#important questions for class 10 science

[safesextips12]

It's been three years since I've had a date or any intimacy, and now, I'm ready to explore those connections again. Life as a model can be busy, but I'm open to new experiences. If someone knocks on my door, I'm willing to embrace what's next. Let’s see what happens! 😌💫💕

[spectre-azula]

LACKADAISY OC🐈‍⬛

Hey y'all! Just want to share two of my characters here, you're welcome to collaborate and be friends with them 🪄

Harkin Väsäinen🌹

“Brains aren’t just for thoughts—they’re for feelings too.”

Bonnabelle Väsäinen☀️

"I was reading about hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia when I realized that if I say extra-long words, the important person will probably give me a cookie to keep me quiet. That’s definitely how negotiation works, right?"

I have other information and details about them but just click it down below to proceed only if you want to know them more ✨

Introduction:

Name: Dr. Harkin Väsäinen

Age: 32

Height/Weight: 5"10 / 154 lbs

Voice/Accent: Low, calm voice with a Finnish accent

Cat Symbolism: Siberian Cat – intelligent, cool-tempered, loyal

Appearance:

Lean but toned build

Slightly sunken violet eyes

Sharp jawline, soft cheekbones

Prefers button-downs, vests, long coats/lab coats, muted pastels

Has mild oculocutaneous albinism

Likes:

Lemon tea

Stargazing with Bonnie

Candied lemon peels

Reading rare books

Dislikes:

Loud disruptions

Overbearing people

Adults who talk down to children

Hobbies:

Journaling case notes

Organizing books by obscure systems or reading

Tasting Lemons (actual Lemons!)

Personality:

Harkin is a man of quiet depth and ironclad gentleness. There is a certain stillness to him—the kind found in snow-covered forests, or libraries where only the ticking of a clock can be heard. His words are meaningful, stitched with care and precision. As a psychiatrist private practitioner himself—he listens more than he speaks, but when he does speak, his voice carries a soft authority that hushes a room. By age 23, he had already earned a PhD in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, graduating top of his class and publishing a widely respected thesis on trauma and resilience. Now, he runs a successful private practice, holds licenses in two countries, and publishes psychological journals that other professionals quote in conferences.

He is often mistaken for cold due to his pale features and observant silences, but those who know him understand: Harkin is warmth hidden beneath layers of caution, intellect, and empathy. The kind of father who packs lemon-curd toast for his daughter with a handwritten riddle on the napkin. He journals thoughts in poetic metaphors and stargazes not for astronomy, but for peace. Harkin sees people as puzzles made of glass—not meant to be solved, but handled with reverence.

Introduction:

Name: Bonnabelle Väsäinen

Age: 6

Height/Build: Very short and petite, chubby cheeks

Voice/Accent: Clear voice with faint Finnish intonation

Cat Symbolism: Ragdoll Cat – affectionate, playful, clingy

Appearance:

Bright yellow-brown eyes

Rich orange hair

Lolita outfits but sometimes wear oversized sweaters and animal-themed jumpers

Likes:

Cheese sticks

Warm milk with honey

Spelling impossibly long words

Drawing maps of imaginary places

Dislikes:

Wassabi or Anything Bitter

Being babied (except her dad Harkin)

“Boring” answers

When people don’t let her finish her 100 questions

Hobbies:

Reading dictionaries + histories

Naming rocks and keeping them as her guardians xD

Making cute little pins

Climbing furniture to deliver speeches (with those silly jargons)

Personality:

Bonnie is a wildflower in a field of neatly trimmed grass. She is brilliantly odd and unfiltered, an exuberant brain housed in the body of a tiny chaos-gremlin. Her love of knowledge is matched only by her desire to share it—whether or not you asked. She's the type to build an elaborate cardboard kingdom in the living room, complete with its own economy, just because she found an old cereal box and somehow she loves mixing jargon words, turns out to be a funny one but you can't stop her with her big interests throughout expressing odd and long words in it.

Moreover, Bonnie was fiercely but emotionally attuned, switching from rambling about volcanoes to hugging someone who looks sad in an instant. Her logic is airtight—even sometimes she’s entirely wrong. With Bonnie, nothing is ordinary, and every day becomes a hypothesis or an adventure. She is curious, complicated, and a little exhausting, but endlessly lovable.

Thank you for your time reading!

[excitedoflife]

Hello 👋🏻, I am Lun☆ or you can call me Lun as a nickname (I know this nickname doesn't exists but I created it because I think it sounded cool).

I am a pansexual girl.

(Art made by me, of course)

Pronuns: She/her.

I have two other accounts:

On X/ Twitter: excitedoflife

On Pinterest: excitedoflife

I like F.P.E, Dandy's world, Dead Plate, Married in red, FNAF, Andy's apple farm, DDLC, Sonic exe games or videos, Scott Pilgram, etc. (More being indie games)

My favourite colours are: ALL SHADES OF PURPLE!!!

I am an artist, and I also do gacha edits. I like to animate, but mostly, I am too lazy to do them (so I don't promise much animations)

Animations I did 👇🏻

My persona is Lun☆!

My favourite artists are: Eminem and Smiley.

My favourite song is "Rises the Moon" by Liana Flores.

My birthday is on: 8 August.

You can ask my OCs/ characters questions! You can also ask me (but please no personal questions for me)

I have lore for them that I will share in some of my posts.

My friends are:

@ross-theartist

@eliezer-elieofficial (irl friends)

@mariahjolynnmartin

@pileofrocksjh

My other account that I only post about fandoms is:

@indiefandomlover

You can ask me what you want me to draw and even ask questions that can lead to a reblogs conversation.

I have many OCs. The important ones are): Lun☆ (my persona), Kyle (her older brother), St★r (her younger sister), Angel (her technically "mom", Lun☆ sees her as a mother figure and Angel acts like Lun☆ is her child. Plus, she is dating Wilson, so they are technically a "family"), Wilson (her technically "dad" same as Angel). Candy (Lun☆ and Angel's best friend), Violet (the same as Candy and has a crush on Candy), Livia (the villan, Xavier's twin sister), and Xavier (Lun☆'s simp, Livia's twin sister. They look nothing alike).

Side characthers: William (Wilson's twin brother, even tought they are completely opposites), Mark (the cool kid in school), Kate (the fashonista of the class) and Jason (the non caring kid).

Ships are allowed, but there are clearly some exceptions.

Never ship: Lun☆×Kyle, Kyle×St★r, Lun☆×Kyle, Livia×Xavier. Anyone who has St★r or/and Kyle as she is a 10 year old kid, and he is a 20 year old college student. Wilson× anyone else rather than Angel, Angel× anyone else rather than Wilson. Xavier× anyone else as he is too much of a simp for Lun☆ so he won't choose anyone else.

Self shipping whit my characthers is allowed except for the ones up there. Okay whit Kyle you can if your occ is 18-23 years old.

Fanarts are allowed (if someone would really do that), and I would try to always reblog them here. (You can also send it in my inbox).

That is all, I am glad you read it all. Hope it helps. Have a good morning/evening/afternoon/night.

Also, thanks to my followers for all they're support:

@mushroom-girl89 @lanasyroy @notwantedonthemoon @kiya-buggie @mtndewlover @pr3tty-0n-the-inside @lavina-arts @technogenesisentertainment @eillanu

@elizachangreaves @atnumenokiura-chuo @montaguelolz

@spookykittyzzz @pokefan250 @wonderstrawberries @crious-bachelor @webpreneurships @larrymoldova @a-girl-who-is-silly @victorialovesskittles @thehomehorse @herfandetective @aroaceindistress @symphonlctears @xgjliggjigfd @krispycowboytimemachine @torsrighteye @usefulcont @hi-imlilac @randomartistontheinternet @ellttbbo @okamithenbwerewolf @science-funtime @asperlisonloveart @jcpennyart077 @kitkatkitmeow @skyhightz @your-fav-stalker-200k @promprom2007 @jjbaperson @theageredeery @butterfly-sundae3 @philanthropistdave86

(If you didn't wanna be tagged, comment on this post, and I will remove you.)

Sorry for the new followers, as I can't tag you guys anymore. 😔

[zinya]

How brothers would react to an MC with bad grades ?

Because we've all had bad grades one day and we all deserve to be comforted.

Lucifer:

Being one of the students in the exchange program he will look at your grades very closely , he may even be aware of your grade before you do.

