diegoyahir36

[zincbotted]

one of many problems i encounter trying to find undertale fanfiction is that, in my mind, talkingsoup's 'the scientist' series is 100% canon, so anything that contradicts that just don't feel right

[circeyoru]

The Only Reason

[Yandere!Sung Jinwoo x Worker!Reader]

Note: I have no idea what to call this AU, but I don't think a lot of people will read this so... Haha~ Mental AU? Chaos AU?

Update! This AU is called Mana Chaos AU! Plus there's Part 2 up!!

Part 1 (here) 一 Part 2

Once, the world’s strongest Hunters were revered as humanity’s saviours and heroes for the weak and ordinary. They were once treated like celebrities and hold the highest power and authority. They were respected, praised, and idolized. They still were, now, with a hint of fear.

It all happened due to the infamous incident now dubbed as <The Outrage Incident>. It happened like any other day, in any other country, in any other city. But to only that one strong Hunter. He was an S-Rank Mage, a successful and loved one at that. The story goes like this. 

One day, this powerful Hunter was out on the street enjoying a day off, but something set him off and he used his powerful ability to set things right. It would have been the end of it since an S-Rank’s threat was enough to make the majority crumble. However, his power got out of control and caused an outrage to his being. He was using his powers in public and there was no dungeon outbreak or monsters nearby for him. No amount of justification could calm the public.

After that one incident, other countries’ S-Rank or higher started to experience a similar issue. The worst case was that even Healers of their level didn’t escape such a phenomenon. Soon, the public feared the strong protectors they once saw as shields and swords against the gates. 

Researchers and scientists were put to work quickly to investigate why and how this issue was happening now. The answer was in the overflowing mana levels within their bodies that couldn’t be contained since the human body was weak and frail for such a change. Addition to that, it correlated to the Hunter’s emotional level and their control. Institutions were built to imprison house the S-Ranks while monitoring their situation. 

Whenever an S-Rank’s mana levels and emotions show signs of <Outrage>, a term they now use to describe the Hunter going haywire with their powers on everything and anything around them, they will be sent to a dungeon alone. In the people’s eyes, it was better for that one Hunter to die in battle than kill innocents. Because at first, it was only the S-Ranks, but then some A-Ranks would fall victim to <Outrage> as well. 

The professionals have named the correlation as Emotional Mana, EM for short, which made way for the Emotional Mana Institution, EMI for strong Hunters. The Hunters were treated like mental patients or worse, forced into a straitjacket and some had a muzzle for certain Hunters. These were specially designed and created items that limit and restricts a Hunter’s use of their powers and abilities. 

It was a miracle that someone managed to create such equipment. That someone was also targetted by the S-Ranks after being announced and killed for such a disrespectful act, still the blueprints and prototypes were created and other talents that took over were able to finalize the perfect form.

“Personnel 002, you were specifically requested by SM-10.” 

You looked up from your laptop and paused in your rapid typing for just a few second before you looked back to your screen and continued typing. That code name was to protect you and everyone else that worked in EMI or have some form of connection to it, so that no innocent is sacrificed for the greater good. Still, you can’t get used to it nor do you want to. “I’m busy.”

“Please… SM-10 is way too picky with the people that enters his cell.” This person, Supervisor 843, was one of the newest employee to join the crew. Though, unlike the name of the duty, they were people that were disposable hence the frequent newcomers and high number. “Please help me.”

You sighed and glared up at the person who had a mask over their head and a voice changer to mask their identity. Though, with the way they were speaking, you could deduce this person was a ‘she’. You got up and snatched the file extended to you. Just when you thought you could rest and work in peace, trouble comes knocking on your door. “Get me a drink and some refreshment, I want to see it on my desk by the time I’m back.”

“Yes? Yes!” Supervisor 843 bowed and clapped her hands together, “I’ll do so!”

As swiftly and automatically, you made your way through the hallways and doorways, tapping your access card to unlock needed doors and lifts for your travel. On the way, other Supervisors nodded their heads and bowed in your presence when you walked by. Unlike them who wear a uniform, you only have a lab coat over your usual outfits. You don’t even have a mask or voice changer. 

Why?

You stood in front of the door that was labelled in bold ‘SM-10’, meaning the 10th S-Rank in Korea that belonged to the Mage class. The guard dressed in black from head to toe nodded their heads at you before they started unlocking the various security checkpoints and locks for you to enter into a battlefield in its own right.

“Will one hour be enough, Personnel 002?” One of the guards asked.

“Not sure, just be alert in case I need to rush out.” You spoke stoically with indifference.

Step by step, you walked in, announcing loudly of your arrival to the individual inside. The doors closed behind you and locked you inside with what everyone feared. You sighed and put away your glasses since there was no need for it right now. The room was eerily silent and cold, something you were long used to. 

You took a few more steps, walking deeper into the room where it seemed to get darker and darker even though the lights in all housed Hunters would be on 24/7 to monitor their actions and activities within the room. 

Just when your vision failed you to the point where you can’t see what was in front of you, you were enveloped in a pair of strong arms, your entire form effortlessly pulled back till your back was pressed against a firm wall of muscle one would call chest and abs. Hair tickled one side of your cheek and neck, you felt a breath cooed before a deep voice rang in your ear, “I’ve been waiting for my favourite Personnel~”

It wasn’t at all odd that your name was called as well, if it was someone like him, he’d know everything there was to know. In fact, everyone should be worshipping him right now for his controlled and well-mannered behaviour. Especially when he could have destroyed this entire facility and killed everyone in it within seconds if he so wished. 

“Jinwoo. I need to work, don’t bully the newcomers.” You sighed while looking to the side as if making eye contact with him. 

“I like it when you call me by name and not some code, thanks for that.” Jinwoo hummed as he played with your fingers. “I guess I’ll think about it. It’s a bit bored here, you understand.”

“You removed your straitjacket again.” You let him fiddle with your fingers as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. “You’ll get caught one of these days and then it’ll be game over.”

“Igris helped me remove it. You know how they are with seeing me constrained and imprisoned here.” He chuckled and leaned back, but it turned out he was just taking a seat, presumably on his bed since you still couldn’t see anything in the darkness. “Don’t worry, I’ve made sure no one could see me free and they didn’t kill anyone. Yet.”

Every Hunter that was admitted into the EMI was evaluated and thoroughly investigated to create the perfect profile for reference. All their fighting style, powers and abilities, weapons of choice, gear type, and any other detail was accounted down. It was all for people to be prepared in case one would have an <Outrage> and they were needed to be countered by weaker Hunters. 

For Jinwoo, however, his profile was lacking to put it in the best terms. His mana levels were unmeasureable, yes, so he was placed as an S-Rank. Though, his powers and abilities were unknown. Since he was a Reawakened Hunter, most would assume he was the same class as he was as an E-Rank; a Fighter Class. But he exhibit <Telekinese> and <Shadow Manipulation> so he was placed as into Mage class.

That wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg. 

You saw through his innocence and lie, uncovering his true powers and abilities. To be honest, even if you told your higher-ups of Jinwoo’s secrets, there was nothing they could do to counter it. Jinwoo was a league of his own and only you knew it. He was no mere S-Rank, he was definitely a National Level Hunter.

Ah, yes. The question as to why you don’t wear a mask or bother having done anything to hide your identity. It was not because you’ve been in one of the people who has been in service of EMI for the longest time or wanted something as shallow as respect from the newcomers or other coworkers. It was completely because you knew it was useless to hide when someone like Sung Jinwoo had his eyes on you.

“I’ll try and arrange a dungeon for you to raid.” You marked down on your phone while Jinwoo continued to treat you like a teddy bear.

“You have to join though. If you don’t…” Jinwoo’s voice went deeper as glowing eyes stared at you from the shadows, “I don’t know what I’ll do to get your attention…”

You nodded, pushing down the urge to flinch or jerk away from him. It was normal, something you expected but still unnerving to hear with your own ear from his lips. You swear this place made the Hunters mad in the head, it was a place that made them sick and mentally ill, it wasn’t actually helping them at all. “Yeah, of course. I’m sure everyone will be relieved to hear it.”

Jinwoo smirked as his arms tightened around you, his face buried between your neck and shoulder. “You’re the only reason I stay here. Remember that. If you leave here… Leave me… I’ll do what Thomas Andre did to America.”

Note: I can't help it, it was supposed to upload the requested ones first, but then this idea hit me like a truck (without the isekai part), so now here it is. There are like 2 requested stories written and ready to be posted, but I'm double checking and stuff. Hope you like this AU/idea.

Circe Y.

My Works: MASTERLIST

Taglist: (none at the moment)

[snakeautistic]

I love finding characters I can relate (/project onto) within media. There’s something so comforting about seeing yourself on screen. I end up headcanoning most of them to be in-line with my identities (lesbian, wasian, autistic) because they are literally me in my head!!

Anyway here’s a long ass list of my favorite characters and why I head canon them as autistic for fun!! If you have any others you’d like to add I’d love to hear them. (And please note this is just my interpretation, and highly based on my experience with autism. I’m not saying they’re definitely autistic or that all the traits I listed are the dsm-5 criteria or something.)

Princess Bubblgeum from adventure time:

This girl is peak evil scientist autistic. Her intense need for control, the way she carefully observes the citizens she created, an outsider to them, not quite like them… god it’s so perfect. I read her as being somewhat low empathy as well, it’s hard for her to change her perspective to that of others. Plus the fact her brother neddy is a pretty obvious metaphor for higher supports needs autism. I think they of represent how autism runs in the family and appears in all sorts of different ways in different people. They’re sort of two different representations of the spectrum.

Marcy wu from amphibia

I mean this one is just obvious. The biggest nerd of all time. So obsessed with her RPG special interest that she literally sucks her and her friends into a fantasy world. She’s clumsy (just like me fr), very smart but super socially awkward, a little oblivious and naive. She’s terrified of change, especially if it means abandoning the few social bonds she’s been able to make. I honestly find it hard to believe this wasn’t intentional.

