#Value Fundamentals

[open-era]

The Dot-Com Bubble: From Rags to Riches...and Back

Learn from the past: The Dot-Com Bubble was a stark reminder of speculative excess and its consequences. Valuable lessons for today's investors and entrepreneurs. #FinancialHistory #LessonsLearned

In the late 1990s, a phenomenon known as the dot-com bubble captivated the world, fueling dreams of untold riches and transforming the stock market into a frenzy of irrational exuberance. As the internet’s rapid growth opened up new opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship, countless start-ups emerged, adorned with flashy “.com” domain names. Investors, eager to ride the wave of the…

[bonefall]

I haven’t read these books in years WHAT is the angel fetuses. What is happening

LMAO yeah there's actually been three instances where Warrior Cats made fetuses into StarClan characters. We're joking about Moonpaw's absorbed fetus twin (Starpaw/The Voice) meeting with Clear Sky's first dead wife's unborn kids.

The first time they did this was in the last book of DOTC, on Gray Wing's deathbed. Bright Stream, last seen in early pregnancy and being carried off by eagles to be gruesomely eaten alive, shows up accompanied by Tiger Tail and Pale Sky. Her embryos.

Because they show up in this big fanservicey montauge of all DOTC's fridged wives happily living as eternal mothers in StarClan, I sardonically call them the Dead Angel Fetus Children.

(It's dark humor to cope with how much the concept freaks me out)

And with Moonpaw, I have to explain how fusion chimerism works.

There are a few types of chimeras, but when a single individual is created from the combination of two fully fertilized zygotes, that is called fusion chimerism. That's what Moonpaw is.

And you have to understand, we're talking zygotes as in cells. The fusion of haploid gametes. NOT embryos (developing major organs) or fetuses (has major organs). When multiple embryos or fetuses are detected during pregnancy, but one vanishes, that is called Vanishing Twin syndrome (VTS).

There is actually very little linkage between VTS and the chance of a baby being born with fusion chimerism. At best it's an overstated link. At worst, it is a general misconception of Vanishing Twin syndrome.

Fusion Chimeras can happen in a lot of different ways, most of them fertilization errors, very few of them involving the multiple embryos of VTS. Likewise, the vast majority of VTS cases do not result in fusion chimeras. I explained Chimerism in-depth over in this post, and I encourage you to follow my citations to learn more if you're interested.

Sooooo... we're not even talking fetuses for Starpaw and Moonpaw. If they ever were separate, it would have been as embryos at best.

Which means that Moonpaw is haunted by cells that hadn't even developed major organs.

Ergo, we're joking around about how peculiar it is that Supernatural Utero Ghosts have happened thrice.

[curufiin]

“The origin of the Orcs is a matter of debate. Some have called them the Melkorohini, the Children of Melkor; but the wiser say: nay, the slaves of Melkor, but not his children; for Melkor had no children.(1)”

So obsessed with this line about Melkor bc it perfectly fits how I envision him. He “creates” (if you can call it that) things but he is not attached to them. I see a lot of people making Melkor a dragon dad like a dog dad and that’s perfectly fine and very cute! Just not how I like to portray him normally. I think he treats dragons the way a kid would when they discover some shiny new toy, plays with them for a few days, and then completely disregards them once he’s bored. In this case he keeps them around because they serve his higher purpose of wreaking havoc on Arda, but I don’t think he considers dragons his children, and he certainly isn’t attached to their existence.

[pyr0cue]

Sooo funny to me when people try to claim John Kramer’s framework for justice is confusing because I’ve never seen a clearer picture. John Kramer is a fucking looser who projects his insecurities and guilt onto others but fundamentally cannot recognize his own flaws. He’s a serial murderer who kills people who kind of piss him off for personal reasons but cannot reconcile that with his image of himself as a fundamentally good person, so he preaches a moral framework that cannot make sense because it’s built on a foundation of self hatred and ego at odds with each other. I don’t understand why critics cannot figure this out. He’s just a bad person who doesn’t think he is.

[uncanny-tranny]

I'm begging abled people to stop saying, "I'd rather die than have [disability]!" or, "how could you not choose to die?" about disabled people being disabled. This especially for those who have an acquired disability.

Maybe this sounds harsh, but if you value the function of your body to the point where you would sacrifice your life over it, that's your business and solely your business. However, that disabled person exists right now. They exist in the same world as you, with a disability you personally would rather die than have. They are alive right now. How the fuck are you going to choose to treat them? Because telling them or implying you'd want to die than be like them is certainly not a good sign.

[ramonn90]

Get access to my brushes, process videos, and files here https://www.patreon.com/ramonn90

[kimherbst]

Little tribute to Mushi-Shi, one of the only anime series I've thoroughly enjoyed in over a decade as an old person 🥲 also practicing a different value/contrast study than my usual stuff so this.... was a struggle.