If it's just one bad grade he will lecture you and probably ban you from certain activities so that you work more (You can say goodbye to video game nights with Levi)

If it's several bad grades he will start asking you questions about what you don't understand and will give you lessons.

Of course, if it's grades that start to weigh on your morale, once your homework is finished, you're welcome to his room to relax.

"I believe in you, don't be discouraged, my love"

Mammon

welcome to the club

If it's a bad grade in math don't worry, The Great Mammon can help you.

Don't be discouraged human, he also has bad grades and lives very well

If he sees that you are depressed because of your grades he will suggest that you go out somewhere with him to take your mind off things. Do you prefer to go shopping or maybe go party somewhere?

If you don't want to go out then he will take you into his room and watch a movie in his arms while he comforts you and cuddle with you

Leviathan

I am convinced that he will show you anime with heroes at school to remotivate you "Hey I have a new anime called "I have bad grades and then everything changed the day I made friends"

If you don't want to, you can always watch TSL with him

But don't get me wrong he will encourage you to work too but he will come get you to take a break if it's been a long time

I don't know if devildom has computer science, but in any case if it's this subject that you're struggling with, he can help you.

Satan

Literally become your personal teacher after all, all his knowledge is yours.

Will lend you textbooks and workbooks

He will always encourage you to do your best

Like mammon he will also offer to go out and clear your mind: Do you want to buy new books? Go drink something at the cat cafe? Maybe the park?

Will read books to you or recite lessons at night in his room when you sleep together

Asmodeus

Positive affirmations

Are you discouraged? Has your self-confidence taken a hit? Spend 10 minutes with him and none of this will happen

"Honey don't cry your pretty skin and your beautiful eyes will suffer "

Will ask you to go shopping with him and you will receive 2 or 3 gifts so he can see you smile

He will help you with the charms lessons (TP too perhaps XD)

You will have the right to take a bath in his bathroom with his products to relax

Beelzebub

Will give you food to comfort you

Would like to help you with potions classes but we all know how it will end

Will give you hugs to comfort you and take you to exercise (if you want of course) to clear your mind

If you decide to study more he will come see you like Levi to take breaks and he will often bring you water or snacks

He will cheer you to death like you do during his matches

Maybe give you a kind of lucky charm to bring you luck for the next exams

Belphegor

Cuddle time

Since it concerns you, he will listen to you talk, like Asmo, about what is wrong

Then he will take you to the top of the Attic to sleep and relax with him

When you revise he comes and sleeps in your bed to keep you company

If you can't sleep because of stress you know where his room is , just kidding, he's already next to you in your bed, can't you see him?

(I don't know who drew this but it's so beautiful.) Anyway, I wrote that instead of studying my exam for tomorrow haha 😅🥲

Sorry for the mistakes, English is not my first language and sometimes I don't understand your abbreviations or expressions🤣

Tell me if you want the others

And don't forget that the most important thing is to do all you can and to be proud of yourself.

Have a Good day 💋

[monorays]

Kinda random but what are ur headcanons about ur ships [focusing on any ship that has suzkau in it (I know miracle that i don't mention gino)]

i actually have a lot to say on this so dump under the cut.

suzalulu

i don’t think they ever start dating. i think lelouch has a crush on suzaku at ashford, but he does a good job of keeping it under wraps for the most part. i think he spending a lot of time mulling over why he likes suzaku—not in the sense of “but we’re both boys!”, but more on how lelouch’s dedication to suzaku and his value of justice are intrinsically connected. witnessing the misfortune of suzaku’s life that happened because of lelouch’s family plays a big part in why he hates them in the first place. by the age of 10 lelouch has already seen how little the empire cares about its own royals and the people around them. i think the furthest their relationship at ashford gets is like, eating dinner together, having movie nights, waiting for each other after class, standing just a little too close. it’s all things that are normal from a certain distance, but a minor change in perspective effects all of it.

imperial szll is a special case to me, because i still don’t think they ever date. i think they kiss and they sleep together But they’re never going to refer to each other as anything other than their names of their title. though i do think lelouch uses calling suzaku his knight as a wraparound pet name. they have figured public appearances down to a science—there is not step out of place, no misspoken sentence or wrong glance. behind closed doors, i think suzaku picks fights A Lot. at this point suzaku just seems very volatile to me. you could ask him the wrong question and he’d be in a bad mood for the rest of the day. initially i think he starts a lot of arguments over the requiem plan, making up excuses on why he’d prefer something else until he has to Outright say he’s initially afraid to actually kill lelouch. on the other hand, lelouch has Mastered being unemotional at this point. there are no breaks in his character, and a part of him hopes that becoming more distant will make the job easier for suzaku, when in reality it just makes it worse.

in my head, they have an actual big fight where suzaku just explodes over Everything and he has to nearly beg lelouch to give him any kind of sign that he’s still a person who feels things, though i don’t know where i’d place it. a part of me wants to put it early on, so lelouch would try to be nice in his final days, but the part of me that likes angst says this happens like a day before requiem.

either way, after lelouch dies i think suzaku starts smoking and becomes a functioning alcoholic. his 20s are very rough. i think he eventually gets sober and goes from smoking a pack of cigarettes in like 2 days to being able to have one last a while, but Again, i have no real time reference for when he recovers. thinking of him getting old makes me sad :,).

(if it’s the re; tl, i do think lelouch ends up at suzakus door step Somehow Someway. still no time idea for that though).

suzaeuphie

euphie is very fleeting in every aspect of her life, and especially suzakus. i think she has a crush on him throughout their whole time together, but is similar to lelouch in the sense of being able to keep it under wraps. she knows they have a lot more important things to deal with, and she’s also well aware that pursuing him romantically would out his position (and probably his safety) at extreme risk. if she had lived long enough, i think they would’ve ended up together.

i don’t think suzaku comes to terms with having feelings for her until the day of the SAZ incident. all the time before that was probably just lloyd making some joke about his “new girlfriend” and suzaku internally going “there’s no way she likes. we’re just coworkers, this is just my job. besides, what would lelouch do if i told him i was dating his sister?”

during this time, i think suzaku is teetering between lelouch and euphie. he’ll have moments of admiring lelouch when he’s invited over for dinner, or feeling like he’s only at peace when he’s with him and nunnally, but he ends up brushing it off as just being close and missing them both after so long.

when euphie commands suzaku to love her, i think that’s when he actually realizes all her little flirts were for real. i think they’d have some kind of conversation about the whole thing in that little field—suzaku talks about his dad, and how he struggles to believe people actually love him, and euphie says she’s ok with waiting. little did she know She wouldn’t be able to. Wait who said that…

suzagino

suzagino is the pinnacle of situationship to me. it’s 100% suzaku rebounding after the tragedy of suzaku and euphemia. gino is totally led on for like 6 months and is Totally bitter when suzaku ends up on the news with lelouch.

i think Prior to suzakus promotion, gino has a reputation for being a playboy—going to parties and flirting with girls, having all the other knights do all the important work for him. he initially only wanted to hook up with suzaku out of curiosity, but after a failed attempt to Woo him, he becomes actually genuinely interested in him. similarly to when suzaku is the knight of zero, i think he’s pretty emotional as knight of seven but has a lot better control of it. he doesn’t try to get super close with the others, partially because he assumes they don’t really want him there. i think gino manages to wedge his way into suzaku’s life in spite of all his attempts to distance himself from the rest of them.

i do think suzaku likes gino. i think they’re both into each other but they keep their Deeds on the down low for the sake of professionalism (suzaku is the first one to make gino actually care about professionalism. that’s how much it means to him.) for suzaku, i just don’t think he’s ready to be with someone else, and ends up using gino as a way to feel better. i don’t think he consciously sees gino and goes “yup im gonna sleep with him to cope with my evil ex and my dead ex,” i think he just sees gino trying to love him and lets him, because at the end of the day that is what he wants, but right now he doesn’t think he deserves it, so he tries to push gino away and tries to be like “you don’t know anything about me, how can you like someone you don’t know.” and gino Just Don’t Gaf cuz he WANTS that strange boy.

i’m telling you. the pinnacle of 18 year old situationship.

