#excelling in math

[renstrapp]

I love lesbians. I love lesbians who have prescriptions for hormones (any kind). I love lesbians who use pronouns (any kind). I love people of lesbian-adjacent genders and sexualities (any kind). I love lesbians who are into kink and BDSM and leather. I tap my "this is a lesbian pervert blog" sign. Love u, cherish u, get freaky with it

[delta-lethonomia]

There's a reddit thread on the BG3 sub where the user u/InklingRain posted a spreadsheet they made with all the companion approvals. Super useful in general both for playing the game and for fic, so I thought I'd post it on tumblr and play around a little!

There's a top row with the average approval by companion, but I didn't find that very useful, so I changed it to the count of approvals (i.e. count of approvals & disapproval total, how often a companion had a reaction to something). We all know Astarion gives a lot of disapprovals here and there, but they're only -1 at a time, so no big deal, right?

No. Minsc has the least at only 45 reactions, Halsin at 95, Minthara at 145, and of the main companions, Gale is pretty average at 198, Lae'zel at 224, and Shadowheart, rather opinionated at 258...

but that's nothing compared to Astarion's 406. That's almost 150 more than the next person!!! That's more than Minthara and Shadowheart combined! Babygirl really woke up one day and decided to get in a snit over everything that happens 😂

(Longer post about count of positive and negative opinions, sum of approvals and disapprovals, and some major outliers below. Picture with values at the very end.)

But that's a bit disingenuous. If we look at the ratio of positive to negative opinions (not taking value into account), Astarion's pretty average at 30% (negative count over sum count, so let's call that negativity). This is similar to Gale (31%), Karlach (30%), and Lae'zel (32%). In theory, getting Astarion's approval or disapproval is just as easy as any of theirs, with a 20% bias towards positive approvals. Later companions are weighted heavily towards the lower end of the spectrum, with Jaheira at 13% negativity and Minsc at 9%. As you only get them very late, it's pretty clear that the game gives you a lot of opportunities to get their approvals and thus open up more of their quests and dialogue.

However. We have an outlier. Wyll Ravenguard, clocking in at an indecent 38% negativity! Which really just goes to show, while Astarion is the most opinionated, Wyll has the most disapprovals, making him the judgiest companion of all 🤣

However, this really wouldn't be a good post if we didn't look at the value of approvals. Karlach, for instance, has the strongest disapproval value of -100 (given if you sleep with her and then call it a mistake). Ouch. This is clearly at outlier and doesn't say much about Karlach's changeability of opinion in general. If we look at the sum of positive and negative opinions, this is a very heavy swing, making up 100 points of her total 191 disapproval points possible to her 281 approvals total. Another outlier is Minsc, who currently possesses a 43% disapproval percentage (a heavy -50 disapproval given if you sacrifice him to Sarevok. Jaheira, by contrast, apparently doesn't give a damn, or her value might simply not be included in the dateset.)

Removing outliers is really a matter of opinion here, so I'll only remove the most extreme swings, such as the above mentioned disapprovals.

The otherwise strongest swings are Astarion (-15 for telling him it was a mistake preventing him from drinking Araj's blood, or saying you only wanted to sleep with him, not deal with his trauma) and Wyll (+20 for siding with Karlach during his confrontation with her, which really shows he didn't really want to kill her and is very grateful you stopped him). Halsin gives +40 for reuniting Oliver with Thaniel, which...lifting the shadow curse is sort of his life's mission, and a bit of a unique case, so while it makes sense, I think it's such a unique event that can't be topped by anything else and will remove it. Jaheira give +20 for extending the Emperor's protection to Minsc, and, for funsies, Minthara's heaviest disapproval is -5 for donating to Lolth at the Stormshore Tabernacle. (lol)

I only chose to remove the aforementioned Karlach, Minsc, and Halsin values, as they're all very large swings and rather character-defining or personal to the individuals mentioned, so I don't think it says much about them in a more general day-to-day sense.

Now, using the sums of our negative and positive values, Gale is our most Negative Nancy, clocking in at 37%, which goes to show that while he's pretty average for the amount of things he cares about, when he disapproves, it's a strong one. Next up is Astarion at 35%, and Wyll at 34%. Lowest are Jaheira and Minsc at 7% and 4% respectively, which makes an intuitive sort of sense: Jaheira is old and just over being upset by the players poor choices, and Minsc is an insanely positive person overall. The next most positive companion is Halsin at 13%, which also matches with his vibe pretty well, followed by Minthara at 17%, Karlach at 24%, Lae'zel at 26%, and Shadowheart at 28%.

