#it’s short and the data they collected aren’t very good

[communistkenobi]

the religion chapter in auth personality is kind of a flop

[cheekycherry20]

I work in the field of aba (applied behavioral analysis) and have been for a little over a year. I started off really passionate about positively influencing the lives of children under the spectrum, because as an adult with adhd, I understood how hard it is as a kid to live in a not-so-opened minded neurotypical society.

I myself was bullied, left out, and made to feel unimportant on numerous occasions. I lacked the correct social skills, trying to mirror my peer’s behavior, yet being completely far off, and struggling to fit in for years. I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression with no outlet and proper coping mechanisms, all made worse with skewed communication skills. All of which I still struggle with today.

I started as a bt(behavior technician) and was quickly pushed into getting my license to become an rbt (registered behavior technician). On the journey to getting my license, I tried to soak up as much information as I could. It was very important to me to be a voice for the children. I had more downs then ups, as I put more pressure on myself then I should.

I wasn’t worried about running targets and gathering data. I wanted to ensure a good quality of life for my children. I’ll always call them my children, because I care for them that much. It’s almost maternal. I cry over my kids, worry about my kids, get angry at my kids. I love them more than anything in the world, I never knew I was capable of love until I got into the field.

Rbts don’t just work alone, we’re directly below bcbas (board certified behavior analyst). They make the plans for the kids, as the rbts run the sessions and gather the data bcbas need. Since the bcbas aren’t in session, it’s incredibly important that the rbt is collecting the right data and being extremely analytical over the session.

In my short time in being an rbt, I’ve been made to feel unimportant (as mentioned before) by numerous senior rbts and most importantly, bcbas. In my personal opinion, not being in a session can make it quite easy for a bcba to make the wrong decisions. In the past I’ve been quite vocal about ideas and goals that my kids can have long term, or just to push them into their next step of life. With children who are learning to functionally communicate, I step up and speak for them if I notice anything. I’m not a bcba, so technically I’m not legally allowed to run something without a bcba knowledge. But once again, my voice doesn’t matter.

As well as taking data, rbts are required to speak to parents. Not just about the child’s day, but for goals, progress, regression, and behaviors. Parent communication is very important, but parents implementing the same strategies as rbts is even more important. Some parents are amazing, but some parents drop their children off as an aba clinic is a daycare. It is far from it.

It’s very difficult watching parents drop their kids off in sick states, or seeing them come in minimal clothing in extreme cold. I’ve seen parents listen to therapist feedback and do the opposite of protocol,ensuring intense behaviors for therapist. As a parent it’s very difficult to live with the behaviors, so I undertstand how hard it may be. But as a therapist, I feel as if I’m not doing enough for my kid because they’re not making progress, because I can’t get them there alone. Parent cooperation is key.

I continue to get shot down and made to feel like I’m incompetent. I don’t know if it’s my age or minimal experience, but whatever the case may be, I no longer want to allow myself to be in spaces where I don’t feel heard. This is a really difficult thought for me to have, as I feel like I’m giving up on so many kids who just need someone to care about them. But I can acknowledge that in this field, caring isn’t always enough.

In the beginning I definitely tried my best. Advocating for my kids wasn’t the hard part, but my mental state is rapidly declining in the process. I truly still want to advocate for my kids, but when I voice my opinions I feel like what I’m saying is wrong.

I believe that stepping out of the field is my best option. To sit and watch fellow rbts and bcbas care too little or not at all for my kids has taken an incredible toll on my mental health. If you’re a parent or friend of someone interested in bringing a child into an aba clinic, please be sure you know exactly who is with them. There’s good therapists and bcbas , but there’s also a lot of people who just so happened to get their license and want a check.

[sarkos]

However, researchers found that without high-quality human data, AI systems trained on AI-made data get dumber and dumber as each model learns from the previous one. It’s like a digital version of the problem of inbreeding. This “regurgitive training” seems to lead to a reduction in the quality and diversity of model behavior. Quality here roughly means some combination of being helpful, harmless and honest. Diversity refers to the variation in responses, and which people’s cultural and social perspectives are represented in the AI outputs. In short: by using AI systems so much, we could be polluting the very data source we need to make them useful in the first place. [...]Can’t big tech just filter out AI-generated content? Not really. Tech companies already spend a lot of time and money cleaning and filtering the data they scrape, with one industry insider recently sharing they sometimes discard as much as 90% of the data they initially collect for training models. [...]There are hints developers are already having to work harder to source high-quality data. For instance, the documentation accompanying the GPT-4 release credited an unprecedented number of staff involved in the data-related parts of the project. We may also be running out of new human data. Some estimates say the pool of human-generated text data might be tapped out as soon as 2026. It’s likely why OpenAI and others are racing to shore up exclusive partnerships with industry behemoths such as Shutterstock, Associated Press and NewsCorp. They own large proprietary collections of human data that aren’t readily available on the public internet. [...]A flood of synthetic content might not pose an existential threat to the progress of AI development, but it does threaten the digital public good of the (human) internet. For instance, researchers found a 16% drop in activity on the coding website StackOverflow one year after the release of ChatGPT. This suggests AI assistance may already be reducing person-to-person interactions in some online communities.

