#all that talking about data

[eternallog]

an old friend who dreamt of crows...

[reasonsforhope]

People ask me sometimes how I'm so confident that we can beat climate change.

There are a lot of reasons, but here's a major one: it would take a really, really long time for Earth to genuinely become uninhabitable for humans.

Humans have, throughout history, carved out a living for themselves in some of the most harsh, uninhabitable corners of the world. The Arctic Circle. The Sahara. The peaks of the Himalayas. The densest, most tropical regions of the Amazon Rainforest. The Australian Outback. etc. etc.

Frankly, if there had been a land bridge to Antarctica, I'm pretty sure we would have been living there for thousands of years, too. And in fact, there are humans living in Antarctica now, albeit not permanently.

And now, we're not even facing down apocalypse, anymore. Here's a 2022 quote from the author of The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells, a leader on climate change and the furthest thing from a climate optimist:

"The most terrifying predictions [have been] made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse. Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations — with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers — about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.”" -David Wallace-Wells for the New York Times, October 26, 2022

If we can adapt to some of the harshest climates on the planet - if we could adapt to them thousands of years ago, without any hint of modern technology - then I have every faith that we can adjust to the world that is coming.

What matters now is how fast we can change, because there is a wide, wide gap between "climate apocalypse" and "no harm done." We've already passed no harm done; the climate disasters are here, and they've been here. People have died from climate disasters already, especially in the Global South, and that will keep happening.

But as long as we stay alive - as long as we keep each other alive - we will have centuries to fix the effects of climate change, as much as we possibly can.

And looking at how far we've come in the past two decades alone - in the past five years alone - I genuinely think it is inevitable that we will overcome climate change.

So, we're going to survive climate change, as a species.

What matters now is making sure that every possible individual human survives climate change as well.

What matters now is cutting emissions and reinventing the world as quickly as we possibly can.

What matters now is saving every life and livelihood and way of life that we possibly can.

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[holdmymetaphor]

okay when i started rewatching house, it took me until 3x15 but i started to notice a pattern in house's wardrobe. the scene where foreman was trying to express sadness(?) at house's (fake) brain cancer they were both wearing pink.

After that I noticed that any time house was wearing pink, they were particularly vulnerable moments. Moments that he's feeling tender or open. Moments where he is being pretty earnest.

Then I started to notice that other colored shirts came up at different times. Light blue was his most neutral state, it represents logic and reason imo. Maybe a little bit of humor. There's a lightness or surface-ness to it.

Purple represents something like consequences or grief or guilt. any time there is purple someone is bearing the weight of a decision that was made, or a complex situation.

Black represents, as you can imagine, death. the darkest moments we see house in black.

The other colors aren't as prominent, but I have theories. Red is sex, power, life, excitement, ego. tan is neutrality. white is almost naive. green is rare and house never wears it. Dark blue is still logic but more solemn, more deep. its also interesting to note the times when he doesn't wear a t-shirt under his dress shirt and leaves like 3 buttons open (hubba hubba) and when he /only/ wears a t-shirt. I think his dress shirt is almost like his armor.

[steakout-05]

me when i've been put into a social situation i really didn't want to participate in and i have to pretend that i'm actively enjoying it until i can go home

[episodes-without-incident]

10/3/2023:

4 episodes since Drawfee last referenced Cats (2019)

0 episodes since Drawfee last referenced Everytime We Touch (2005)

[winryrockbellwannabe]

this guy is honestly making me question too much shit

bc there's no way in hell is just that nice, right?

at this point either: 1. he's being this nice and kind bc he has a crush on me, 2. he's honestly that nice, which will make me have a crush on him, bc omg. he's just the nicest person ever

[hollis-art]

I just love how you draw Data, that is all. He's so silly :D I have no idea how to draw his hair do you have any tips?

Thank you!!! And heck yeah I do!!! My biggest tips for drawing any character, Data or not, is to find references, analyze them, and then simplify them.

I made a little board about Data to help explain a few things, and I'll be typing up what the written parts say because I'm not sure how comprehensible my handwriting is to other people.

Biggest thing to do, is to look up references. He's from a 7 season show, so it's pretty easy to find a large variety of angles no matter what angle you're actually drawing him from.

Just like how you can tell if a Data picture is from the earlier seasons or later ones by the cut of his collar, you can also tell by the shape of his hair. In the first season, his hair was more slicked back, while after that, there tends to be more volume in the front of it. Depending on what season you're going for, that could be something good to keep in mind.