suzajuli

szll is a relationship that has respect as its groundwork. at this point, suzaku assumes all respect for both parties has been lost. as far as he cares, his friendship with lelouch had ended when euphie was shot. what interests me about suzajuli is how much internal turmoil it gives suzaku. i think, to him, julius becomes a facsimile to take out his anger on, but only when julius and lelouch are entities he can consciously separate. suzaku doesn’t feel bad about hurting julius—he actively deprives him of water or ignores him when he needs help, but as soon as julius starts acting like lelouch (or the version of him that suzaku would like to keep) he feels bad. early in akito on the train, julius is in obvious distress, asking suzaku for help, and he does nothing. i believe it’s safe to assume, thanks to suzaku’s reaction (or lack thereof) and julius’ mental breakdown near the end of the series, that this is a common occurrence. suzaku views julius in pain as lelouch getting what he deserves. when they’re in the jail cell together, and julius is acting like lelouch, this is the first time we see suzaku hav an outward reaction of violence toward him, and he backs away when lelouch begs suzaku to kill him.

suzaku understands that this request is from lelouch and not julius, forcing him to realize that lelouch does, in fact, feel guilty about what he’s done up to this point—he feels bad enough to want to die, and to want suzaku to do it. this is no longer suzaku righteously taking the life of a terrorist, but rather suzaku putting his friend out of his misery. this admission of guilt on lelouchs part end up putting suzaku’s own actions into perspective—he realizes he is being just as “dirty” as lelouch was.

suzaC

i’m including them cause i think it’s an interesting dynamic that doesn’t get talked about a lot. not even in the purely romantic sense, but i think suzaku and cc have a lot of potential for really interesting interactions And they just don’t really get that. i think cc can sympathize with the guilt suzaku feels about killing lelouch, but in Classic CC Fashion, she never feels the need to disclose too much information about herself to suzaku.

i think there would be times that suzaku would find cc praying in a chapel that’s built in to the palace, and he would just sit down next to her. they don’t need to talk—just being around lelouch so much has given them a sort of quiet understanding of one another To a Degree. suzaku enjoys ccs company because she’s the kind of person who keeps her expectations for most on the ground. she wouldn’t be upset if he decides to just say nothing, and she wouldn’t hold it against him if he wanted to actually talk openly with her.

suzakall

post ending they’re drinking buddies IDC. i think kallen really struggles to get along with suzaku because of how much she doesn’t understand him, but after lelouch dies and she connects the dots that suzaku is zero now, she, in similar fashion to gino, forces her way into his life. i really really like the concept of them being battle friends. in canon, i think suzaku really does want her to understand him, and i think she almost can, but they’re both very driven people so it’s difficult for them to see eye to eye.

i also think kallen is a lot more emotional than she’s given credit for, and she’s way more emotionally driven than suzaku, so a part of her distaste for him early in the season is also out of jealousy. from her perspective, he’d kiss britannias boots in a kimono if he could. she’s frustrated by the fact that he doesn’t deny his heritage yet works for the people who kill people like them.

one day they get drunk and talk it out. They go fishing together :,)

well That’s it! Thank you for showing interest! cuz i think about them all the time! all of them! nonstop! sorry it’s not typical Head Canons, but i’ve been building my Own code geass timeline for the last like 2 years, so sometimes the lines get blurred on what’s canon and what isn’t. i actually make a handful of character/ship playlists on spotify, so if you’re ever interested in how i “perceive” ships or characters Then feel free to have a look!

[xdeepinyoux]

US ELECTION Breakdown and the American Neo Nazi flood.

As of 5:34 this morning on November 6th, the 2024 candidate for the next president was announced. While many are celebrating, there are many like myself who are terrified. I am fortunate enough to live in a Blue state (Democrat) but many are not. There will be many people who claim it’s because of the economy that they voted for Trump, unfortunately this is not true. It saddens me to say that as Americans, understanding different aspects of the candidates main running points can be misunderstood and or entirely wrong. Let’s correct and breakdown these misconceptions.

Understanding Trumps Economic Plan:

Trumps plan will endanger, if not entirely bankrupt the American economy. His plan is to raise the taxes of lower class (low income) and middle class taxes while giving a massive tax breaks to those in the 2-1% (those who make a minimum of $900,000 annually).

Nobel prize winners, people who are awarded the Nobel prize for their incredible contributions to humanity:

More than half of the living economist Nobel prize winners (all with different backgrounds and political beliefs) voiced support for Kamala’s plan and labeled it as superior to Trumps. Trump added over 8 trillion dollars worth of debt to the US during his first term in office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/science/kamala-harris-nobel-winners.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/science/kamala-harris-nobel-winners.html

Tariff’s:

Definition- a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country to influence it, raise revenues, or protect competitive advantages

Trump plans to impose Tariff’s which would be paid for by the American people, not the country whose goods are being imported. Adding this tax on imported goods will raise our country’s inflation higher. The purpose of this is to create market distortions that can actually harm domestic consumers over time.

The American Economy is Built on Immigrants:

Immigration, specifically undocumented immigrants, are constant talking points in which Trump uses to manipulate and induce fear into MAGA and other voters. By using derogatory language and racial stereotypes, he has created a harmful, dangerous and false narrative of undocumented people. Where Trump claims they are “taking American jobs”, the truth behind the matter is that undocumented migrants are working jobs that Americans do not want and will not work for the pay that is given. This was reconfirmed when Florida Govern, Ron Desantis, exiled and deported thousands of undocumented immigrants in Florida which left American citizens to complain and refuse to work those labor intensive jobs even after food shortages occurred in 2023.

Mass Deportation and what it means for the American Economy:

Mass deportation and demonization of immigrant people will lead to the downfall of the American Economy. Adding to his economic plan, the topic of deporting over a million migrants back to there birth countries would not only cost hundreds of billions of dollars but also cause labor and food shortages that have only been seen in the years 1929 – 1939 (The Great Depression).

What does this mean overall for the American People?

With a deadly combination of mass deportation, higher taxes and tariff’s the American economy will crash. Along with targeting minority groups, inflation will also bring us back to the philosophical question; would you steal bread to feed your family? The question at hand seems simple, yet statistics show the correlation between high crime rates and poverty levels time and time again. As American citizens we will see the rise of Trumps violence for a second term in office. Violent crimes against women and children, hate crimes and other violence against minorities and those who are apart of the LGBT+ community.

Trump has also spoken openly about his desire to rid Americans of their right to choose ranging from topics of abortion to voting. He has recently stated that when he wins American citizens won’t have to vote again after four years. While some may interpret this as it being his second term and therefore no longer being eligible to run again, it may have a much darker meaning. Trump has shown in the past that he has no issues with disregarding the American constitution and overturning democracy. If he were to succeed in overturning future election and voting laws then he would become Americas first Dictator. Furthermore, Trump is a convicted felon with 34 counts including but not limited to: Rape, selling national security secrets to enemy nations, staging a coup to overturn the 2020 election, election interference and voter fraud. Though we have a glimpse of what the next four years will look like it is unsure as Trump is dangerous and unpredictable. Voting for Trump in 2024 is Voting against America.

Final Note:

To anyone living in a red state where you are not safe please see the resources below:

LGBTQ+ INCLUSIVE CRISIS LINES:

Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

or text START to 678-678 or online chat

Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860

Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988

[marshmallowprotection]

Any hcs of Saeyoung and his days trained by the agency? I saw some pretty messed up ones and it made me tear up a bit remembering that he was just a KID

Saeyoung's time in the agency is far from joyful. It is the worst experience of his life because he sold his autonomy away for the chance to keep his brother safe, and it was for nothing in the end because Rika and V didn't keep their promise.

There isn't a lot of concrete evidence as to everything he went through during his time in the agency, and due to how much he pointedly jokes about his experiences to cope, it's hard to tell the truth from the lie he put in to make you doubt the validity of what actually happened.

So, if anything, I think it's important to point out that the agency did send him to California to study computer science. He went by a solid alias during his time there, Chilyoung Choi, and this is revealed in the diary Rika wrote for the Special Believer box. He went missing before the graduation ceremony, and the newspaper clipping Rika had was proof the agency wiped all the data of him being there which made a lot of students question if he was even there or not.

It seemed like his existence was a question meant for a scary story online about how someone never existed at your school but you all collectively remember this person for some reason. So, imagine that, Saeyoung is no older than fourteen or fifteen, and he's in America, no choice but to learn English and other languages as fast as possible to acclimate and not be suspicious, and he has to remain out of sight at all times as not to make a lasting impression on others, but be good enough to ace all his classes without fail.