What is ‘model collapse’? An expert explains the rumours about an impending AI doom - Raw Story

[firewolf-pyro]

Episode seven: following lights

Olesia clutched her seat belt as Henry flicked the switch on his van’s dashboard which turned on the sirens. The little makeshift police car crammed all four of the Torchwood team members in it as it raced viciously through the crowded city streets after a fast paced orb. The nimble glowing device soared through intersections forcing the crew to blast through them without a care in the world. It was taking the, very quickly, very dangerously out of the city.

Soon enough they were no longer on city roads but driving through deep sand. The peer was just in front of them and Henry had to pull out some old racing tricks he had learned to prevent the van from skidding in the sand right into it. Once the hot metal box had rolled to a near stop Oleasia, Kendra and Jones all hopped out to tail the orb on foot. They could see it vanish off the end of the docks in front of them. It took all of Jones weight to prevent both Olesia and Kendra from diving in after it.

“Well…” Henry slowed to a stop and took a moment to double over to catch his panting breath.

“Well indeed. A good long chase and we’re left stuck inland while that little orb rushes off into the ocean.” Jones grumbled holding his arms across his large belly to glare into the blueish black abyss.

“Well… I guess now would be a good time to mention that I collected the data from within the orb… right?” Olesia smirked as she inched closer to the end of the dock.

“No, and here I thought you were too busy with that Dalek mutant to focus on this job.” Jones sniggered with distaste as he turned to head back to the steaming van.

“Great… “ Olesia ignored him, choosing instead to take a seat at the end of the dock.

“Well, at least we’ll get to go on a bit of an explore.” Kendra suggested, patting Olesia’s shoulder gently.

ACTIONS-Suggests young woman, pats her shoulder gently.

Upon returning back to the little facility under the apartment building Olesia separated herself from the rest of the group. Instead of entering the office space she headed to the old cells at the other end of the facility. She hesitated at the heavy metal door that held within it their prisoner before clearing her throat and wrapping her knuckles against the surface.

“Enter.” Would come the gruff voice of a Dalek and the heavy door would slide open soon after. Olesia carefully walked into the room- freezing when she saw the writing burned, no- melted into the walls. They seemed to be names or titles describing something. She was not sure if they were references to people the Dalek had met or events they had played a part in. Somehow it reminded her of horror movie asylum rooms.

“Blue…” Olesia blinked towards the Dalek which had pressed itself into the far corner. Both the manipulator arm and the laser were pointed square at the ground. They gave off a sense of despair the closer she got to it.

“I know you’ve been in here for a while now, but- how would you feel about helping us track down that… That little scrap of technology you were after when we found you?”

“I assumed your commander did not wish for any outside assistance.” Blueton responded as the eyestalk turned slowly towards her. Even in a state of depression the Dalek could put off such an air of intimidation.

“Well you aren’t wrong there. And he especially wouldn’t like the idea of mine -“ Olesia smiled at the disheveled Dalek. She set her work case down on the ground in front of his casing.

“Do you seek an alliance with me?” The Dalek asked as its eyestalk focused on the case below it.

“Actually, yes… Though it will only be for a short while. Just long enough to satisfy my curiosity.” Olesia suggested as she opened the case. Within it lay all of the drawn up blueprints and copied bits of information she had gathered from the Orb. She held up a long list of quardnants the orb had dumped into the facility’s computer before taking off.

“You have already begun the process of replicating the technology?” The Dalek asked as it pointed its laser to a few pieces of scrap that Olesia had tucked under some of the blue prints. The Dalek observed them before turning to look at Olesia. She looked up at it and they both just sat there quietly for a moment she cleared her throat.

“Right you are! And you’re going to help me. I have all of the information that little device held within it saved here.” She explained as she pulled out a thumb drive. She waved it around at the Dalek before setting it back down with the rest of the little bits of tech.

“I just need to - figure out the rest of it.”

“That is not necessary. You already have enough information to locate the important piece of technology.” Blueton interrupted, turning its whole casing to face the door that was right behind her. The rim of the skirt pushed the case to the side.

“What do you mean?” Olesia asked as she pulled the case back to her.

“It is only a drone. An assistant. Yes, it may act as a guide but it is not a key.”

“A guide! I knew it, okay- so then where was it trying to take us?” Olesia asked while she closed her case again. She was glancing over the list of quardnants while the Dalek shifted from side to side in a sort of stim.

“In an emergency, where would your assistant guide you?” Blueton asked, trying to prompt Olesia to use her brain. They saw her as usefully intelligent but- somehow she managed to also be a little slow at times.

“Assistant? To an emergency exit. I guess?”

“Consider this, a planet is just another form of ship.” Blueton suggested which got a snort of amusement from Olesia. Its manipulator arm lifted a bit startling her out of the show of amusement.

“Oh.”

“It is leading you to an escape pod. You are just as logical as the Dalek drones. This is no fun.” It spat in a tone of disappointment. It seemed to be judging her worth, the manipulator arm shifting from side to side as if he were deciding what to do with her. Olesia glanced back at the door, taking that time to back away towards it.