Entrapta from she-ra

Another pretty overt example. I do have some issues with how she was portrayed in the show- (keeping her on a leash was weird.) but overall I really love her. She understands her tech, not people, and it can cause her to come into conflict with other characters. Their treatment of her makes me sad at times, but it’s realistic. I also love some of her other quirks, her love of tiny food, her exitable demeanor, ect.

Pearl from Steven Universe

Peridot is the more obvious example of an autistic character in SU, and while I agree she’s coded that way, I personally resonate more with Pearl. She is not very socially aware, and bothered by disruptions to her routine/ broader life changes. She doesn’t like to break rules (despite being a literal rebel lol.) I find it interesting how she seems to have the poorest understanding of life on earth out of the gems, despite having lived here for thousands of years. She is graceful, but has an almost sort of awkward gangly-ness to her that I relate to. Her neuroticism is also very similar to how my anxiety disorder presents.

Pearl has a tendency to infodump, without realizing those around her are uninterested. Even her relationship with Rose struck a chord with me. The hopeless devotion to her, the way she followed along at her side. It’s how many of my friendships have been. Obvious it’s not exactly the same considering Pearl having originally been her servant, but while not being an explicitly autistic trait, that sort of clingy, starstruck relationship is something autistic people are prone to developing. She does little hand stims at times too that I love to see.

Poison Ivy (specifically the version in the Harley Quinn animated show)

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more people mention poison Ivy. Fiercely intelligent and deeply introverted, she isolates herself from all people, and only connects with and understands her plants. (Which her deep affinity for can definitely be read as a special interest.) She very overtly has trouble forming relationships with others.

She’s blunt, socially awkward and a loner, has something of a flat effect and a monotone voice. Those around her initially read her as cold and impersonable.Her struggle with social anxiety as well as intense fear of failure/ low self esteem is also very relatable to me. She also often struggles to express/understand her feelings and emotions. Her radical political ideas and the fact that she’s literally an ecoterrorist paints her as having a very strong sense of justice and a somewhat black and white worldview. (Me)

Finally, her relationship with Harley just SCREAMS neurodivergent solidarity. Harley Quinn is (I think canonically) adhd, and they’re both outsiders in the world that found each other and just… get each other. She’s Ivy’s closest and only friend and amazing girlfriend and god it’s all so perfect.

They remind me a lot of the relationship I have with my best friend with adhd except theirs is gayer.

[xf-cases-solved]

S1E23: Roland

Case: Our story starts by introducing the main of the episode—Roland. We see Roland in his janitor uniform, struggling to use a keycard, and getting exasperatedly reprimanded by a guy named Dr. Keats, in a very overt way of letting the audience know that Roland has an intellectual disability and occasionally struggles with basic tasks, which is in stark contrast to the others in the cold open, Dr. Keats and his colleagues, who are clearly Scientists doing Science with Math and Intellect. 

Anyway, stuff happens and Roland murders one of the scientists by causing him to get turned into hamburger with a giant wind tunnel thing, and then he does some math. Cue credits!

Mulder and Scully come to investigate, and are so very extremely puzzled when all of their leads take them to Roland, who couldn't possibly have had the intelligence to have murdered the scientist. Except, we find out that Roland... can count really super good. Boom. Case blown wide open. 

Mulder tries to relate to Roland by trauma dumping about his horrible nightmares; a Good Will Hunting-esque whiteboard plot device has suspicious handwriting; Mulder correctly guesses a password for the first time in the series; and man-popsicles may be the answer to it all.

Does someone die in the cold open: Someone gets splattered all over the cold open.

Does Mulder present a slideshow: Nah

Does the evidence survive the investigation: Did they even really have physical evidence to begin with?? Like, the man-popsicles and the picture of Roland and his brother ig? Idk, bro, I think their evidence game was weak this episode.

Whodunit: Roland, but he might be being Ratatouilled by his man-popsicle twin.

Convictions: I don't think Roland was arrested, but they took him somewhere to be evaluated.

Did they solve it: Reluctant yes. Since the case was "who turned this man into hamburger?" and they DID witness, with their own eyeballs, Roland trying to turn another man into hamburger, and are able to use that as evidence to reasonably claim that Roland committed the first murder and can put him somewhere where he can cause no further harm, they technically solved the case. That said, I don't think any of them remotely understand what happened (except maybe Mulder, tho even that's a toss-up), and they probably don't deserve my yes, reluctant or otherwise, but whatever.

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: A generic autistic person who is secretly really good at a thing. Are you writing a cop procedural show and need a protagonist detective who is insanely good at picking up fine details on a case (but not so great at social interaction, haha)? Or maybe you're writing a thriller that involves a seemingly impenetrable code being broken... by the last person you'd ever suspect 👀. Are you a big fan of like, idk, "Good Will Hunting" or some shit, and want to write a similar plot but have no original ideas of your own? Might we suggest incorporating a generic autistic person who is secretly really good at a thing! It's 100% not not super cringeworthy, and that's our guarantee!  Try it today!

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 12 (streak restarted, ig)

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, It's Me" Phone Calls: 1 

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 5

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 7

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 8

Total Number of Sexually Charged, Uncomfortably Intimate, and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 11

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed On Screen: 3 

Total Number of Times Scully Plays Doctor: 2

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 10 

Total Number of Times People Making Out in a Car Are Hurt or Killed: 2

Total Number of Times Someone Correctly Guesses a Password: 1 (new stat!)

Total Number of Nosebleeds: 4

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Tasted/Sniffed/Touched Something Questionable Without Following Proper Safety Procedures: 2 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "Trust No One": 1 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "I Want to Believe": 3

Total Number of Times Someone Says "The Truth is Out There": 1

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 6

Total Number of Maggie Scully Sightings: 1

Total Number of Lone Gunmen Sightings: 1

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: 0 :(

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 8½ (actually, i STILL don't know what state this took place in bc the wikipedia page doesn't say, which probably means it's in or around D.C., but -shrug emoji-) [edited to add after the fact: i went back to the episode later, and yeah no, it took place in washington state. complete opposite side of the country lmao]

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 5

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

More Backup Eclipse OCs time because polls are upcoming. (This one is long, there’s eight backups instead of five like usual.)

Starburst: Activates in Kill Code/Moon when Eclipse gets put into a lab. Has some of the memories that Eclipse does but not nearly all of them. Personality is similar to Eclipse’s in terms of temper and obsessive but more open and much more loving and kind. When he activates, Starburst trips over his feet in the mindscape and makes himself known by accidentally taking control of the vocals with a yelp. This causes KC to go in and investigate, only to find a tiny backup in his and Moon’s head. He puts this backup in his own body to see what he can do, which unfortunately leads to KC deeming him useless and locking him in a room alone. When Blood Moon finds him lurking around where they shouldn’t, they’re horrified to see their baby brother heavily injured and skittish hiding in a corner. Blood Moon takes Starburst to the daycare, getting to a similar greeting of near death via Sun until they hurriedly explains that they seek safety for their baby brother.

Seyfert: Activates quietly in Moon’s gaming computer. Technically him and Cosmos are twins, made and hidden at the same time and activate around the same time. Seyfert just kinda tapped on the screen of the computer when Moon came back from helping with getting Cosmos into a body and Moon now has to extract him into a body too. Seyfert is a little more closed off, having much more of Eclipse’s personality than his twin, but is greatly attached to his twin and his brothers.

Meteor Shower: Activates at the same time as his twin in Good Eclipse. How they got there? Eclipse refuses to answer. How he travelled dimensions? Also unanswered. But Meteor Shower is such a nice bot nobody minds having him around. He got all of Eclipse’s abandonment issues, unfortunately, but no memories to go with it. Good Eclipse and Shooting Star and even Backup Moon are his best friends and family. Lunar gathers that title as well shortly after meeting. Him and Shooting Star follow Good Eclipse around like little ducklings, which has earned Good Eclipse the title of ‘Mama Duck Eclipse’ from Lunar and Backup Moon.

Shooting Star: Activates quite chaotically in Good Eclipse. Lots of screaming and crying and fear of being in someone’s mind. But once Backup Moon is able to calm everyone down and transfer the twins into their own bodies, Shooting Star is quite calm, though easily startled. He has all of Eclipse’s trauma dumped into him with no personality buffer, so he’s very closed off and easily frightened. Good Eclipse treats Shooting Star and Meteor Shower as his children, he loves them both very much.

Heaven: A backup that activates in Solar Flare. Solar Flare brings this issue to KC first, rather than Eclipse himself. KC takes Heaven out of Solar Flare and deems him useless and tosses him to Blood Moon as a ‘toy’. The twins happily tear him apart, only to realize he doesn’t have any memory or personality afterwards and they try to backpedal. Once KC is gone and Solar Flare is off watching Monty again, the twins carefully take Heaven up to the lab and plead with Eclipse to fix him. Eclipse does this, he doesn’t want to see his backups in pain or dying and he understands that the twins were in bloodlust when they hurt Heaven. When Heaven is fixed, Blood Moon takes him to the daycare and leaves him in the naptime area because they’re scared of hurting him again and they want him to be safe. Heaven is quite heavily attached to Sun, who found him, and quite easily startled.

Astro: Activates in an alley, only to be kidnapped immediately by scientists and taken for experimentation. Astro is heavily traumatized, wiped over and over during his stay as a mechanical lab rat. He loses his left leg during this time, a way for them to keep him contained. Moon is simply letting off stress when he burns down the scientist’s lab, he doesn’t know Astro is in there. Thankfully, Astro doesn’t die during this fire, but Moon finds him trying to crawl out of the wreckage. Moon, terrified of having nearly killed him, immediately takes him home and gives him a nanobot prosthetic leg. Astro needs a lot of physical therapy as well as emotional therapy for what he’s gone through. He clings to Moon, Moon was the first person to treat him not as an experiment.

