#if anyone in the entire history of the internet has a better solution please fucking reply or reblog

[autumnalhalcyon]

my partner and i have been scouring the entire internet for at least 25 minutes trying to find out what to do if a windows 10 system restore is stuck on a full bar finished screen, and no article or post ive managed to dig up is helpful. either its a pc website telling me "hurrbdurr boot in safe mode" (which isnt helpful bc i literally risk bricking my computer if i restart to do that), its a site saying "whoops you restarted during sys restore youre fhUCKED lol" or its like 5 separate reddit posts asking the exact same question that no one on the entire internet has answered.

there is no fucking way that nobody in the entire fucking history of the internet hasnt managed to fix this exact fucking issue, yet my only fucking recourse apparently seems to be wait for 3 fucking hours then risk bricking my computer anyway.

all of this bc my amd driver makes my pc shit itself when it needs updated instead of just fucking telling me it needs updated.

[yuvon-writes-letters]

To all,

I am sending this, simply as an update.

I have officially put my foot down, Rai will be taking a break indefinitely, until he is stable enough financially and mentally to take on super-natural issues once more, and I will act as a substitute.

I can’t promise I’ll be a friend like he was, or as comforting as he was, but he says to simply ‘watch and see the trustworthiness ooze out of them” his words, not mine.

I won’t be an active letter writer either, I may not be as busy as Rai is, but I’m sure you all realize that I have a job that takes more priority than this, if Rai shared more than just my name.

That is all.

Skie

[Real life update, I’ll actually be temporarily gone for a few days, family trip :) I’ll prolly be back by around Wednesday or Thursday, so not too long. Don’t wait up for me]

Skie,

Well, welcome to Duskwood Detectives Inc., then :) I figure anyone who can and does write letters is at least an honorary member, even if they're not actually a counterpart of ours.

It's probably good that Rai's taking a break. Dealing with these fucking entities tends to be bad for mental health, even people who aren't directly involved with any of the damn things. And now this Lily

Nope, not calling her Lily, we already have a Lilly. Let's call her Flower, why the hell not.

"Watch and see the trustworthiness ooze out of them"? XD Not sure I can promise that, I have a history of lying about important things, though I'm trying to be better about it. Jake's pretty trustworthy, though.

Yeah, no. Message for everyone, though I don't think y'all actually need to hear it: Please don't prioritize these letters over your daily life. Jake and I can get away with it because we're completely cut off from any semblance of a normal life, but I'd hate to be the cause of anyone being hurt in any way.

Then again, I've sort of indirectly already

Alright, moving onto general purpose updates.

Probably unsurprisingly, those white lilies in the death room full of death symbols are gone. I don't know whether it was Flower or the one that calls everyone sweetling who did it, but that's a thing that happened.

I'm fully healed from that whole thing three weeks back. I mean, on a purely practical level, I've been healed for a little while, but apparently in here we heal COMPLETELY. I'm not scarred in the slightest, and there's no lingering pain or anything.

Juvyr gur ragvgl jnf qvfgenpgrq jvgu Sybjre, V sbhaq gur yvtugre V fhzzbarq ntnva. V qba'g xabj jul vg qvqa'g qrfgebl gur guvat, whfg ohevrq vg, ohg V qba'g guvax vg xabjf naq V'z xrrcvat vg gung jnl.

By the way, remember that "cipher" from forever ago none of us could translate and Jake got really frustrated over? I didn't until recently. Well, we've finally cracked it. Want to know how?

Thomas asked if we'd tried lining up the four pages together and holding them up to the light. There wasn't enough ambient light to do it, so we had to use Jake's phone flashlight, but lo and behold, it fucking worked. Now I feel like an idiot, yaaay.

The papers weren't even that helpful, anyway. It just outlined the ritual we'd have to do to pay an even price, which, as we've already established, is not an option I am considering. Ever. Literally no one is okay with using that option.

On social matters: No one from the Crow Crew is precisely pleased that we've been keeping all this from them, especially the stasis, since the stasis directly affected them. They're not renouncing their friendships or anything, but it definitely hurt things a lot between us. I've been trying to patch things up as best I can, especially by trying to involve them in anything of note. Problem is, there's... just not a lot here to figure out right now. Not without more letters coming in.

Speaking of, it's been a really long time since we've heard from Lis or Jessy, or any of Lis's associated honorary Duskwood Detectives Inc. members. I'm honestly really worried about them. I don't think Lis is hurt or dead or anything, because she's got Goldie, Jake, and Max all helping her out. But I'm way more worried about alter Jessy. If Jake's pursuers caught on at all about our letters back and forth, or if the MWAFerfucker became active again...