“Oookay, so this drone grabs people in danger and tries to bring them to the escape pod. That makes sense, but why do you- a Dalek, want this kind of technology?” Olesia asked. The Dalek froze, leaving the pair in a strange silent stair off again. It did not seem to know how to answer that question.

“I can not say.”

“Fine! Keep your secrets.” Olesia huffed before pacing at the cell entrance. She was hoping that her show of annoyance would trick the other into saying more on this topic. She had learned that - for some strange reason, it reacted oddly to different displays of emotion.

“You do not need to rebuild the piece of technology to find a way to the escape pod. We have the coordinates of the assumed location. We should simply go there.” Blueton stated urgently. Her tactic had worked well.

“We?” She grinned over to the Dalek. It backed away from her, the rim clanking against the metal wall.

“I… do not suggest you go alone. Unless your species can breathe under water.” Blueton grumbled.

“Well I really don’t think I’ll be able to bring you with me.” Olesia sighed as she glanced at the door of the cell. To prevent the acceleration of cell death caused by the Mevalon virus in its blood they had returned the mutant to its casing. Even with the anti-virus Olesia had designed, the mutant’s body was having trouble shrugging the illness off.

“That was not the suggestion I had meant to put out.” Blueton corrected her.

“Right, with the rest of the crew.” Olesia laughed, realizing what the Dalek had meant.

“I still don’t get it. Why aren’t you just killing us? Exterminating the inferior and all?”

“You are useful to me.” The Dalek said plainly.

“But what about the others?”

“As long as they do not interfere, they will be safe.” Blueton gave his word. With that Olesia gave him a nod and continued out of the cell.

“I’ll ask Henry and Kendra to help me with this. Get some rest, Dalek.” She called behind her as the cell door closed behind her.

“Why bother doing the work when you can get others to do the work for you.” The Dalek would say, the eyestalk lowering and going dark.

A group of five Daleks traveled through a dark hall lit only by red emergency lights. The two in front were solid black, the one in the middle- blue and the two at the back were bronze with black caps. They were escorting the maddened strategist deep into the asylum. The only sound around them being the defining screams and laughter from the other inmates.

They moved through a crowded white hall with many war torn Daleks chained to the walls. The group passed through the crowd before they vanished into a circular white room. At the center of the room the blue Dalek stood patiently as the four black Daleks chain it to the ground- metal seers into the Dalek’s rim to lock them into place. The blue Dalek is watching every movement of the others around them, the eyestalk moving from one side to the other. When all is done and over with the four black Daleks trail out, one pausing to look back at the blue Dalek.

“Let Chaos awaken within you.” The Blue Dalek spoke. The black Dalek’s eyestalk would give a very subtle nod before it continued after the other three. Leaving the blue strategist alone with nothing but the screams of the other inmates to fill its mind.

[cavefilllingcorporation]

The Offer

“Welcome back sir! How was your trip to the wormhole?” The officer said to Vismark, who had just entered the meeting room.

“It was… disturbing.”

It absolutely was. The thought of that black mass hadn’t even occurred to him until before. He admittedly wasn’t the best at astronomy, and didn’t know what a black hole was, and what features that thing was missing, until after he returned. Even senior officers needed to read up on topics once in a while.

“Anyways, down to business.”

Vismark then sat down, along with the rest of the officers.

“First, our reports show that the Helldivers are busy cleaning up the Terminid front. They won’t be ready for another operation until the weekend. I guess Strohmann news was a bit misleading there. That’s what we get for making plans on direct propaganda.”

There was then an awkward pause, before Vismark continued.

“Has the steel arrived?”

“Yes sir! Right after you left even!”

“Good. Prepare the steel to be shipped. Short of an extreme circumstance, I expect the next major order to be focused on our clients.”

He was still overjoyed that he could provide steel at least for a good while. He wasn’t sure when he would be able to do this again. Maybe not even in the next month. Not if the DEA’s plans and focus on the Default project were to go through.

Anyways, that is not the main focus of today’s meeting. If I understand correctly, our transmission to Liberty News…”

“At Liberty News {@at-liberty-news}” corrected an officer.

“Ahem, yes, AT Liberty News has reached back out to us regarding the two questions that we had asked.” Vismark said, looking directly at the officer responsible. The officer then responded.

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t want to wait until your return.”

“You’re fine. I’d like to know in advance in the future, but you did fine. Anyways, apparently, they aren’t another Super Earth broadcast as we thought, but a group focused on pure journalism.”

“They don’t have good opinions on our clients though.”

Vismark sighed. “No, they do not. It's to be expected. Still, they are very valuable, which is why I am considering sponsoring them.”

The table looked in confusion, wondering why would he make such a decision?

“Sir, what would we even do for them?”

“They’re on the run, aren’t they? It would be nice to give them a place to rest and restock their supplies. We can easily manage that?”

“But why?” Another officer asked. “What would be the point. What would they give us for this?”

“Simple, a reliable source of information.”

Vismark then stood up and opened the presentation that he had prepared.