[the-stars-are-warring]

Something something the first thing Arligan Zey does when he finds out that ARCs who want to desert get fucking assassinated by black ops hit squads (or perhaps fails to find definitive proof that it ISNT happening) is tell Maze that if he wants to leave Zey will get him the resources to do so.

Like. Yea man I'm normal.

[burning2know]

i read the jason schreier article. It's mostly stuff we nerds pieced together already before, but jason has more authority than our collective left brain lobe.

it's funny to me that people think the ME contingent did a good job with the ending because it was Not It. 😭 The best parts were undoubtedly in the 3rd act, but those parts had a distinct dragon age flavor that was completely absent from the "emotional" ending.

I feel so bad for the DA nerds because their company and leaders just did not get them. And yeah, not being supported in your work is going to hamper the quality your output.

[magpie-trove]

In need of a solid movie about the imago dei for a curriculum about imago dei

[swallowtail-ageha]

♥️ ((totally not baiting you for more Maria discourse))

Oh noes an ask about my controversial views on the most popular character with the most rabid fanbase~ and i cant help but respond to it~ such a tragedyyyy

❤️ Which character do you think is egregiously mischaracterized by the fandom?

Mariaaaaaa. In fact her mischaracterization is so bad that if i didn't latch on her BEFORE interacting with the fandom she wouldve been one of those characters i would be aggressively disliking

I just... hate fandom maria lmao. On a vacuum she is fine (eh. Kinda. She just falls into the fandom typical stereotype of the only girl in the group being the sane one/cool one with no other depth than that or kissing adeline/ maybeeee sometimes being sad for the genocide/human experimentation), but when compared to what the game shows us she just makes me mad. Fandom maria is not canon maria. Its just a random girl with swords and most generic tropes about girl with swords.

Fandom maria cannot have flaws, actually, you see. She cannot be someone who was sucked i the cycle of brutality and gleefully continued it only to realize what she was doing AFTER the situation became unsalveagable and then jump ship trying to remedy it and making things worse for anyone. Nope! Cant have any of that! God forbid female characters to have actual depth. Maria NEEDS to be the cool female hunter that is the voice of reason. She NEEDS to be the cool girlboss that always opposes Laurence's wrongdoings to the point where you ask yourself why even she is the head of the research hall if every interaction she has with him is telling him you and your plans suck. Cant be complicit in anything ever.

You see! She was the token good member of the research hall for giving adeline the key! Nevermind that she experimented on adeline (and many others) to death.

You see! The fishing hamlet massacre was justified because they were mutated!

You see! She is actually the real hero while due to her regret she actively upholds the nightmare and makes innocent people suffer more!

This is not a character. Its a cardboard cutout that can be used only and only when making her kiss with adeline, whose fanon potrayal is also as shallow as a puddle and might as well be renamed to y/n.

And like. God. Swinging the bat against an hornet nest with this take but the fact that the people who are the most adamant, the most rabid, the most likely to harass people over this headcanon do that because in their mind is feminist makes me want to bash my head against a wall. Taking a complex female character that kinda sucked and removing all of her flaws to give a shiny unproblematic "girlboss" version of her isn't feminist at all. In fact its quite misogynistic.

Anyways, thanks for the ask! Got super salty with this one, but mariacourse gets my gears grinding (esp since she's my favourite character)

Ask game here

https://www.tumblr.com/fintan-pyren/747123238736429056/ask-game-unpopular-opinion-edition?source=share

[fridge-04]

Kinda love how you can chart a course throughout the series of Rouge gradually growing more and more emotionally attached to Shadow. I like to think that what happened with Shadow at the end of SA2 deeply affected her, and she kinda viewed him coming back to life almost as a second chance.

[shsl-heck]

Thinking about the Chevalier interlude, specifically the inaugural team of Wards. Like in universe, they sell it to this first group of kids (and presumably the rest of the world) as a place for second chances, to find friends and mentors who understand what youre going through, where you can learn to use your powers safely while making good memories. The kids broadly seem to believe in these noble intentions of course, but what really gets me is that I've seen readers buy into it!

"Oh, it's such a tragedy that the Wards program became this awful thing that traumatizes kids even more, and expects them to die for the sake of civilians! It's fallen so short of what it was originally supposed to be!"

No it has not??? The fact that the triumvirate and Hero are saying it has this noble goal doesn't make it true. The Wards was pretty clearly always a way to increase the amount of bodies the prt could throw at threats, and we know this because it was started by the fucking Triumvirate as a part of the Protectorate! Alexandria literally came up with the idea of the Protectorate to legitimize the power of capes, and have a consistent source of heroes Cauldron could throw at problems. That is the whole reason for the PRT/Protectorate existing. So when we have this group of children brought in a subsidiary, there are 2 real options.