I'm worried.

By the by, Crow Crew says hi and welcome. And also has quite a few choice words for the entity that's keeping us here.

Well. I'll hand this over to Jake, now. Hell knows I've talked long enough XD

—Yuvon

Hallo, Skie. I don't believe I have written to you before. It is a pleasure to meet you.

I agree with Yuvon and yourself that a break is likely necessary. I will be sad to see him go, however. He is capable of talking sense into Yuvon, a rare trait indeed.

That is... interesting wording on Rai's part, but I do agree on at least one count: Yuvon is very much trustworthy. She may occasionally lie or hide her true feelings, but she quite genuinely cares about the people she is close to, and does what she is able to help them even to her own detriment. She is quite capable of helping as well. Despite her assertions to the contrary, she is quite intelligent.

That cipher Yuvon mentioned and the solution was probably one of the more vexing things I've experienced recently. It does go to show the inherent benefits of allowing the "Crow Crew" to assist in these matters, however. Outside perspectives are occasionally necessary, loathe as I am to say it.

Please do not share this with Yuvon, but she stated that "literally no one" has been considering the ritual. She is incorrect, though I have not shared this with her as of yet and likely will never do so. The ritual calls for a sacrifice, either of the self or of a willing human sacrifice. It claims that if one of the two of us here were to do the ritual, not only would the kidnapper lose his own life, but the other would escape this place.

You see the appeal, I presume. Not only would Hannah be out of danger, (and possibly Richy as well if he is not simply deceased,) but so would (blacked out) Yuvon. While it would be regrettable that I would not survive to witness their subsequent freedom, I feel that this is quite the lucrative trade. The single hitch remains my pursuers, who may attempt to target Yuvon again. Despite the lack of internet access, I have managed to, in my copious free time, upgrade NYM-OS to hopefully better protect her, but my pursuers nearly succeeded in hacking her once.

Given the events in the alternate Jessica's universe, I am quite concerned about what will happen if they ever succeed.

Of course, given that I will be dead at the time, they may simply cease to pursue me entirely and allow Yuvon to live her life in peace.

As you are an outside perspective, Skie, and one without a vested interest in any version of myself: do you believe this trade is worthwhile?

Sincerely,

Jake

(The letter tucks itself into the paper clip with the others.)

[mutantsrisingrpg]

Congratulations NOEL! You’ve been accepted as IAPETUS.

This was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make. Both of the applications for Jack were so damn good and we went back and forth on it. But, the way Jack idealizes Alma in your expanded connection has what hooked us, Noel! The way you ended Jacks bio to everything written about Alma, to this “He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline.” This, this line right here had us SOBBING. We can’t wait to see you bring Jack to life on the dash! 

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information: 

NAME/ALIAS: Noel :~)

PRONOUNS: They/them

AGE: 24

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: CDT / GMT-5

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Jack Mizuno

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:  

I see Jack as someone with an identity whose boundaries are constantly in flux, and the consequences of that endless/unsure sense of self. Someone (largely) unrepressed, unrepentant, unashamed, whose depth comes from his own unknown limitations, and the exhilaration that comes with exploring that edge. What could he do, what will he do? He hardly knows himself, but rather than being a problem, it’s a challenge, a philosophical question. He shares his brain with so much all the time, and sometimes the space between himself and everything else is more a suggestion than a defined line. 

He’s like one of those kids raised in excessive, grotesque wealth, except with information instead of money; information, which is often power. Definitely someone who never learned to shut up, turn down the drink or the job or the daring glance. No one can be tapped into the Internet like that, an endless sea of screaming neon and screens and signs and meaning and nonsense and desire, and not be a little bit unhinged. He combats this with a straight-forward, analytical nature, a temperament capable of riding the crest of all that data without drowning. Most of the time. 

Ultimately, Jack is someone with immediate access to anything and everything he could ever want to know, and a personality just morally flexible enough that he wouldn’t for a moment think to feel ashamed using it against someone.

BIO: (cw: neglect, violence, addiction, drugs, suicidal ideation)

Jack’s power had started as a party trick.

It was the first time he’d been invited to a sleepover. The other boy’s parents probably felt bad for him, the kid with no mom and no friends and an always-absent father, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He’d been hungry for their attention, anyone’s attention, and when the opportunity was given to him he intended to leave an impression. Do you have a computer room? There’s something you should see. He’d rested one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard, scowling-serious like the hackers he’d seen on TV. The posture was more for the visual than anything else; he wasn’t going to need to press a single key tonight. Give me a name. Someone you hate.

