aogaroi

[ante--meridiem]

Took too long to code my own graph and zettlr has now implemented an official one before I got there.

Mildly useless due to the obvious issues such as "the formatting cuts off parts of it" and "there's too many tightly packed vertices I can't zoom in on" but at least I can now say Look At My Boy

[sending-the-message]

HOW TO BE BEAUTIFUL AND THIN by Skelethin

Hello everyone, so, uh, I want to be beautiful and thin. And I’ll tell you exactly how you can too!

There’s a storm deep within me that’s dying to get out. It’s a storm of rage and self hate, constantly gnawing at my fat to escape. I must admit, I’m not fat and I never have been. I have always been a size small, since I’m 5’3 and 105 lbs to begin with. What hurts more is that I’m simply average. Normal body, normal size, normal everything. I’m considered “normal thin”, and not fat nor skinny. I’ve never been anything special. I’m 15 and I frequently enjoy, well, different things than your average teen. I’m obsessed with books, and only classic literature. I only listen to classical music and I play a few instruments, as well as spend my time writing poetry and practicing ballet En Pointe.

Anyway, now that you know a little bit about me, I’m here to tell you exactly how I got thin and beautiful. So, I had tried everything at this point; being Vegan for a few months, which resulted in Anaemia, I tried the Keto diet, which also didn’t work. I even tried diet pills, which no, did not give me a tapeworm. I will admit, I was losing 4 pounds per week, but that’s simply not enough. How do people even have the patience to diet for months while losing as little as 1-4 lbs per week? I didn’t. I had to find a way to speed up the process. I stumbled across a diet known as an “Ana Diet”, unbeknownst to me, it definitely would work. It was on some website called “AnaBones4evur.com” and i figured it was a spam site at first, since it popped up like an annoying ad on the bottom of my computer when I was searching other legit dieting websites. This one didn’t seem professional, as it was a minimalistic page. The font looked as if it were tipping and falling off the page, as well as little blue sparks were glitching all over the deep black wallpaper of the website. I looked closer, and I noticed that the millions of little blue sparks that were glitching were in fact mini pixel butterflies. Strange. There were only a few links displayed on the page, which were clearly misspelt.

There was an “Abooout”, an “FAQ”, a “Store” And a “Dietes, Tricks and Ttipss”. Now, I know what you’re thinking, clearly it’s a fake scam website as all the red flags were there. Mind you, I was absolutely desperate to lose weight. As silly as this sounds, I couldn’t just be happy and satisfied with a body like any average girl. I wanted mine to be surreal, angelic, ethereal, like sharp jagged bones protruding like glass. So first, I clicked on the store. There weren’t many items being sold; just scales, measuring tapes, laxatives, diuretics, exercise merch, and a bunch of purple bracelets with the same bluebell butterfly symbol on them. The prices were all surprisingly low, and I hoped that the FAQ would say something about the butterfly, so I clicked on that next.

There were only 5 Questions with short non-detailed answers below. It’s weird, since all the questions seemed odd but well punctuated, and the answers from the website host was misspelling everything and often using foreign letters such as “ ç, ż, ł, ß, æ, ø, œ, ü, ę, ŵ, etc.” It was strange. One of the questions was “How long does it take to lose about 60 lbs?” And the host answered “well, if you follow all the ÅNNNNÁ rules, then you will lose 60 lbs in about 5 months. Usūally yoau losę 8 pounds p3er ŵeek (((:” the rest of the questions weren’t very important. So I clicked “Abooout” and it was also short paragraphed. It looked a little like this:

“Hallo And Welcym freinds!!! U are now part of the ÁnNa famly. Everywun who joyns, is my fellowe sister or brothear!! U can onlye be acepTed on 1 Condishin. You MUST FOLLEW allkklllllll the rules. If u fail to follew evry rool, u will be BANNED FROm THISE WEBSIGHT. How will I Kno if u breyk a rule?? TrUuuuuust me. I kno. I am Alwaus Watching u. It u sighn up here, I Will Automauticalli have Access to sey what u r doing 24 HRs A DAY. SeveRe Punichment will come ur way if u Brayk a rule.

Remember, have Fün and liive Dangeroushly!!”

