#foundational knowledge

[techminsolutions]

Unleashing Excellence: Hidden Potential Through CSC Olympiad 5.0: An In-Depth Guide

Introduction to CSC Olympiad CSC Academy, an esteemed educational organization, is renowned for its commitment to fostering academic competition and nurturing a competitive spirit among school children. By promoting education, digital literacy, and financial literacy, CSC Academy aims to prepare students for the rigorous demands of today’s highly competitive world. This comprehensive guide delves…

[elucubrare]

i firmly hold that it's my duty as a reader to believe it when an author tells me at the beginning of the series that the dragons are gone forever and never coming back. but god it's a struggle sometimes.

[rottingraisins]

vanguard blues

[reality-detective]

Part 2

Clintons’ Secret Pedophile and Cannibal Club in Haiti Exposed By Locals.

The Clintons have long considered Haiti to be their personal playground where they can indulge in their wildest fantasies with close friends from the global elite, according to Haitians who allege the Democrat power couple are involved in a Satanic cannibal club in which children are ritually abused and their flesh eaten.

According to multiple eyewitnesses in Haiti, the Satanic club has become the new Bohemian Grove for the jetsetting globalist elite, with private jets regularly landing in Port-au-Prince before the passengers are whisked away to their secret hideout in the jungle where unspeakable horrors involving children have been documented by local investigators.

The locals call this place “Clinton’s den” and generations of local children have been taught to be terrified of Bill and Hillary who are viewed as evil incarnate due to the depraved nature of the company they keep, as violent cannibals and pedophiles stalk the island with impunity. 🤔

[wackywatchdotcom]

what intrigues me abt caines dynamic w the rest of the cast is the way that none of them seem to understand why he is the way he is. like not in the comedic sense but how they dont seem to have a clear concept of his motivations or anything of that sort

we havent seen toooo much of it. but we have seen how pomni, zooble, jax, ragatha, and gangle view him and its so fascinating

pomni is like. she doesnt understand what hes doing but seems to view his actions as malicious in some way. i dont think she sees him as a 'mean' person but with how she says she thinks he wants her to suffer its very illuminating of how she sees him as someone who wants all of them to hurt. i dont think she knows why he would, but its the only conclusion shes got. it also speaks to her distrusting nature that upon being hurt by him her first thought is that its an intentional decision to harm her, and unfortunately for caine she hasnt actually been given much of a reason to think he feels otherwise. i dont know how she thinks caine feels about them but its clear to me how she views his goals and hobbies for lack of a better term

zooble doesnt trust him. they find him to be annoying but more significant is that they KNOW he likes them all. it adds an interesting tone to how they see him, that they specifically say that whats 'holding caine back' is that he 'likes [them]', which on one hand is them interpretting caines actions as being done from a place of liking the players, and that his actions are coming from a place of NOT hurting them, because he likes them (its interesting to note that they have participated in less adventures, so its unclear how much they know abt caines adventures firsthand). but on the other hand is implying that they think caines holding himself back at all. that there IS a desire or a capability to be cruel that theyre wary of. theyve also seen caine at his most vulnerable (in the show itself at least) and their comment, 'whose therapy session is this again?' implies theyre at least aware that this is caine having his own problems, though i dont think theyre comfortable safety-wise with how these problems affect them and the others. them asking caine 'why did you think i would like that?' speaks to the idea that they do think hes genuinely trying to appeal to the players, but they seem to find his lack of understanding of the players frustrating and unsafe for all of them

jax i think is pretty vague since most of his lines to caine are brief, and the most telling line he has abt caine is the only one we have. but he seems neutral on caine as a whole. caine is just a guy who makes things for them. he tries to entertain them and thats all jax really seems to be concerned with- whether his 'its not in his nature' line is reflective of him genuinely Believing that is smth i see debated often but i think no matter what, it conveys that jax Generally sees caine as someone who isnt malicious. hes not trying to hurt them, and whether or not he thinks caine is capable of hurting them is whats more vague. either way, jax doesnt seem to like or dislike caine