One brush of his thumb against a wire, and the screen flickered a hundred colors. Garbled words and images, resolving into a series of personal photos, emails meant for someone else’s eyes. A social security card. A private world cracked open for him, as easy as asking please.

It was the last time he’d let anyone watch him work. The other kids had looked at him in horror, his still hands, the blank look on his face. Blank as the static on a broken TV, or the waxy face of a corpse. Freak. Mutant. It didn’t bother him— other people’s opinions rarely bothered him— but it made the reveal less effective. Distracted from the point, which was: Look what I can do. And, more importantly: What can you give me for it?

Jack had been glad when they'd moved states not long after. Moving every few months was mostly an annoyance, but it did give him an unlimited supply of second chances at first impressions. By his teens, he’d perfected his routine. Cash for information. Blackmail, answers to tests, access to any secret. Any question answered, for the right price. Even if he had nothing to spend the money on but video games, candy, cigarettes and (eventually) drugs, whatever— it was the power that got to him, the real fun of the exchange. Before long his clientele had expanded from his fellow students to the local teachers. Then their friends. Then, a more dangerous kind of customer. More dangerous friends. If his father noticed his new schedule of late-night outings, he never mentioned it. Richard Mizuno had never been much of a parent, coming and going with no notice, sometimes for weeks on end. When they were sleeping in the same house, he didn’t seem to notice Jack’s movements around him at all.

Jack got caught when he was fifteen. A client looking for dirt on a cheating spouse recognized him, his dark hair, those blank eyes. Hey, aren’t you Mizuno’s kid? It was inevitable, running in circles adjacent to criminals, that he’d eventually run into someone who knew his own criminal father. Rich was a small-time con man and a big-time gambler. What money he made never lasted long in his pockets; it was rare that he made more than he lost, and outrunning his debts had been what kept them on the move through Jack’s childhood. That evening, his father called him into the kitchen and passed him a cigarette over the cheap plastic table where they’d never eaten a meal together. That evening, his father looked at him with interest for the first time in his life.

Once again his ability was a party trick, this time for his father’s benefit. Something to show off to strangers in the back rooms of clubs and anonymous private basements. Look what I found on you. Imagine what I could find on your enemies. Blackmail was a dirty business, but it paid better than the various scams his father had been working through the years. Pretty soon, they were making good money, more in a week than they’d previously seen in months. For the first time, they signed an actual lease on an apartment. He swapped out his Craigslist bed frame for one from Ikea. Soon, all Jack’s evenings were spent scowling in corners, the prop for his father’s grand reveal, and his mornings were spent sleeping through classes. He didn’t need to be present for the actual deals, but his dad liked leaving an impression, and silent boy genius hacker was a pretty memorable one.

That routine lasted nearly three years. The Mizunos made a name for themselves as the ones who could get dirt on anyone, anytime, and bore no strict alliances; it was more lucrative that way. Their reputation began to precede them. Even at a young age, Jack knew enough about the world— enough from watching his father, and the men who came after him— to know it could never end well. Inevitably, his dad made a gamble on the wrong person, and got a bullet in the head for his trouble. Jack took what was left of their money and ran as far as he could run, all the way to the opposite coast, into the familiar arms of an anonymous face and an unfamiliar town.

In another life, that would have been his lesson to take a sharp right turn and set down some more legitimate roots. As it was, he’d spent his years honing his abilities, learning how to control them and sell them to the highest bidder. The money was too easy, the satisfaction of a new impossible puzzle cracked— it was addictive, all-encompassing. Where most people only accessed a trickle of information at a time, their own personal corner of infinity, Jack bathed in it.  All the world’s secrets at his fingertips, if he did things right, if he kept at it. Every puzzle had its solution. He could have anything and everything in the world he could want, and at that moment all he wanted was more.

He was so cocky. Cocky, and empty, and often bored. Sometimes high. It was a dangerous combination. First, he got run out of New York with his life, just barely. He’d bet on the wrong person, someone who knew that all it took to get him to do something was telling him he couldn’t. Nothing more attractive than a locked door and a challenge. Nothing better than proving someone wrong. Next stop, Chicago, where he hadn’t fallen into old habits as much as his only habits. It started with some high-powered mutant at a house party, looking him up and down with a raised brow— This guy? Really?— and it was like he lost his fucking mind. People could call him any name in the books and he wouldn’t bat a pretty eyelash, but questioning his abilities set him off like a rabid dog, what little common sense he had disappearing behind a smirk. All the mutant had to do was cock his head and ask, Can you? And Jack had said, Try me.