Tl;dr: Astarion has many, many opinions, but Wyll is the most judgemental (most disapprovals compared to approvals possible). However, when it comes to the strength of those disapprovals, Gale reigns supreme, followed by Astarion.

If don't break Karlach's heart, help Halsin achieve his life's ambition, or sacrifice Minsc, then they're pretty positive overall. Later companions are heavily weighted to approve of your actions, and Minthara is comparatively judgemental, but overall far more easy to gain approval than disapproval from.

If you take the average of all these values and include the later companions to look at as a personality "baseline" of how judgy and how strong those disapprovals may be, then...the Act 1 companions are all dramatic af, which really should come to no ones' surprise, while Karlach is the most willing to give the benefit of the doubt imo.

[vasira96]

the more time passes the more upset i am at the culmination of seasons 1 and 2 of arcane, like asdfghjkl what was even the point of any of the first season if that is how it all adds up????

[rebouks]

Previous // Next

Byrd: My skin’s falling off. Oscar: DON’T SCRUB IT! [scrubbing] Oscar: BYRD. Byrd: I’m not! Oscar: I can literally see you. Byrd: Daaaaaaad, I’m ten and a third! I can take a bath by myself. Oscar: YOU’LL MAKE IT SORE IF YOU PICK IT. Byrd: I won’T!! Byrd: [whispers] We’re gonna pick it alllll off, Bugface. Bugface: [shrieks] Oh, no! You’ll-… [splashing – exaggerated drowning noises]

[doiefy]

ateez discography stats?? (preview lmfao)

(freak in the spreadsheets that's what)

work has been chill lately so I've taken to developing an excessively large and detailed spreadsheet that analyzes ateez's discography and line distribution from debut until present... will be posting my full summary soon because as a STEM and spreadsheet nerd I think this is super fun and interesting LOL (if you hate math get off my page (just kidding pls stay))

yes I went through ateez's entire fucking discography to record their total line time for this, shout out to the four line distribution channels I ripped shit from (HEXA6ON, random_k, k_line distribution and others doing the most for this fandom)

my favourite finding so far:

this is a trend most kpop fans know about but I'm showing graphically here. we see a lot of groups start out with line distributions that rely on one or two vocal powerhouses to carry the rest of the group (debate all you fucking want about this, I'm not getting involved in that shit I'm just saying it as it is); then the distribution becomes more "fair" as time goes on and members all get more experience.

in the graph above, there's a lot of variance in 2018, but all the lines have converged recently, indicating a more equal line distribution. the distribution was most equal in 2023 and we've diverged a little bit since then, but 2024 isn't over yet!

some other nerd shit:

hongjoong starts the most songs out of all the members, with 17 songs in which he sang the first line. he's closely followed by yunho, seonghwa, and then san.

yeosang's share of lines has increased by a net 76% since debut, while jongho's has decreased by a net 77%.

13.7% of ateez's total songs are remixes and 12.3% are a Japanese/Korean/English version of an existing song.

on average, ateez songs run for 3 minutes and 12 seconds

whenever a future song is teased in a previous song, we typically wait 3 months for the full song to be released... with the exception of "Sector 1," which was teased in "Outro: Long Journey" back in January of 2020, and wasn't released in full until almost 3 years later.

and a peak at the spreadsheet madness behind all this:

will be posting the rest soon, stay tuned ✌🏻

[johnnylandslide]

"You have the shape the spell in this precise pattern, and hold it steady. If you just try to force your way through it, you'll shatter it and waste aether. Arcanima is all about logic and efficiency, rather than raw destructive power!"

"I'm trying, it's just so different from thaumaturgy... I can't believe so many people say that this is easier than black magic!"

[o2studies]

|| ༻`` 🦎 Monday — 29 Jul 24

I moved house at the start of this month so I've been very busy then, I went to meet some family which was lovely and celebrated a friend's birthday (it was such an amazing day, I'm so lucky to have the friends I have).

But in the past 3 weeks my mental health has been really low, I've very quickly fallen into very 'depressive' habits again that I'm still trying to get out of now — mainly sleeping in for hours and wasting away on social media for the whole day (my average screen time has been 6hrs), isolating ...