He doesn't even get to enjoy the experience of being in school or making friends in school. Sure, it's implied he did speak to others sometimes, but that... that isn't a fun experience. I think that had to be hard on him, because Saeyoung loves to learn and if his life wasn't cruel, he would stayed in college to learn as much as he could for as long as he could. It was another slap in the face that he couldn't live a free life, but maybe, just maybe, Saeran would be able to experience a life like that.

It's a note of contention between Seven and Vanderwood when Seven slacks off. He procrastinates doing much of his work, and I think he does that for a reason. Most of the work he's doing is dirty work that wealthy people want to pay off the agency to take care of so they don't have to worry about getting their hands filthy. That means the work he's doing in the field and through cyberspace aren’t things he’s morally okay with.

After all, if you're going to pay an agency to take care of something for you, you are not a good person, and even if you are, what you're asking for from the agency is more likely than not illegal and would be considered taboo or unforgivable in the public world 9/10 times. For a long time, I always theorized that Saejoong Choi was amongst those who paid the agency, and hot damn, I was proven correct in the RAE. That goes to show how dirty and underhanded the agency is when it comes to work.

Anything for the bottom dollar.

Anything for greed.

Part of the reason why he avoids doing his work until the last minute has to do with the kind of work he's doing. I feel like if his target is innocent and he doesn't want to do what the agency wants him to do, he puts it off as much as humanly possible and tries to find other ways to take care of the problem first.

If that doesn't work, the only reason why he procrastinates is because he doesn't want to go through with doing what he has to do. In the end, he doesn't have a choice, and neither does Vanderwood, they’ve got guns at their heads and that’s why Vanderwood doesn’t fucking ever mince his words and tells him to get over himself and DO IT. He does it, and he long lost the reasoning to tell himself to think about the morality of the situation.

It'll happen to Saeyoung eventually, too.

But, as much as Vanderwood thinks of saving his own ass first, we all know that he covers for Seven, too. As much as he reasonably can in a situation, anyway, doesn't make Vanderwood the best person, but I do think his soft spot for Seven is important because it shows a good reason why some people soften to Vanderwood in the end. He has a good heart underneath everything, and even if he has methods to do things that most people don't agree with, he still wants to look after his brat.

Seven doesn't want to hurt other people who don't deserve it. But, he doesn't have much of a choice given the fact he sold his life away for his brother. He doesn't regret that choice, but he has to live with it in ways he never imagined when he made that deal as a kid. Ways that haunt him every day, even after the agency is dismantled from every angle imaginable.

Now, I think most people are well aware of the fact that Seven has had missions where he has to dress up to get close to his target. There are a multitude of reasons why an agent would have to dress up, and sure, not all of those reasons are horrible, sometimes you need to wear a tuxedo to get into a party. You have to look the part otherwise you're going to stick out like a sore thumb.

But, I don’t think most people who see him dress up think about the implication of his words. This is a snippet from his Diary that you can look at in the RFA box. Saeyoung has been a member of the agency since he was a teenager, and it doesn't blow past me for a second to think about the fact that they'd have him dress up to fill a role to get their targets to drop their guard long enough for the kill.

Saeyoung dressed up as a maid because there was a "maid fanatic." I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't like the phrasing of those words and I never have. There is some creep at the event he attended and the only way he could get close to this creep was by dressing up as a maid to get this guy to look at him. They used the fact that he's a scrawny teenager / young adult to their benefit, knowing that if he is there playing a helpless damsel, their targets will eat it up.

The amount of sexual harassment and WORSE that Saeyoung has experienced is something I don't think he's even begun to unravel. I do think as well that the agency giving him the opportunity to don a new persona on missions also helped him explore his gender identity and fluidity. He feels comfortable as a woman when he's the one who has a say in his look, and while no Saeyoung fan agrees on what label he's comfortable with, nonbinary, genderfluid, trans, or a cis guy who simply loves to crossdress or do drag—it's an interesting to see how we all view his exploration of gender.

I personally think he's genderfluid, and he doesn’t mind whatever pronouns you use for him, but if you deviate from using he/him as your default, God there’s a look of euphoria on his face the likes of which you have never seen before. “Pretty girl” and “Good boy” hit the same for him but the former really makes his eyes sparkle. My headcanon, of course.

Though, I think sometimes he has a complicated relationship with his identity because his self-discovery happened not because he decided to dress up and learn more about himself, but because the agency told him he had no choice but to dress up. He doesn't want his experience in the agency to taint what he sees when he dresses up, which is why I think he does what he does in the chat room to receive compliments now and again from the other members. He ends up fishing for compliments because he wants them to come from a genuine place, not from some creep he has to get rid of for work. 

I think it'll be better for him once he's out of the agency and he can explore his identity comfortably, and his MC can play a role in helping him feel validated in his sense of self, regardless of how you headcanon him. Because, more than anything, I think he deserves to have an experience that makes him feel good when he dresses up, allowing him to overcome the damage the agency did to him and embracing that he can identify and express himself anyway he wants to and nobody can take that from him. 

Most people are aware of the warehouse phone call. He spent days in a warehouse behind enemy fire and the only consolation he won out of that pain was the Honey Buddha Chips they paid him off with for the "trouble". He spent those days thinking he was going to die within an instant, one wrong move and he's dead, and that's one of the hard traumatic events he's gone through that he hasn't unraveled the way he needs to. 

I cannot even begin to imagine how agonizing it was to sit there, no food or water, knowing that if he made a single sound, they would kill him without remorse. 

He isn't just a desk agent who hacks his way into what they tell him to. If they tell him to go out into the field, he has to and that's that. He doesn't have a say in the matter.

He's mentioned visiting Antarctica and I believe a few island nations before. Again, you can't tell for certain just how much he's joking and how much of the truth he's telling you, so you have to take it with the smallest grain of salt and work out the realism. But, it's clear to me in my mind that he's had to travel to places just to take care of a mission and those missions put his life at risk.

He's trained not to defend himself but to attack first. He doesn't keep guns in his bunker but he knows how to use one. He knows best how to defend himself in a fight, considering that the car he used to take you with him was bullet proof, and that's not something you do in the average life. You don't just get a bulletproof car for no reason. You get it because you're scared for your life.

I make it abundantly clear in most of the posts I write about him to remind people just how paranoid of a person he is. It's not healthy, not in the slightest, but if you understand where he's coming from, it makes sense why he reacts the way he does. Saeyoung is afraid of dying and he’s right to be afraid. Not only does he need to be scared of his father and how fast he could be erased, he has to be afraid of all of the people he has pissed off during his time in the agency. He is not short on enemies.

Plenty of people don't like him and that's one of the reasons why he was afraid to let anybody get close to him. It's not that he's afraid of letting himself be loved, although, that is something he does have to learn how to accept, it's more so he's afraid of people being tortured because they love him. Bad people will exploit your weaknesses and if you own those weaknesses close to your heart where anyone can see it, they will know how to hurt you. 

Honestly, there are a lot of things he went through during his time in the agency, things that I don't think will ever be able to account for because it's going to take him a long time to open up about what happened to him. He always puts the needs of others before himself. He's going to get better about that in the future, but you're going to have to be gentle with him as he begins to unravel all of the things they made him do to survive. He's not out of the water yet but at least he's willing to trust his partner with his heavy heart. 

[materialsscienceandengineering]

hi, do you have any resource recommendations for laypeople who want to grasp the most important essentials/fundamentals of material science? any help will be very appreciated!

Great question! Unfortunately, our definitions of 'laypeople' and 'fundamentals' may vary, so if this list doesn't have what you're looking for just let me know and I'll give it another shot.

Let's start with some... let's say 'unpublished/unofficial' resources. First - this blog. Not to toot my own horn, but I've got a good collection of original posts (try the tag MyMSEPost, or this year's newest variety 2024Daily) that I hope are fairly readable to the general public - and come with links and further reading resources for each topic. However, these posts are not comprehensive. I don't think I've ever talked about what is a crystal structure, for example. [Also, I've been doing this for, wow, almost 10 years now, so... that's a fair number of posts...] I also, one upon a time, made some MSE Masterpost posts, though those are probably pretty outdated by now and I can't guarantee the links all work.

Another resource is msestudent.com. They don't have an about page, but it seems to be a more official (i.e., non-Tumblr) blog about the fundamentals. That being said, while they do have a search system, they don't seem to have a table of contents. Both of these resources will help you learn some fundamentals, but they won't tell you what the fundamentals are if you don't already know them.