Jack would show them. He would show everyone in the entire world if he had to. And that was how he’d found himself on the wrong side of the Blackburn Syndicate.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS: 

ALMA: When Jack looked up from his crouch on the floor of the Blackburn server room and saw Alma, pure rage in a five-foot-two frame and looking ready to snap his neck, he’d laughed. In the split second between seeing their face and recognizing it, his mind tried the odds of getting out of that room alive and came up with the equivalent of an error message. So this was it, his penultimate moment, the last bad decision in a history of bad decisions. He’d lived his life from one increasingly risky gamble to the next, always left unsatisfied and searching for the next big thing-- assuming he didn’t get his face kicked in first. Not a great way to live if longevity was a priority, but he’d been running long enough on hubris to ignore that part. Until now. Now, it seemed the ever-chaotic universe had found a small justice to be done, one small moving part of chaos to put back in its place. He was going to be powered down for good. All that was left was to let go, with the finality of an animal going limp in the mouth of its mother, submitting to the inevitability of the narrative he’d always seen coming. 

Jack wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Disappointed? He should be. He’d gotten caught before he could deliver the product to his client. He’d failed the job. But he’d gotten into the Blackburn servers first, cracked open the deepest secrets of one of the most secretive gangs. The rest of the job was just… transportation. This was his biggest challenge to date, and he’d— somehow, incredibly— pulled it off. Which was how he’d found himself laughing in the face of the inevitable, expression lit only by the blinking red and blue lights of the monitor below him and his hands nested in a tangle of wires like the hair of a lover. 

He can’t imagine what she saw in him at that moment. A scruffy kid in old clothes living out of a hotel on the South Side, spending his days chain-smoking out the bathroom window while he waited for his phone to ring. Those days, he’d always had this feeling like he was about to vibrate out of his skin, worst of all when he was waiting for a job. Bouncing between all these intense, erratic impulses, always on the edge of shaving his head or robbing a bank or jumping in front of a car. He was a ball of tightly-would energy with no container, spinning and ricocheting and destroying everything it touched, and getting himself banged up in the process. An attack dog without a leash, biting its own tail into infinity. Jack was on his way to a dead end, full-speed, and changing paths wasn’t an option. Stopping felt like drowning; moving, outwitting every challenge, outrunning all consequences, at least it had a rush.

Until Alma Rosario looked at him and said, I’ve been looking for someone like you. He’d never been looked at like that before, like they were taking the whole measure of him, like they knew what he was and what he was meant to do. You’re with us now. Like he’d been theirs the whole time, and everything up until that moment was just practice for the real work of his life. He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline. Someone who gave a fuck about him in a way no one ever had before. A cool hand on his shoulder, a direction to point his focus, and a leader who took his restlessness and alchemised it into blood-deep loyalty. The rest of the world could get fucked, but Alma Rosario had spared his life in more ways than one, and he’d follow them to the ends of the Earth.

EXTRA:

Jack speaks English, Japanese and Polish. The last he learned from his friend group in high school, who he had nothing in common with apart from a mutual interest in doing drugs and World of Warcraft. A fun side-effect of his ability is a natural aptitude towards languages, which could be cool if he ever cared enough to do something with it. In reality, he’d only learned Polish so he could talk shit as well as the rest of them during games. 

At one point in his childhood he’d gotten really good at card tricks as an outlet for his fidgeting. It didn’t stick, but he still has the muscle memory.

There is an irony to the fact he ended up in the Blackburn Syndicate, the most holier-than-thou of the gangs, considering he doesn’t give a fuck about mutant rights. He’s never cared about politics or paid much attention to life outside his circle, and the interiority of his ability has spared him from the abuse other mutants experience on the day-to-day.

The last romantic interest he expressed in a girl was Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion; to be fair, he was 12 at the time.

There was a period at the beginning of his work with the Blackburn Syndicate where he lived in Alma’s guesthouse, because he had nowhere to go, and had been kicked out of his hotel for not caring enough to pay their bills. While he didn’t spend much time with Alma personally, being literally taken in off the street solidified his trust in their promise that Blackburn takes care of its members.

Jack was born on August 6, 1990 (which makes him a Leo sun, Scorpio moon, Capricorn rising.) Yes, this is a year to the day the internet went public.

His mother left him with his father when he was five. He doesn’t remember anything about her, but if she was thoughtless enough to leave her child with a man like his dad, he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t think about her much anymore.

