#Value of Determinants

[rudjedet]

I know you probably get this everyday, but would you be so nice as to show the proper hieroglyphs for Osiris.

It was my dogs name and I lost him unexpectedly yesterday. He was my best friend and I’m devastated. I’d like to engrave his proper name in his urn.

Oh love I'm so sorry, losing a companion animal is awful, and when it happens unexpectedly it can be so much worse.

Here's Osiris' proper name in hieros, most commonly rendered as Wesir:

However, since it was your dog's name, I've taken the liberty of rendering it with a dog hiero at the end, and adding mAa-xrw, meaning "true of voice" or "justified", which was a common epithet for the deceased.

Because I didn't know what shape of urn you were thinking of, I also rendered it vertically (and more vertically) for you:

or

Sending you many good thoughts. <3

[theambitiouswoman]

How To Maintain an Air Of Mystery In a Social Culture

Maintaining an air of mystery can have numerous benefits in various situations, such as dating or networking. By selectively revealing information about yourself, you increase intrigue and heighten interest, making you more attractive and interesting to others. The quietest person in the table, who contributes the least, tends to be the perceived as the most attractive. Additionally, projecting an image of confidence and independence can earn you respect from others. Being selective in communication can also help you direct conversations in your favor. Maintaining an air of mystery can help you establish personal boundaries and avoid unwanted attention, thereby protecting your privacy. Keep in mind that maintaining an air of mystery is about being selective with what you share and keeping people guessing. It's not about being dishonest or unapproachable.

Be selective with what you share: When interacting with others, choose carefully what information you share. Avoid revealing everything about yourself and your life. Leave some details up to the imagination of the other person.

Listen more than you speak: Ask questions and listen attentively to the responses. People often reveal more about themselves when they feel they are being listened to. This can also give you the opportunity to selectively share information and maintain an air of mystery.

Be comfortable with silence: Silence can be uncomfortable, but it can also be powerful. Don't feel the need to fill every moment with conversation. Take your time before responding to questions or statements, and use pauses to your advantage.

Keep an element of surprise: Surprise people with unexpected actions or thoughts. This can keep them guessing about what you will do or say next, adding to your mysteriousness.

Don't be too available: It's important to have a life outside of the interactions you have with others. Don't always be available to meet or talk, and make sure to have your own interests and activities.

How to maintain your mystery with social media:

Be selective with what you share: Only post certain things about yourself or your life. Share only the highlights of your day or week and keep the more personal or intimate details private.

Use photos creatively: Instead of sharing photos of yourself or your daily routine, post abstract or scenic images that spark curiosity and imagination. Use images to tell a story or convey a mood without revealing too much.

Keep your personal information private: Limit the amount of personal information you share, such as your address, phone number, or full name. This helps create a sense of distance between you and others and increases intrigue.

Be unpredictable: Post at irregular intervals, share unexpected things or create a sense of mystery around your posts. This can keep people interested in you and keep them guessing about what you will do or say next.

Use humor or irony: Humor or irony can be used to create a sense of distance and make people wonder about your true thoughts and feelings. This can make you more interesting and appealing to others.

How it benefits you in a career/business setting:

Increased professionalism: By maintaining an air of mystery, you can project an image of professionalism, which can earn you respect from colleagues and employers.

Improved negotiation skills: People who are confident and self-assured tend to be better negotiators. By projecting an image of confidence and independence, you can improve your negotiating skills and achieve better outcomes in business deals.

Better networking opportunities: People are naturally drawn to those who are interesting and intriguing. By maintaining an air of mystery, you can attract the attention of potential employers or business partners and create networking opportunities.

Heightened creativity: Keeping a certain level of mystery around your work can spark creativity and innovation. By not revealing everything, you may be more motivated to come up with new and unique solutions to problems.

Enhanced personal boundaries: Maintaining an air of mystery can help you establish personal boundaries and avoid unwanted attention in the workplace. This can help you maintain a sense of privacy and protect your personal life from being too exposed.

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: violence mention / death mention / ]

Will never stop thinking about how Leo, all alone in an endless void and being beaten again and again and again by the only other living thing around, still finds comfort in that space. The situation he was in was completely hopeless, and in any other circumstances he would not have escaped, at least not fast enough to save him from permanent (or even fatal) damage, be it physical or mental.

And yet, despite the bleakness of his situation, despite the agony and helplessness, all he needs is one glance at a crumbled photograph, one glance to remember his family, and that’s enough of a reason for him to smile.

Maybe that’s why his powers center around manipulating space - because no matter how much space is between them, no matter how dire his own situation may be, just the thought of his family, alive and okay, is enough to give Leo hope.