“As you all know, we have four other main sources of news information regarding the affairs of Super Earth. There is Strohmann News, the Super Earth Galactic War Data Archive {A Youtube channel that has semi-frequent uploads that is really great!}, gossip collected from our agents, and the automaton’s real-time mapping systems. However, these are all with their own flaws. You all know the dangers of blindly trusting Super Earth’s direct propaganda machine, and obviously gossip from zealots isn’t reliable. Before we got access to the mapping system, the Data Archive was our most reliable source of information, but they are an informal team created by Helldivers for Helldivers, so they keep pushing propaganda, albeit not as well as Super Earth does. More importantly, they have a tendency to push misinformation Super Earth doesn’t even present, such as the claim that the 1.5 billion remains of the automatons after the failed massacre were just thrown away. Obviously, this is a little extreme for our tastes.”

“But the mapping systems are accurate, and we can pull them out at any time!”

“And they are slow and not perfect! They are our most reliable source of information, but they can often take up to a day to update on major orders. Besides, Liberty News reports on things that they don’t have, and has a decent approach to the war. Not our side of course, but it’s rational compared to everything else. Simply put, if they accept our offer, this will be very much worth our while. Any questions?”

There were none. Nobody could argue against his idea.

“Very well then. Send them the offer. Meanwhile, we have work to do.”

[ifanfictiondreamerworld]

Ratchet and Kim Possible Chronicles: Anti-Corporation-Part 8

Shortly afterwards, there finally able to reach the planet Terachnos. Ratchet: “There it is, guys. Terachnos.” Kim: “Oh, thank goodness. Thought we’d never make it here.” Clank: “Let us see what we need to do first.”

As they were entering the planet’s atmosphere, Wade’s image appeared on the screen. Wade: “Oh, good! You guys made it to Terachnos.” Kim: “Glad we did.” Ratchet: “So, where do we go from here?” Wade: “Let me see…Pollyx Industries has a branch office on a far-off miniature island just West-Northwest of Axiom City. Head over there now.” Ratchet: “Got it.”

They continued flying through the planet’s atmosphere.

Within a short amount of time, they arrived at the secluded skyscraper. There, they landed and got out of the ship. Kim: “We’re here.” Ratchet: “OK, guys, let’s go.”

They made their way into the building. As soon as they entered, they were immediately greeted by Pollyx: “Oh! Uh…hello! Welcome! I…uh…I’ve been expecting you.” Kim: “Why, hello, Pollyx, glad to see you’re doing…good.” Pollyx: “Uh, yes, well I have been doing all I can to pay off that hefty debt that I owe for all of my crimes.” Kim: “Good, see to it that you keep at it; you know what would happen if you didn’t.” Pollyx: “Yes, of course. I know.” Clank: “Now then, we were asked to meet with someone.” Ratchet: “We were told that she has something that we needed to check up with. Is she here?” Pollyx: “Ah, yes, she is and she has been quite busy.” Clank: “May we see her?” Pollyx: “Oh! Yes, yes! Of course. Right this way please.”

Pollyx walked off, the group followed after him.

They walked along the hallways of the building. Pollyx: “We’re so glad you guys got here; we’ve been wanting to report to you our progress with collecting and analyzing the data regarding the shady occurrence within our faire galaxy.” Kim: “Yeah, we’ve been looking into that, too. We’re not happy with what we have found out.” Pollyx: “No, I would not think so considering that all of it is being caused by your kind; almost making you seem like part of the problem.” Ratchet: “Hey! Don’t you dare pin any of this on her! Humans may be causing this, but that does NOT give anyone any right to blame her or any other human that has nothing to do with it!!” Pollyx: “Uh! I’m not, I’m not! But you would have to admit that most of what I say is true, is it not? I wouldn’t go so far as to blame all humans for this.” Ratchet: “You better not, considering that one of them just so happens to be working for this company.” Pollyx: “Yes, and she has been phenomenal.” Voice: “Are you referring to me?”

They looked directly in front of them and noticed Justine Flanner. Kim: “Justine!” Pollyx: “Well, here she is now.” Justine: “Bout time you guys got here.” Ratchet: “Hey! Justine! How’s it been?” Justine: “Things have been relatively well, mind you. In fact, they couldn’t be better, for me, at least.” Pollyx: “Yes, well, as I have mentioned to you guys just now, ever since we have brought in Miss Justine Flanner, I would have to say that she has been quite phenomenal. She seemed to be well adapted to our technology as well as understand it and our extremely advance science, in some aspects.” Justine: “Finally, a line of work that actually presents some real challenge.” Kim: “Well, we thought that it would a perfect for you to work amongst the Terachnoids since you have a very high IQ like the entire race and that you tend to brag about it while looking down others who aren’t as smart as you.” Ratchet: “That as well as regular Earth science being something that is too easy for someone like you; although…we had our doubts about that and worried that all of this might be too overwhelming for you.” Justine: “Oh, not at all. In fact, I was so bored with standard Earth science and not so advanced human technology that I was more than thrilled to take on even frustratingly difficult forms of alien tech. Stuff like this is what I live for and I couldn’t be happier.” Clank: “It is good to hear that, Miss Flanner.” Pollyx: “Now then, let us be on our way, shall we?”