Xoxoxo- MIA

Finally, I clicked the diet, tricks, and tips. All of them were normal enough, at least at first. “Eat only X amount of calories per day” and the punishment is, if you eat over 900 calories then you will have severe nightmares for 8 days. You have 3 strikes. If you go over 900 for the third time in a row, you will have severe physical pains. I don’t believe in a lot of supernatural stuff, I mean, I believe in ghosts, but not that some random person on the internet has the power to control your mind and your body. You have to exercise until you faint, if you stop exercising and you’re still able to walk and stand fine, then you aren’t doing it enough. You must count and measure everything that goes in your mouth. You must make yourself throw up in case you accidentally consume a little extra calories. I hate vomit, but if it will make me lose weight, I will do it.

So I tried. On August 1st I began my diet. I restricted. That was the main word etched in my mind: Restriction Restriction. Other words were “Willpower” and “Self Control.” I have the willpower to restrict my calories, and I feel like I am the Goddess of my own body. I have immense self-control that people often express how jealous they are, that I easily decline delicious sweets being offered to me. Every time my stomach rumbles and moans and screams at me for my cruelty, I smack it and tell it that it’s not hungry, just bored. Who knew that feeling hungry and empty felt so good?? The “full” feeling I used to feel when I ate normally was disgusting. Bloated belly, full of food, now is empty shrinking belly. I feel so weightless, like a feather. I hated vomit, but soon I began to vomit 5 times a day. I never went over my calories. I was gonna be the one to do everything perfectly so I can impress Mia. I will be the number one winner in her dieting contest. She will absolutely love me. She expresses adoration for me already. Her little voice in my head constantly praises me after a good purge.

September 10th: I feel so nauseous. My bones ache and my whole body is sore. I think I worked out too hard last night. My breath still reeks of last nights vomit even though I brushed them like, 12 times. I had to tell people my teeth are yellow because I ate something that contained food colouring. It’s tiring, having to pretend to make breakfast and lunch so my dad thinks I’m eating. Luckily he’s the only person I live with. It’s crazy how the only reason I manage to get out of bed is so I can weigh myself. The scale is my religion. I hated math, but now I love it. I’m the best at counting calories and measuring the size of my waist and my thighs, and that number that drops every day is amazing. I weighed in at 83 lbs today. My dad doesn’t know since my old clothes are the only thing I wear, and they’re huge on my delicate and dainty figure.

October 1st: I can’t even move. My long pretty fingernails are yellow and brittle and they constantly fall off whenever I scratch my dry, itchy head. My once thick mass of luscious blonde hair is dirty and greasy and stringy, falling out in clumps when I brush it, when I shower, and when I wake up. My skin feels like a snake; patchy and scaly. I’ve always been pale, but never like this. It’s a annoying how everyone asks if I’m sick or if I have a fever. They don’t know. They’ll NEVER understand. I’m constipated so I have to rely on 15 lax a day. I can’t sleep because I’m so hungry, and when I do sleep, all my dreams are food-related to me binging, and I wake up in a panic, crying since I think it’s real. I can’t walk 3 steps to my own bathroom in my own room. It hurts. I want to pass out and pant heavily whenever I walk up the stairs, as it feels as if I have walked 30 miles. I resorted to crawling everywhere. Sometimes, my dad has to carry me.

November 1st: I hate my my life. I used to have depression before, but it’s never been this severe. I feel like the more weight I lose, the more depressed I get. MIA LIED. She said I’d be happier once I’m thin. She promised I’d look like one of those models in the VS show. They don’t look as dead as I. My dad is a mortician, and he constantly remind me that I look and feel like a dead body. I’m cold, my skin is so so cold. I’m cold. I wore Uggs, Sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and thick blanket in 105 degrees and I was shivering and freezing. Every time I stand up my vision fades to black and all these black little dots dance around my blurry vision. It’s like when you stand up too fast you get dizzy spells, except it happens to me all the damn time. I have to lay down 4 towels on the toilet seat to go pee since it hurts my bones. I have to sleep on 5 blankets since it hurts my bones. I can’t sit on wooden chairs because it stabs my bones.