[keii4ii]

My Lies of P experience, part A

[soath]

It is genuinely not surprising that Ashton has such a strong The Gods Are Going To Kill Us take on the situation, given what they specifically have seen and what they have to relate to. They're about two weeks out from 1.) getting done violence onto them by an angel and then 2.) being told they have a bit of a dead thing that the gods tried to kill inside them. Then they go and put a lot of effort into getting that dead scrap to wake up (with disastrous consequences illustrating how incredibly volatile its power is). Then they have their only religious friend blow up in front of them. Then they watch a movie trilogy where the only non-god main character is another earth genasi broken-walking-timebomb whose main purpose on the mission is to explode when the gods need him to. They don't see the Lawbearer weep for her son, they only see the Emissary, a child, crying because he's afraid to die. Then they go to Vasselheim, the city of the gods, and see the corpse of a Titan, the dead thing the gods killed, yanked out of the earth and puppeted by one wannabe god and now desecrated in death by the overconfident followers of all the others. They're making something beautiful out of it, they're living on it, and normally he'd be in favor of that but they don't even know its name. They're building new temples on the corpse of the old world, hollowing it out and starting fresh, and Ashton is a part of that old world. They cannot stop being connected to a power the gods seem to, at best, be willing to weaponize. That would make anyone paranoid; given their background it's impressive that he's not more combative, tbh.

[awesomechocolatesauce]

"It's so weird having Astarion flirt with my female Tav!"

Why, exactly? The man is pansexual. If you have high enough approval with him, chances are he's going to flirt with you, no matter what gender identity your Tav is.

Nothing weird about a pansexual/bisexual man flirting with a woman.

[void-pitcher]

i will literally never stop thinking about that one glass onion analysis video that said “i wouldn’t say i’d destroy [the mona lisa] to save a stranger’s life, but honestly? it’s kinda fucked up that i wouldn’t. we should value a person’s life, stranger or not, more than a piece of art.” like that changed something in me. bc our society DOES value art. not new art, not artists, sure, but it values the results. they put the results at a higher value than the artist themself, and if they think the results is worthless? they’ll still value the artist less than the result.

[simplydnp]

I live in Cali (between the LA and SD venues) and I might just pony up to go to both. SD is further away, but they are successfully guilting me into it LMAO

Here's the thing, though- I'm a relatively new fan (phan) and also I have social anxiety. So is it not worth doing the Meet and Greet? Should I save the spot for others who deserve it more and won't be shaky and stupid?? Or should I throw back a couple drinks for liquid courage and say phuk it?

I do want the VIP stuff and part of me does want to say hi to them, but I don't feel like I deserve it since I wasn't there from the beginning.

Sincerely,

A PHAKE PHAN

firstly welcome!!! it's always exciting to talk to new fans yall are here at such a great time ☺️

anxiety is a very real thing, and if you think a m&g is something you cannot handle, you know yourself enough to know. but if the only thing holding you back is 'someone else deserves it more' or 'i'll be shakey and stupid', please don't listen to that voice in your head. there's no 'deserve' as if it's something you have to earn. anyone can buy one (so long as they have the means). there's no set amount of time you've had to watch them, nor any 'behaviour' expectations (other than, yknow, don't assault them, but that's a given). it's okay if you're nervous and shakey--they're professionals, they'll take care of you. (i also know someone made a compilation of silly things dnp have said/done recently to help with the fear around 'what if i come off as stupid'.) firstly you're not stupid, but secondly, we all say/do silly/awkward/cringe/incorrect shit. it's okay. it's very hard to phase them; they've seen it all. in terms of alcohol, if that's what you need, go for it. but i wouldn't recommend getting entirely sloshed bc 1 you need to be able to get to and from the venue, and 2, you wanna remember it.

the point of this tour is to go see them. if they wanted to lock vip behind years watched, lore known, and number of posts made about them, they would have (i dont think thats like, possible though 😂). don't deprive yourself of an experience bc your brain is creating non-existent rules. no one there is gonna turn and look at you and go 'wow theyve only been here x weeks/months/days'. and if they do? fuck 'em. you're there because you enjoy their content. simple as that.

it's a celebration of dnp, so as long as you like them (or are going with someone who does) then you belong!

if it's possible, i absolutely recommend hitting both shows. the LA one is guaranteed to be wild, and if san diego happens, it'll be a smaller crowd, which is kind of an awesome vibe.

[hotwaterandmilk]

I'm still not well so this isn't going to be articulate, but I wanted to say something anyway.

