms, seeds, nuts, and insects in the wild, as well as cactus fruit and even agricultural pests. They form monogamous breeding pairs at about 4 to 5 months of age, and they feed and groom each other before breeding. They mate for up to three minutes and are then affectionate with each other. They nest in trees and palms, and lay 3 to 4 eggs per clutch. The females incubate the eggs from 23 to 27 days, and males protect the nest. The chicks are dependent on their parents until 8 weeks after hatching, and they become independent after 9 to 10 weeks. Though they can form pairs early on, but are only really sexually mature at about 2 years of age, and live up to 30 years. 

By Lionpro2006, CC BY 2.0

Their behavior is very poorly known in the wild, and most of our knowledge about them comes from their behavior in captivity. In captivity, they can learn to speak and perform tricks to a moderate degree. They feed on many different types of plants, and use cuttle bones or other calcium-rich substances to obtain calcium in their diet. They are very loud for their size and are very curious, so they require a lot of attention - but they can also be very loving and cuddly, and can be friendly towards those they know well. They like to listen to music, and can dance and sing along with. They chew on a lot of things and need toys to chew as pets, and they require extreme attentiveness in order to make sure they don’t escape, bite something they shouldn’t, or otherwise harm themselves. 

Sulphur-breasted Parakeet, by Sidnei Dantas, CC BY 2.0

The Sulphur-Breasted Parakeet, A. maculata, resembles the Sun Conure extensively. It used to be two different species, A. maculata and A. pintoi, but those were since combined. It has been reported around the Amazon river, but it’s status as its own species separate from the Sun Conure is relatively new, and so much of its behavior and range is unknown. It is thought, however, to be of Least Concern in terms of its conservation status. They have more green feathers on the ring and greyish eye-rings in the wild, though it can fade to white in captivity. 

Jenday Conure, by Giannizzzero, in the Public Domain

The Jenday Conure, A. jendaya, is my favorite species in the genus, and thus my favorite species of modern-day dinosaur. It is small and long tailed, with a reddish orange body, orange cheeks, a black bill, and green and blue wings and back. It’s tail feather ends are tinged blue, and it’s about 30 cm long. it has a loud and shrill call, and is found primarily in Brazil, in lowland woodlands and palm groves. They feed on mangos, cashews, apples, and nuts, as well as human crops, which often leads to them being considered pests. They nest in tree hollows, about 15 meters from the ground, and the young are fed by both parents. 

By Frank, CC BY 2.0

Jenday Conures are not endangered, and the trade and export of them is forbidden. Though they are not endangered and have a wide range, they are fairly scant in their ranges, and are rare to spot. They are often called the flaming conure, due to their bright red feathers, and are often kept as pets. They are intelligent birds and mimic sounds well, and are very social, living in large flocks in nature. They are very affectionate and playful birds, and are also extremely curious, so much like the Sun Conure, when kept as a pet they require extensive supervision. 

Golden-Capped Parakeet, by Guérin Nicolas, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Golden-Capped Parakeet, A. auricapillus, is another species of this genus, found in Brazil and Paraguay. It typically lives in tropical and subtropical dry forests and lowland forests, savanna, and plantations. It is near threatened due to habitat loss. It is about 30 cm long and is mostly green, with an orange bell and red face, leading to its name. 

Nanday Parakeet, by J. Patrick Fischer, CC BY 3.0

The Nanday Parakeet, A. nenday, is another species of the genus - maybe - it’s been placed in its own before and Aratinga in general is probably paraphyletic (meaning, it’s not a single clade, but rather bits and pieces of other bird clades). It is 32 to 37 cm long, making it longer than other species in this genus, and doesn’t seem to particularly resemble them to look at. It is mostly green and has a black facial mask and beak, and has black flight feathers. It’s tail is tipped in blue, and its upper chest is bluish-green. They feed on seeds, fruit, nuts, berries, flowers, and buds. They live in scrub forest and forest clearings, as well as savannas and pastures. They find holes in trees to nest in, laying three or four eggs, and they form large communal roosts. IN captivity, they much like their relatives require sufficient stimulation and observance - they are very good at escaping from their cages! 

Dusky-Headed Parakeet, by David Long, CC BY 2.0

Finally, our last species, A. weddellii, is the Dusky-Headed Parakeet, or Dusky Conure. It is a green parrot from Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela, and is fairly common and not threatened in its conservation status. It is a small parrot, only about 25 to 28 cm long, and it is green in color with a grey head, a blue-tipped tale, and varying shades of green and grey on its body. They’re sometimes called mini macaws, because they have skin near their beak and eye like macaws. They are found in pairs and small groups, even flocking with other conures, with flocks having up to 100 members in times of plenty. They eat fruit, seeds, and flowers, and even insect larvae and mineral-rich soil and clay. They also are kept in captivity. They have life spans of anywhere from 25 to 50 years. As with all members of this species, they are energetic and playful birds. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aratinga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aratinga_vorohuensis

Tonni, E. P., J. I. Noriega. 1996. Una nueva especie de Nandayus Bonaparte, 1854 (Aves: Psittaciformes) del Plioceno tardío de Argentina. Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 69: 97 - 104. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_parakeet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphur-breasted_parakeet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jandaya_parakeet

http://www.parrotsecrets.com/Jenday-Conure/about-jenday-conure.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden-capped_parakeet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusky-headed_parakeet

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