Jack has a secret obsession/fascination with the arcane and occult. Possibly because it’s one of the few topics that remains mysterious, no matter how much digging he does.

His home computer has a Sailor Moon-themed keyboard. It is wholly incongruous with the rest of his place, which has as much personality as a cheap motel room.

Jack reads everyone in Blackburn’s emails. Because he can. Occasionally their texts, too, if he really doesn’t like them, or distrusts their motivations. (He distrusts most people’s motivations.)

On that note, he considers it part of his job to keep some amount of dirt on everyone he knows, from bank account details to embarrassing archived Myspace profiles. The only one he affords their privacy is Alma.

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/remusjlupin/jm/

ANYTHING ELSE: N/A

[genderfluidkevinday]

genderfluid kevin day headcanons bc i can do what i want and also i have the perfect url to spread my “please representation” propaganda. 

“how did you know?”

because in the quiet of nights when kevin is supposed to be asleep but he cant, not really, when his heart is still pounding from practice and every breath riko makes him terrified of being caught, he reads what he stole from the public library and it says sometimes people do not fit into the gender they were assigned and

because by sneaking searches on the internet when he can, kevin finds words. dangerous, un-raven-like words for how to love someone and how to be yourself. he finds words that mean you are not alone. 

because he wakes up one day and demands to be the queen of exy, to be seen as what he is. the best. more powerful than the king. (not entirely cisgender?)

because it feels right. 

because in the quiet between exy and family, kevin day has the time and the love to have the quiet understanding that this is who kevin day is. 

it’s kinda a shitty realization process to go through- kevin starts questioning in the ravens, then immediately goes “No TM !” and internalizes all those feelings 

kevin internalizes All the feelings, always ! compartmentalizing!

bisexuality? put it in a box!

gender identity? put it in a box!

feeling crushing inferiority? put it in a box!

mom died tragically? put it in a box!

ur dad isnt here? put it-

jesus fuck these headcanons were supposed to be happy and it got SO derailed 2 points in

anyways 

post canon, kevin starts to become more comfortable w every aspect of himself, and finally takes the time to have a gender crisis

and then, immediately, decides it was all ridiculous and he was actually a cisgender all along !

he does the dumb thing i did. which is spend about a month going “lmao i’m cis but i wish i wasn’t, i don’t need a gender!” while badly ignoring his gender crisis

it’s renee who finally helps kevin out a little

kevin, dumbass: pfft, gender is stupid, but i’m cis so whatever! renee, nb lesbian icon: are you sure? kevin, having a crisis:

renee actually sends kevin a bunch of links to pages that have lots of words, and “what gender are you” quizes, and dumb memes about being trans/nonbinary and it shouldn’t help as much as it does. 

renee is the first person kevin quietly texts at like, 2 am, and goes, “uh, can you use they, i think?”

her response is, obviously, “of course!”

so they’re like, pretty sure they’re not cis, but they bounce around labels for about a week before they end up settling on genderfluid. 

sometimes kevin day is a boy, with loud opinions and soft hands. sometimes kevin day is a girl, with messy hair and a bright smile. sometimes kevin day is neither, with clumsy limbs and determined eyes

(however- kevin day can always outclass any striker on a court.) 

it just feels right, in a way nothing else did. 

theyre like,,, super nervous about coming out, like, they can’t even come up with the courage to tell their dad they’re bi, how the fuck are they gonna end up telling anyone else? solution! don’t.

except kevin is becoming more comfortable with every aspect of themself, and being casually bisexual around the foxes (nicky makes one too many jokes about kevin’s “”hetero guy crush”” on jeremy and they end up snapping “bitch i’m bi there’s nothing hetero about it.” and nicky is immediately like !!!!!!!!!!!!!) (but thats another post)

so kevin, with the growing comfort that yes, you can be non-heterosexual and non-cisgender and still be fucking amazing at exy, they start to come out

it’s a slow process because when they tried to do it all at once, they got tongue tied and just walked away without saying anything. so they end up doing it individually. 

allison first (because renee can be there and give support AND bc allison is also A Trans), and kevin whispers, “so, I’m genderfluid.”

allison, casually: what are your pronouns? kevin: she/her. i’m a girl today. allison, with all the softness of someone who has been there: do you want me to do your makeup? kevin, with all the softness of someone who’s new to this: maybe one day.

after allison is andrew+neil, because they spend so much time together at night practice it’s inevitable it comes up

and by that i mean kevin screams halfway through night practice “THIS IS GENDERFLUIDPHOBIA” because andrew keeps blocking her shots. 