In the wake of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (amongst other titles) being purged from streaming I've seen countless posts saying "This is terrible, we need to stop this practice -- they might purge a good show next!" and yeah, for sure a lot of titles being impacted by streaming purges/lack of physical media/a decline in archiving right now aren't going to be remembered for changing the world.

However, I think it is vital that we fight to preserve these titles for their own sake not just because "What if next time it's something we actually like?!" There is value is preserving things widely regarded as "bad" not just because I have firm beliefs about the absurdity of taste, but because who gives a shit if something is deemed "good?" Actual human people put their time and energy into realising these artistic visions. Even if the results are arguably not "good" or "popular", should the efforts of these artists be lost to the sands of time? No, no they fucking shouldn't.

I share a lot of art on this blog from titles very few people consider culturally important or valuabe. However, I don't look at the things I collect & share like that. Even some of the most objectively absurd titles I own are still pieces of art that were developed, published, and consumed by humans in the real world. Whether they've turned out to be broadly memorable or not is irrelevant because they existed and that in itself makes them worthy of preservation so that others can choose to familiarise themselves with them long after the original creative team is gone.

So yes, we should all be trying to preserve the media that's important to us and not let corporations try to stamp out every trace of a financial (though not necessarily artistic) misstep. However, it shouldn't take the threat of something we, personally, like being taken away to stir us into giving a shit.

Even the demise of less admired works should concern us and make us start to burn copies of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies because it might not mean anything to you or I right now, but to some kid in 20 years it could be a seminal experience that leads them to follow their dreams. Or it could become a cult classic that people reflect on at watch parties years in the future. Or it could continue to be a footnote in the history of television that nobody really cares about.

Ultimately I don't think it matters what level of value we arbitrarily assign to media now or in the future, we should be trying to preserve as much of it as possible so that generations from now people can enjoy the option of engaging with these titles should they so wish.

[skepticalcatfrog]

RIP Benedikt Montagov, you would've hated that most digital drawing applications can automatically make perfect spheres for you

[adhdandcomics]

adding to my tags because i’ve been thinkin a lot about the post i just reblogged and have more thoughts:

i’ll be real, the more i saw ‘hey adhd influencers are so annoying’ the more i worried that i was unconsciously contributing to the spreading reputation of adhd folks as annoying and over-pathologizing every symptom they experience

and then i realized. i am not a goddam influencer or life coach or representative. obviously i have some obligation as someone who cares about myself and the people that like my comics to not spread harmful ideology or blatant misinformation but i never intended myself to be a “’increase your productivity!!’ blog OR a ‘if you have XYZ you have adhd!’ blog. and i do this for fun, and originally started this blog bc i had a lot of internalized shame and self loathing about my adhd and thought if i could make it funny i might have less of that. let’s get real! and it worked!

i’ve obviously done this kind of thing— (hey these symptoms might be adhd!) a lot before in my life & on this blog, but there’s more to it than trying to be an “influencer” or whatever. a term that didn’t even exist when i started this blog!

i felt very isolated trying to find out if i had any mental problems & what have you originally because of large advice (etc) blogs with staunchly anti self Dx views at the time

so i overcorrected when i DID get dxed and tried to validate everyone who was like me. and of course. not the best course of action always for the ol mental health. tried to be the source of positivity and jokes that i didn’t see because the online adhd presence was near non-existent.

and anyway. i make a lot of fun of myself & the way m brain works in my comics obviously but it is not my obligation to... how do you say.... not be annoying online.

because if folks interpret MY little jokes as a strict guide to diagnosis. that’s on them, really, not me. i also believe “making adhd your entire personality” is a non-issue. so what if people find out they have it and get over excited with identifying as adhd. saying this as someone who DID do it. criticism of this gives the same vibes as people being annoyed that young queers make “being queer” their whole personality. im very obviously more than a guy with adhd, and id reckon other adhd comic artists are too. (im friends with a lot of them!) it’s fine to post about it online.

anyway. i just don’t take myself too seriously and i’m a comic artist for myself first! and you know what, i’ve been considered annoying my entire life. what do i care if a few more folks think i’m annoying. neurotypical or not