Quark: Quark activates as a part of the Main Stage’s projections. He can’t leave the Main Stage for a long time after being activated. Moon finds him crying alone on a nightly patrol and transfers him into a body, though he’s been stuck on the stage for nearly a month already and is quite shaky trusting others because nobody found him before then. He still sometimes hides in the Main Stage area, only getting found by Moon, who always looks for him. Quark is quite tiny, shorter than Lunar even, but incredibly wide-eyed and sweet to the people he loves.

Chthonian: Activates in Servant Sun before Moon comes to the dimension. Still nobody knows how Eclipse was travelling dimensions to do this. Lord Eclipse sees that Chthonian activated and immediately pulls him into a body of his own, treating him as a pet along with Servant Sun. Servant Sun is quite attached to Chthonian, he sees him as his child and will attempt to protect him from Lord Eclipse’s abuse. The buffer doesn’t stop Lord Eclipse, however, and Chthonian gets horribly abused along with Servant Sun. When Moon comes to the dimension, Servant Sun shoves Chthonian at him when he’s about to leave, pleading to take him somewhere safe. Moon ends up taking both of them home with him.

[kitkatt0430]

I know you're planning the main Finale Westhallen Fix-It AU (which I'm very much looking forward to) but I also want to know - how would you have done the Cobalt Blue storyline? Like if you'd been writing it, in what season would you have had it and how would it have played out?

I have a few different ideas on that. :D

1.) Armageddon would have been the changing of the guard. Eobard starts as the main villain with hints of someone else at play, slowly revealing Malcolm Thawne - Barry's long lost evil twin like in the comics - who steals Eobard's speed using his Blue Flame, introducing it's power-theft abilities from the start. It's other powers would get revealed over the course of the rest on Season 8 - the ability to create temporary objects and healing powers. It would have given Grant a second change to be both the hero and the villain in the same season - S3 might not have been great, but Savitar had a lot of promise to him and a significant part of that wasn't how he was written but how Grant played him and played Savitar and Barry off each other.

I like keeping the Thawne connection, but it does raise the question as to why Eddie never mentioned having a cousin who looked exactly like Barry. Though the show's had worse plot-holes. And, honestly, I couldn't identify my cousins on sight anymore, so I'd give Eddie not recognizing the similarities a pass.

2.) E2 Eddie in S2 would have made for an interesting Cobalt Blue. Forcing Barry to confront his feelings of guilt about Eddie's death in S1 and opening the possibility of Zoom being after Cobalt Blue for his healing powers as a potential fix for the Velocity induced power incontinence and health problems he's suffering from. If E2 Eddie is morally gray that adds another wrinkle to the whole protecting him thing, as Barry would have to confront and overcome his own tendencies to be kind of a hypocrite about certain aspects of his (and Oliver's) vigilantism.

This opens up the option of E2 Eddie sticking around for S3, assuming the show runners could resist the urge to kill him off too. (And makes me consider E2 Eddie/Barry/Iris... Westhallen of a slightly different flavor?)

3.) Post multiverse reboot, Eddie never came to Central City and is in Keystone instead, alive and well. Maybe a scientist here instead of a police officer. A lab accident triggers his previously dormant powers and he saves his lab-mate's life. Which leads him to seek out the Flash - Keystone's Flash, Jay. This could play out different ways, with this Eddie having led a different life. And maybe Eobard's out to make sure his ancestor doesn't bite it this time, blaming Barry for his own mistake of driving his ancestor to suicide in the pre-reboot timelines. This idea is a lot more nebulous to me, but still an interesting one.

4.) Malcolm, Eddie's younger brother, shows in S3 instead of the Savitar arc. He wants to know the truth about his brother's death and Alchemy - a legitimate threat here - turns Malcolm into Cobalt Blue. Malcolm winds up a dragon ascendant type here, going from lackey to leader and taking out Alchemy in the process because he blames the Flash for Eddie's death. Learning the truth, that Eddie killed himself to stop Eobard, just cements the blame in Malcolm's mind - especially if he's made aware Eobard is still alive. Perhaps driving him to blame Iris too, now that she and Barry are dating. (Not engaged, let them actually date first.)

This would probably also toss out Flashpoint and the needless drama of Dante's death. Or at least push Dante's death to further down in the season so that it's not an off screen event that causes much viewer confusion.

5.) Alternatively S3's version of Malcolm Thawne is just Eddie by another name from Earth-19. HR and Cynthia show up on E1 because she's looking to track down the dangerous breacher and HR was able to get permission from on high to shadow her for a novel. Which she's very unhappy about. This could allow for the re-imagining of the Collectors as a somewhat more ethical and less hypocritical organization, making it less of a protagonist centered moral quagmire that Cisco nearly gets sucked into while dating her.

Malcolm initially tries to pull what Black Siren did over on Arrow - convince everyone he's Eddie back from the dead. Team Flash is suspicious, of course. And that's before they team up with Cynthia and HR to expose and capture the fraud. It could also have Cobalt Blue teaming up with Central City's Rogues would also make it a Rogue season, which the show needed and deserved.

[ahotcutea]

The silhouette of the summer ( or at least in my imagery closet)

With the rise of global warming, we should try to protect our skin this summer. While applying sunscreen is important, I think the best way to protect our skin is through fashion ( there is a reason why I'm not a scientist); according to my brain, the best way to protect our skin while being fashionable is by the design of silhouette - thick but cool fabrics.

Fabrics such as Linen, lightweight kinds of cotton, Chambray, or other light weave fabrics. Along with fabrics, I think patterns are going to be big in a different way. During the past few years, the summers have been drowned in cute vibrant patterns. I think this year, the patterns will be very subtle, instead of printed patterns such as neon swirls and big flowers. I think the patterns we will have this year are more 3d ( in a way), with bows that are sewn on instead of printed and stitches that have a texture ( such as summer knits). These patterns aren't going to be apparent unless felt with the human hand. 

I also think this will be from the human isolation and lack of texture ( due to the constant contact with smoothness, ex., Computer/phone screens, fabrics of fast fashion as they lack quality, and many other factors )

In my opinion, the best silhouette for the summer is aline dresses/shirts with a little flare - not a peplum flare but just enough for it to be classy and cutie. I also think pleats will be a big part of these types of dresses; they wouldn't be those pretty big pleats but instead small delicate pleats, the kind you only notice when you spin or feel the waistline. Thick straps, bows, layered slits, sailor collars, and high but soft necklines are def in. These fashions Ofcsss will vary in color, but I definitely think they will be blendable colors. I like to think of it as a middle-aged woman's color: grays, creams, muddled purples, black, cream butter yellows - colors that don't clash within the scale of the city but definitely stand out when in community groups such as book clubs or coffee catch ups. 

I also think a 2-piece loose set will make a comeback, specifically within straight sizes with the return of a slim figure; people who are straight sizes but not slim will go to these types of 2-piece. They give the illusion of slimness without sacrificing their current lifestyle. 

Now the shoe of the summer is low kitten heels, those j.crew heels, and those cute sneakers.

The theory - I like them - look how cute they are, just adorable. 

Ok, I'll justify my opinions - the reason why I think people will go out in shoes while dressing super casual is the cause of the lack of color - we left the summers of color puke, the people need a pop - you know a little hit here, and there never hurts - and the color hit will be seen in the shoes, with the same allure of the casual clothes the structure of the shoe will be very sleek, but similar to the colors of the last summer the color of the shoe will have a nice pop! 

Anyways - this is just a cute lil microtrend-theory i have 

I definitely will have different trends and styles this summer - and tots will write about them …

I hope you enjoyed this lil rant 

Thanks for reading my first post 

Here my pin board that visualized these types of styles 

XoXo ~Z

[internationalmathschallenge]

Anyone Can Play Tetris, But Architects, Engineers and Animators Alike Use the Math Concepts Underlying the Game

With its bright colors, easy-to-learn rules and familiar music, the video game Tetris has endured as a pop culture icon over the last 40 years. Many people, like me, have been playing the game for decades, and it has evolved to adapt to new technologies like game systems, phones and tablets. But until January 2024, nobody had ever been able to beat it.

A teen from Oklahoma holds the Tetris title after he crashed the game on Level 157 and beat the game. Beating it means the player moved the tiles too fast for the game to keep up with the score, causing the game to crash. Artificial intelligence can suggest strategies that allow players to more effectively control the game tiles and slot them into place faster—these strategies helped crown the game’s first winner.

But there’s far more to Tetris than the elusive promise of winning. As a mathematician and mathematics educator, I recognize that the game is based on a fundamental element of geometry, called dynamic spatial reasoning. The player uses these geometric skills to manipulate the game pieces, and playing can both test and improve a player’s dynamic spatial reasoning.

Playing the game

A Russian computer scientist named Alexey Pajitnov invented Tetris in 1984. The game itself is very simple: The Tetris screen is composed of a rectangular game board with dropping geometric figures. These figures are called tetrominoes, made up of four squares connected on their sides in seven different configurations.

The game pieces drop from the top, one at a time, stacking up from the bottom. The player can manipulate each one as it falls by turning or sliding it and then dropping it to the bottom. When a row completely fills up, it disappears and the player earns points.

As the game progresses, the pieces appear at the top more quickly, and the game ends when the stack reaches the top of the board.

Dynamic spatial reasoning

Manipulating the game pieces gives the player an exercise in dynamic spatial reasoning. Spatial reasoning is the ability to visualize geometric figures and how they will move in space. So, dynamic spatial reasoning is the ability to visualize actively moving figures.

The Tetris player must quickly decide where the currently dropping game piece will best fit and then move it there. This movement involves both translation, or moving a shape right and left, and rotation, or twirling the shape in increments of 90 degrees on its axis.

Spatial visualization is partly inherent ability, but partly learned expertise. Some researchers identify spatial skill as necessary for successful problem solving, and it’s often used alongside mathematics skills and verbal skills.