As for the analyzing part, I usually skip this step because of how often I stare at Data whenever he's on screen. But here are a few of the things that I have noticed due to my staring: when looking at him from the side, you will see that bump of volume right at his hairline. It continues back very smoothly into the rounded curve at the back of his head (no indents can be seen), which trails down to the tail ends of his hair in a relatively straight path. The tail end usually is just the right length to hit the top of his collar. And this is something I noticed only recently when trying to draw a portrait straight from an image, but the bottom line of his sideburn lines up perfectly with the top line of his ear (so cool).

In order to simplify the hairstyle, I exaggerate aspects of it to better suit my style. This typically means I ignore how it actually looks, & I make the front & back bump larger than they actually are, also ignoring how his hairline looks in order to cartoonize it a bit more. As long as the basics are there, then everything should be fine!!

While I draw him differently depending on the tool/program I'm using, I tend to draw the hair bump further up on his head, and I exaggerate the size of it. And despite the fact that all the references show the back of his hair being very smooth and straight, I usually indent it or curve it out a bit more. This also includes a shorter, but larger tail end of his hair.

I have no clue how helpful this was, but I am happy to take any excuse I have to ramble about this dude!!!

((I hope my handwriting is legible because I feel like that's easier to understand than the stuff I typed up since it has pictures instead of just my description))

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

I know this is interesting to no one because it's incredibly niche but I have a little mystery around mid-to-late 19th century mens waistcoats that I've been digging into, and so far, after digging into a bunch of local, provincial, and also national and international online archives, including but not limited to the Rijksmuseum, the V&A, LACMA, and KCI, and also asking about this on instagram and specifically asking the dutch costume society, I have found:

-9 pictures, all local to my area in eastern Netherlands, and every single one of these pictures is people wearing local folk dress -and one (1) extant garment, in the US and also made there.

that's it.

[animentality]

I have joined the steel watch discord, link here, where people talk about Gortash and Durgetash with the same sort of brainrot intensity that I have, and in the data mining channel, it was mentioned that there are lines referencing the steel watch potentially being a summonable ally in the finale of the game.

And also that, potentially, maybe, after you kill Gortash...he'd be sent to the House of Hope.

Where you could rescue him. And make him an ally.

And now I must kms.

Because how the fuck am I supposed to live now...????

Knowing that there might've been a world...where I could've fixed him...???

Where I could've saved him from his tormenter...

I just.

I'm like imagining the dark urge killing him for his netherstone, but then saving him by murdering Raphael and voiding his contract...

And him saying why would you save me...you were the one who killed me...

And they'd just say you were the only one who saw me as something more than a monster. You gave me a chance.

Now I'm giving you the chance to be something more than a monster.

And then they fucking...I don't know, kiss or something.

Christ.

Help me.

What am I supposed to do, thinking about seeing Gortash in the House of Hope...without his fancy robes...in those hideous debtors' outfits...

Feeling like a scared little boy again, and thinking that all of that work, everything he did, was useless because in the end he was powerless, just as he was always afraid of...

And then you come and you kill the person he was most afraid of...

And then...only then can you make him a true ally.

Like I'm not. I'm supposed to live with this, until I die???

How about I die today?????!!!

[bookshelfpassageway]

I am once again asking people to consider the Ace Attorney playthrough by Save Data Team

Featuring: an actual lawyer, a group of 3 friends who genuinely like the game/story and at least one is playing blind, so many running jokes, my new headcanon Miles Edgeworth voice, unhinged questions from Ohio's bar exams, genuine interest in the context of the original Japanese version, increasingly absurd stream funding goals, canon Narumitsu, and much more

it starts off like a standard "that's not how law works!" series but do not be fooled. It's very good

Here's a fun highlight reel comp, or, this one from Case 5/Rise From the Ashes to see the gang in full swing of things

[warpfactor9]

i knew Elementary, Dear Data (2x03) was going to make me start climbing the walls and tearing up the carpet but i didn't expect it to happen barely 2 minutes into the episode with Geordi getting excited about being "your [Data's] Watson"

[descendant-of-truth]

The data characters in Coded are endlessly fascinating to me because like... they're so much like the originals. But everything is shifted just enough to the left that they feel different, and a little off if you think about it long enough.

Probably the main thing that stands out is that they all start out with different "base memories" from each other, if you will. The only thing Data Sora knows is that he grew up on the islands with his friends, but Data Riku has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that happened in KH1. Data Namine knows what happened in CoM, and Data Roxas remembers up to the end of the KH2 prologue.

None of them are caught up to the present. The events of KH2 don't exist to them, because those events are written in a different journal.

But you can't even say that Data Sora is "just" Sora from before he started his journey, because almost as soon as the game starts, there's something wrong with that picture.