[lotus-pear]

hear me out for genshin x bsd-

atsushi would be a cryo claymore that scales off atk (since the tiger is shown as extremely powerful and can even cut through space) and optimizes physical dmg

dazai would be a geo sword support that increases elemental res, acting as a debuffer (as no longer human works in the bsd universe) he would also scale off em

kunikida would also be geo but catalyst that deals physical aoe dmg.. he'd be an in-slot dps but not an optimal one imao his talents are much better suited to make him a battery unit

akutagawa would be pyro polearm?? or sword?? and he's obviously a heavy dps that scales off crit rate/dmg and tenma tengai could be similar to cyno's burst when, once activated, increases def while simultaneously raising rashomon's atk

chuuya would be an anemo catalyst dps similar to wanderer bc of his gravity manipulation and he would have a melee stance where he atks from the ground and an elevated state where he uses gravity manipulation to be able to atk off-ground. his ult would be corruption obviously and would parallel xiao's where his atk and crit rate/dmg are sharply increased but he undergoes continuous dmg until the duration of his burst ends (in this state he is vulnerable as his def is lowered and he isn't able to accumulate energy meaning he needs a team built around him, preferably with a healer and a shielder)

how does it feel to be the sexiest person on this site w absolutely the most correct and banger takes anon??.. why are u correct on literally everything

[theambitiouswoman]

High quality conversations lead to high quality thoughts and actions.

[tanadrin]

OK, so this post is going to probably look like I’m critcizing @jadagul quite directly, and I am, but only because he is a proximate example of something I find worth commenting on generally. This does not change the fact that I generally like and respect him, and find him pleasant to interact with.

There is a style of political thinking which seems to have an intuition that the law should work like mathematical formalism or computer programming, with a very close and literal relationship between any act of government (an executive action or an act of a legislature) and the constitutional or statutory text which enables that action. That even if the law is a messy and organic human institution, it shouldn’t be, and in ideal circumstances the whole system would be fairly mechanistic, with little room for human discretion. This line of thinking seems to work itself out in ideas like, “OK, discrimination is bad; but so is the government interfering in private actions; so anti-discrimination legislation is bad, too, in a different way.” Or “democracy is important, but part of democracy is free expression; and how you spend your money is a kind of expression, so limits on how you spend your money when it comes to politics is antithetical to democracy.” Or, in the anarcho-capitalist form I most strongly associate this line of thinking with, “OK, people seem to want a lot of freedom, low taxes, and the government not to tell them what to do; so we can (and should) construct a society where the government does very little--ideally nothing at all--and everything that can be is transferred to the private sphere, to be a matter of contract law and civil litigation. Since government power is very little or nonexistent, and all oppression comes from the government, everyone will be very free.”

This isn’t just wrong in the sense that the law is actually an irretrievably messy and organic institution because all human institutions are irretrievably messy and organic and we’re stuck with them; this is wrong because it is good that human institutions are messy and organic, and it would be bad if they were all purely mechanistic. I know this probably seems like a self-evidently silly thing to say if your intuition is toward the mechanistic and formalistic (and believe me, I share that aesthetic preference a lot of the time!) but it really is true. It is simply not possible for a legal system to reduce all potential coordination problems, political disputes, and breaches of social order to a set of general principles, and trying to would result in either monstrously cruel outcomes, like the ancient law codes that just killed everybody who broke them, or total structural collapse, like that town that got taken over by libertarians and then bears (because the libertarians didn’t understand the specific governance needs of the town, like how regular trash collection kept the bears away).

In particular, trying for this kind of metaphysical purity in your legal system often seems to cause people’s aesthetic preferences to short-circuit their moral ones; and because no legal system actually is metaphysically pure in this way, ultimately neither is satisfied. The thinking seems to go, we want a free and equal society without oppression; but government action is frequently oppressive, especially when it interferes with private business, so we don’t want to have anti-discrimination legislation. So what they get is a society without anti-discrimination legislation, that is also markedly unequal, because it turns out that bigotry just doesn’t go away by people saying “bigotry is bad, people shouldn’t do that.” Or, people want democracy; but they also want people to be able to spend their money how they want (that’s key to the liberal part of liberal democracy), so they don’t want to impose limits on spending around political campaigns. As a consequence, wealth inequalities distort politics by making the only viable candidates the ones who appeal to wealthy donors, putting a whole class of policies that poll really well outside the political pale--i.e., a profoundly undemocratic system where very popular legislation stands no chance of getting passed. Or, people want property rights and healthy markets; commensurate with that, they resist any effort to impose limits on those property rights or redistribute wealth. They get, as a result (and often hand-in-hand with the distortions of democracy that stem from the previous example), a system with a lot of rent-seeking and corruption where fair competition is almost impossible and there are a lot of monopolies that are bad for both businesses and consumers, far from the libertarian utopia of their laissez-faire dreams.

This isn’t meant to be a Chestertonian set of counterintuitive gotchas, where I try to argue that the real democracy was monarchy all along or something, just an observation that you have to look at, and argue from, actual outcomes, and not just what is conceptually appealing, even if you want to further quite lofty and abstract political ideals. Much the same way that abolishing your military does not keep you out of conflicts, if it results in you suddenly getting invaded by your neighbor, or abolishing anti-discrimination law would not result in a freer society, if you have a bunch of racists itching to discriminate against the minorities they don’t like.