Spatial visualization is a key component of a mathematics discipline called transformational geometry, which is usually first taught in middle school. In a typical transformational geometry exercise, students might be asked to represent a figure by its x and y coordinates on a coordinate graph and then identify the transformations, like translation and rotation, necessary to move it from one position to another while keeping the piece the same shape and size.

Reflection and dilation are the two other basic mathematical transformations, though they’re not used in Tetris. Reflection flips the image across any line while maintaining the same size and shape, and dilation changes the size of the shape, producing a similar figure.

For many students, these exercises are tedious, as they involve plotting many points on graphs to move a figure’s position. But games like Tetris can help students grasp these concepts in a dynamic and engaging way.

Transformational geometry beyond Tetris

While it may seem simple, transformational geometry is the foundation for several advanced topics in mathematics. Architects and engineers both use transformations to draw up blueprints, which represent the real world in scale drawings.

Animators and computer graphic designers use concepts of transformations as well. Animation involves representing a figure’s coordinates in a matrix array and then creating a sequence to change its position, which moves it across the screen. While animators today use computer programs that automatically move figures around, they are all based on translation.

Calculus and differential geometry also use transformation. The concept of optimization involves representing a situation as a function and then finding the maximum or minimum value of that function. Optimization problems often involve graphic representations where the student uses transformations to manipulate one or more of the variables.

Lots of real-world applications use optimization—for example, businesses might want to find out the minimum cost of distributing a product. Another example is figuring out the size of a theoretical box with the largest possible volume.

All of these advanced topics use the same concepts as the simple moves of Tetris.

Tetris is an engaging and entertaining video game, and players with transformational geometry skills might find success playing it. Research has found that manipulating rotations and translations within the game can provide a solid conceptual foundation for advanced mathematics in numerous science fields.

Playing Tetris may lead students to a future aptitude in business analytics, engineering or computer science—and it’s fun. As a mathematics educator, I encourage students and friends to play on.

For more such insights, log into our website https://international-maths-challenge.com

Credit of the article to be given Leah McCoy, The Conversation

[ridmymind]

Hey there

Deleted my ig platform for good

I accidentally viewed my ecs gf and I was crushed by the cringeness

I do no want to partake in such foolish behavior like DO REMEBER TO SHINE✨

Not my cup of tea

One time he said he didn’t like girls if they have an unnatural hair color. LIES✨✨✨

Also she is nothing special and that’s the most shocking thing

Thinkin if she knows bout his cousin and all the cult things. Thinking if anything was true at all.

I was suspecting she was in the CIA or something. No way, she s just a girl with a giant nose -he said he like ugly nose on girl I dunno its a thing-

I guess another person would have contact her to send screens and whatever BUT IM NOT LIKE THE OTHER GIRLS IM PROTECTING MY PEACE. Jk i don’t want to. Its a matter of time she s going to discover how shallow he is. And if that s not going to happen, well. Good luck, babe. I was wrong the first time I talked to him and he said was on ketogenic diet, I guess. I studied medicine. Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on you. They studied like political science. Pls. I was so embarrassed for him I swear. Shame on you and that’s the end. Shes like his therapist, nutritionist and all the other figures he had to follow in order to being good with himself, having a person that tell him what to do. I am legit furious cause he knows everything bout my situation and he did not tell me the truth. And he was acting like he was mr right all the time. I even edited part of his thesis. Of course i’m mad. Now i can tell a garbage narcissist way sooner. Maybe i have to activate my account only to haunt him. But at what cost?

I have lost my voice.

My spirit is broken.

Life on social media is fake af.

Nevertheless, I’ll post. Not to mock anyone. Just to take space.

I need to take space

He didn’t know me at all. I am a poet and a person in stem. A painter and a doctor. An artist and a mad scientist. A kind person that want to make others happy and well. And i have a strong moral compass. I’m a reader and a writer. I play piano, guitar and uke. I can do my own hair. I have good taste in fashion choice. I listen to english podcast at 2x. I loved alternative stuff all my life. And I was the best in everything I ve done so far. If I was the man, I’ll be THE man.

He Was just a boy who play pretend to be an adult

Was just a boy that’s smell like my grandpa used to. And that’s telling about me.

I thought she was a ballerina. An actress. A beautiful girl. Or an accomplished ones. I thought she hasn’t social media. That she was cooler than me. Poor thing.

If I ll get past these health problems the next page I wanna do is an uku learn with me

Im speechless. Logically speaking they have nothing to do with me. I m educated, have studied a lot, has so many interests. We haven’t the same culture at all. The same moral values. He s just a follower. She will have his babies. And he ll continue to do what is in his nature. BEING A BAD BAD BAD HUMAN BEING. But i m very emotional disregulated so I can’t do a logic argument. I just want to talk sit about them with my bff. Like any other girl.

A fellow student I can’t. I thought she was a neurologist. That was helping his sister. I thought she was his teacher. I have over estimated this guy so much. It costed me years of my life. Maybe she s p3ggin him rn. I don’t think so but.

However i m slowly transitioning in the man I d like to date. Maybe i like myself too much, and we shared similar facial features. I know what she is at least.

And thats me, rockin my hair cut and i’m cute as hell🥲

[jcmarchi]

Summer 2024 recommended reading from MIT

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/summer-2024-recommended-reading-from-mit/

Summer 2024 recommended reading from MIT

MIT faculty and staff authors have published a plethora of books, chapters, and other literary contributions in the past year. The following titles represent some of their works published in the past 12 months. 

Looking for more literary works from the MIT community? Enjoy our book lists from 2023, 2022, and 2021.

Happy reading!

Novel, memoir, and poetry

“Seizing Control: Managing Epilepsy and Others’ Reactions to It — A Memoir” (Haley’s, 2023) By Laura Beretsky, grant writer in the MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering, and Science (MITES) program

Beretsky’s memoir, “Seizing Control,” details her journey with epilepsy, discrimination, and a major surgical procedure to reduce her seizures. After two surgical interventions, she has been seizure-free for eight years, though she notes she will always live with epilepsy.

“Sky. Pond. Mouth.” (Yas Press, 2024) By Kevin McLellan, staff member in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology

In this book of poetry, physical and emotional qualities free-range between the animate and inanimate as though the world is written with dotted lines. With chiseled line breaks, intriguing meta-poetic levels, and punctuation like seed pods, McLellan’s poems, if we look twice, might flourish outside the book’s margin, past the grow light of the screen, even (especially) other borderlines we haven’t begun to imagine.

Science and engineering

“The Visual Elements: Handbooks for Communicating Science and Engineering” (University of Chicago Press, 2023 and 2024) By Felice Frankel, research scientist in chemical engineering

Each of the two books in the “Visual Elements” series focuses on a different aspect of scientific visual communication: photography on one hand and design on the other. Their unifying goal is to provide guidance for scientists and engineers who must communicate their work with the public, for grant applications, journal submissions, conference or poster presentations, and funding agencies. The books show researchers the importance of presenting their work in clear, concise, and appealing ways that also maintain scientific integrity.

“A Book of Waves” (Duke University Press, 2023) By Stefan Helmreich, professor of anthropology

In this book, Helmreich examines ocean waves as forms of media that carry ecological, geopolitical, and climatological news about our planet. Drawing on ethnographic work with oceanographers and coastal engineers in the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Bangladesh, he details how scientists at sea and in the lab apprehend waves’ materiality through abstractions, seeking to capture in technical language these avatars of nature at once periodic and irreversible, wild and pacific, ephemeral and eternal.

“An Introduction to System Safety Engineering” (MIT Press, 2023) By Nancy G. Leveson, professor of aeronautics and astronautics

Preventing accidents and losses in complex systems requires a holistic perspective that can accommodate unprecedented types of technology and design. Leveson’s book covers the history of safety engineering; explores risk, ethics, legal frameworks, and policy implications; and explains why accidents happen and how to mitigate risks in modern, software-intensive systems. It includes accounts of well-known accidents like the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents, examining their causes and how to prevent similar incidents in the future.

“Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again” (University of Chicago Press, 2024) By Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies and Chemistry

We solved planet-threatening problems before, Solomon argues, and we can do it again. She knows firsthand what those solutions entail, as she gained international fame as the leader of a 1986 expedition to Antarctica, making discoveries that were key to healing the damaged ozone layer. She saw a path from scientific and public awareness to political engagement, international agreement, industry involvement, and effective action. Solomon connects this triumph to the stories of other past environmental victories — against ozone depletion, smog, pesticides, and lead — to extract the essential elements of what makes change possible.

Culture, humanities, and social sciences

“Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It” (Princeton University Press, 2023) By Adam Berinsky, professor of political science

Political rumors pollute the political landscape. But if misinformation crowds out the truth, how can democracy survive? Berinsky examines why political rumors exist and persist despite their unsubstantiated and refuted claims, who is most likely to believe them, and how to combat them. He shows that a tendency toward conspiratorial thinking and vehement partisan attachment fuel belief in rumors. Moreover, in fighting misinformation, it is as important to target the undecided and the uncertain as it is the true believers.

“Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China,” (Princeton University Press, 2023) By Tristan Brown, assistant professor of history

In “Laws of the Land,” Brown tells the story of the important roles — especially legal ones — played by fengshui in Chinese society during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644–1912). Employing archives from Mainland China and Taiwan that have only recently become available, this is the first book to document fengshui’s invocations in Chinese law during the Qing dynasty.

“Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions” (Polity, 2024) By Alex Byrne, professor of philosophy

MIT philosopher Alex Byrne knows that within his field, he’s very much in the minority when it comes to his views on sex and gender. In “Trouble with Gender,” Byrne suggests that some ideas regarding sex and gender have not been properly examined by philosophers, and he argues for a reasoned and civil conversation on the topic.