ragatha has very mimimal interactions with caine and not many lines about him, but i think her line in the pilot, 'thats just one of caines little adventures. theyre just something fun to do to, yknow, prevent us from going insane,' is extremely telling of how she sees caine. of all of them, she seems to have the most positive view of caine, since she interprets his actions as an active attempt to stave off abstraction in the players. whether or not she thinks caine is acting from a place of wanting to stop disruptions or if he wants to ensure the players arent doing as unwell as they could IS up for debate though. the way she talks about him in the pilot in general reads like she has some level of trust in him, but it seems like a surface level trust in him at the worst- she knows hes not malicious and knows he wants to help. she knows he can help her when shes jumbled. but its not clear if she Likes him. she seems to enjoy the adventures though (which, ill keep it brief so i dont derail this, but it honestly reads like a deliberate parallel writing-wise that the two of them both seem fond of distractions as an acceptable solution to a bad situation- if her assessment of Why he makes the adventures is anything to go by)

gangle is harder to read on this front, as she has way less lines about him, though she does have multiple notable interactions with him in ep 4, in the way of her seeming genuinely enthusiastic about his adventure (it doesnt seem completely directed at him, but she seems genuinely a bit happy about his praise of her leadership skills). when she calls him it doesnt convey TOO much i dont think but the way she talks to him and requests he make a punishment could imply she doesnt think hed normally make one, but also that hes not opposed to it, which is confusing in what it means about how she sees him but it feels important. her interaction with him at the end of the episode also doesnt convey much in this way (i feel like caine is not the main focus of most of that scene- which works for the scene and is good writing wise bc the scenes important for gangles writing of her own problems, but in terms of breaking down this idea it means im not sure this scene conveys much about how she sees him)

and then. i didnt mention kinger at the beginning specifically bc i dont think we have... almost any indicators of how he sees caine. he tells caine abt kaufmo in ep 1, suggests caine could find pomni in ep 2, doesnt address the thing pomni says abt caine in ep 3, and even his suggestion in ep 4 to sit out the adventure doesnt convey almost anything. the only throughline is that kinger sees caine as someone who can help them if they ask, but it doesnt convey any thoughts on what he thinks caines motivations are or his thoughts on caines actions. which frankly reads like a deliberate choice when kinger should be the one with the most history with caine

this post is long but i just am bery intrigued by this. i thinka ll the character dynamics are so deeply fascinating but with caine being the closest the show has to an antagonist (which of course is a loaded statement but i mean it in the writing sense and not in the 'antagonist is evil' way) it means that the way the characters see him holds a lot of weight. it conveys a lot abt them all with how they interpret the person that has (at least on the surface) the most control over the situation

[hisclockworkservants]

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

CASE COLOURLESS GREEN by qntm: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/case-colourless-green

SCP-2747 - As below, so above by minmin: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2747

[ssaalexblake]

The thing about complaining about 13's outfit in legend of the sea devils from a watsonian perspective is that this doctor has not Once bothered to dress appropriately for any of her adventures in other times.

I mean, sure, she put on a tux to go to a party in an era where a tux isn't weird on a woman But she still wore culottes and work boots to a formal wear party. She didn't bother to even change in Nikola Tesla's night of terror and while I'm not an expert in American fashion history I'm fairly certain her outfit included actual crimes. She didn't change in the witchfinders. Or Rosa. All she did in The Haunting of Villa Diodati was throw on a floral waistcoat with her normal outfit.

Doyleism is a whole other conversation to be having but 13's outfit, while 99% likely to be wildly inaccurate (and anachronistic) and not in keeping with the fashion of their era Or the region, is very much in character for Her.

If 13 walked out of that TARDIS dressed in a perfectly on point outfit for the times, my immediate reaction would have been to ask what on earth was wrong with here and to try and figure out the catch.

But yes. Doyleism is its own conversation here, but from a watsonian perspective, 13 being in a half assed outfit? Yeah that checks out.

[deepspaceboytoy]

Again not me saying any native person being put off communist thought is wrong, it’s on the onus of the communists to build a program that people want to join, not the other way around. It’s a failing of the movement, not natives. I’m certainly not about to demand anyone subscribe to my own political system just because I believe in it.

[mel-hath-no-fury]

Hey Dragon Age friends, I got some freaky trivia for you.

