#akashic storm ╱ meta analysis

[aekashic]

oughe ok i have to draw this (when my apple pencil replacement comes in bc i ordered some), but on eternatus' "eternamax" form-

it is in fact a hydra, not a hand, but ok. it has the five heads yes and in the center is that glowing core which is essentially like its heart but ok. this form is about 900 feet (snout of center head to tip of tail) uncoiled, that's almost as tall as the eiffel tower (without broadcast antennae).

in theory, eternatus can fire off five moves at once, because gods don't follow the 4 move rule that's league standards and gods don't care what humans think. eternatus' favorite thing (aside from the fivefold dynamax cannon) is the "draco meteor but it's 'wishing stars'" because of course it is.

eternatus is a horror thanks

[warninggraphiccontent]

13 December 2019

The morning after...

...the fright before, in Labour's case, with their worst general election performance since 1935. I think this is the current composition of the Commons:

Expect more #dataviz from my team and me throughout the day - and weekend, and whenever a reshuffle happens...

In brief:

Last week's Inside Briefing sonification - literally, actually singing the polls - will be difficult to top. We also did this one on general election results. Helpfully, all our sonifications will be collected in this thread for as long as I remember to update it.

A reminder of last week's data reading list and list of UK government reports on data - please do add to them. And thanks to Alex for flagging this.

It's important to vote, despite widespread public apathy. A lesson Alice and I learnt this week as we tried to bring some jollity to people's Twitter timelines with the news/politics #ThemeTuneWorldCup. Catch up on what happened here - final couple of rounds here. Some of you have very strange tastes (On The Record getting knocked out that early, seriously?!). I think I only lost five followers.

Escape the election in favour of festive fun and come to the New Tottenham Singers Christmas concert tomorrow evening.

Until next week

Gavin

Today's links:

Graphic content

#GE2019: aftermath

Composition of the Commons (me for IfG)

Results (BBC News)

Britain’s 2019 general election* (The Economist)

Britain votes resoundingly for Boris Johnson* (The Economist)

Live forecasting (The Economist)

Live results: UK general election 2019* (FT)

UK election results live: Boris Johnson returned as PM after Tory majority confirmed (The Guardian)

VOTE 2019: Results Centre (Sky News)

Some Sky News visualisations (Will Jennings)

Results (Flourish)

Britain Elects/New Statesman

Share of seats: exit poll (me for IfG)

State of the parties: exit poll (Marcus for IfG)

Exit poll vs polls (Lewis for IfG)

Welcome to the Electoral Reform Society’s 2019 general election results hub. (Electoral Reform Society, via Akash)

#GE2019: The calm before the storm

Thread (me for IfG)

Singing the polls in four part harmony (Katie, Jess, Lewis and me for IfG)

Vote share since 1945 (me for IfG)

Britain’s exit poll has an exceptional record* (The Economist)

GB seats (Chris Cook)

Lies, fake news, “alternative facts” (Tortoise)

Constituency estimates (YouGov)

Final 2019 general election MRP model: small Conservative majority likely (YouGov)

Tories still set for majority but lead narrows, latest poll shows* (FT)

Media appearances by frontbenchers (Matt Chorley)

Brexit positions (Haydon and Melissa for IfG)

This chart from @TheEconomist is outstanding, so I thought I'd have a go at replicating it for every election in my lifetime (Colin Angus, via Tim)

Election results mapped: 63 seats that always back the winner* (The Times, via Sukh)

Election turnout: Britain’s most politically engaged seats revealed (The Times)

Jo Swinson has a Facebook problem (Sky News - somehow missed this)

Constituency profiles (David Kane)

British Political Atlas (Ipsos MORI)

Coalition government at Westminster (IfG)

How have gender policies landed with the electorate? (YouGov)

Facebook under fire as political ads vanish from archive* (FT)

U.K. Election Winners Will Find Reviving Economy No Easy Task* (Bloomberg)

General Election 2019: The Final Week (Deltapoll)

A #dataviz review of the UK Election Poll trackers (Andy Cotgreave)

USA

How the New Primary Calendar Changes the Contest for Democrats* (New York Times)

A SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR* (Washington Post)

#dataviz

The Pudding Cup: The best visual and data-driven stories of 2019 (The Pudding)