This week tho (from the 22nd) I've been at a summer school at the uni I want to attend and the structure has been great for me. My subjects there were maths, physics and chemsitry so every day we had different talks on those subjects, experiments (I made and tested asprin for the chemsitry one!), met some of the professors and students there and potential employers. I had a really great time. I talked to a few people but didn't stick with anyone for the week, the lunches were really nice, and the student assistants were so lovely. I was the only one that wanted to do straight chemsitry from this pathway and I made friends with one of the assistants becase of it (plus he was Polish too!). Luckily my friend who was doing psychology stayed in the same floor as me in the accommodation buildings so we slept over in each other's rooms each night. It was very fun. On the last day (apart from tripping and getting a massive bruise on my knee 😅) my group had to write 3 essays and I fully finished them last night. I really enjoyed the writing process. I think I definitely want to pursue research in the future.

Photo dump: // 🍊

[sportsandlaughs]

[powerup-the-revolution]

lady at the autism assessment test: can you tell me what the kangaroo's pouch is for?

me, tumblr brained: kangaroo pouch is to put baby in it. put baby in pouch very safe

[sisididis]

The parallels between Anne Sallow - Ariana Dumbledore, Sebastian Sallow - Albus Dumbledore and Solomon Sallow - Aberforth Dumbledore 

I’ll preface this deep dive into the Sallow family’s tragic fate by asking if anyone else found it oddly…familiar? I’ll admit that re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows right before becoming invested in Hogwarts Legacy made uncovering the “strange likenesses” between the Sallow family and the Dumbledore family considerably easier. 

The fate of the Sallows is reminiscent of the Dumbledores’ in more ways than I can articulate — from the untimely deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Sallow, and Percival and Kendra Dumbledore, to the tensions between the new and reluctant patres familias, Solomon and Albus, and their resentful charges, Sebastian and Aberforth, and the tragic killing of their family members. 

Let’s start with the history of the families, whose first common element is their short-lived wholeness. Albus, Aberforth and Ariana became orphaned in the aftermath of two tragic events — first, their father’s imprisonment and later death in Azkaban, due to his assault on the Muggles who had tortured his daughter, and, second, the killing of their mother during one of Ariana’s fits of uncontrollable magic. 

According to Ominis, Mr. and Mrs. Sallow too had untimely deaths, caused by an undetectable toxin emitted by their faulty cellar lamp. At that time, Sebastian and Anne “had no magic yet." We suspect that means the children were younger than 11 years old, the age when signs of magical ability should already manifest. 

Another common element is the reluctant take-over of the two new patres familias, Albus and Uncle Solomon, after the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Dumbledore, and Mr. and Mrs. Sallow. Fans of the books will remember the reason why Albus was reluctant to assume his new role in the first place — the long-awaited Grand Tour. Albus and his close friend, Elphias Doge, were planning on going on a Grand Tour after their graduation, but the sudden death of his mother right before he was meant to leave forced Albus to stay behind and provide for his siblings. In Chapter 35, King’s Cross, Albus claims that he loved his family, but upon his return to Godric’s Hollow, he felt “trapped and wasted.” 

Aberforth recalled that moment, too:

“So that put paid to Albus's trip round the world with little Doge. The pair of 'em came home for my mother's funeral and then Doge went off on his own, and Albus settled down as head of the family. Ha!” (P. 435, Chapter 28, The Missing Mirror, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

We are not sure where Uncle Solomon’s reluctance to care for his nephew and niece comes from, aside from the obvious disruption of his quiet retirement, but while his anger at this unexpected responsibility is justified and should be directed towards his late brother, it backfires on Sebastian instead:

“I know what's best for Anne – and Sebastian. They are my stubborn brother's children. Especially Sebastian.”

Sebastian himself comments that his uncle often compares him to his father:

“After Anne was hurt, he only grew worse. It's as though he blames me somehow. Always calling me 'my father's son.' As if that's an insult.”

Here’s where the interesting switch happens. The new guardians’ resentment at these unexpected burdens does not go unnoticed. Both Aberforth and Sebastian saw the new patres familias’ reluctance to assume their new role and thought that they would have been a better fit for it. Much like Aberforth and Ariana, Sebastian and Anne were infinitely closer to each other than to the rest of their family:

“Anne won’t survive this. She’s withering away - inside and out. Solomon’s never been there for us. Not really. He gave up on Anne. I’ll never give up on her."

Aberforth echoed this sentiment: 

"He didn't want to be bothered with her. She liked me best. I could get her to eat when she wouldn't do it for my mother, I could calm her down, when she was in one of her rages, and when she was quiet, she used to help me feed the goats.” (P. 434, Chapter 28, The Missing Mirror, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) "I'd have looked after her, I told him so, I didn't care about school, I'd have stayed home and done it." (P. 435, Chapter 28, The Missing Mirror, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

The way I see it, both Albus / Sebastian and Aberforth / Solomon thought that they had Ariana’s / Anne’s best interest at heart. While Solomon thought that making Anne “comfortable” was the best path of action, Sebastian saw this as resigning themselves to Anne’s sure death. “There is no cure! When will you accept that?” asks Uncle Solomon, to which Sebastian replies adamantly, “Never! I can never accept it.” The same stubborn conviction is exhibited by Aberforth after he uncovers Albus and Gellert’s plans. 