Anyone remember the Disney Channel original movie Don't Look Under the Bed (1999)? It was a Halloween movie about a teenage girl getting harassed by a mysterious figure called "the Boogeyman," who exists because she stopped believing her imaginary friend too early? It's a weird core memory movie for me because it scared the shit out of me as a kid.

Anyways, wanna know who played the Boogeyman?

^^^ This guy? Steve Valentine.

You know who else Steve Valentine played?

ALISTAIR FUCKING THEIRIN.

Alistair "golden retriever incarnate and my first dragon age romance ever" Theirin was played by the main character of my childhood nightmares.

[philosophybits]

Once conversation replaces confrontation, the notion of the mind as Mirror of Nature can be discarded. Then the notion of philosophy as the discipline which looks for privileged representations among those constituting the Mirror becomes unintelligible. A thoroughgoing holism has no place for the notion of philosophy as "conceptual," as "apodictic," as picking out the "foundations" of the rest of knowledge, as explaining which representations are "purely given" or "purely conceptual," as presenting a "canonical notation" rather than an empirical discovery, or as isolating "trans-framework heuristic categories." If we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature, we will not be likely to envisage a metapractice which will be the critique of all possible forms of social practice.

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

[skin-slave]

They aren't the same thing. They aren't the same thing. They aren't the same thing. They aren't the same thing.

[kafus]

hi guys meet scramble. the salamence i have been preparing for NEARLY AN ENTIRE FUCKING MONTH!!!! AAAAA

so okay. i am trying to build a 6 pokemon team to take on orre colosseum in pokemon xd gale of darkness. for the uninitiated, it's basically like gen 3 VGC, but against NPCs with predetermined and handcrafted teams made by the developers. you can honestly kind of think of it like the trainer battles in the indigo disk DLC, but if pretty much all the fights had a full team and some competitive merit. and of course gen 3 doubles mechanics (which have some WILD fundamental differences from modern VGC, but i digress as that's not really the point of this post)

despite getting perfect stat pokemon being extremely difficult and time consuming in gen 3, and basically impossible outside of emerald if you want the right natures on your pokemon, the NPC opponents in orre colosseum have pokemon with perfect IVs and such, so to not suffer you really have to have some Good Pokemon. now usually this wouldn't be a problem for me because i know how to RNG manipulate wild encounters and eggs in gen 3... but there's a catch.

see i've been trying to play this copy of emerald, my new main file as of last year, MOSTLY fully legitimately and as intended by the developers, AKA no RNG manipulation and very little use of glitches. don't get me wrong, there are exceptions to this, i make my own rules and i'm just here to have fun, not to prove myself like it's some sort of challenge run for the internet to judge me on. but as for battle tower pokemon and whatnot, i haven't used RNG manipulation at all, and i intend to keep it that way. i've used RNG manipulation for that stuff in the past and frankly i'm just bored of it.

this is the team i built for orre colosseum. it's first time ever building my own team for gen 3 doubles, so i suppose we'll see how it goes, but yeah. a writeup on it after i beat orre colosseum in the future perhaps. for the sake of this post, the important pokemon is that salamence.

this thing was a fucking NIGHTMARE to get without RNG manipulation. as you may or may not know, hidden power is a move that can be any type and of any base power between 30 and 70, depending on the IVs of the pokemon that knows the move. this is an extremely unforgiving calculation and it's also pretty complex so i'm not going to get into the exact math here. but what you need to know about breeding this salamence is:

bagon is 40 egg cycles. most standard pokemon are 20. they take double the time to hatch compared to other pokemon. collecting and hatching these eggs was excessively slow, even with flame body

dragon dance is an egg move and egg moves can only be passed down by male parents in gen 3, so that is something i have to juggle

the adamant nature has only a 50/50 chance of passing with the everstone hold item as opposed to the 100% chance in modern gens. additionally, it only works when the female parent is holding it (or a ditto, but that's irrelevant here)

there is no way to guarantee the passing down of specific IVs, and there also is no destiny knot to guarantee that 5 total IVs are passed down from the parents. you're stuck with getting a random 2-3 IVs from the parents in completely random fashion

this means that i have to hatch dozens of eggs to even get a pokemon with 3 perfect IVs, even off of two parents that have the 3 perfect IVs, and the process of getting those parents in the first place is a very slow and incremental and random process... WHILE juggling nature and egg moves

the cherry on top is that to realistically have the chance to get hidden power flying, i have to have two parents with a 30 IV in special attack/special defense and a 30 or a 31 in speed. so i can't just get a perfect bagon and call it a day, i have to cross two perfect bagons with all of the above parameters to roll for those parameters to pass down again, and also roll HP flying.