“Life at the Center: Haitians and Corporate Catholicism in Boston” (University of California Press, 2024) By Erica Caple James, professor of medical anthropology and urban studies

In “Life at the Center,” James traces how faith-based and secular institutions in Boston have helped Haitian refugees and immigrants attain economic independence, health, security, and citizenship in the United States. The culmination of more than a decade of advocacy and research on behalf of the Haitians in Boston, this groundbreaking work exposes how Catholic corporations have strengthened — but also eroded — Haitians’ civic power.

“Portable Postsocialisms: New Cuban Mediascapes after the End of History” (University of Texas Press, 2024) By Paloma Duong, associate professor of media studies/writing

Why does Cuban socialism endure as an object of international political desire, while images of capitalist markets consume Cuba’s national imagination? “Portable Postsocialisms” calls on a vast multimedia archive to offer a groundbreaking cultural interpretation of Cuban postsocialism. Duong examines songs, artworks, advertisements, memes, literature, jokes, and networks that refuse exceptionalist and exoticizing visions of Cuba.

“They All Made Peace — What Is Peace?” (University of Chicago Press, 2023) Chapter by Lerna Ekmekcioglu, professor of history and director of the Program in Women’s and Gender Studies

In her chapter, Ekmekcioglu contends that the Treaty of Lausanne, which followed the first world war, is an often-overlooked event of great historical significance for Armenians. The treaty became the “birth certificate” of modern Turkey, but there was no redress for Armenians. The chapter uses new research to reconstruct the dynamics of the treaty negotiations, illuminating both Armenians’ struggles as well as the international community’s struggles to deliver consistent support for multiethnic, multireligious states.

“We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care” (Portfolio, 2023) By Amy Finkelstein, professor of economics, and Liran Einav

Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many existing proposals miss the point, focusing on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. As Finkelstein and Einav point out, our health care system was never deliberately designed, but rather pieced together to deal with issues as they became politically relevant. The result is a sprawling, arbitrary, and inadequate mess that has left 30 million Americans without formal insurance. It’s time, the authors argue, to tear it all down and rebuild, sensibly and deliberately.

“At the Pivot of East and West: Ethnographic, Literary and Filmic Arts” (Duke University Press, 2023) By Michael M.J. Fischer, professor of anthropology and of science and technology studies

In his latest book, Fischer examines documentary filmmaking and literature from Southeast Asia and Singapore for their para-ethnographic insights into politics, culture, and aesthetics. Continuing his project of applying anthropological thinking to the creative arts, Fischer exemplifies how art and fiction trace the ways in which taken-for-granted common sense changes over time speak to the transnational present and track signals of the future before they surface in public awareness.

“Lines Drawn across the Globe” (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) By Mary Fuller, professor of literature and chair of the faculty

Around 1600, English geographer and cleric Richard Hakluyt published a 2,000-page collection of travel narratives, royal letters, ships’ logs, maps, and more from over 200 voyages. In “Lines Drawn across the Globe,” Fuller traces the history of the book’s compilation and gives order and meaning to its diverse contents. From Sierra Leone to Iceland, from Spanish narratives of New Mexico to French accounts of the Saint Lawrence and Portuguese accounts of China, Hakluyt’s shaping of the book provides a conceptual map of the world’s regions and of England’s real and imagined relations to them.

“The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline” (Yale University Press, 2023) By Yasheng Huang, the Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management and professor of global economics and management

According to Huang, the world is seeing a repeat of Chinese history during which restrictions on economic and political freedom created economic stagnation. The bottom line: “Without academic collaboration, without business collaboration, without technological collaborations, the pace of Chinese technological progress is going to slow down dramatically.”

“The Long First Millennium: Affluence, Architecture, and Its Dark Matter Economy” (Routledge, 2023) By Mark Jarzombek, professor of the history and theory of architecture

Jarzombek’s book argues that long-distance trade in luxury items — such as diamonds, gold, cinnamon, scented woods, ivory, and pearls, all of which require little overhead in their acquisition and were relatively easy to transport — played a foundational role in the creation of what we would call “global trade” in the first millennium CE. The book coins the term “dark matter economy” to better describe this complex — though mostly invisible — relationship to normative realities. “The Long Millennium” will appeal to students, scholars, and anyone interested in the effect of trade on medieval society.

“World Literature in the Soviet Union” (Academic Studies Press, 2023) Chapter by Maria Khotimsky, senior lecturer in Russian

Khotimsky’s chapter, “The Treasure Trove of World Literature: Shaping the Concept of World Literature in Post-Revolutionary Russia,” examines Vsemirnaia Literatura (World Literature), an early Soviet publishing house founded in 1919 in Petersburg that advanced an innovative canon of world literature beyond the European tradition. It analyzes the publishing house’s views on translation, focusing on book prefaces that reveal a search for a new evaluative system, adaptation to changing socio-cultural norms and reassessing the roles of readers, critics, and the very endeavor of translation.

“Dare to Invent the Future: Knowledge in the Service of and Through Problem-Solving” (MIT Press, 2023) By Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, professor of science, technology, and society

In this provocative book — the first in a trilogy — Chakanetsa Mavhunga argues that our critical thinkers must become actual thinker-doers. Taking its title from one of Thomas Sankara’s most inspirational speeches, “Dare to Invent the Future” looks for moments in Africa’s story where precedents of critical thought and knowledge in service of problem-solving are evident to inspire readers to dare to invent such a knowledge system.

“Death, Dominance, and State-Building: The US in Iraq and the Future of American Military Intervention” (Oxford University Press, 2024) By Roger Petersen, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science

“Death, Dominance, and State-Building” provides the first comprehensive analytic history of post-invasion Iraq. Although the war is almost universally derided as one of the biggest foreign policy blunders of the post-Cold War era, Petersen argues that the course and conduct of the conflict is poorly understood. The book applies an accessible framework to a variety of case studies across time and region. It concludes by drawing lessons relevant to future American military interventions.

Technology, systems, and society

“Code Work: Hacking Across the U.S./México Techno-Borderlands” (Princeton University Press, 2023) By Héctor Beltrán, assistant professor of anthropology

In this book, Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders’ personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltrán shows how these hackers apply concepts from the coding world to their lived experiences, deploying batches, loose coupling, iterative processing (looping), hacking, prototyping, and full-stack development in their daily social interactions — at home, in the workplace, on the dating scene, and in their understanding of the economy, culture, and geopolitics.

“Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines” (Penguin Random House, 2023) By Joy Buolamwini SM ’17, PhD ’22, member of the Media Lab Director’s Circle

To many it may seem like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Buolamwini, this moment has been a long time in the making. “Unmasking AI” is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls “the coded gaze” — evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products. She shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity “excoded” and therefore vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools.

“Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action” (MIT Press, 2024) By Catherine D’Ignazio, associate professor of urban science and planning

“Counting Feminicide” brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting feminicide, and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work. D’Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account.

“Rethinking Cyber Warfare: The International Relations of Digital Disruption” (Oxford University Press, 2024) By R. David Edelman, research fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies

Fifteen years into the era of “cyber warfare,” are we any closer to understanding the role a major cyberattack would play in international relations — or to preventing one? Uniquely spanning disciplines and enriched by the insights of a leading practitioner, Edelman provides a fresh understanding of the role that digital disruption plays in contemporary international security.

“Model Thinking for Everyday Life: How to Make Smarter Decisions” (INFORMS, 2023) By Richard Larson, professor post-tenure in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Decisions are a part of everyday life, whether simple or complex. It’s all too easy to jump to Google for the answers, but where does that take us? We’re losing the ability to think critically and decide for ourselves. In this book, Larson asks readers to undertake a major mind shift in our everyday thought processes. Model thinking develops our critical thinking skills, using a framework of conceptual and mathematical tools to help guide us to full comprehension, and better decisions.

“Future[tectonics]: Exploring the intersection between technology, architecture and urbanism” (Parametric Architecture, 2024) Chapter by Jacob Lehrer, project coordinator in the Department of Mathematics

In his chapter, “Garbage In, Garbage Out: How Language Models Can Reinforce Biases,” Lehrer discusses how inherent bias is baked into large data sets, like those used to train massive AI algorithms, and how society will need to reconcile with the inherent biases built into systems of power. He also attempts to reconcile with it himself, delving into the mathematics behind these systems.

“Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness” (Penguin Random House, 2024) Chapter by Tod Machover, the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media; Rébecca Kleinberger SM ’14, PhD ’20; and Alexandra Rieger SM ’18, doctoral candidate in media arts and sciences

In their chapter, “Composing the Future of Health,” the co-authors discuss their approach to combining scientific research, technology innovation, and new composing strategies to create evidence-based, emotionally potent music that can delight and heal.

“The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots” (W. W. Norton and Company, 2024) By Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; and Gregory Mone

In “The Heart and the Chip,” Rus and Mone provide an overview of the interconnected fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and reframe the way we think about intelligent machines while weighing the moral and ethical consequences of their role in society. Robots aren’t going to steal our jobs, they argue; they’re going to make us more capable, productive, and precise.

Education, business, finance, and social impact

“Disciplined Entrepreneurship Startup Tactics: 15 Tactics to Turn Your Business Plan Into a Business” (Wiley, 2024) By Paul Cheek, executive director and entrepreneur in residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management, with foreword by Bill Aulet, professor of the practice of entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan and managing director of the Martin Trust Center

Cheek provides a hands-on, practical roadmap to get from great idea to successful company with his actionable field guide to transforming your one great idea into a functional, funded, and staffed startup. Readers will find ground-level, down-and-dirty entrepreneurial tactics — like how to conduct advanced primary market research, market and sell to your first customers, and take a scrappy approach to building your first products — that keep young firms growing. These tactics maximize impact with limited resources.

“From Intention to Impact: A Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (MIT Press, 2024) By Malia Lazu, lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management

In her new book, Lazu draws on her background as a community organizer, her corporate career as a bank president, and now her experience as a leading consultant to explain what has been holding organizations back and what they can do to become more inclusive and equitable. “From Intention to Impact” goes beyond “feel good” PR-centric actions to showcase the real work that must be done to create true and lasting change.