Other science Tumblr blogs have come and gone over the years, but @materiallugy seems to be currently posting, and @matmake was not too long ago. Both have separate websites with resources, though I'm not sure how comprehensive.

Now for undergraduate level resources that are comprehensive. These are introductory, but I suppose they might presuppose a high-school level education (basic chemistry and physics, probably):

Online classes, such as MIT OpenCourseware, or Coursera (two examples of many). Some of these kinds of resources are free, some aren't. MIT, in particular, isn't so much a class you take online as it is the resources (and sometimes videos) of their classes.

Textbooks. I used Materials Science and Engineering: An Introduction (Callister and Rethwisch), which I think is pretty common and a well respected book. Obviously it costs money, but I think it's safe to say you could go back a couple editions and save some money.

Less comprehensive but still official is the University of Cambridge's Teaching and Learning Packages. Again, this won't tell you what are the fundamentals if you don't know already know. For example, there are 78 at the moment - I wouldn't say the additive manufacturing TLP is essential to MSE, but atomic scale structure of materials is.

Additional resources:

Specifically corrosion

Online, virtual, general chemistry textbook

Online, virtual, organic chemistry textbook

Someone else's compiled list of links and resources, which may be outdated

YouTube videos from a professor of MSE (side note: I have not watched these and cannot verify their accuracy or usefulness, but the guy does teach this stuff for a living...)

Hope this helps, and everyone feel free to chime in if you have any resources of your own you use!

[absolutebl]

Recs for Uni or HS BLs where studying impacts plot

My ask box is bonkers, sometimes I get a message in email saying someone asked a question and then when I check on the hellsite itself, it's gone... (What does this MEAN?)

Anygay...

@sagi-kari asked a question:

Do you have any recs for Uni or HS BLs where the main focus is studying or study related (they have to actually do the thing). Like LITA with Rain's studies being a caveat to their relationship or Big Dragon with Mangkorn's New York internship/job idr.

Basically, the study needs to be an important thing to the narrative.

This is a doozie and I'm only gonna rec stuff I rated over 8/10

University & HS BL Revolving Around Study

Semantic Error - class conflict is the inciting event, and this is one of my favorite BLs of all time. So yeah, it tops the list. I am assuming you have watched it because EVERYONE must watch this little pice of perfect. Full review here.

Blueming - the school project is the source of the conflict, this is a complicated chewy very thoughtful BL, longer than normal for Korea. If you enjoy things like The 8th Sense you might like this. Full review here.

Love Class - the whole show is about a manufactured relationship as part of a social science class experiment. Full review here.

You Make Me Dance - I mean it's a dance major so no actual book study but yeah, it's there he has to win a dance scholarship as a main part of the plot. I've never done a full review of this, and frankly that's an oversite. Time for a rewatch?

HIStory 2: Right or Wrong - it's about a teacher student relationship so...

Addicted: Heroin - especially the first half, I know what you're thinking, but also, THINK about it. It's all within a class from environment for most of the first 6 eps. I believe it counts. This is, without question, the best BL China has ever produced. FIGHT ME.

Destiny Seeker - an under appreciated pulp that is basically predicated on the university sorting hat. I have great affection for this hot mess, including all the sides. Mostly takes place within and around the complexities of dorm life. Full review here.

Kiss Me Again series (BL cut) + Dark Blue Kiss (AKA the PeteKao series staring TayNew) - it's not necessarily a driver but engineering and study is actual integral in a setting as character kind of way. And there is a lot of "make-out while studying." Plus we in the TayNew renauances and I have great affection for their original series. Everyoen shoudl watch it. Here's the watch guide.

HS BL - not exactly study, but sorta & they really good

Light On Me - Another one of my absolute favorite BLs, but it's about the school government club, not actual study. Full review here.

Love Sick - if you count club activities. I just got a full load up of this series with new subs, so I was going to do a watch along in honor of 2024 (its 10th anniversary). I am still considering it.

My School President - also, if you count extra-curricular & club activities. Another BL that i absolutely adore. No full review but I did have a long discussion on how this plays into Thailand's new norm in BL here.

Takara & Amagi - ugh I love this show so much but it's more about popularity and social acceptance in HS than studing, full review here.

About Youth - if you count external parental pressure to over achieve, another underappreciated gem, this time for Taiwan. Full review here.

I dithered...

Bad Buddy - maybe, I mean departmental conflict is a large part of the story, plus high school back story club activities, but there is very little study. Full review here.

Please feel free to add more on a RP or in comments, but remember my codicil was I have to have personally rated it over 8/10 so your baby might not be on here because it wasn't to my personal taste.

(source)

[candy8448]

GCSE ADVISE FOR CLASS OF 2025/current year 10s

This is a copy and paste from a group chat i have with some yr 10 friends so if there are teacher names from my school, ignore them

Website, resources and youtube channel names will be highlighted in orange

More subject specific advise on my GCSE rambles masterlist

------

1. you should seriously start revising from now

At the start of the year i didnt care about revision so i didnt do anything till our first mocks rolled around and then tried to cram an entire year and few months of content for every subject in 2 weeks and i didnt get it in time. And during the easter holidays i spent so much time revising to catch up before gcses that i fell into a depressive episode so start revising slowly from now and over the summer holiday to save your emotions later

2. Rest is gonna be more important than revision at times

Especially towards the lead up to your real gcses if you need a break, savrifice revision for having a break or sleep it will do you better, but make sure you have/will do enough revision in time

3. Your first mocks will be this year's gcse papers but don't cheat and look up the questions, especially for english because that will do you no good because the mocks are meant to help you practice analysis on the spot in total exam conditions

4. Do practice papers, especially for science and maths this will help you the most. Do it in english as well if you are not so good at analysis or essay writing. If ur bad at essay writingf, practice writing and give it to the teachers, if youre bad at on the spot analysis, then juust bring up a bunch of practice quuestions and just play your essay. Dont write the essay, just keep planning a bunch so you develop that skill better

5. Gcses really aren't too bad. Sure they are a bit stressful when you are doing the exams that you need for a levels, but they are still not as bad as people might say. Also dont let your mocks make you worry. My mocks were a TON harder than the real thing. Dunno if that is cuuz i got better or what but dont fret about what you got in your mocks and just use it to know what to revise next

6. I dont know what order hiistory is going to be taught in, but ask mr millen or mr crozier what unit you are going to study last and during your breaks, try to study that unit yourself. We didnt have time to cover elizabeth and only covered one enquiry of content out of three so i had to spend the entire weekend teaching myself the unit from scratch so maybe try studying that unit yourself throughout the year so you dont run out of time and have to cram a ton of new content in 2 days

@Cognito is a great channel for science revision. Ive used the "entire [bio/chem/phys] paper [1/2] in 30 mins" videos so much for revision. Its efficient and labels triple and combined topics so you know which bits to ignore and such. They also have other exam boards and not just aqa

@freesciencelessons ive heard is really good but ii hardly used it, but its good for going into detail for certain topics

Also for science, make revision cards during or closely after your science lesson to save yourself time. Makig the revision cards took so much time and took away time fron actually revising from them so if you make them during school hours then you have time to revise from them.

Also getting a bunch of questions or opening a textbook and makig questions up about it to ask your friends helps both of you revise really well, especially as last minute reviisiion.

Questions like "what iis the name of the instrumental method for the flame test" (that is paper 2 so you wouldnt have pearned iit yet but questions like that)

Litcharts is the best for english revision, it has detailed notes for every single english text you would have ever done and the poems. Its also layed out in a really good way, especially best on desktop.

You dont need to pay the subscription because the things it gives for free are more than enough. I mainly used this website for the poems

@Mr salles has good videos for english. I used this channel a lot because he gives very nuanced ideas that work so well as well as advise that helps a lot with general essay writing and such.

Ive also heard tgat @everythingenglish and @mrbruff are super good. Ive used mrbruff for last minute poetry revision the day before our lit paper 2 because he has really good analysis of each poem in five minutes which i used for all the poems i was not confident in at all

Also for english, learn how the mark scheme works. If you know exactly what the examiners want, that is basically half of your marks.