NOW. i made this WAY more torturous on myself. because the easiest way to get HP flying is by pairing two x/x/x/30/30/30 parents together. but knowing that orre colosseum pokemon can have perfect stats, and because of the relative lack of speed control options in gen 3 doubles (no tailwind, no trick room, etc), every point of speed matters. i wanted that perfect speed of 31. the issue? when rolling for x/x/x/30/30/31 pokemon instead, the only way that the type of the hidden power is flying is if all the three other IVs are even numbers. so alltogether, i need the following to happen on any bagon egg, assuming that i've already put together the two x/x/x/30/30/31 parents with a male dragon dance bagon and an adamant female bagon holding an everstone:

all three IVs to pass down from the parents (the way emerald determines which IVs pass down is weird but it's roughly a 1/16 chance for the offspring to be 30/30/31)

the nature to pass down with the everstone (1/2)

all three other IVs to randomly roll even (1/8)

so the odds? 1/256. and that's not even a guarantee that the final resulting bagon has GOOD IVs in its other stats, just EVEN numbers. or 0. they could all be 0!!!!

and the first bagon i got after probably around 200 eggs (i wasn't counting at that point)? a middling 16 in attack, and a fucking ZERO in HP. zero!!!! i was so sick of bagons at this point that i considered keeping it and stopping there on that fateful day of september 1st. BUT I WAS NOT SMART. AND I DIDN'T. i decided i would keep hatching bagon until i got one more HP flying one with the IVs and nature passed down, and THEN i would stop no matter what, just keeping whichever bagon of the two was better.

i actually started fucking losing it. i had to recount the amount of bagon i ended up hatching. i was doing it full boxes at a time, and later on i even added a second save file/GBA SP just to make it go faster. you know how many bagon i hatched?? 840!! for a 1/256 chance!!! dealing with the 40 egg cycles and everything!!!

my friends watched me slowly devolve into insanity as i routinely announced in our game liveposting channel that i was HATCHING MORE BAGON. and FINALLY after nearly a full month of on and off bagon hatching. I GOT ONE TODAY. AND GUESS WHAT ITS ATTACK IV WAS.

IT.

WAS.

2!!!

anyway i'm not even actually mad because i'm just so happy this is over. i was getting so fucking sick of it. i love long pokemon grinds but this was a lot even for me. it doesn't feel even remotely good like full odds hunting and this is the longest and most miserable egg grind i've ever done in these games and will hopefully ever have to do. and yet despite knowing that i couldn't stop myself because of sunken cost fallacy. and being stubborn. so i am glad to be RELEASED from BAGON PURGATORY

i am settling for the 0 HP IV 16 attack iv bagon and i will love her. she is named scramble as a reference to the sheer amount of eggs i hatched on this journey and also the scrambled RNG. and despite it all i am very proud of myself and excited to use her in orre colosseum regardless of everything. but i can't for a while because i have three more pokemon to breed... none of which should even be NEARLY this painful. hopefully. FINGERS FUCKING CROSSED!!

[reality-detective]

⚠️ Rockefeller insider gives a rare glimpse of the real reasons for the feminist movement

"One reason was we couldn't tax half the population before Women's Lib. And the second reason was, now we get the kids in school at an early age, we can indoctrinate the kids how to think." 🤔

[wayti-blog]

Organization is impossible unless those who know the laws of harmony lay the foundation.

-Ancient Egyptian Proverbs

[noosphe-re]

I want to create a great Encyclopedia, containing within it all the knowledge humanity will need to rebuild itself in case the worst happens—an Encyclopedia Galactica, if you will.

Hari Seldon, Forward the Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

[marinsawakening]

"I'm playing all the Zelda games." :D "Oh I meant all the 3D ones." :(