andrew flips her off.

neil asks if thats an actual term.

kevin says to fuck off and keep practicing.

next is wymack. 

oh boy. 

so kevin isn’t even sure how to be a good son- she has no idea how to go about being a good daughter. she has no clue how to be a good child. 

she doesn’t know if wymack even wants that.

but she goes to him after practice and he snaps, “what is it?” in a voice thats maybe a little less gruff than usual

and she says, “i’m genderfluid.”

he stares at her for a while.

she continues, “i’m a girl today, actually, and i just thought you should know.”

wymack asks, “you’ll tell me when it changes, right?”

kevin nods and leaves. 

its a start.

telling jean feels like a really big deal, but in hindsight its about fifteen minutes of bad puns that follow an awkwardly worded coming out. 

kevin: so like... guys right jean: yes? kevin: what if... i wasn’t one jean: are you trying to come out to me? kevin: is it working?

the rest of the monsters follows after that- aaron obviously doesnt understand, but he doesnt say anything rude. (he looks into it later). nicky, immediately, takes a supportive role.

nicky: I’M GONNA STAPLE A GENDERFLUID FLAG TO MY FACE THATS HOW MUCH I SUPPORT YOU kevin, softly: please don’t how would you play exy.

matt and dan get a less official coming out, because kevin isn’t sure how to be friends with them at all. but they manage a “so, i’m not a guy, actually, i’m genderfluid, and right now i don’t have a gender.”

dan gives them a set of pronoun bracelets for their birthday and matt gives them a book about the history of the nonbinary community and yeah, maybe this is how to be friends.

the baby foxes don’t get to find out. kevin doesn’t trust them as much, and isn’t ready to be... out out. 

kevin has absolutely no desire to change their name, at all.

kevin: why would i change my name i’m an ICON.

WAIT i lied,,, they change their middle name to kayleigh. 

the first time kevin gets invited to a girls night, she cries

its a surprise, which is hard to plan- girls nights are always on tuesdays, so they have to wait for a tuesday where kevin is free and feels like a girl

renee casually mentions that they have a history book that kevin might like, so she should come pick it up

and then in the dorm, dan and allison are setting up a movie and popcorn and renee is getting her nails painted. dan waves kevin over and tells her to pick a movie, allison tells her to pick out a nail polish, and renee actually does have a history book for her.

kevin finally accepts a make over from allison. 

she cries like five times that night and tries to brush it off as nothing but... kevin can finally exist in a space, and feel welcome, and also feel... wanted.

it’s a good feeling

kevin, wearing a crop top with the genderfluid flag on it, painting renee’s nails as they watch the trojans game: lmao can you imagine thinking i was cis? what was i thinking? i was so dumb lol.  renee, sweetly: no it was a perfectly normal reaction to being raised in a cisnormative society, and i’m very proud of you for figuring out that it wasn’t right for you kevin: dammit renee why do you have to be so kind and supportive just let me make jokes about my moron-ness in PEACE 

kevin day is the fucking QUEEN of exy !!!!!!! she’s better than you and you know it. 

each and every day kevin day hears misogonistic comments towards female exy players and each and every day kevin day wants to scream B I T C H in their face

he wanted to do this even before he figured out he was genderfluid bc kevin day drank respect women juice before realizing he was also drinking sometimes i am women juice

kevin actually 100% hates dresses a lot bc they can never find any that are a good texture and its Sensory Hell, and also you cant play exy in them?? what the fuck??? 

they end up liking crop tops and short shorts, and a few kinds of makeup, but skirts and dresses are dumb and itchy actually 

kevin goes on an impassioned rant about this at LEAST once a month

you know that really good feeling when you wake up one day and you realize you’re happier knowing who you are and maybe it’s rough and maybe it’s not perfect but you get to know who you are and your friends respect and love you for who you are and you start to realize you love knowing you too????????

yeah.

kevin day is genderfluid and this is my hill to die on thank you and good night

[theconservativebrief]

I’ve been a hypochondriac for much of my life.

When I was 13, I read an article about a girl my age who had recently lost her hair to alopecia. For the next six months, my teenage self developed an obsessive hair-counting habit every time some collected in my hairbrush.

A few years later, as a freshman at university, a three-day headache led me to call home in tears, convinced I had a brain tumor. (I did not.)

In 2008, my 24 years of neuroticism reached their dizzying peak. I had gone wakeboarding on a warm lake during a trip to Las Vegas, and I woke up a few days later feeling a little under the weather. One three-hour Google spiral later, I was in a full-blown panic.