"I told him, you'd better give it up now. You can't move her, she's in no fit state, you can't take her with you, wherever it is you're planning to go, when you're making your clever speeches, trying to whip yourselves up a following. He didn't like that.” (P. 435, Chapter 28, The Missing Mirror, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) “You may mean well, but I know what's best for Anne – and Sebastian. They are my stubborn brother's children. Especially Sebastian.”

The pairs’ irreconcilable differences did not stop there. In Sebastian’s efforts to heal Anne and Albus’ efforts to create a better world for wizard kind, the pair aspired to leave no depth of magic unplumbed, dark or otherwise, an issue which often sparked conflict with their family. Aberforth did not agree with teenage Albus’ plans “for the greater good”, because he did not prioritize their sister’s safety.

Sebastian’s own stance on using Dark magic to save his sister is in perfect antithesis with his uncle’s aversion to the Dark Arts. Unfortunately, in both cases, the tensions between the brothers and nephew and uncle culminated in the death of their family:

“And then . . . you know what happened. Reality returned in the form of my rough, unlettered, and infinitely more admirable brother. I did not want to hear the truths he shouted at me. I did not want to hear that I could not set forth and seek Hallows with a fragile and unstable sister in tow. (…) The argument became a fight. Grindelwald lost control. That which I had always sensed in him, though I pretended not to, now sprang into terrible being. And Ariana . . . after all my mother’s care and caution . . . lay dead upon the floor.” (P. 549, Chapter 35, King’s Cross, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) 

Sounds awfully familiar to the scene in the catacomb, doesn’t it? Not only did uncle and nephew turn their wands against each other, but Anne had to bury their uncle alone, much like Albus had to bury Ariana alone after Gellert fled Godric’s Hollow. After Solomon and Ariana’s deaths, all that the Dumbledore and Sallow siblings had were each other. Unfortunately, the death of their family did not inspire a renewed sense of closeness. On the contrary, Solomon and Ariana’s deaths caused an irreparable rift between the siblings. 

“To add to his misery, the loss of Ariana had led, not to a renewed closeness between Albus and Aberforth, but to an estrangement.” (P. 20, Chapter 2, In Memorandum, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

The breakdown of the Sallow twins’ relationship is reflected in Anne’s letter to Sebastian:

“Sebastian,  Too much has happened. I needed to get away from here for a while. I miss Uncle Solomon. I need time. I will always love you, but I don't know if I can ever forgive you.  Anne”

What do you think?

[lilolilyr]

What I've been reading May 2025

January • February • March • April • 2024

I read 'only' 2.4mil words in fic this month, lowest that's been in ages, even though I had a lot of free time! I think I read less because I actually wrote a lot these past weeks for a prompt event!

In addition to fic I also read seven Yoko Tsuno comics, and I continued reading the bird non-fiction by Jennifer Ackerman, I'm now on page 228 of The Bird Way and have read about bird sounds, their 'work', their use of tools (one page precisely describes what's happening in this video!) and how they can be playful :)

Coming to the fic recs of the month (over 80! wow, I've read a lot of good stuff this month!), I've actually mostly got femslash on there this month! Well, the ship I've got the most for is Stucky because basically all of the slash I read was for that ship with just a handful of 00q, Geraskier, and one Poirot, while for femslash it's pretty evenly split up into Bering and Wells and Berena, and I've also read some Avorah and Khany/Yoko. The links are to the fic recs on Ao3, do check them out :)

My absolute fav fics of the month are:

Stucky:

My favs definitely have a theme, lots of fics about Bucky and/or Steve getting out of the fighting business and settling down somewhere :)

From What Seemed Like A Ruin by @artgroves and @rohkeutta, 50k T-E, Bucky centric

an irrevocable condition by @wrenaspun, Bucky centric with lovely OCs, 14k T

The Things That Unlocked Him by @sadbi-hours and @norelationtoatticus 143k E, modern!Steve canon!Bucky BDSM and plot

Where the Need is Greatest by @princessniitza, Steve joins Doctors Without Borders instead of SHIELD, Bucky finds him anyway. 20k T

oh my love, my love, Steve and Bucky from 1939 to 2015 as seen through Steve's quite poetic journal entries, I made a podfic of this! 20min/3k words, T

And my absolute fav 360k monster that I'm still slowly working my way through, Operation: Gros Michel by @norelationtoatticus, "In which Steve learns to surf, Bucky becomes a gardener, and they both begin to heal.", ft. current politics and social justice, dealing with trauma, wonderful OCs, and a move to Florida, rated E.