1). Cauldron and Alexandria decided they would be really niceys and created this program with no intentions other than helping these kids out.

Or 2). As things got worse, they realized the Protectorate didn't have enough manpower to do what they needed, and so they expanded it to include children (the demographic most prone to triggering). That way, they greatly increase the number of capes who they can send to fight and die as needed, and the ones who do survive their tenure in the Wards will be better trained when it comes time to join the actual Protectorate.

At the risk of sounding conceited, I think the second one is far more likely based on everything we know about Cauldron. Maybe it was originally a little nobler, and the goal was just to create more well trained heroes and cut back on young villains, but there's no way Alexandria, Doc Mom, and Contessa didn't factor in the ability to sacrifice the kid heroes if it improved their chances of success. That was absolutely a perk at minimum.

That's the real tragedy of the inaugural Wards. The kids were lured in with promises of safety, comraderie, and second chances like lambs to the slaughter. All the while, Alexandria and Cauldron knew that many (if not most) of these children would suffer abuse by the prt (like in the case of Reed), die, or face a fate worse than death like poor Mouse Protector. It's horrifying! The idea that they didn't know the danger these kids would be in is literally inconceivable. Especially when one of you is also the head of the prt! They knew, and they didn't care. It improved their chances at the end of the world, and so they did it no matter the cost.

[fromtheseventhhell]

"It's normal for siblings to fight" Okay well it's not normal to be extremely classist and look down on your sister for being non-conforming. Or to go to the woman who ordered the death of your pet to tell her about your father's plans, when he specifically warned you against doing so, because you want to marry the boy you saw attack your sister and her friend (contributing partially to said father's death and your sister being unable to escape on the ship he chartered). Or to think of your sibling as unsatisfactory in comparison to another when you believe her to be dead. I notice that none of the "Sansa and Arya are going to reunite and instantly have no issues" crowd ever acknowledge any of this, which makes it seem like they don't actually believe what they say about their relationship being normal and easily reconciled. People wanting them to have no issues simply because they're siblings is another example of how fandom likes to flatten complex characters and relationships. They get reduced to being bickering siblings when their conflict runs deeper than that. If the author is telling you that they have "deep issues" to work out [X], I don't understand being so adamant about ignoring said issues. I also get the sense it's about ignoring the capacity for a certain character to be flawed, but that isn't going to change the fact that her "slip of the tongue" is very likely to be revealed and a source of further conflict 🤷🏾‍♀️

[nyroom]

Genuinely curious about how people look at Ishimaru's values.

It's well established that he has a grudge against geniuses and that he views himself as an ordinary man who can use pure hard work and effort to surpass them. He also mentions this in his last Free Time Event:

That seems to imply that talent = genius. Which makes sense since talent is an inherent skill, not something you work towards.

However, every bonus mode (school mode, UTDP, summer camp) has him mention talent in a positive light and only makes vague reference to his work ethic and dreams of building a better society. That makes it sound like talent doesn't equal genius. Which could also be possible - talented people can work hard - but it's a little surprising that someone so entrenched in a black and white thinking has that viewpoint.

Has anyone else put any thought into this? Obviously the bonus modes aren't truly canon but, to me, it seems like an odd hole in Ishimaru's character.

[saintjasper]

having conversations about religion and spirituality with my partner is scary but also healing. i’m used to either people telling me i’m stupid/crazy for believing in religion/spirituality, people who are religious themselves shunning me for not believing in any one true religion that is above the rest, or people like my ex trying to control everything right down to my spiritual/religious beliefs. being able to speak freely and not be punished is very new to me and kind of nerve wracking, but it’s good. i personally do believe that all forms of worship are valid, even the weird ones i don’t understand. i think that those are very real to the people following them, and i genuinely do not believe in a god or gods who wouldn’t meet you where you’re at. so i mean, i do believe in higher power, but i believe that that can look like a lot of different things to different people. i’m not explaining this super well, but it’s a large part of why i’m so interested in other religions. it’s in large part due to me being taught by the elders in my community that the word “creator” can mean many things to many people, creator will present to you as you need creator to be, our culture is spiritual but our spirituality is not a religion, so when we give thanks to creator what that means is very personal to each person. and my experience isn’t everyone’s experience so i’m sure other people have been taught different things about creator, even amongst other anishinaabe people. but i think those teachings heavily influenced my belief that then every belief system is the true belief system to the people who follow and believe in it, even people who worship fictional characters as gods, ya know? creator is whatever you believe creator to be, creator is whatever you need creator to be. so anyways i’m rambling, but i figure since i ramble somewhat frequently about my interest in religions and i’ve mentioned having followed many different religions at different points, it would maybe interest people to know where my beliefs lay. it’s why i’m never opposed to converting if i find a belief system to align with my values, i think all religions are valid.