You see, there is an extremely rare but nevertheless horrifying amoeba called Naegleria fowleri that occasionally appears in warm freshwater lakes in the southern states and, if said lake water gets into your sinuses through a mistimed splash, the amoeba can climb up your olfactory nerve, reproduce, and quite literally eat your brain. Even though I understood the meaning of the words “extremely rare,” the narrative was just too perfect — neurotic hypochondriac who always worried needlessly about rare terrible diseases succumbs to rare terrible disease.

Of course, I was wrong again. The only thing eating my brain was my own irrational anxiety, and after a few sleepless nights, I felt sheepishly well enough to rejoin the Vegas revelry.

Fast-forward to today, and I’m pleased to say that my hypochondria — and my reasoning skills in general — have significantly improved. A large part of that was my choice of profession; I began playing professional poker shortly after the amoeba episode, and 10 years later, the game has trained my mind to better handle uncertainty.

But the most powerful antidote to my irrationality came from a surprising source: an 18th-century English priest named Reverend Thomas Bayes. His pioneering work in statistics uncovered an immensely powerful mental tool that, if properly used, can drastically improve the way we reason about the world.

Our modern world is notoriously unpredictable and complex. Should I buy bitcoin? Is that news headline reliable? Is my crush actually into me, or just stringing me along?

Whether it’s our finances or our careers or our love lives, we have to tackle tricky decisions on a daily basis. Additionally, our smartphones bombard us around the clock with a never-ending stream of news and information. Some of that information is reliable, some is noise, and some is intentionally created to mislead. So how do we decide what to believe?

Reverend Bayes made enormous steps toward solving this age-old problem. A statistician by training, his work on the nature of probability and chance laid the groundwork of what is now known as Bayes’s theorem. While its formal definition appears as a rather intimidating mathematical equation, it essentially boils down to this:

Javier Zarracina/Vox

In other words, whenever we receive a new piece of evidence, how much should it affect what we currently believe to be true? Does the information support that belief, dispute it, or not affect it at all?

This line of questioning is known as Bayesian reasoning, and chances are, you have been using this method of belief-building all your life without realizing it has a formal name.

For example, imagine a co-worker comes to you with a shocking piece of news: He suspects that your boss has been siphoning money from the company. You’ve always respected your boss, and if you had been asked to estimate the likelihood of him being a thief prior to hearing any gossip (the “prior odds”), you would think it extremely unlikely. Meanwhile, your colleague has been known to exaggerate and dramatize situations, especially about people in managerial positions. As such, their word alone carries little evidential weight — and you don’t take their accusation too seriously. Statistically speaking, your “posterior odds” stay pretty much the same.

Now, take the same scenario but instead of verbal information, your colleague produces a paper trail of company money going into a bank account in your boss’s name. In this case, the weight of evidence against him is much stronger, and so the likelihood of “boss = thief” should increase proportionally. The stronger the evidence, the stronger your level of belief. And if the evidence is compelling enough, it should make you change your mind about him entirely.

If this feels obvious and intuitive, it should. The human brain is, to some extent, a natural Bayesian reasoning machine through a process known as predictive processing. The trouble is, almost all our intuitions evolved out of simpler times for savannah-type survival situations. The complexity of more modern-day decisions can sometimes cause our Bayesian reasoning to malfunction, especially when something we really care about is on the line.

What if, instead of respecting your boss, you’re annoyed at him because you feel he’d been unfairly promoted to his current position instead of you? Objectively speaking, your “prior” belief that he is an actual account-skimming thief should be almost as unlikely as in the previous example.

However, because you dislike him for another reason, you now have extra motivation to believe the gossip from your co-worker. This can result in you excessively shifting your “posterior” likelihood despite the lack of hard evidence … and perhaps even doing or saying something unwise.

The phenomenon of being swayed from accurate belief-building by our personal desires or emotions is known as motivated reasoning, and it affects every one of us, no matter how rational we think we are. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve made an objectively stupid play at the poker table thanks to an excessive emotional attachment to a particular outcome — from chasing lost chips with reckless bluffs after an unlucky run of cards, to foolhardy heroics against opponents who’ve gotten under my skin.

When we identify too strongly with a deeply held belief, idea, or outcome, a plethora of cognitive biases can rear their ugly heads. Take confirmation bias, for example. This is our inclination to eagerly accept any information that confirms our opinion, and undervalue anything that contradicts it. It’s remarkably easy to spot in other people (especially those you don’t agree with politically), but extremely hard to spot in ourselves because the biasing happens unconsciously. But it’s always there.