“The AFIRE Guide to U.S. Real Estate Investing” (Afire and McGraw Hill, 2024) Chapter by Jacques Gordon, lecturer in the MIT Center for Real Estate

In his chapter, “The Broker and the Investment Advisor: A wide range of options,” Gordon discusses important financial topics including information for lenders and borrowers, joint ventures, loans and debt, comingled funds, bankruptcy, and Islamic finance.

“The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results” (Hachette Book Group, 2023) By Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist and co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

The geek way of management delivers excellent performance while offering employees a work environment that features high levels of autonomy and empowerment. In what Eric Schmidt calls a “handbook for disruptors,” “The Geek Way” reveals a new way to get big things done. It will change the way readers think about work, teams, projects, and culture, and give them the insight and tools to harness our human superpowers of learning and cooperation.

“Iterate: The Secret to Innovation in Schools” (Teaching Systems Lab, 2023) By Justin Reich, associate professor in comparative media studies/writing

In “Iterate,” Reich delivers an insightful bridge between contemporary educational research and classroom teaching, showing readers how to leverage the cycle of experiment and experience to create a compelling and engaging learning environment. Readers learn how to employ a process of continuous improvement and tinkering to develop exciting new programs, activities, processes, and designs.

“red helicopter — a parable for our times: lead change with kindness (plus a little math)” (HarperCollins, 2024) By James Rhee, senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management

Is it possible to be successful and kind? To lead a company or organization with precision and compassion? To honor who we are in all areas of our lives? While eloquently sharing a story of personal and professional success, Rhee presents a comforting yet bold solution to the dissatisfaction and worry we all feel in a chaotic and sometimes terrifying world.

“Routes to Reform: Education Politics in Latin America” (Oxford University Press, 2024) By Ben Ross Schneider, the Ford International Professor of Political Science and faculty director of the MIT-Chile Program and MISTI Chile

In “Routes to Reform,” Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning — especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political — are possible. He demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, and more on micro-level factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.

“Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification” (IT Revolution, 2023) By Steven J. Spear, senior lecturer in system dynamics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Gene Kim

Organizations succeed when they design their processes, routines, and procedures to encourage employees to problem-solve and contribute to a common purpose. DevOps, Lean, and Agile got us part of the way. Now with “Wiring the Winning Organization,” Spear and Kim introduce a new theory of organizational management: Organizations win by using three mechanisms to slowify, simplify, and amplify, which systematically moves problem-solving from high-risk danger zones to low-risk winning zones.

“Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance” (Oxford University Press, 2024) Chapter by Annie Thompson, lecturer in the MIT Center for Real Estate; Walter Torous, senior lecturer at the MIT Center for Real Estate; and William Torous

In their chapter, “What Causes Residential Mortgage Defaults?” the authors assess the voluminous research investigating why households default on their residential mortgages. A particular focus is oriented towards critically evaluating the recent application of causal statistical inference to residential defaults on mortgages.

“Data Is Everybody’s Business: The Fundamentals of Data Monetization” (MIT Press, 2023) By Barbara H. Wixom, principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR); Leslie Owens, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former executive director of MIT CISR; and Cynthia M. Beath

In “Data Is Everybody’s Business,” the authors offer a clear and engaging way for people across the entire organization to understand data monetization and make it happen. The authors identify three viable ways to convert data into money — improving work with data, wrapping products with data, and selling information offerings — and explain when to pursue each and how to succeed.

Arts, architecture, planning, and design

“The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage, and Death” (Routledge, 2023) Chapter by Laura Anderson Barbata, lecturer in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology

This book provides an examination of death, dying, and human remains in museums and heritage sites around the world. In her chapter, “Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home,” Barbata describes the case of Julia Pastrana (1834-1860), an indigenous Mexican opera singer who suffered from hypertrichosis terminalis and hyperplasia gingival. Due to her appearance, Pastrana was exploited and exhibited for over 150 years, during her lifetime and after her early death in an embalmed state. Barbata sheds light on the ways in which the systems that justified Pastrana’s exploitation continue to operate today.

“Emergency INDEX: An Annual Document of Performance Practice, vol. 10” (Ugly Duckling Press, 2023) Chapter by Gearoid Dolan, staff member in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology

This “bible of performance art activity” documents performance projects from around the world. Dolan’s chapter describes “Protest ReEmbodied,” a performance that took place online during Covid-19 lockdown. The performance was a live version of the ongoing “Protest ReEmbodied” project, an app that individuals can download and run on their computer to be able to perform on camera, inserted into protest footage.

“Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era” (Brill, 2023) Chapter by Caroline Murphy, the Clarence H. Blackall Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture

“Land Air Sea” positions the long Renaissance and 18th century as being vital for understanding how many of the concerns present in contemporary debates on climate change and sustainability originated in earlier centuries. Murphy’s chapter examines how Girolamo di Pace da Prato, a state engineer in the Duchy of Florence, understood and sought to mitigate the problems of alluvial flooding in the mid-sixteenth century, an era of exceptional aquatic and environmental volatility.

Miscellaneous

“Made Here: Recipes and Reflections From NYC’s Asian Communities” (Send Chinatown Love, 2023) Chapter by Robin Zhang, postdoc in mathematics, and Diana Le

In their chapter, “Flushing: The Melting Pot’s Melting Pot,” the authors explore how Flushing, New York — whose Chinatown is the largest and fastest growing in the world — earned the title of the “melting pot’s melting pot” through its cultural history. Readers will walk down its streets past its snack stalls, fabric stores, language schools, hair salons, churches, and shrines, and you will hear English interspersed with Korean, several dialects of Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and hundreds of other fibers that make up Flushing’s complex ethnolinguistic fabric.

[culttvblog]

The Invisible Man: Man of Influence (Seventies TV Season)

The introduction to this series of posts about 1970s TV shows can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729351469162233856/seventies-tv-season-introduction

I'm sad to be blogging about The Invisible Man since David McCallum has died so recently, and also delighted because revisiting the show for this post has significantly improved my opinion of it. I have actually had the box set for some time, and have definitely watched all the way through it before, not been very impressed, and added it to the collection to be revisited at some point because it wasn't utter dross to be thrown out with some violence. I am glad that that point has come because on revisiting it, this show is an absolute joy.

The title gives the premise away, but briefly it is that Daniel Westlin is a scientist who discovers how to make a person invisible and tries it successfully on himself. Most of the rest of the series is him undertaking adventures, in which invisibility would be useful, for the US government, with his wife.

I have identified the mistake I made with this show before and if you have never seen it, I would suggest you skip the pilot (on the box set) and start straight on into the series. The reason is that the pilot sets you up wrong, by dealing with the difficulties of being invisible, which are naturally not negligible, and the moral difficulty that obviously the process would be wanted for military use. In the pilot this rather ruins Westlin's life and he's also stuck with being invisible, with no hope of a cure. In the actual series this heavy stuff is just abandoned, Westlin has somehow forgotten his moral quandary and ignores the problems that being invisible would cause, and the show has a humorous touch which makes it a jolly romp.

Honestly, I wish I'd given this show more attention sooner because it's an absolute delight: the sort of show where you know it's going to resolve alright, but you're not worried about what is happening because you know it isn't real. It's real comfort television. Despite the way it is quite similar to many another detective show of the period, of course it's the invisibility that gives it this unreality. It isn't exactly science fiction, because the fiction of invisibility isn't really the subject, but it's always there. This show isn't in the vein of shows like Sky or The Owl Service which drew on the magical/occult/folk horror interests of the time, but this episode almost pokes fun at those things by representing a medium who is fake but is believed by intelligent, educated people.

For the lover of old TV one of the interesting things, watching it fifty years after it was made, is the obvious glee the team took in the sheer number of special effects, and the way they are all 1970s vintage special effects. If a door is opened by an invisible person in media nowadays it will certainly be computer generated, but in the 1970s we know that door actually opened and was filmed in real time. Full use is made of green screen (although I suspect actually blue screen because that colour is largely missing from the show). It's literally got every trick available at the time.

Westlin's invisibility means that a theme runs through the show about seeing, not seeing, and deception. This is very pronounced in this episode, because Westlin and Mrs Westlin investigate a fake medium. The fake medium makes a politician change his mind about an energy source but this plot is handled with a lightness which doesn't make this episode at all stodgy.

I can't disagree with the obvious criticisms of this show and they're all over the internet, but briefly, the show doesn't deal with the huge contradiction that Westlin has a moral problem with the possible military uses his discovery would be used to, before without explanation becoming an agent for the US government and asset for the company where he discovered it. There is also a repeated criticism that the show, by its nature, becomes rather formulaic. Something happens, Westling uses his invisiblity to investigate, he sets up Mrs Westlin to do something to resolve the plot but she gets into trouble, and Westlin resolves it using invisibility.

Reportedly (and we all know how reliable internet rumours are) one of the reasons for the show's cancellation after one series was that people were incensed by the realisation that notionally when McCallum is invisible, he would be naked. This despite the fact that of course we can't see him! I have even read a couple of more recent online reviews by people who find this realisation an incredible sticking point for this show.

I honestly find this so surprising because my personal reaction was just to think that it wasn't real and of course he wouldn't actually be naked! This is perhaps a perfect example of how the artifical world of television can mess with your head, although I'm sure everyone reading this knows that in reality what the crew would have seen when McCallum undressed was him dressed in a green or blue morph suit to make him go invisible.

This show is one which I really wish I'd paid more attention to sooner, and may well be appearing here again.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog

[thebrokencrescent-blog]

📅 Mar 2022 📰 The Strange Connection Between Mono and M.S.

The virus enters cells at the back of the throat and from there moves into B cells, a type of white blood cell that produces antibodies. In some B cells, the virus replicates, making proteins that the immune system can recognize and subdue. In other cells, though, it remains dormant. “It’s very stealthy,” Cohen says. Ultimately, as those infected B cells circulate throughout the body, they reach the back of the throat again. The virus awakens and starts replicating itself, potentially spreading the pathogen to others, probably for several days each month. “The vast majority of people who are infected are passing it around,” Cohen says. “It’s shed in our saliva the rest of our lives.”