One key advise i try to remember is to analyse the form and structure of the text or poems. That will get you many more marks and very quickly push you to the top bands withiut being too dificult. Just talk about the way the paragraohs are done, or ciclical structure

MME, This website is very good for maths revision. I despise maths and do worst in maths so this helped me learn entire topics in a few minutes when i couldnt in a few weeks of lessons.

What i did was go through all of my old books since yr 8 or yr 9 and just write down a list of every topic i wasnt 100% confident in. And then went through one by one and learned them again, and made revision cards on them

Also for revisioncards to save time, i litterally just tore out some bits from my maths book tgat had the information layed out well.

Also dont fret if there are one or two topics you just cannot understand. If you cannot do completing the square for the life of you, then just screw it, at most it will be 5 marks on one of the papers. Dont do this for too many subjects but if tgere are one or two you just cannot do, thhen ignore it.

Also if you are aiming for a grade 6, all you need to do is get 100% on the first 13 questions on each of the 3 papers. That will get you ceazy close to grade 6, and then complete the rest of the paper and you've probably gotten it

I HATE CGP's books, they judt never work for me cuz i hate how they are layed out buut for hostory it is tge one textbook that actually worrks from them. Ive found this text book so helpful, more than youtube videos. Mr millen gave all of our yeargroup one of these for free but i dont know if he will for your year. Ask him, but dont buy it if you find out he is just gonna give you one

I think that's about it. I dont have anything for frnech because i honestly just winged it and did no revision, but you should probably practice it for good measure

There is a perfect amount of stress where you will work the best. Too little stress and you wont do as well, too much stress and you wont work as well. First mocks i was fretting, but second mocks i went into each exam calmly and did much better, and same with the real thing.

I did slack off on the last history exam and physics exam because those were my last two exams, but i wish i did work a bit more on those instead of just give up

You will never feel more comradery with the entire country of year 11s than you will when you finally sit those real exams

Good luck next year!

[bambiraptorx]

Okay so since yokai education system won in this poll as the topic of my lore dump, have a ramble.

The yokai education system is fairly complicated in nature: even though it's largely publicly funded via taxes, it doesn't necessarily resemble what people think of as a public school. (This is because I'm drawing a lot on my experiences from being homeschooled/ homeschool co-ops/in the US school system, so there's kind of a hodge-podge.) Also, as a rather important sidenote, I'm working with the headcanon that different yokai species have different rates of development/aging, so the whole process of education isn't nearly as standardized as it would be in a US public school anyway.

Yokai schools have a lot of variety in size and purpose, but are usually designed to provide classes for any level of education. This might be done through having multiple wings or floors in the building for different levels of education (kids are usually separated from adults, gen eds from higher level classes, etc) or having the school itself spread out over multiple buildings. Schools tend to be pretty large, and one person might spend their entire educational career (from what we'd consider pre-k all the way to a PhD) at one building or campus.

It's also fairly common for schools to be organized by subject: a wing (or floor or building) for science, for arts, for history, etc. If this is the case, there's usually a separate area specifically for the lower education levels (think elementary/middle school-ish) so that the youngest kids don't have to run all over the place or between buildings to get to classes.

Speaking of classes: they tend to be relatively small, no more than 20 students tops, but usually around 10-15, even going as small as 4-5 people on occasion. Students are more likely to take 3-4 days of classes than 5 days in a row, but it depends on what the parent is willing/able to teach them at home. Also, the selection of teachers is less "you went to school to learn how to educate" and more "hey we heard you're a physical therapist, would you like to teach anatomy and physiology classes this semester". There's a bit of a social expectation that people who have spent a long time in a given field will eventually teach a class about it, or at least come in and do guest lectures.

Also: P.E. is generally considered to be an extracurricular activity and/or a parental responsibility. Yokai are too varied in body types and exercise needs for any form of standardized physical education to be particularly effective (like how can you have bird person and a centaur and sentient slime do the same exercises? not easily, and it's way easier to teach a class where everyone's doing the same exercises than it is to teach one where everyone has to do different things.)

Schools will usually have sports teams though, and it's fairly common to offer some kind of fighting/weapons class. They often have plenty of clubs and extracurriculars, from chess and art clubs to theater productions. However, there's only one or two schools in the Hidden City that currently offer a robotics club.

Feel free to ask questions! This is barely a fraction of the lore I have, and, as you may have guessed, I like infodumping lol

[abenvs3000f24]

Unit 10 Blog Post

Through my developing of my personal ethic as a nature interpreter, I often find myself grappling with a blend of ethical responsibilities, philosophical beliefs, and practical approaches shaped by both my own experiences as well as new teachings through this course. For me, my primary belief is rooted in the intrinsic value of nature - through this, I have encompassed a deep respect for all living things, ecosystems, as well as the complex interdependencies throughout nature. I truly recognize that nature is not merely a resource for humans to use but also a dynamic, living and functioning entity with inherent worth. This way of thinking guides me to a form of interpretation that emphasizes stewardship, respect, education, and the shaping of a healthy relationship with nature.

One core belief that I carry is the thought of interconnectedness. I find myself often astonished by how interconnected nature is with itself as well as with humans. This also drives how I have developed as a nature interpreter - I find myself deeply attached to the idea of protecting the nature around us and creating a sense of thankfulness and respect. I want to interpret nature in a way that fosters a deeper connection and understanding of our place and role within the natural world around us. My goal as a nature interpreter is to show others this interconnectedness, and to help people recognize that their actions affect the environment they rely on.

In addition to this, I also believe in the power of storytelling to connect others to natural on both a personal and emotional standpoint. I know that facts and figures are essential, but often I find that they lack an emotional impact that is required to inspire genuine concern or action. Intricate and meaningful stores that highlight the historical, ecological, and cultural significance of the natural world can create deeper connections. As an example from another class of mine, sharing the story of the Pacific yew tree’s role in cancer treatment, alongside the challenges of its conservation, can help others understand and connect to the real-world consequences and implications of biodiversity loss. As an interpreter, a goal of mine is to create empathy and a sense of responsibility towards taking care of and respecting the natural world.

Pacific yew tree (Taxus brevifolia)

Furthermore, I believe that with these beliefs come responsibilities. Firstly, I view it as my goal and duty to educate in a way that is both accessible and engaging. As an interpreter, it is important for me to remember that I have the opportunity to shape individuals perceptions of nature, and I want to help others as much as I can to see the value in nature beyond utility to humans. For me this means providing balanced and accurate information that highlights the complexity and beautify of ecosystems while also acknowledging current threats they may face, including climate change, habitat destruction, and over-harvesting.

Another important responsibility is to create an ethic of sustainability and conservation in my audience. This needs me to be well-educated about environmental concerns and to stay knowledgeable on new information in conservation science. I hope to present this information empathetically and clearly, so that I can empower others to make healthier, more sustainable choices in their own lives. I believe that my role is not to preach but to guide; instead of telling others what they should do, my goal is to provide them with the tools and knowledge to make their own informed decisions.

When addressing my approach, I personally find that a participant-centered style suits me most. Rather than delivering information in a lecture style, I prefer to create and engage in discussions and dialogues, encoring others to ask questions, share experiences and observations, and reflect on time spent in nature. In my opinion, this interactive method can help deepen learners understandings and connections to the environment.

In addition, place-based education is another approach I strongly believe in. By focusing on the local environment and its features, I can help participants form a connection to the place they are visiting. I found this approach particularly effective when I would deliver education to students while working with my local conservation authority. Whether it was pointing out native plants and animals or discussing the history associated with the landscape, I found this approach to make the experience overall more memorable and relevant. Additionally, this method can also help others understand the importance of preserving the environment that is local to them.

One of the trails I often delivered educational content to children.

Overall, my personal ethic as a nature interpreter is something that is shaped by a deep respect and understanding of the intrinsic value of nature, a responsibility to create positive and inclusive interactions with the environment, as well as a belief in the impact of story telling. I want to create experiences that are not only educational but also transformative. I want to help others see themselves as part of the natural world and inspire them to respect the environment around them. My goal is to guide other people toward a deeper understanding and appreciation of the natural world and foster a commitment to its preservation. I believe that I can create meaningful impact as a nature interpreter, translating my insights and passion to help others protect our planet.

Alexandra

[dailyanarchistposts]

Footnotes

[1] I here gladly acknowledge my obligations to Victor Drury, {15} whose classification I adopt and follow.

{1} Actually Say may have gone farther.