Everyone says they’re worried about me. Teachers pull me aside, my ballet instructor, the nurse, store owners when I go and order a Diet Coke during lunch rather than actual food. I don’t even look twice at the display of pastries. I’m successful. Everyone says I’m too thin and I need a doctor, blah blah blah. They’re wrong. They have no idea how long it took for me to get here. They have no idea how I desperately needed this. They have no idea all the effort I put. They need to appreciate how beautiful I am. I thought they’d praise me. They’re just denying I’m beautiful, they’re all jealous. They stare at me with haunting and pitying eyes and whisper behind my back. They gasp and gape at my body wherever I go. See how jealous they are? They want to be me. They’re just saying I’m dangerously thin because they wish my body was theirs. Well, I had to work for it. If being thin was easy, everyone would do it. We live in a world of gluttony where everyone is constantly stuffing their face, whereas I eat every other day.

December 1st: Too weak. Can’t move. I have missed school for a week now. My skin is more blue and purple than white, and it’s not my veins. My lips are dry and white with a slight pale red and swollen shut with dead skin hanging off. I have heavy and thick black bags underneath my eyes. I FEEL BEAUTIFUL. My body is covered in bruises, even though I do nothing but sit on my ass all day watching TV. Mia said it’s okay to stop exercising since I’m so weak, so I deserve a break. My metabolism is dead, and I’ve hit a few plateaus, but I’m almost to my goal weight. It’s funny because my goal weight gets lower and lower the more weight I lose. At 105 lbs my goal was 95. I got there, and I still looked obese. Then it was 85, got there, and still obese. 75, got there, and still obese. I’m currently 68 lbs and my goal is 59. 5 is my favourite number, and 9 is one less away from being the highest and the greatest: 10.

It’s so funny. It’s like I was blind my whole life. I never really thought I was fat, but Mia said to take one good look in the mirror, which opened my eyes, and suddenly, I realised, maybe I AM obese. Soon those protruding bones became rolls of fat and I physically transformed into a monster. My mirror was alive and moving. It kept morphing and twisting and distorting like a fun-house mirror. Why isn’t enough? I think I was born with a special body that can’t be skinny no matter how much weight I lose. That number on the scale will never be enough. It will never satisfy my cravings and my need for skinny. Maybe my goal should be 50.

December 10th: I’ve fainted 4 times so far. I get Charlie horses in my legs every night. My dad says I have low magnesium and blood pressure. As well has dangerously low blood sugar and severe iron deficiency. He’s lying. He just wants to make a big fat ass again. My heart rate is currently 40 BPM. There is one thing that i love, though, and that’s my period. It’s gone. I haven’t had it in forever. My dad keeps crying and getting on his knees and begging me to eat, telling me I’m painfully thin. He’s just MOCKING ME. Everyone who says I’m thin is a big fat liar. They know I’m an obese pig, they just want to lie to me. I’m the only one who sees my body truly for what it is, why can’t everyone else? I know the real me is fat. Apparently everyone else just looks shocked and surprised when I say I’m still fat. “Gaunt Girl” they call me. “Emaciated Evangeline” they call me. “Starving Sister” I’m called. “Skinny Minnie” “itty-bitty” “Malnourished.” Everyone calls me either a zombie, a vampire, or a ghost.

I don’t even FEEL alive. I feel more like I’m existing, but not living. I don’t feel like I have a life. It’s as if I’m a puppet. Or someone is playing with me like an unmoving doll. I can’t breathe, i can’t sleep, i can’t eat, and I feel dead. I feel brain dead. I can’t even move now. I lay on the couch all day, barely moving my head. I can’t even watch tv or go on my phone. I can’t even tell you what I said 3 minutes ago. My memory used to be intelligent and sharp, now I can’t remember anything. My vocabulary speaking-wise is that of a 5 year old. My mind is that of a 5 year old. I dumbed down as my malnourished brain and mental state deteriorated. I am nothing but a decomposing body, waiting to be as light as dust. Soon to be ashes. I can only really remember to speak 5 words “Hi, Bye, No, Yes, Okay.” THIS IS WHAT PERFECTION FEELS LIKE

December 17th: This is Evangeline’s Dad. I found her diary and all the sickening things she’s written in it about her diet and some website. Evangeline Elizabeth Winters was admitted to X hospital at X address for a possible cardiac arrest. It appears she was found unconscious in her bed. On December 16th 10:31 AM. She is thankfully not in a coma. They were able to shock her heart and revive her. It is an utter miracle that she is along the 2% of patients who are able to recover from cardiac arrest.