From there, they walked through the halls.

They were making their way through a massive corridor. Justine: “Um, I wanted to thank you guys for introducing me to the Terachnoids and convincing them to give me a chance.” Kim: “Actually…we didn’t do much to convince them to take you in.” Ratchet: “Yeah, that was all you.” Kim: “Oh, for sure, after they saw how brilliant you are, they were all over you as well as the idea to have you work for Pollyx Industries.” Ratchet: “Heh! Brilliant? Forget it! You were able to figure out how Lombax technology is able to work; probably much faster than Wade did!” Kim: “Yeah, the Lombaxes were known for being some of the most phenomenal engineers in the Universe!” Justine: “Well, I have to admit that it was a little bit of a challenge for me to understand your advanced machinery.” Ratchet: “Oh…well…that made me feel kind of primitive coming from you.” Justine: “Oh, not at all. I agree that Lombax technology is indeed very advanced and I was impressed by how brilliant your entire species was. It was very much like a difficult puzzle and even I’m not ashamed to admit that solving it was very time consuming. You should be proud of yourself, Ratchet.” Ratchet: “Thanks.” Justine: “But, yeah, you’re right, guys; the Terachnoids were very impressed with my intelligence, so they seemed to have accepted me very well.” Pollyx: “But of course, dear girl. You did indeed put forth quite an impression on us; truly extraordinary for a human. She has already done so much for my company.” Ratchet: “Hm, perhaps when you really get yourself into some hot water, she may actually be able to start running the whole company.”

Kim and Clank were heard chuckling. Pollyx: “Wha-!?! Why, I would never allow a human to run my industry!!! It doesn’t matter to me how immense her intelligence is!! You know that we Terachnoids have a reputation to uphold!! Do you know what that would do to my image if we were to allow a member of a primitive race to run MY entire industry!?!” Kim: “Believe me, your pride in your intelligence should be the least of your worries with the kind of trouble that you’ve gotten yourself into.” Ratchet: “Can’t argue with that.” Kim: “And…let’s just hope that it wouldn’t come to that becoming an option.”

Ratchet and Clank were heard chuckling along with Justine. Pollyx: “Hmph! You primitive creatures and your snark.”

They kept on going until they arrived near a massive door. Pollyx: “Ah, here we are. Miss Flanner, would you be a dear and enter the access code to this chamber for me?” Justine: “Certainly.”

She walked up to a keypad and dialed on it at lightning speed. From there, the door opened. Pollyx: “Right this way, please.”

They walked into the chamber. Inside were a few dozen Terachnoids, each in front of their own monitor. They were circling a massive holographic sphere within the middle of the chamber. Pollyx stood along side Justine, with Kim and Ratchet nearby. Justine: “Hello, everyone.”

The Terachnoids looked towards their direction. They seemed quite ecstatic. Terachnoids: “Justine!!” Ratchet: “Wow, you’re really well-liked among these Terachnoids.” Justine: “Yeah, I’ve earned a great deal of respect towards these people: they pretty much see me as their equal.” Kim: “That’s…really impressive!!!” Justine: “I know.” Ratchet: “So, about this intel that you needed us to look into…?” Justine: “Oh! Yes, of course. Now then, it you could take a look at this holographic map, you should notice several things that seem very alarming.”

She moved up closer to the holographic map along with Ratchet and Kim. As they took a closer look at it, several small dots on it were highlighted. Justine: “We have noticed some unusual activity going on within the galaxy. As we examined them closely, we noticed readings that were somewhat similar to Earth on several planets. They’re very petite but distinctive enough to be very alarming.” Ratchet: “Hm…could they be…what Wade informed us of earlier?” Kim: “You were able to identify which planets contain these readings, correct?” Justine: “Yes, I have, I was also able to figure out what those strange readings are after I picked up on some violent activity on the planet Sargasso.” Ratchet: “That must have been when we destroyed that factory.” Justine: “From that, I was able to confirm these other readings to be very similar to that on Sargasso.” Ratchet: “Yeah, those would have to be the other factories built by Hench Co.” Kim: “Can you provide us with a list of planets containing those readings?” Justine: “I’ll have that list arranged and uploaded to Aphelion’s main computer.” Ratchet: “You don’t know how appreciative we are to have this.” Justine: “Actually, I am, more than you realize. When I was analyzing those readings thoroughly, I was able to confirm some extremely lethal substances from that can pose a threat to these planets' delicate ecosystem. Should those be released carelessly, they could prove disastrous to all of those planets. From there, people within this galaxy will develop excruciating and almost irreversible disdain towards all humans. I’m glad that you were able to destroy that factory. You guys were able to save that entire planet.” Kim: “Yeah, we did, but we still have a long way to go.” Justine: “Yeah, you do.”

Pollyx walked up to them a bit. Pollyx: “Well, then, in that case, what say we have you sent out and put an end to this evil monopoly before their horrible, unspeakable crimes become far worse issues for us, much like what they tried to do or will do with that Sargassium.” Kim: “Yeah, of course, we’ll do just that.” Pollyx: “Now then, if you will excuse me, I have other matter to attend to.”