And this kind of Bayesian error can have very real and tragic consequences: Criminal cases where jurors unconsciously ignore exonerating evidence and send an innocent person to jail because of a bad experience with someone of the defendant’s demographic. The growing inability to hear alternative arguments in good faith from other parts of the political spectrum. Conspiracy theorists swallowing any unconventional belief they can get their hands on until they think the Earth is flat, or movie stars are lizards, or that a random pizza shop is the base for a sex slavery ring because of a comment thread they read on the internet.

So how do we overcome this deeply ingrained part of human nature? How can we become better Bayesians?

For motivated reasoning, the solution is somewhat obvious: self-awareness.

While confirmation bias is usually invisible to us in the moment, its physiological triggers are more detectable. Is there someone who makes your jaw clench and blood boil the moment they’re mentioned? A societal or religious belief you hold so dear that you think anyone is ridiculous to even want to discuss it?

We all have some deeply held belief that immediately puts us on the defensive. Defensiveness doesn’t mean that belief is actually incorrect. But it does mean we’re vulnerable to bad reasoning around it. And if you can learn to identify the emotional warning signs in yourself, you stand a better chance of evaluating the other side’s evidence or arguments more objectively.

With some Bayesian errors, however, the best remedy is hard data. This was certainly the case with my battle against hypochondria. Examining the numerical probabilities of the ailments I feared meant I could digest the risks the same way I would approach a poker game.

Sick of my neuroticism, a friend looked up the approximate odds that someone of my age, sex, and medical history would have contracted the deadly bug after swimming in that particular lake. “Liv, it’s significantly less likely than you making royal flush twice in a row,” he said. “You’ve played thousands of hands and that has never happened to you, or anyone you know. Stop worrying about the fucking amoeba.”

If I wanted to go one step further, I could have plugged those prior odds into Bayes’s formula and multiplied it by the evidential strength of my headache-y symptoms. To do this mathematically, I’d consider the counter case: How likely are my symptoms without having the amoeba? (Answer: very likely!) As headaches happen to people all the time, they provide very weak evidence of an amoebic infection, and so the resulting posterior odds remain virtually unchanged.

And this is a crucial lesson. When dealing with statistics, it is so easy to focus on fear-mongering headlines, like “thousands of people died from terrorism last year,” and forget about the other equally relevant part of the equation: the number of people last year who didn’t die from it.

Occasionally, “red-pill” or conspiracy enthusiasts fall into a similar statistical trap. On its face, questioning mainstream belief is a good scientific practice — it can uncover injustice and prevent systemic mistakes from repeating in society. But for some, proving the mainstream wrong becomes an all-consuming mission. And this is especially dangerous in the internet era, where a Google search will always spit out something that fits a chosen narrative. Bayes’s rule teaches you that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

And yet for some people, the less likely an explanation, the more likely they are to believe it. Take flat-Earth believers. Their claim rests on the idea that all the pilots, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and GPS engineers in the world are intentionally coordinating to mislead the public about the shape of the planet. From a prior odds perspective, the likelihood of a plot so enormous and intricate coming together out of all other conceivable possibilities is vanishingly small. But bizarrely, any demonstration of counterevidence, no matter how strong, just seems to cement their worldview further.

If there is one thing Bayes can teach us to be certain of, however, it is that there is no such thing as absolute certainty of belief. Like a spaceship trying to reach the speed of light, a posterior likelihood can only ever approach 100 percent (or 0 percent). It can never exactly reach it.

And so, anytime we say or think, “I’m absolutely 100 percent certain!” — even for something as probable as our globe-shaped Earth — we’re not only being foolish, we’re being factually wrong. By that statement, we’re effectively saying there is no further evidence in the world, no matter how strong, that could change our minds. And that is as ridiculous as claiming, “I know everything about everything that could ever possibly happen in the universe, ever,” because there are always some unknown unknowns we cannot conceive of, no matter how knowledgeable and wise we think we are.

Which is why science never officially “proves” anything — it just seeks evidence to improve or weaken current theories until they approach 0 percent or 100 percent. This should serve as a reminder that we should always remain open to the possibility of changing our minds if strong enough evidence emerges. And most importantly, we must remember to see our deepest beliefs for what they ultimately are: just another prior probability, floating in a sea of uncertainty.

Liv Boeree is a science communicator and TV host specializing in astrophysics, rationality, and poker.

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Original Source -> How an 18th-century priest gave us the tools to make better decisions

via The Conservative Brief