{2} From Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609) by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (c. 1539-1616; not to be confused with the earlier Spanish writer of the same name); Lum quotes from the 1871 translation by Clements Markham.

{3} Principles of Sociology I.ii.10

{4} Probably American historian John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877).

{5} Swiss historian and economist Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (1773-1842).

{6} Jack Cade, leader of 1450 peasant rebellion; John Wycliffe, 14th-century Catholic dissident; Jacob van Artevelde and Philip van Artevelde, father and son, 14th-century Flemish nationalist leaders; Étienne Marcel, bourgeois leader involved in the 1358 French peasant rebellion known as the Jacquerie; rising of the Swiss cantons: a 14th-century confederacy that threw off Habsburg rule; Cola di Rienzi, 14th-century Italian revolutionary leader; Hanseatic League, Renaissance mercantile alliance of northern Europe.

{7} A reference to Auguste Comte’s (1798-1857) division of history into theological, metaphysical, and positive/industrial phases, though in his description of the details Lum seems closer to Spencer than to Comte.

{8} Barebone’s Parliament, form taken by the British Parliament in 1653, between the dissolution of the Rump Parliament and the rise of Cromwell’s Protectorate, taking its name from the involvement of religious dissenting leader Praise-God Barebones or Barebone or Barbon (c. 1598-1679); Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836), French revolutionary leader who served in the national legislature known as the Convention.

{9} “Progress and Order” (or equally “Order and Progress”) was a popular slogan among followers of Comte; see the Brazilian flag.

{10} Pen name of American humorist Benjamin Drew (1812-1903).

{11} Bonds payable only upon the death of a third party, though here used metaphorically to mean payable only in the afterlife.

{12} “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God.”

{13} Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), whose description of economics as “the dismal science” has often been thought (as probably here by Lum) to refer to its conservative aspects (e.g., Malthus’s alleged proof that improvements in the lot of the working class were unattainable), though in fact Carlyle meant to be condemning its liberal aspects (specifically its opposition to slavery).

{14} plural sic.

{15} Victor Drury (1825-1918), French-born American anarchist active in the Knights of Labor.

{16} William Godwin (1756-1836), English anarchist philosopher who advocated voluntary equality of property.

{17} American economist Henry George (1839-1897), who though generally a free-market advocate regarded society as the legitimate owner of all land, and consequently favoured replacing all taxation with a single tax on land; American state-socialist writer Edward Bellamy (1850-1898); Lum’s line “looking backward to Sparta and Peru” is a sarcastic reference to Bellamy’s utopian 1888 novel Looking Backward.

{18} A reference to an example in Henry George’s 1881 book The Land Question.

{19} German economist Wilhelm Roscher (1817-1894), an important influence (perhaps surprisingly) on both the German Historical School and the French Liberal School. The passage quoted is from Joseph Lalor’s 1878 translation of Roscher’s 1854 Principles of Political Economy.

{20} A frequent misquotation from Shakespeare’s Tempest IV.1.151-57, eliding “the baseless fabric of this vision” with “we are such stuff as dreams are made on” a few lines later.

{21} English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) had argued in his 1817 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation that there was a natural tendency for wages to approach the cost of production of labour, which he held to be the bare cost of keeping the labourer alive and able and willing to work; however, he also held a) that wages may be kept above this natural rate indefinitely in an improving economy, and that b) willingness to work depends in any case on cultural factors (including prevailing standards of comfort and decency). Dropping these qualifications, Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) and other socialist thinkers developed Ricardo’s theory into an Iron Law of Wages according to which wages are doomed to stand forever at bare physical subsistence so long as the wage system survives.

{22} Classical liberal English statesman John Bright (1811-1889), free-trade and anti-imperialist activist; the quotation is from Bright’s Glasgow University installation speech in March 1883.

{23} Whatever source Lum is quoting (presumably by Henry George) is evidently to be found reprinted in the 1901 Sunset Club.

{24} In Greek mythology Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the underworld.

{25} A standard Spencerian concern, taking the line of progress to run toward greater differentiation. By “to greater differentiation” Lum presumably means “in preference to greater differentiation.”

{26} The quotation is from Spencer’s 1876 Principles of Sociology V.18 §570.

{27} This phrase often means “piecework,” but in the present context seems to mean labour done on one’s own without cooperation.

{28} The English phrase “to go without saying” derives from the French aller sans dire, although aller de soi, “to go of itself,” may be the more common French idiom.

{29} Lum had had an acrimonious falling-out with the Greenback Party ten years earlier.

{30} Change of antecedent sic.

{31} Presumably there should also be a hyphen between “from” and the first “day.”

{32} An agrarian association friendly to the urban labour movement, formed in Michigan in 1889; a similar movement of the same name was formed in Ontario the following year.

{33} The passage that follows is drawn from the article “‘Greatest Happiness’ Principle” (Westminster Review XI, no 21 (July 1829), which is apparently but not explicitly by Bentham; see Macaulay’s discussion.

{34} The quotation which follows is from Herbert’s “A Politican in Sight of Haven.”

{35} Principles of Sociology V.xviii.563.

{36} Probably a reference to the title of Henry George’s 1879 Progress and Poverty.

{37} Either American economist Amasa Walker (1799-1875) or his son Francis Amasa Walker (1840-1897).

{38} American anarchist and currency reformer William Batchelder Greene (1819-1878).

{39} Hebrews 11:1.

{40} This makes no sense, and is an error for “will not go bankrupt at the same tine” in the original.

{41} Should be “since it is subscribed.”

{42} From Proudhon’s Organisation of Credit and Circulation (1848).

{43} Science of Wealth (1866), ch. 5.

{44} Another quotation from Roscher.

{45} “The great thinker is the secretary of his age”: from English philosopher George Henry Lewes (1817-1878), Problems of Life and Mind (1874).

{46} The Land Question (1881), ch. 16.

{47} Bavarian-American anarcho-communist Johann Most (1846-1906).

{48} French novelist Edmond François Valentin About (1828-1885).

{49} First quotation from Rights of Man (1792), II.1; next three from First Principles of Government (1795).

{50} Reference to a quotation from Malthus.

{51} Science of Wealth, XI.6.

{52} American abolitionist, businessman, liberal economist, and antiwar activist Edward Atkinson (1827-1905).

{53} German-American anarchist August Spies (1855-1877), one of the Haymarket martyrs.

{54} Isaiah 58:1.

{55} American abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), in “Stanzas for the Times.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

A new Harris poll for The Guardian found that the majority of Americans believe that the U.S. is in a recession.

This is patently untrue.  The U.S. is experiencing an extended period of growth, and while market forecasters spent much of the last three years predicting that a recession was just around the corner, it never arrived. Now economists believe that a recession is increasingly unlikely. As The Wall Street Journal reported a month ago, the U.S. economy is the envy of the world, and it has “far outperformed expectations over the past year and a half.” But in poll after poll, Americans say that the economy is poor or simply bad. And a plurality believe the economy was better under Donald Trump. With voters saying that the economy is their top issue for the 2024 election, there might be nothing more important to President Joe Biden than finding a way to get people to believe good news in a nation pervaded by media outlets and Republican politicians selling disaster. All three of the major stock indexes set new records in the last week, with the Dow Jones closing above 40,000 for the first time. 

While it’s easy to dismiss stock prices as something that matters only to the rich, workers with 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts have also benefited from this extended period of good economy and rising markets. The number of American workers with access to a 401(k) plan surged in 2023. The percentage of workers who depend on a 401(k) or IRA for retirement now greatly exceeds the number who rely on a pension. The average 401(k) plan grew by 9.6% in 2023, and markets are up 10% in just the first quarter of 2024. Sure, that’s a lot of money for the wealthy who control 93% of stock, but it’s also tens of millions of Americans who will have a more comfortable and secure retirement. In fact, the number of Americans who have over $1 million in their retirement accounts grew by 20% in the last quarter of 2023.  Unemployment dropped from 6.3% under Trump and has remained under 4% for the longest period since the Vietnam War. Also, 15 million new jobs have been created under Biden while 2.9 million were lost under Trump.

Not only that, but manufacturing jobs, long the foundation of a strong middle class, are making a comeback under Biden as the CHIPS and Science Act brings in billions in new investment. Good new jobs are finally being created in areas where Trump promised but failed to deliver.  Economists recognize that the economy is much better under Biden than it was under Trump. So why do polls keep showing that Americans aren’t giving Biden any credit? And why do 74% of swing state voters say inflation is getting worse even though that's not true? A majority of Americans say that their own personal finances are doing well, and even when the question is expanded to their whole state, voters say the economy has improved. 