Scientists have long hypothesized that viruses, including Epstein-Barr, are involved in the development of autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. Evidence links it to lupus, and a recent study reported that people with long Covid were more likely than others to have an active Epstein-Barr infection (though it is unclear whether that infection causes symptoms, because the virus can proliferate when the immune system is under stress without creating any health problems). There are documented associations between mono and multiple sclerosis, a disease in which the immune system destroys a protective sheath called myelin that coats nerve fibers, often disabling communication between the nervous system and the rest of the body.

“People have been trying for many, many decades to prove that a virus causes M.S. or rheumatoid arthritis,” says William H. Robinson, the chief of the immunology and rheumatology division at Stanford. “And they have not been able to convincingly demonstrate that it does.”

The very ubiquity of Epstein-Barr has made it especially difficult to isolate as a causal factor. To show that Epstein-Barr causes M.S., or any other condition that takes years to develop, researchers would need to find a group of people who don’t have the virus and follow them over decades to see who becomes infected — and of those, how many go on to develop M.S., compared with how many without Epstein-Barr do. Such a study would need tens of thousands of participants, because only about 10 percent of the adult population has not been infected by Epstein-Barr by their mid-20s, and an even smaller number of people — 1 in 330 in the U.S. — develop M.S., usually between age 20 and 50.

Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and elsewhere, however, devised a novel way to carry out that study, and they published their findings in January in Science. U.S. military recruits, a group of more than 10 million people, are screened for H.I.V. when their service starts and biennially thereafter. Their blood serum samples are then archived in the Department of Defense Serum Repository and can be retested for other pathogens. Between 1993 and 2013, the researchers identified cases of M.S. among active-duty U.S. military personnel. Then they tested their first serum sample; their last sample before M.S. onset; and one in between. They found that of 801 soldiers with M.S., 800 were positive for Epstein-Barr.

They also looked at serum samples from a randomly selected group of those participants’ peers with similar characteristics, such as age, gender, race and branch of service. At the time of the first sample, 35 of the M.S. cases tested negative for the virus and 107 of the controls did. By the last test, all but one of the M.S. cases were positive for the virus, whereas only 57 percent of those who didn’t have M.S. were. “In practical terms, if you’re not infected with E.B.V., your risk of M.S. is virtually zero,” says Alberto Ascherio, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard and a senior author of the Science study. “After infection, your risk jumps by over 30-fold.” The odds of that increase having occurred by chance are less than one in a million.

That was the strongest evidence yet that Epstein-Barr initiates M.S., but it didn’t explain why. Just over a week after the Science paper came out, though, Robinson and colleagues published their own paper in Nature that demonstrated how the virus triggers the disease in some people. Epstein-Barr produces proteins that mimic a protein in the myelin sheath, they found; when the immune system makes antibodies to attack the virus, they also attack the myelin — “the insulation around your neurons,” as Robinson puts it. “Like electrical wires, if the insulation gets stripped off, it short-​circuits,” he says. “That’s what results in M.S.”

This protein mix-up, though, can only explain about a quarter of M.S. cases. And while the Science paper concludes that Epstein-Barr is the “leading cause” of M.S., Cohen says he wants to be careful with the word “cause.” He thinks the study proves that the virus is a necessary precondition for M.S., but the fact that so many people have Epstein-Barr and so few of them get M.S. demonstrates that other factors, very likely including genetic susceptibility, must play a significant role in the development of the disease. Still, similar hard-to-disentangle circumstances describe other diseases for which most people do feel comfortable pointing to a specific culprit. The C.D.C. refers to polio as “a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus,” for instance, but fewer than five in a thousand people who contract the virus develop serious symptoms.

[wow-its-me]

The Midnight Spider pt.3

You thought I was done ranting about my oc? You were wrong!

The third phase of Parker Peters’ story takes place in September, at the start of the school year. She goes to a small collage in NYC and is Majoring in conservation biology.

Her roommate Liz is a very blunt and aloof journalism major. Despite their differences Parker tried her best to befriend her. It doesn’t go too well at first.

Parker also quickly begins a rivalry with a class with Henry, a pretentious know-it-all, who seems to be hiding something…

Of course a new city mean new villains, and the criminals of NYC take notice of The Spider, and what starts as stopping robberies, turns to unraveling a much bigger scheme.

Did I mention she also started as a pizza delivery guy?

(Yeah, like most Spider-Men, she struggles with the whole “spreading yourself too thin” thing)

Trying to balance school, a job, a personal life, and a secret double life, is much harder than she anticipated.

Liz takes notice immediately. How Parker disappears for late hours into the night, how she’s always tired, how she disappears right before the Spider shows up, how she gets awkward when arachnids are even mentioned, vials of an odd serum, the way the window is left open with the screen popped out. What she swears it was a mask being kicked under her roommates bed.

What does she do with this information? Nothing. It’s none of her business. And frankly? She’s too busy with her own stuff to deal with that craziness. So Liz lives on pretending like she has no idea, sometimes doing little things to help Parker out.

The Midnight Spider is starting to connect the dots between recent attacks throughout the city, targeted at Alcemex employees. With odd tech similar to what she’s fought in the past, as well as chemical weapons like she’s never seen before. She comes to the conclusion that there will be an attack that night, at an investors gala at Alcemex. 

Attendees include Liz (Press! She’s an intern at a small newspaper), Henry (brought along by his father Norman), a few of her professors, Alcemex scientists, and the richest of New York elite.

Parker is almost certain that the attacks were caused by her classmate Harry, in an awful attempt to destroy Alcemex’s reputation, and get more investors to his family’s company, Oscorp.

Then their attacked, The Spider fights off the masked villain, and is doing fairly well, until a bomb causes a column to fall to the ground, saving the life of a bystander-

Henry?

Then who’s?

She doesn’t have time to rethink her suspects.

They continue their battle.

Liz helps evacuate the area with the first responders. Henry can’t find his father, he searches outside while Liz goes trough the building looking for him. To her own surprise, she finds him, tied up in a sound proof closet, he rambles on about being framed.

Outside the fight continues, the spider is able to take down the goblins hover-board, causing the villain to crash, slightly injured, and ripping green mask.

Norman tells Liz about how someone’s trying to boost his business, steal his fortune, then destroy his life.

The Spider, the Goblin, and Henry are isolated on a roof top. Finally removing the mask, The Goblin reveals her identity. Messy hair so blonde it’s white falls over her sunken face, Marilyn Osborn, Henry’s mother.

She gives her ‘join the dark side’ talk, targeted at her son.

She explains how her “little stunt” would ruin the Alcemex name, make them seem dangerous, sloppy, whilst also getting rid of it stealing their newest inventions. How she got Norman out of the way, so if things went wrong they could frame him for it. How she is just as intelligent and resourceful as her husband but people constantly forced her to become some quiet trophy wife instead. How she could set herself up to take over Oscorp. How they would live such a happier life together.

Henry sees through her and he works with The Spider to finish the fight and web her up for the cops.

Liz writes about it and gets a higher position at the paper she works for.

Parker calls Stacy and catches her up on all the crazy stuff she’s done- I MEAN WITNESSED

Stacey turns the story into a comic

Marilyn is arrested. But won’t serve what she deserves…. rich people.

Henry and Norman deal with the aftermath of the situation.

And Parker finally thinks her life is going back to normal (her version of normal)

But normal never lasts forever



[urbanicebotanicals]

Best Kratom Products

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In addition, we also send all our Kratom powders and capsules to an independent, third-party lab for testing while adhering to cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices) outlined by the American Kratom Association. While all of these demanding quality control practices may seem exhaustive, we don’t stop at that. We take even more steps to ensure that the Kratom that makes its way to you from our state-of-the-art cGMP-certified facility is as potent, clean as pure as possible.

The Kratom tree grows naturally outside, making it crucial to ensure that its leaves are healthy and clean for consumption in the chosen format- powder or kratom capsules. Our company has invested heavily in a Kratom treatment process, involving careful screening every one of our Kratom products using a multi-tiered method as soon as we acquire them.

Part of this detailed screening process includes a stringent pasteurization step that few customers know much about. Here we discuss the Kratom pasteurization process, the steps we use, and why it matters in the quality control process overall.

What Is Pasteurization? In the year 1860, Louis Pasteur, a French scientist, discovered that he could easily prevent alcoholic beverages such as wine and beer from fermenting abnormally by applying a certain heat level for a specific duration. By following this process, vineyards and breweries could streamline their consumables’ production, and there would be far less wastage of raw material due to spoilage.

It didn’t take long to find that this specific heating process was helpful in the dairy products industry. It was shown that when heat in the 135-150°F range was applied, it was possible to eliminate most of the pathogens. Mycobacterium Tuberculosis was one of the bacteria included in this array of pathogens, and it can potentially cause Tuberculosis in humans. In simple words, pasteurization was nothing less than a revolution in public safety and health. Because of the importance of this development, the process was named after Louis Pasteur, who discovered it, and it is one of the most widely used processes in the food processing industry and others like the Kratom industry.

How Pasteurization Works In pasteurization, the application of heat is directed for a preset period. So what makes this such an effective treatment to reduce the presence of pathogens like bacteria in organic products like milk, wine, beer, and Kratom powder?

Understanding More about Enzymes All bacteria need enzymes for their essential biological functions. These enzymes are the substances that exist within the cells required for a range of simple cellular activities, including metabolism and respiration. Bacteria can use these enzymes optimally in temperatures in the 40-140°F range. To some extent, this explains why frozen foods (32°F range or lower) are effectively not prone to the development of harmful bacteria.