January 1st: Hello everyone, I’m back! I’m in the hospital and they have diagnosed me with something that ended in “Nervosa” and I can’t remember what the first part is. All I know is that Mia would be so proud of me. I got a message saying “I’m the official Ana of the website.” And apparently Ana is the highest ranking position. There are many Anas, but there’s only one true perfect Ana. Along with Mia, she promised we’d rule together! I can hear her talking in my head already. Apparently I’m forced to be submitted into an Inpatient facility at a mental hospital for a few months, as well as be supervised and regularly see a dietician, a doctor, and a psychiatrist. I did nothing wrong.. it’s just a diet. Why can’t anyone let me be skinny? Why do they want me to be fat?? I’d rather kill myself than be fat.

January 2cd: I managed to steal a knife off of the medical table while no one was looking. It’s 1:30am and I’m going to do the final step it takes to become a true Ana. Cut off the rest of my fat. My bones are in the way, but I’ll find the fat hiding behind them.

This is what perfection feels like. This is what perfection is. Perfection is death. I am thin and beautiful, and I can already see Mia’s shadowy figure smile at me with glowing fangs across my bed.

ThÁbks For raéDjng this And Becum a Membrrr of THe Dïett!!! -Evangel-AÑNÁ

[shirlleycoyle]

It’s Crunch Time and Data Shows the USPS Is Still Experiencing Delays

This article was sent on Tuesday to subscribers of The Mail, Motherboard’s pop-up newsletter about the USPS, election security, and democracy. Subscribe to get the next edition before it is published here, as well as exclusive articles and the paid zine.

Hi everyone, exciting news: Our second zine has been printed and is currently on the way to us, and will be mailed out to subscribers later this week or early next week. This month's edition is about a topic that has always been near and dear to our hearts: Hacking. Since most of our hacking coverage is about things that happen online, we thought it'd be cool to have a snapshot of where hacking culture is, in a printed zine. The issue features stories by Motherboard staff and this incredible cover art by Rebekka Dunlap:

Anyone who subscribes now will also get a copy of our first zine. There are also a few people who have subscribed since we sent out the first zine—we will ship you both zines at the same time.

If you want to get in on the first batch, please subscribe by Friday.

We are now a week from Election Day (somehow!) and mail service in many parts of the country still sucks. Two areas in particular where mail service sucks are Philadelphia and Detroit, Democratic strongholds in key swing states. The Washington Post published an article focusing on mail problems in those two cities as well as other swing states, although the article also made clear they're hardly the only areas experiencing delays.

Mail delays are persisting despite the USPS's carefully worded promises to stop doing some—but not all—of the stuff that made people angry over the summer, at least until the election is over. For example, they stopped dismantling sorting machines but didn't promise to put any back in service (a few recent media reports claimed a federal judge ordered them to put the machines back together; the order merely stated the USPS must do so if it could no longer accommodate election mail which the USPS has long maintained won't be an issue). They said they would not ban late or extra truck trips or overtime but also insisted they never did that in the first place, even though they obviously curtailed them significantly. And the USPS never in fact fully resumed late or extra trips, which still lag far behind pre-DeJoy levels along with overall service. In sum, delays are persisting despite court orders that mandate USPS management knock it off (to use a technical legal term). 

Why does mail service still lag its pre-DeJoy levels? And does it matter for tallying votes?

We live in a country in which all votes matter but some votes matter more than others. If you live in a swing state, the marginal value of your vote in the presidential election is a lot higher than mine is in New York. Similarly, mail delays in some parts of the country could have a much greater significance than in others.

Using performance data released by the USPS as part of one of the court cases, I tried to create one chart that summarizes first class mail delivery performance since the beginning of the year. It's a little messy since it's broken down by the USPS's 67 service districts, but I think it tells an important story. Below is a screenshot of the chart, but you can play around with an interactive version of it here (the big swooping outlier that runs off the chart in April is the New York district).

USPS First Class Service Performance by District

Every chart tells a story, sometimes misleadingly so. But the one this chart is telling me accords with all of the reporting I and many others have done on the USPS so far. So I think it's worth listening to.