I remember a post of Scott Alexander’s once expressing confusion at the idea banks would just decide not lend to black people in the midcentury US, because surely they would stand to make more money if they had more customers, and if they had more customers the banks run by non-racists would outcompete the banks run by racists, and I remember thinking, like, come on dude. There is a whole complex social ecology surrounding race and racial discrimination, which is going to drown out any possible weak effect that you are pointing to here. And he simply could not see it because it was not part of the world he knew, and he lacked the imagination to understand it.

Everything the law touches is like this. Law is not actually, nor can it be, a separate domain from politics, or economics, or private business, or religion, or any other aspect of human life. It is a loose category of thing we have drawn a fuzzy border around, like so much else. And because of the complexity inherent in the problems it presents, trying to decide which policies are best without reference to actual outcomes at best makes you prone to a kind of head-in-the-clouds idealism. But much more often, I think it means people support things actually corrosive to the principles they claim to espouse.

[gibbearish]

every time i see discourse about fundraisers go by on here im just fully struck with the realization that not a single one of you people have either taken a cybersecurity fraud prevention course or bothered to take one singular second to consider the website youre on. this is the broke bitches website. none of us can afford to fund our mutuals' grocery bills, much less entire evacuation funds, and CERTAINLY not FAKE evacuation funds taking advantage of genocide victims. all this shit abt how people are deliberately choosing not to fund every post that passes their dash because they hate palestinians literally just does the work of actual scammers for them by laying the high-pressure sales tactics groundwork, and the "do you guys have any idea how hard it is to keep coming up with new attention-grabbing fundraiser posts?" ones just ring EXTREMELY hollow because YEAH! YEAH I DO! and so does everyone i follow! and everyone they follow! because all of us are FUCKING BROKE and surviving on crumbs! i just saw one that said "i make sure to keep $40 in my wallet at all times so i can give $20 to any panhandlers i see, this is the same" and its like!! good for you, thats very nice, but like!!! you need need NEED to take a step back and realize that /being able to do that/ is a position of privilege, not the default setting to be a good person. i wont discount that some people do ignore fundraisers specifically because of racism because Of Course, but like. a) yelling at them isnt gonna make them stop, or more accurately yelling at /everyone else/ isnt gonna make those people stop, and b) trying to apply that as a blanket motivation for everyone just. realistically doesnt work. not donating is a nonaction, it is the literal default status, and while in specific situations you can use CONSISTENT absence of SPECIFIC actions to track a person's motivations SOMETIMES, broadly speaking that just. doesnt work.

there are 8 billion people on this planet. most of them will never know you exist. of the ones that do, most will not be able to help you. of the ones that can, most will not be on the broke bitches website passing the same communal $20 around. consider your audience and stop shitting on fellow poor people for having the gall to need to be careful with their money. and if you are genuinely only posting your fundraiser to tumblr, like. im sorry, but you need to anticipate not reaching your goal and prepare accordingly. theres a reason the last big scam scandal people talk about actually getting the money is like. all-or-nothing era, as a website none of us have the funds to make that kind of thing happen anymore or the security to risk it. a fundraiser not meeting its goal on here is not a personal sleight against whoever made it, its just how life goes sometimes. and it's unfair and it sucks and we should help however we can, but. sometimes you just arent able to help someone else, and continuing to feel responsible serves only to torture yourself. and blaming OTHERS serves only to move that guilt from yourself off onto another person. i imagine that has to be where a lot of the vitriol comes from, is people who cant afford to donate more getting pissed at people they see as having the funds but choosing not to share them, but again, sometimes you just are not able to achieve the goals you set out towards, through no fault of the specific parties involved.

people on tumblr choosing to buy groceries rather than potentially donate to a scam are not your enemy and are not the ones facilitating a genocide. we're all victims of the same horrific system, the question is just how that system manifests its influence on each of us. poverty kills just as thoroughly as a bomb. everyone is just doing their best to survive, and as much as we like to pretend that everyone should be a perfect selfless angel that puts others before themselves no matter what, humans are by default a selfish species, and it is a lot easier to say what youd do in theory than actually do it. and there's a reason you have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping the person beside you, youre of no help to anyone if youre too dead to do anything.

[lilithfairen]

Condolences to the kind of people who believe that a female character didn't get any development during the course of a show's season if her development didn't amount to "learned her place, in the eyes of weirdo manbabies".

Actually, scratch the condolences, get fucked misogynists~