10 think tanks nailing data visualisation (Cast from Clay, via Melissa. Old but interesting, even if there's an obvious omission... static viz still has its place, you know)

Everything else

The Ipsos MORI Almanac 2019

What unites us: 10 reasons why we're not a divided nation (BBC News)

MPs think personal principles should influence decision making, but the public aren’t so sure (Ipsos MORI)

Phylogenomics of 10,575 genomes reveals evolutionary proximity between domains Bacteria and Archaea (Nature, via Marcus)

Mistrust and the Hunt for Spies Among Chinese Americans* (Bloomberg)

How big are the fires burning on the east coast of Australia? Interactive map (The Guardian)

Meta data

#GE2019

Exit polling explained (Department of Statistics, Warwick)

The digital election (Rowland Manthorpe)

Political ads on Facebook disappeared ahead of UK election (Politico)

General election 2019: Do social media ads work, are they fair? (BBC News)

Political parties spend more on leaflets than Facebook ads. Why? (Wired)

How to police political advertising* (The Economist)

Researchers fear 'catastrophe' as political ads 'disappear' from Facebook library (Sky News)

Wrexham Roulette (The Critic)

Why are polls from different pollsters so different? (Elections Etc)

By ignoring the digital world, the party manifestos ignore the future (Giles for IfG)

Where is the vision for our digital future? (King's Policy Institute)

#GE2019: fact checking

Online fact-checkers warn of misinformation on unprecedented scale in 2019 election (Computer Weekly)

'Do not believe a stranger on social media who disappears into the night' - An open letter from our editor to you (Yorkshire Post)

The rise of fake news as a political strategy should terrify us all (New Statesman)

The Toxins We Carry (CJR)

Why the BBC needs a social media overhaul* (New Statesman)

AI etc

The first effort to regulate AI was a spectacular failure (Fast Company)

The Second Wave of Algorithmic Accountability (Frank Pasquale, via Lewis)

AI-driven Personalization in Digital Media: Political and Societal Implications (Chatham House)

Health data

Amazon ready to cash in on free access to NHS data* (Sunday Times)

FoI and analysis (Privacy International)

The story about @amazon and the NHS is so overblown (Daniel Korski)

Patient data from GP surgeries sold to US companies (The Observer)

What happens to patient data in practice (Understanding Patient Data)

NHS data is a goldmine. It must be saved from big tech (James Meadway for The Guardian)

Health data

Inside Ring’s Quest to Become Law Enforcement’s Best Friend (Motherboard)

France Plans a Revolution to Rein in the Kings of Big Tech* (Wired)

How to take back control from the Big Tech barons* (Rana Foroohar, FT)

This Man May Be Big Tech’s Biggest Threat* (New York Times)

Openness

The Politics of Open Government Data: Understanding Organizational Responses to Pressure for More Transparency (The American Review of Public Administration, via Andrew)

Let’s ‘think different’ about procurement* (Apolitical)

Open data is needed for collaborative climate action (Open Data Charter)

Everything else

Collective Intelligence Design Playbook (beta) (Nesta)

A Manifesto for Better Government (CPI)

How to gamify government* (Apolitical)

On India's new Data Protection Bill (via Jeni)

History as a giant data set: how analysing the past could help save the future (The Guardian)

#FoI on ICO priorities (Tim Turner)

Opportunities

JOBS: Election/graphics (New York Times)

Contracts Finder - Measuring Tender and Award Publication (Cabinet Office)

Apply to our stimulus fund: Using data to improve safety in the engineering sector (ODI)

And finally...

May the force, etc

Adieu to a galaxy far, far away (The Times)

Star Wars, In One Chart (FiveThirtyEight)

Every Color Of Every Lightsaber In ‘Star Wars,’ In One Chart (FiveThirtyEight - more here)

The five best lightsaber battles in Star Wars history* (Washington Post)

Everything else

Here’s everything we learned from this election-themed tube map we just made (CityMetric, via Haydon)

Salmon... (Per Axbom, via Nick)

A Dessert Table Tutorial: Charts Named After Food (Viz Zen Data)

State-backed crypto is a contradiction* (FT Alphaville)

[aekashic]

eternatus; zacian and zamazenta did battle with me and i slaughtered them with my full power and now they're out of the way(affectionate)

eternatus when zacian and zamazenta return as wolves: i hate you so much i'll slaughter you again (affectionate? obsessive?) do eternal battle with me we were meant for this