It's a little hard to explain, but Sora seems... remarkably unconcerned with his surroundings. He accepts whatever Mickey tells him without a second thought, even if he admits (still much too casually) that he doesn't understand what's going on.

(Not to mention that the giant, eye-catching blocks around him are things he doesn't even acknowledge until prompted by Mickey to "look for anything odd.")

But probably the biggest difference between the two Soras when they're starting out is that the journey isn't personal for Data Sora. He doesn't dwell on the islands being lost, and more importantly, he isn't looking for his friends. He doesn't even think about his friends. The first time Riku's name comes out of his mouth is when he literally shows up in front of him.

The early parts of Coded really make the "data" part of Data Sora apparent, I think. He's kind and brave like Sora, he has his mannerisms down, but he feels a bit hollow. There's nothing that's really important to him yet; he just goes along with things as they happen to him.

And then he loses the Keyblade and Riku at the same time, which is the first event to prompt genuine distress from him that he doesn't quickly bounce back from.

This is when Data Sora goes from a passive protagonist to more of an active one - something that the original Sora was from the start. He finally disobeys a request from Mickey, going to Hollow Bastion by himself in order to save Riku.

It's only there that he finally starts to process what having friends means, though, courtesy of Donald and Goofy's guidance... which the original Sora had ever since Traverse Town, by the way. Mickey wasn't a bad mentor to Data Sora, necessarily, but he was a lot more objective-focused, and thus didn't do a lot to help foster a deeper understanding of certain things in him.

Another thing I find interesting - the original Sora lost his Keyblade before going through Hollow Bastion, too, but the way they each get them back is different. Sora makes a rousing speech about how his friends are his power, and his conviction in that summons it back:

While Data Sora summons his back in a moment of fear, and a desire to protect his friends from being crushed:

He even fights a possessed Riku like Sora did, but the dynamic between them is much different on both ends. Originally, Sora was really fed up with Riku, and didn't know the full extent that he was being manipulated. (Also Riku stole the Keyblade and his friends by extension from him, so he's understandably kind of mad about that)

Meanwhile, Riku's villainous sass was on full display, mocking Sora for having a weak heart and saying he would get destroyed by the darkness. This was probably the worst terms they've been on with each other.

In Coded, there's no bad blood between them, and Data Sora knows exactly how much Riku isn't acting of his own accord. So his tone becomes one of unambiguous concern, while Riku wants so much to not fight Sora that he asks to be destroyed instead.

And because Ansem just... doesn't seem to exist in the datascape, Sora is able to bring Riku back with him much faster than the original could, so the motivation that made CoM and KH2 possible in the first place is gone entirely.

Data Sora's journey leads him to the same places as Sora's, and the story beats are similar, but his experiences are unmistakably different. Which is what makes the way Data Riku talks about things especially fascinating.

He makes a lot of references to the original events of KH1, and talks like he and Data Sora are inextricable from it. "I always seem to give in," "you once turned into a Heartless," "you would have saved us." He never completely separates the events of the datascape from those in the real world, treating Riku's failings as his own, saying that Data Sora lost his heart and doesn't remember it.

Data Roxas and Namine are the same way - it's actually Sora who's the odd one out, who doesn't give his original a second thought most of the time. It's only when other people attribute Sora's experiences to him that he, somewhat mistakenly, adopts that information into his worldview.

(No, Sora, that's not your Heartless. No, you weren't on a journey to find Riku and Kairi. That was a different guy. You don't even know Kairi for some reason. Add him to the list of people that live in Sora's shadow along with Roxas and Xion)

I don't know what the conclusion is here exactly, just that there's something about the way the data characters are so different but similar at the same time to the people they're based on that's really engaging to me.

I mean, one of Sora's biggest fears seems to be turning into someone else, or just being a copy of another person, as we saw in DDD. Data Sora is a Sora who's a copy, and he's kind of just... fine with that. He's content with what he has. Even when his memories are a complete mess by the end of the game, he accepts the situation as it is and keeps moving forward.

Anyway I could keep going but for now I'll leave it at "and that's why the data characters should show up again in future games"

[biteofcherry]

When I think I can't write anything filthier, my brain strikes again 😳

[piscoyt]

the mrst/endless compilations i've been talking about for months! it's here!

big thanks to @dragonpuff17 for finding like 80% of the clips <3

funny screenshot as a bonus :3

[libartz]

Let’s play a fun game I like to call “do I actually ship them romantically, or do I want their relationship to be acknowledged as extremely close and among the most important in their lives and calling it romantic is my way of achieving that?”