Berena:

Mistletoe, a 24k G series which @squishmittenficfan wrote for me for a gift exchange, loved the re-read! Elinor lives and meets Charlotte at university, cue Family holiday fluff.

The Move by @sassyrequin, "Serena moves to Nairobi to be with the one great love affair of her life". 40k M

'Appy' Christmas by robliz, Serena vs. the world of dating apps, 13k T

Warehouse 13:

Appeal by @purlturtle, Helena is an opera singer and Myka spontaneously ends up on stage with her, inspired by a fic idea I had :) 10k T

Christmas in Clement by @birdofdawning, here they are "the jilted other people in a Christmas romcom", 9k rated G

Also by @purlturtle, Sometimes dæmons change, a really emotional little daemons!AU/canon-divergence, 6k words, rated G

Warehouse 13 reimagined by @sparklyjacquelee, an all female Warehouse world! 3k + series note, G

My own fake married fic, I had so much fun with this! Artifact hunt shenanigans, 10k words, rated T

Misc:

Right here on tumblr, this fun little LotR bit about Eowyn and Glorfindel by @tanoraqui (900 words, G)

My own first Mirandy fic The Mystery Stranger, re-read it for podfic purposes and honestly, slay! I love coming across old fic of mine that I still enjoy :) 6k words, T

And a gen fic I beta read despite knowing absolutely nothing about the fandom (Fallout) bc I know the author from a Star Wars discord: She Had Herself by LambdaGnome, there are currently 4k posted but the entire 30k fic is finished and will presumably update regularly now, and it's such an interesting story, I can only recommend you check it out, whether you know the fandom or not!

Shoutout also/especially to @squishmittenficfan (squishmitten on Ao3) @purlturtle (NuMo on Ao3), @odsbodkins (Ao3), sevtacular, @princessniitza (niitza on Ao3), @wrenaspun (spinawren on Ao3) @enemyofrome (Ao3) @sparklyjacquelee (jacquelee on Ao3), @sassyrequin (requin on Ao3), @amnesiaguy (ftmsteverogers on Ao3), the most fics I read this month were from you guys, so thank you for giving me so much great reading material :D

Tagging everyone tagged above and everyone else who sees this to make your own rec list on tumblr and/or update your Ao3 bookmarks with some fic recs :)

[zookacestance]

all images from Pinterest and Tumblr

Pink Studyspo!! Go Study📖

[subbyp]

we need more post-canon/40-yr-old content with Zoro as the bartender of Sanji’s restaurant in the all blue and you can’t convince me otherwise

[violetfractal]

Violet is playing Microsoft Excel...

You're listening to an ms excel fractal played one column at a time! Imagine the spreadsheet is sheet music with higher pitches toward the bottom. (The pitch for each row is in column C.)

I made this sound in miscrosoft excel! I made it in desmos. I used excel to generate excel formulas that generate desmos formulas that play music.

I was inspired by this arcade machine i saw.

wanna see some formula gore?

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/ecyjwrrg63

the desmos code is generated by excel:

A261="\operatorname{tone}("&C2&",L_{"&(ROW()-259)&"}[\operatorname{mod}(o,l_{"&(ROW()-259)&"})])"

B261="l_{"&(ROW()-259)&"}=\operatorname{length}(L_{"&(ROW()-259)&"})"

C261="L_{"&(ROW()-259)&"}=["&D261&"0]"

D261=CONCATENATE ???

you can't ask excel 2010 for concatenate(a1:a3). it will only take concatenate(a1,a2,a3). So I had to generate a list of cells to concatenate.

??? was generated recursively by:

E260=ADDRESS(ROW()+1,COLUMN(),4,1) F260=E260&","&ADDRESS(ROW()+1,COLUMN(),4,1)

[twilightkitkat]

Did the ENTIRE FIRST PART OF THE PROBLEM the hard way by just substituting outright and compounding the chain and product rule. I got the actual numeric answer right only for it to go back and ask me to format it differently?

I got it right once I used their method WHICH GIVES YOU THE SAME ANSWER but isn't practical at all since I had to substitute the parametric functions in anyway? I should just write these questions at this point bro I'm actually going crazy.