[aekashic]

anyway eternatus has very few mortals that he ever truly had a personal bond with but the most prominent are zacian and zamazenta and every time he meets a mortal couple he sorta ... compares them to the legendary heroes ...??? eternatus never got over anything ever

[aekashic]

before i get back to writing starters i just gotta say uhhh irt eternatus getting human sacrifices, any time he was sent a child as a sacrifice, he'd turn that child into a jirachi and that is why jirachi has an eye on its stomach, good old eldritch things :) also people wish on jirachi ... wishing stars ... and they similarly call the fragments of eternatus the same thing i connected the dots

[aekashic]

ETERNATUS OF ENDLESSNESS, THE GREAT OLD ONE BEYOND THE FORGOTTEN GATES

TAGGED BY: no one i stole this

DEITY OF: endlessness. destruction and creation. transformation.

ASSOCIATED WITH: gruesome deaths. gentle births. the aftermath of a bloody and brutal war. the resilient spirit. interdimensional travel. alchemy. the gate to the beyond. eldritch horror, the feeling of being watched.

SACRED PLANTS: often, deadly flowers are left at the altars of eternatus, but he has never shown preference.

SACRED STONES/GEMS: it is often associated with the legendary sage's stone, more commonly known as the philosopher's stone- said to be created by killing others and transmuting their lives into a single object. the sage's stone is said to then grant eternal life and grand power to the one who uses it.

SACRED ANIMALS: dragons. poisonous serpents. carrion birds.

COLOR(S): blood red. royal purple. gold. 

FOOD: eternatus has no specific offerings of this sort.

WAYS TO HONOR: considering that eternatus is not a god that is necessarily honored, he is more often feared. honors considered of offerings, but some groups would pray to it upon their deathbeds, especially those who died abandoned and alone.

ACCEPTED OFFERINGS: in ancient times, soon after the fall of the darkest day, a grand temple was built over the corpse of the great elder god, eternatus, the temple itself is in fact underground because eternatus made quite the crater when he fell from the sky. on top of the underground temple, the kingdom of wyndon was built. each year, a person was selected from the kingdom (usually a commoner) and was offered as a human sacrifice to the great god. this tradition continues through the modern day.

the legends say that in return for a human sacrifice, the god would give a small portion of his energy in return. this is in fact untrue, since the corpse of the god was raided multiple times to obtain "wishing stars"- but it is certainly noted that eternatus was kept satisfied in some manner by a human sacrifice. to make it seem less horrific to the tribute, they were told that eternatus would grant them eternal life in his in-between. this may or may not be true, no one has ever come back from being sacrificed, clearly.

eternatus holds no love for mortals due to the fact they literally defiled his body, but it isn't impossible to gain its favor. two notable favored mortals of eternatus are the legendary heroes zacian and zamazenta. eternatus' sign of respect was slaying the heroes in a grand battle, allowing them to die as heroes with dignity.

[aekashic]

ok before i go to work i just also want to address a few things about eternatus and also lmao worldbuilding-

eternatus exists in his own space which is outside the multiverse. often, it is called "the space in-between" and it functions similarly to the reverse world where giratina lives. except, eternatus wasn't banished there, it just lives there. since he lives in this space, it's unclear if he has any relation to arceus' creation of the universe, but with how his true base stats far surpass that of arceus, it's likely that eternatus is his own separate entity from arceus and everything that stemmed from arceus.

due to this, he holds no real opinion on the quarrels of other gods, and of those there are many. eternatus is rather isolated and usually he just watches what goes on in the multiverse (and thanks to oras and usum, multiverse is a Real thing) and he's not impressed with any of it lmao. but, it's also not really his job to deal with the issues that the other gods didn't get under control, but can he really fault them? he holds outer knowledge that even other gods may not hold, but to be "fair", he doesn't use this to do anything- it's not his job to fix other problems.