He walked off. At that time, Justine got to work on a small console while Kim and Ratchet stood by. She then hesitated a bit as she dropped her head a little lower and sulked a bit. Justine: “Um…I’ve always wanted to tell you guys this, but…I didn’t the chance to…until now…”

Kim and Ratchet exchanged concerned looks before they looked back at Justine. Ratchet: “What is it, Justine?”

She hesitated a bit before she continued. She then looked back towards them. Justine: “I’m glad…that you both reestablished your feelings for each other. I always believed that…despite the 2 of you being completely different species, you really are great together.” Ratchet: “You…you really mean that?” Justine: “Yes…I do…”

She then turned around and faced them both. Justine: “I really felt that a lot of the horrible things that people say about the 2 of you being together…are stupid and nonsensical and…I just don’t understand why they get so riled up about it over this. You 2 deserve to be together and only complete imbeciles would be against it, not to mention that their reasons for that are also very ridiculous. Sure, it’s different, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be…I always believed that…”

Kim and Ratchet stood silent for a bit, as did Justine. Ratchet: “Justine…I…we…” Justine: “I won’t sugar code it, when I heard that you guys broke off your relationship with each other, I was genuinely sad, what 2 guys have between each other really is special and it should be advocated, not dissuaded. We all believed that…all of us from Middleton High…”

Kim and Ratchet faced their eyes away from each other as they sulked, then glanced back towards Justine. Kim: “Um…you know why…we…uh…” Justine: “Yes, I’m well aware of it, Kim. In all fairness, it wasn’t the right time, with us still being in high school. Even though you guys had a lot of support from all of our classmates, not just your friends and family, there were many of those from other high schools that would have scorned, snubbed and ridiculed you for dating an alien. We knew that, but…we really wanted you guys to be together…we knew how much you guys were in love with each other…we never wanted you to let go of that.” Kim: “Well…that was what we used to plan on doing…but then…” Ratchet: “Ron snapped us out of our slump and reminded us of whom we were as opposed to how people see us.” Kim: “Yeah, he convinced us that we didn’t have to be afraid or hide away how we felt just because people wanted us to…wanted me to…be with someone who’s the same species as me…”

Justine’s sulking decreased a little, she then walked up to them and held both of their hands as she brought them together, she held them together. Justine: “Apparently, Ron knew you guys better than anyone, perhaps…even the both of you…listen to the people who are closest to you. They know you, not all of those people that want you to be apart from each other…they will never see you for who you guys really are…”

They seemed touched by her words; almost as though the both of them were about to cry. Clank looked up at them; he also seemed quite moved by this. Just then, they felt a ruckus as well as heard a loud bang. Kim: “What was that!?!” Pollyx: “Oh, goodness me!!”

Pollyx was seen rushing out towards the group. Pollyx: “We seem to be under attack!” Kim: “What!?! But…why…?” Pollyx: “I do not know: this building was supposed to be out of the way and very hard to locate, but that does not matter right now. Miss Flanner if you do not mind, I would like for you to escort our guests outside so that they can do away with this most crippling threat.” Justine: “Of course, leave it to me, let’s go, you guys.” Ratchet: “Sure.” Kim: “Of course.”

Justine walked out along with the group.

[bananainbox]

Is doom 2016 snapmap any good

#Is doom 2016 snapmap any good mod#

#Is doom 2016 snapmap any good upgrade#

#Is doom 2016 snapmap any good full#

#Is doom 2016 snapmap any good full#

When his health is depleted he will respawn again with a full health bar. When he uses the laser beam just do a double jump to the side.Ī great weapon to down him quickly is the Heavy Assault Rifle with the Micro Missiles Mod. In the first phase he uses mostly rockets which you can easily dodge by running in circle around the boss. For the trophy the difficulty does not matter. This video shows the fight on Ultra Violence difficulty (hard). You fight him at the end of mission 9 (Lazarus Labs). Plus it has really good range and splash damage to kill multiple targets at once.Ĭyberdemon is the first boss in Doom. It lets you fire a grenade that kills most enemies on a direct hit.

#Is doom 2016 snapmap any good mod#

This will drop more health than shooting them and saves ammo.Īlso make sure you buy the “Explosive Shot” mod for the shotgun at the field drone. The smallest enemies are easily defeated with melee attacks. A charge shot with the pistol can kill some enemies in 1 hit. Use the alternate fire of the pistol to zoom in. Try to let them come to you one by one and stay as far back as possible. Best thing you can do is bait the enemies. On this difficulty you die in 3-4 hits and you gain very little health and armor from pickups. Luckily, there’s no trophy for beating all missions in this mode, you only need the first one. If you die you respawn at the very beginning of the game. This is a hardcore mode without checkpoints. You don’t have to pick it up again when you die.įor this you need to complete the first mission on Ultra-Nightmare. It’s okay if you miss a few of those.Īs soon as you pick up a collectible it will be saved instantly and you can exit the mission without having to reach the next checkpoint.