Why do a majority of Americans (wrongly) believe that we're in a recession and that things were better under Trump, when in fact President Biden has presided over a booming economy? Too many people have the perception that the incumbent President is to blame for everything.

[crystal-overdrive]

15 questions

I was tagged by @fangbangerghoul!

1. Are you named after anyone? My first name is from a dream my Mam had where she had twin babies, a giant boy with no name and a tiny girl with my name, she went into premature labor a couple of days after that dream. My middle name is for my great grandmother.

2. When was the last time you cried? I genuinely can't remember. Not sure if that suggests I'm happy, or callous. Or both. It's probably both.

3. Do you have kids? No, and no plans to have any.

4. What sports do you play/have you played? I'm training for a 5k right now but it's not going very well...shin splints...kill me. I used to play badminton with my friends but only one of us knew the rules so we called it Yu-Gi-Oh because we were convinced he just made them up as he went. When I was a kid I did horse riding and figure skating.

5. Do you use sarcasm? Putting a sarcastic answer here would be too obvious. I do but I'm also pretty bad at reading it in others which can be awkward.

6. What’s the first thing you notice about people? Their manners, especially if it's a highly coded situation. Politeness is important to me. In more informal situations probably patterns of speech?

7. What’s your eye color? Brown, sometimes green in summer.

8. Scary movies or happy endings? Scary movies 100%. Love a tragedy, love horror.

9. Any talents? I belive in hard work more than talent, but I guess I'm fairly good at putting in the work?

10. Where were you born? That's a security question, mate. No way.

11. What are your hobbies? Video games, tabletop rpgs, going to the theatre, reading. I write both professionally and as a hobby so that's kind of a strange blurred line.

12. Do you have any pets? The beautiful Miss Loonie.

13. How tall are you? Fucking tiny. Five foot. That's it.

14. Favourite subject in school? In high school? Drama. In university? My favourite post-grad class has probably been worldbuilding which focused on writing for science-fiction, fantasy and horror.

15. Dream job? I was having an interesting conversation about this the other day. I don't have a dream job anymore, no allusions to a title or a place on the ladder. I just want to make lots of cool stuff, and get it out in front of an audience. I want to work in a bunch of different forms and try things out. So I guess the dream job is being a prolific enough writer that people will give me the chance to take on that sort of portfolio career? I tag @doxieandthedead, @nyda-the-tav, @brave-little-avocado-toaster if yous are up for it!

[kermit-p-hob-brainrot]

Ok y'all I have promised my beloved mutual @pop-squeak that I would write a post on my most beloved invasive marsh plant, Phragmites australis also known as the common reed. This thing is so invasive that it is considered a model for invasive plants as a whole.

Some things before we start

Most of this is focused on Virginia since that's where a lot of the research on this bad boy is being done but it does exist elsewhere

I will have citations at the end if you want some more reading

This is based on research I did for a paper like a year ago so there might be new research I am unaware of due to having other classes to do

Please brush off your shoes when you enter/ leave a park so you don't bring stuff places it shouldn't be

Please read I promise it is really really interesting and important to the resilience of out coasts in North America especially in the mid Atlantic to the south :)

If you have questions don't be scared to drop them in the replies/ reblogs

I am an undergrad!!!!! I am generally new at this but I am fairly familiar with this specific subject and trust that everything in this post is accurate, but in general with invasive species it is a heavily nuanced topic that can be very complex. This is my best attempt to simplify this species for general consumption since I think its just really cool and important to coastal botany rn.

This thing lives in the marsh which is the area often between forest and the ocean/ body of water of varying salinity. This thing loves moderate salinity marshes since it can somewhat resist salt water intrusion. This is a part of what makes it so invasive especially in this era of severe sea level rise. Many coastal forests are dying as sea level is rising pushing the marsh farther inland. Part of the problem is that many native species can not move as colonize the new land as fast as the common reed can.

Phragmites as is incredibly good at reproducing and growing so close together that nothing else can live even close to it. It makes clonal offshoots of itself (THEY CREATE CLONES OF THEMSELVES?!?!?!?!?) and creates networks for communication. this dense packing leads to a monoculture where for miles in the strip of marsh 95% of what you see is phragmites. It is a magnificent and horrifying sight as you see the dead trees in the middle of these fields of phragmites knowing it was only 5-10 years ago that that was where the forest line was. It is the beautiful horror about being slowly consumed by the ocean. This monoculture does not only apply to flora but also fauna.

Farmers often actually welcome phragmites to their land and are resistant to get rid of it. This is because as native species have died off, phragmites has been able to colonize these areas fast enough to help resist further salt inundation and prevent flooding. This unfortunately is only a band-aid solution, especially in southern Virginia near the Chesapeake bay which has some of the highest rate of sea level rise in the country, since native plants and diverse marshes make them more resistant to flooding. It is better than nothing though, so we must keep in mind transition plans for farmland when trying to manage phragmites. We practice science to help every day people, not in spite of every day people. They should be included in all management decision making. We work for them not the other way around.

Competition is the name of the game for Phragmites. It beats is competition not only with its cloning abilities (there's a lot more to this but i had to read like 7 different papers to figures out wtf anybody was talking about so I'm not going into it) and sheer density, but it can also just poison the other plants around it. It can release a toxin that inhibits growth and seed sprouting in other species. It is also resistant to flooding and drought and it has been found that ground disturbance can make it spread faster. This makes it highly resistant to most disturbances that occur in marsh and wetland habitats.

Because it is resistant to like everything it is so hard to kill. To the point where some of the people who management have told me that eradicating it for an area is near impossible and an unreasonable expectation. Reduction has become the best case scenario. This makes early identification important. You can try to kill it by herbicides, mowing, fire, smothering with a plastic tarp, throwing a bunch of salt on top of it, and flooding with fresh or salt water.

The common reed is an interesting mix of being both a native and invasive plant. Phragmites australis has a subspecies native to North America, but this subspecies has been largely replaced by a more aggressive non-native European subspecies. Phragmites can grow from three to thirteen feet with broad sheath like leaves. Its considered one of the most invasive plants in the worlds having a broad geographic range. It exists on every continent except Antarctica.

As someone who has been in a field of them you can not pull these out of the ground. The tops break off but you have to dig them out of the ground if you wan them out. Also just a pain to walk through.

Here's a pic: (Yes that a person, yes they can be that tall)

Works Cited

Langston, A. K., D. J. Coleman, N. W. Jung, J. L. Shawler, A. J. Smith, B. L. Williams, S. S. Wittyngham, R. M. Chambers, J. E. Perry, and M. L. Kirwan. 2022. The effect of marsh age on ecosystem function in a rapidly transgressing marsh. Ecosystems 25: 252-264.

Humpherys, A., A. L. Gorsky, D. M. Bilkovic, and R.M. Chambers. 2021. Changes in plant communities of low-salinity tidal marshes in response to sea-level rise. Ecosphere 12.

Accessed 9 December 2022. Invasive alien plant species of Virgina: common reed (Phragmites australis). Department of Conservation and Recreation, Virgina Native Plant Society. https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural-heritage/document/fsphau.pdf

Accessed 9 December 2022. Common reed (Phragmites australis). Virgina Institute of Marine Science. https://www.vims.edu/ccrm/outreach/teaching_marsh/native_plants/salt_marsh/phragmites_facts.pdf

Theuerkauf, S. J., B. J. Puckett, K. W. Theuerkauf, E. J. Theuerkauf, and D. B. Eggleston. 2017. Density-dependent role of an invasive marsh grass, Phragmites australis, on ecosystem service provision. PLoS ONE 12.

Accessed 9 December 2020. Phragmites: considerations for management in the critical area. Critical Area Commission for the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Coastal Bays. https://dnr.maryland.gov/criticalarea/Documents/Phragmites-Fact-Sheet-Final.pdf

Uddin, M. N., and R. W. Robinson. 2017. Allelopathy and resource competition: the effects of phragmites australis invasion in plant communities. Botanical Studies 58: 29.

Meyerson, L. A., J. T. Cronin, and P. Pysek. 2016. Phragmites australis as a model organism for studying plant invasions. Biological Invasions 18: 2421-2431.