he hates rose and on top of that he hates humans, believing them to be a plague on the planet, and in general thinks that the planet was a massive mistake, but that wasn't his choice so it isn't really like. his job to destroy it, but he wants his swings at galar because the people of galar literally defiled his body and tore away his scales and flesh until they cut into his bones- which explains his skeletal dragon body. and related to that, that's why his human shape is literally missing parts and leaking cosmic radiation. and lmao yeah those wounds on his dragon body are still open they've existed for 20,000 years so he's like this rotting thing- but he's still immensely powerful and it's a bad idea to try to fight eternatus. it has been shown that eternatus is capable of warping time and space (see final battle in swsh where we get to see like the scenes of the player's journey floating around). it is likely that as the great outer god, eternatus is able to use the powers of other legendaries if it so desires.

uhh other things: no mortal can command eternatus because he is the great outer god. he can be stunned by things like the red chain, but it's a really bad idea to use that. pokeballs obviously don't work on eternatus because it isn't a being from the multiverse, but one that originated from beyond.

[aekashic]

my dash is going on about gender and eternatus is a he/it and uses a very beautiful masc tulpa to get around :) it will mingle in its tulpa form with whoever he fancies i guess? gods are fickle, eternatus is no different from any other god in that way???

[aekashic]

How do you feel about being sacrificed humans?

❝ it has been a tradition since the end of my great battle with zacian and zamazenta. they were my first sacrifices- ❞ he remembers the brave heroes, how he enjoyed their company, and how he continued to quite fancy them even when they had turned against him. times had been different, then. he'd welcomed them with open arms on that fateful day- he gave them honorable deaths.

❝ weary from my battle and the constraints of the corporeal realms, i was no longer able to maintain the altered state of the world. the entities affected by my power returned to normal and the mortals believed that i was dead. ❞ they'd taken the opportunity to carve away parts of his body, until they saw that his core was still quite vibrant- the king of the outer gods was still very much alive.

❝ i believe they misinterpreted the situation. they assumed that since i had consumed the bodies of their heroes and fell into that state that they could keep me satisfied with human sacrifices. i cannot say that it was always the case. ❞

❝ even if i had wanted the sacrifices to live, they were unable to withstand the presence of divine power. they died quickly. for some, i made them stars in the sky. others are resting peacefully in my in-between. i have taken care of the gifts given to me... and as a god, i am not one to decline an offering. but i suppose it may have been better if it did not start from such a sorrowful event. ❞

feelings ╱ accepting

[aekashic]

since his usual human form also emits cosmic radiation and his dragon body is literally just a mangled mess, eternatus also uses the tactic of making a tulpa to act as a proxy for him to see the world. his tulpa is modeled after his human form, except he gets both his arms lmao, and he's not radioactive. to keep things under control, his tulpa lacks the usual divine abilities, being left with heightened reflexes and super strength, neither of those are really TOO abnormal considering how things work in the world. his tulpa is about 6'6 in height (as opposed to his own mortal form at 8'), and is linked to his main body's senses- so really he is able to explore the world :) which is nice. it also allows his dragon body to just rest because making a tulpa is like godhood 101 and rather effortless especially for the king of the outer gods

[aekashic]

something something eternatus' human form is 8 entire feet tall. he hates clothes and just uses the cosmic stuff for modesty. he is a shining golden being to signify his superiority as the great outer god- also something something alchemy the golden man is "the perfect being". the missing parts of his body are because of the wishing star thing (20,000 years ago he thought it would be cool to visit a corporeal universe and it was NOT a good idea)

he has a hidden shrine deep underground in galar. since his "defeat" by the heroes zacian and zamazenta, human sacrifices are offered to appease him in his supposed slumber.

on the note of zacian and zamazenta, eternatus killed them in a fair battle because it was its sign of respect, but due to corporeal realm laws he was also so fatigued from the battle it fell dormant. humans took the opportunity to basically raid his exhausted body and that's how wishing stars happened.

wyndon was built on the giant "corpse" of eternatus. because of course it was.

eternatus' "eternal" form is way bigger than 328 feet in length lmao, this is a being that could swat the sun around like a ping pong ball, but due to the corporeal laws, he has to be something much smaller (he is about 328 feet in his skeletal form from snout to tip of tail. his eternal form is confined to about 900 feet in length). he gets to be a cosmic terror in the in-between because there are no laws there lmao

eternatus uses he/it pronouns. in human form he uses exclusively he/him. in his divine form it alternates between he/it.

[aekashic]

tags

akashic storm ╱ meta analysis cosmogony ╱ worldbuilding on the darkest day ╱ insp writing is hard ╱ ooc