The story goes like this: In 2020, two events destabilized USPS performance in different ways. The first was the pandemic, which began in mid-March in certain parts of the country and, in case you haven't noticed, is still going. It destabilized service in specific places at specific times. While this could impact delivery rates elsewhere if it caused key sorting facilities to be short-staffed, in general the impacts were relatively localized. To tell this story in terms of the way the graph looks, it caused some districts to get detached from the big clump of lines that represents the pre-2020 status quo. But the status quo clump didn't change much if at all.

Then, in July, the clump undergoes a "W" pattern, where service tanks, briefly rebounds a bit, tanks again, then rises once more to almost-but-not-quite reach the status quo levels again. This second destabilizing event coincides with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's sudden policy shifts as well as the peak of coronavirus case counts over the summer. 

However, I think it's pretty clear this "W" pattern was the result of DeJoy's changes, not coronavirus cases as the USPS continues to argue. We saw throughout the previous months how coronavirus affects mail service, and this looks altogether different. 

When coronavirus delays mail service, some districts fall off the clump as case counts rise in that area. That's not what we see in July. Instead, we see a sudden, simultaneous drop-off across the entire postal network. Districts didn't fall off the clump. The clump went into freefall. 

What happened afterwards is the most important lesson for today: the clump stopped being quite so clumpy, meaning service performance became more erratic and with a higher variance between districts. You can tell this by comparing the density of the lines in January to that of September. In January, the clump ranged from 85 percent to 95 percent, or a 10-point variance. By September, the clump is spread out from a high of just over 90 percent all the way down to about 70 percent, or a 20-point variance.

In total, the story of this chart is one of an organization losing control. Not just in swing states, but everywhere. Even non-swing states like Alabama and Mississippi are struggling with mail service, ranking towards the bottom of first-class mail delivery.

Which brings us back to the second of the two questions I asked at the top of this newsletter: does the USPS service tanking matter for counting votes? The best answer I can give right now is: probably, but we don't yet know how much.

First, we simply don't know how many people are waiting to mail ballots until the last minute. According to the U.S. Elections Project, there were 47 million mail-in ballots still waiting to be returned as of Sunday. Some of them will be mailed back in the last week. A smaller number of them will probably be mailed back on November 1 or 2. But many likely won't be mailed back at all, with voters either opting to cast their ballot in person on Election Day, during early voting if available, or not at all. Plus, a few states have changed postmarking and ballot delivery deadlines to add some buffer time for sluggish mail service, so even if a ballot is mailed back on, say, November 2, it might be counted in one state but not the other, even if they are both delivered on November 4.

Second, it's not clear whether the overall first-class mail statistics accurately reflect how ballots specifically are handled (which are only about two percent of overall first class mail during these election weeks). The USPS has pledged to make all possible resources and alternatives available to expedite ballot delivery, particularly in the final week before Election Day. How much will they actually do, and to what extent will it move ballots faster and more reliably? This is all yet to be seen.

Third, the distinction between being on time and being two days late has a huge difference in service delivery. According to the USPS, for the week of October 10 to October 16, 97.25 percent of first-class mail was delivered either on time or less than two days late. That's within a percentage point of its performance in January. 

So a randomly selected voter within the U.S. would have roughly the same expectation a ballot mailed by Thursday will reach their election official by the end of Election Day with the similar confidence as before the pandemic. But, on aggregate, a one percentage point dip across tens of millions of ballots could mean hundreds of thousands of ballots not getting delivered in time. That could make a huge difference if these delayed ballots are concentrated in just a few key areas like Detroit and Philadelphia. It could also make little difference if they're spread out across the entire country roughly in proportion to the service performance lines we saw above. And, of course, smaller numbers of ballots make bigger differences in outcomes the further down the ballot you go. How much of a difference the USPS will make is one of those things you can only really know by doing the math after the votes are tallied. But I think we can all agree it would be better for democracy if the USPS was functioning like it did in early June.

This Week in Mail

I just sent links on Thursday and not that much has happened since then. Here’s a cool story about India’s postal network. Which reminds me, I’ve gotten a few questions about how postal services work in other parts of the world, how they have handled the internet transition, etc. I will have more to say on this but for now please read this excellent London Review of Books article from 2011.

Postcards

Wash hands

Wear masks

Write letters

Aaron

It’s Crunch Time and Data Shows the USPS Is Still Experiencing Delays syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/