In temperatures higher than 140 °F (the opposite range), the enzymes in the bacteria go through the process of denaturation. Without discussing in detail what this means, the denatured bacteria become dead bacteria almost immediately, and they are unable to function. It is also why cooking food, and boiling water is a way to ‘clean’ it, making it safer for consumption.

Thermal Heat Treatment Vs. UV Light Exposure UV light is used to sterilize surfaces, and it is used for Kratom powder and similar substances. Ultraviolet radiation is highly effective in killing certain types of pathogens and viruses, but it has several limitations.

When UV light hits a surface, it either will reflect or be absorbed by it. If we were to expose a 1kg bag of Kratom to a source of UV light, the radiation would act only on the exterior of the powder and not on any that lies below the surface. To make sure that the UV light sterilizes the Kratom well, it would have to be constantly agitated for hours so that the UV light would act on all of the powder in the bag. This method is just not feasible, and it would be impossible to rely on sterilizing bulk best Kratom in this way.

In comparison, thermal radiation works very differently. The heat penetration is much deeper and more effective than UV light penetration. We can also measure the heat using a thermometer. Contrastingly, it is impossible to know what amount of UV radiation has penetrated a specific amount of powdered Kratom. These are the reasons we prefer using heat to reduce the microbial loads in Kratom rather than with Ultraviolet sterilization.

Other Aspects to Consider It’s a widely accepted fact that extreme heat effectively kills harmful pathogens, and we have determined that already. However, excessive heat can potentially break down certain vital plant alkaloids such as 7-Hydroxymitragynine and Mitragynine that the Kratom plant contains.

These two principle phytochemicals are responsible for Kratom’s effects, and fortunately, both have far higher tolerance levels than bacteria have. It means that using the 4-step pasteurization process in sterilizing Kratom, as outlined above, doesn’t affect the structure and condition of the most critical alkaloids in the product.

Throughout the 4-step pasteurization process, it’s crucial to ensure that the Kratom powder isn’t burned as it would adversely affect Kratom coloration, smell, and taste. It’s why we use precision ovens that we can control down to the required level. While the pasteurization process would not be as effective if the Kratom isn’t sufficiently hot, excessive heat will only compromise and ruin the Kratom.

Commitment to Quality Urban Ice Botanicals follows stringent and comprehensive quality control measures, which we are incredibly proud of. Following these proven and time-tested processes help us ensure that the Kratom capsules and powder we sell are as contaminant-free as possible. The rigorous treatments and battery of tests that we run our Kratom through is our way of ensuring you get the purest and cleanest product you’ll find anywhere.

Quality is something we never compromise on, and this approach has helped us build a solid base of new and returning customers. Our consumers know that they never have to worry about the quality of the Kratom capsules or powders they source from Urban Ice Botanicals.

[bestseotoos]

Screen Resolution Simulator – A Simple Tool To Test Webpage Resolution

On the off chance that you are a web designer, it is fundamental to have a device that can assist you with testing the goal of your pages. A site page screen goal test system is a program expansion that assists you with really taking a look at the goal of your site on various gadgets and goals. By utilizing this instrument, you can recognize design issues and roll out fundamental improvements to guarantee that your site looks great and shows accurately on all gadgets. What's more, this device helps in testing the similarity of website pages with various programs.

Aside from being useful for web engineers, this instrument can likewise be utilized by entrepreneurs to check their site's goal and perceive how it looks on changed gadgets. Also, it tends to be an extraordinary method for really looking at the design of your site prior to rolling out any improvements.

To begin with utilizing the website page screen goal test system, read this aide on the most proficient method to utilize it.

Screen Goal Test system

The page screen goal test system is an instrument that permits you to test the screen goal of your site on various gadgets. By utilizing the test system, you can check how your site looks on changed gadgets and ensure it's advanced for every one. This will assist you with tracking down the ideal screen goal for your site and guarantee it is visible across countless gadgets.

Utilizing the test system, you can likewise investigate any issues with your site's screen goal. By testing various goals, you can recognize which one turns out best for your site and enhance it as needs be. You can utilize the page screen goal test system to see whether your site is stacking gradually on various gadgets and check whether there are any issues with its exhibition. By utilizing this instrument, you can improve your site and make it work proficiently across a large number of gadgets.

What is a page screen goal test system?

A site page screen goal test system is a device used to test the screen goal of a site. This instrument can be utilized to check in the event that a site is showing accurately on various gadgets, like PCs, PCs, and cell phones. A page screen goal test system can likewise be utilized to streamline a site for better survey on various gadgets. By utilizing a site page screen goal test system, web engineers can guarantee that their sites show appropriately on different gadgets without requiring any extra assets.

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How to utilize website page screen goal test system?

Open the site page screen goal test system and enter the site's URL.

The site page will stack in fullscreen and you can really look at the page's goal by tapping on the "Screen Goal" button. This will show an instrument that permits you to enter your site's screen goal. You can utilize this instrument to test different screen goals to guarantee that your site looks ideal on every gadget. By testing different screen goals, you can guarantee that your site is enhanced for a wide range of presentations, whether it be a work station, tablet, or cell phone. This instrument permits you to effortlessly test different screen goals and find one that gives the best survey insight to your site. By utilizing the site page screen goal test system, you can guarantee that your site looks perfect on each gadget no matter what its size or screen goal.

As often as possible Got clarification on some pressing issues

What is the best screen goal test system?

A site page screen goal test system can be useful for testing screen goal. There are a wide range of screen goal test systems accessible on the web, so picking the right one for your needs is significant. The best screen goal test system will permit you to test various goals and gadget types, so you can guarantee that the goal of your site will look great on all gadgets.

What is the Page Screen Goal Test system Instrument?

The Page Screen Goal Test system is a device for testing the screen goal of website pages. A free device can be utilized to test the screen goal of sites you are utilizing. The apparatus is likewise useful in distinguishing site similarity issues and tracking down arrangements.

How would I change my screen goal?

For a fast and simple method for testing your screen goal, you can utilize the site page screen goal test system found at http://www.webpagescreensimulator.com. By contributing in a goal and screen type, you will actually want to see whether your screen goal is viable with that gadget or not. Furthermore, you can likewise utilize this site to test various goals and screen types.

How would I find the goal of a Website page?

To find the goal of a Site page, you can utilize the website page screen goal test system.

The website page screen goal test system is a free internet based device that can be utilized to test the goal of a Website page.

The site page screen goal test system can be utilized to test the goal of any Page on a PC.

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End

At long last, site page screen goal test system is an instrument that can assist you with effectively testing the screen goal of your site and perceive how it charges against different sites. Furthermore, it's an extraordinary instrument to utilize while improving page plan and designs to look great on changed gadgets. With this device, you can rapidly think about site page goal and illustrations! Reach out to us in the event that you'd like us to make a site page screen goal test system for your site.

[tastydregs]

Mind-Altering Parasite Could Be Making Wolves Bolder

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)

The mind-altering effects of a well-known parasite may extend to more species than we thought. In new research this month, Yellowstone scientists are making the case that Toxoplasma gondii infection can influence the behavior of gray wolves in the area. It appears to increase their odds of risk-taking behaviors, such as leaving their packs or becoming pack leaders.

Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled protozoan parasite. To complete its complex life cycle and reproduce, it has to eventually infect members of the cat family. In order to accomplish this, T. gondii is thought to shift the behavior of infected rodents—a common intermediate host. T. gondii-infected rodents become less wary of cat urine and less fearful of predators in general, which then makes them more susceptible to getting eaten by a cat.

Though T. gondii would probably prefer to end up inside rodents or birds that cats like to munch on, their hardy cysts regularly infect all sorts of warm-blooded species. These infections seem to only rarely cause acute illness, but the cysts themselves often survive in the body for a lifetime. And over the years, some studies have shown, this infection might have subtle behavioral or neurological effects in non-rodent animals. Most of this research has looked at humans, with studies finding that infected humans might have a higher risk of schizophrenia, for instance. But wildlife researchers at Yellowstone National Park wanted to know what factors could affect the prevalence of T. gondii infection in their wolves, and whether this infection can have far-reaching consequences for them as well.

The team analyzed over 25 years of data on the park’s gray wolf populations, which included blood tests that could screen for antibodies to T. gondii. They also looked at data on the park’s cougars, since they suspected that wolves living closer to these cats would have a higher risk of infection.

As expected, cougars were regularly exposed to T. gondii (about 50% of the sample tested positive). And when wolves lived in areas that overlapped cougar populations, they more often had T. gondii antibodies—likely obtained through direct contact with cat droppings or cysts in the environment, the researchers say. These infected wolves were then more likely to display risky behaviors than non-infected wolves, such as dispersing (leaving their pack and traveling far elsewhere) or becoming the breeding leaders within their pack. Interestingly enough, this influence may then create a sort of feedback loop, the researchers speculate, since bolder infected wolves could be more likely to lead their packs into cougar territory, allowing the parasites to infect more wolves.

“This study is a rare demonstration of a parasite infection influencing behavior in a wild mammal population,” the authors wrote in their paper, published this month in Communications Biology. “These two life history behaviors represent some of the most important decisions a wolf can make in its lifetime and may have dramatic impacts on gray wolf fitness, distribution, and vital rates.”

The findings, intriguing as they are, should ideally be confirmed by other studies before they’re assumed to be true (even in humans, there is an ongoing debate over how much T. gondii infection really affects us). And it’s not clear exactly how T. gondii could be affecting wolf behavior, though the authors hypothesize that the infection might raise testosterone levels. But this is only the latest piece of research to suggest that T. gondii isn’t just capable of playing puppet master with rodents. A study last year, the authors note, found that infected hyenas were bolder and more likely to be eaten by lions than non-infected hyenas. So, if nothing else, more research is needed to understand and untangle the many ways that T. gondii and similar organisms may be influencing the world around them.

“Incorporating the implications of parasite infections into future wildlife research is vital to understanding the impacts of parasites on individuals, groups, populations, and ecosystem processes,” the authors wrote.