#Is doom 2016 snapmap any good upgrade#

You don’t need every single secret to fully upgrade everything. The secrets will give you weapon upgrade points. Some are still hard to find because you need to use switches that aren’t marked. The Praetor Upgrade called “Full View” reveals the collectible locations on the map (except for Secrets). This makes them an important part of the game. You are allowed to get them via chapter select after beating the story, just don’t start a completely new game until you have all of them.Īll collectibles (except for dolls & data logs) let you upgrade your gear. For two of the trophies “Overclocked” & “Argent Fiend” you have to find all Elite Guards & Argent Cells in one campaign playthrough. You can get everything via chapter select at any time. Finding all locations is required for the following 13 trophies / achievements: There are the following collectible types in Doom 2016: 79 Secrets, 26 Collectibles (Dolls), 49 Data Logs, 36 Elite Guards (Praetor Upgrades), 12 Argent Cells, 12 Field Drones, 12 Rune Trials. Continued abuse of our services will cause your IP address to be blocked indefinitely.All Collectible Locations (Secrets, Collectibles, Data Logs, Elite Guards, Argent Cells, Field Drones, Rune Trials) Please fill out the CAPTCHA below and then click the button to indicate that you agree to these terms. If you wish to be unblocked, you must agree that you will take immediate steps to rectify this issue. If you do not understand what is causing this behavior, please contact us here. If you promise to stop (by clicking the Agree button below), we'll unblock your connection for now, but we will immediately re-block it if we detect additional bad behavior. Overusing our search engine with a very large number of searches in a very short amount of time.Using a badly configured (or badly written) browser add-on for blocking content.Running a "scraper" or "downloader" program that either does not identify itself or uses fake headers to elude detection.Using a script or add-on that scans GameFAQs for box and screen images (such as an emulator front-end), while overloading our search engine.There is no official GameFAQs app, and we do not support nor have any contact with the makers of these unofficial apps. Continued use of these apps may cause your IP to be blocked indefinitely. This triggers our anti-spambot measures, which are designed to stop automated systems from flooding the site with traffic. Some unofficial phone apps appear to be using GameFAQs as a back-end, but they do not behave like a real web browser does.Using GameFAQs regularly with these browsers can cause temporary and even permanent IP blocks due to these additional requests. If you are using Maxthon or Brave as a browser, or have installed the Ghostery add-on, you should know that these programs send extra traffic to our servers for every page on the site that you browse.The most common causes of this issue are: Your IP address has been temporarily blocked due to a large number of HTTP requests.

[illegiblewords]

FFXIV Lore Resources

Hey dudes! Lately I’ve been reaching out a bit to some FFXIV players who expressed interest in getting a hold of lore resources. I mentioned to them I’d try to set up a post making the most helpful ones I’ve encountered readily available, and this?

It’s that post.

MIRKEMENAGERIE: Easily one of (if not the) most complete and comprehensive collections of lore I’ve encountered online. Includes quotes from NPCs in-game, Encyclopedia Eorzea I and II, item references, and more. The Twelve posts and location lore are some of my favorites but really all of this is fantastic. Very accessible.

HARMONEA: Has assembled a HUGE collection of lets plays on youtube that are organized and well-paced, showing everything from MSQ to Ascian-lore specifically to Job quests and beyond. This has been truly helpful whenever I want to check a reference but don’t necessarily have time to New Game + or check the Unending Journey in-game. It’s easy to jump around to find exactly the scenes you’re looking for, and compare moments from different points during the game.

GARLAND TOOLS DATABASE: Sometimes I need lore details from specific quests, that aren’t in cutscenes or easily found in a video. Garland Tools helps with tracking down quotes, character information, and much more. Also contains data around NPC designs. Doesn’t have cutscene quotes, but does have enough info to find what cutscenes you’ll likely need to watch. Whether on youtube or in the Unending Journey, it gets much easier spotting references.

TALES FROM THE CALAMITY, TALES FROM THE DRAGONSONG WAR, TALES FROM THE STORM, CHRONICLES OF LIGHT: THE HUNT BEGINS, TALES FROM THE SHADOWS, TALES FROM THE TWILIGHT: These are official FFXIV short stories associated with A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers respectively. The story from Chronicles of Light is also canon but insanely difficult to locate, contains details surrounding Zenos’s backstory and psychology. These absolutely carry lore details! You don’t need them to understand and enjoy the game, but they give added information and context.

ALL FINAL FANTASY XIV 1.X MAIN SCENARIO CUTSCENES: I have not gone through all of this yet but you can bet your ass I have it saved.

FINAL FANTASY XIV 1.X LETS PLAY: Likewise haven’t gone through all of this yet but if you want really detailed 1.0 lore info, this has it.

OZMA’S ASCIAN REFERENCE PILE: Contains both concrete known information, game data, and speculation by Ozma as a longstanding Ascian fan. 1.0 WHITE MAGE QUESTLINE: This isn’t 100% canon anymore, but I’m including it because it actually shows the Elementals in voiced roles and that is a huge deal. Worth noting this youtuber has other 1.0 videos documented too.

BOTANICA EORZEA: This contains all lore surrounding the plants of Eorzea, organized and accessible.

MINERICA EORZEA: Sent by @firecattebird, A fully searchable, organized, and accessible doc containing all the lore I could find in-game about the things we pull from mining nodes.

LODESTONE SONG LYRICS COMPILATION: There are often other places you can google around for official song lyrics and I usually use those, but if you want everything in one place this is your spot!

ETHYS ASHER: Has some really good coverage of the niche parts of Eorzea’s history and solid discussion/speculation surrounding various lore elements. I haven’t gotten to investigate deeply but did enjoy his coverage around Belah’dia and the Great Wyrms.

Lastly, while not lore related I do want to share a particularly fun resource with the people who might be peeking over.

EORZEA COLLECTION: A lot of players in FFXIV are  heavily invested in the design components of the game, and this is a hub for that. Whether you’re looking for something in the vein of Dark Souls, something outrageously silly, something cute, something majestic, etc. you can basically find all kinds of tones/experiments here. You can restrict what you see by job, race, gender, etc. and order according to recency or loves. It’s also somewhere you can see how gear looks with different characters, dyes, and combinations. Very organized and can be a useful resource for farming.

[communistkenobi]

Do you think andor stans are pretentious? I'm seeing people calling them that more and more. I know some are annoying but every star wars fan is annoying imo.

the most beloved past time of star wars fans is bitching, and andor has provided us with an extremely productive frontier from which to do so. I’ll just agree and say that yeah sure it’s pretentious, because I don’t think trying to like logically refute that is a good use of time.

I think part of the reason why the “andor is better than the rest of star wars” sentiment is so popular (beyond the subjective enjoyment of it as a superior show) is that andor has a completely fresh take on star wars, one that is deeply connected with the “guts” of star wars canon, and its presence in the canon is making people go “wait we could have had this kind of Star Wars content all along?” and then rage at the rest of the franchise for not being andor.

It’s sort of hard to describe why it feels this way (at least in short form lol), but like I think the main difference between andor and the “traditional” star wars show is that andor is taking the canon extremely seriously. not in a strict factual manner, but in the sense of like, okay how does the empire operate? what is its internal structure like? How does it respond to rebel attacks? What impact does that have on civilian populations?

These of course are not new questions (I think SW Rebels for example does a decent job of exploring these things), but it feels different. To use the mandalorian as a counter example, take the tracking fobs the guild hands out. These are simple devices that provide location data for targets. They make the plot go forward. Easy and simple. But like, I don’t think that would fly in a show like andor. Not only on a technical sense (how tf do you get sub-metre accurate positional data on another person who is dozens of solar systems away, frequently on fringe planets that do not have global satellites?) but also in a sociological sense - if this technology is available, how else is it used? Who else uses it? What kind of society produces this kind of technology? I think andor pushes audiences to think of these silly little gadgets as technologies of power. It must always be considered in its ability to oppress people and its role in structuring society. The infrastructure required to make something as simple as those tracking fobs work is itself a commentary on the state of the galaxy. And these questions are multi-scalar - if something as simple as a tracking fob can provide extremely accurate, unrestricted data on virtually any person in the galaxy, where do those data come from? Where are those data being held? Who controls those datasets? Why are these data being collected?

I think andor most excels at attending to the bureaucratic and administrative elements of the empire. “The Empire” is not a literal physical thing that you can point to and say it exists, it’s a collection of people and equipment and buildings and processes and laws and ideas. You see proof of the state in andor every time a database is queried, every time a criminal record is made, every time a security contract for another planet is secured. a person could go their entire life without seeing a star destroyer and still know the empire is very much real. It’s literally doing “we live in a society” shit with star wars. It approaches star wars not at the level of individual characters but at the level of systems, as a process of history that you are watching unfold, and that history is being told through the lens of people experiencing it.

This is sort of drifting off topic, so to circle back - I think andor is demonstrating the power of star wars canon in a way previously unconsidered, and people are (i think understandably) irritated that, for all the money and brain power and talent behind a lot of the other shows, we aren’t getting the same level of curiosity for this incredibly expansive fictional universe. I don’t think star wars always has to be this way, or even be this serious, but I think the recent narrative failures of the other shows (the mandalorian, kenobi, book of boba fett) demonstrate that star wars does not have to be about itself - you can explore the canon seriously and create stories from what already exists. You do not need to treat characters as saints or action figures, you do not need to flinch away from them showing vulnerability or humility or flaws. People will disagree that the shows I mentioned do this in the first place, but then they’re the people who say “you’re pretentious” to begin with, so in the immortal words of sun tzu. who give a shit

[copperbadge]

Hey this is a weird one! Your nonprofit post is going around. And I’m in a position where I can give a lot of money away, lately. I don’t 100% understand how to tell what is and isn’t a good charity? Like I know charity navigator gives you a lot of information but also like….favors organizations that aren’t paying very many employees? And you probably can’t help as much with this part, but how do you decide which types of causes to support? Like I like animals, but it seems fucked up to choose them over people, and there’s only so much money…

This is a good question and a very complicated answer. To start with I'm going to point you to a previous post of mine, which talks about the best way to find and form a relationship with a nonprofit. Most of the information you want will be there.

Charity Navigator is not a terrible way to go about finding local nonprofits to support; they've expanded the data they collect, and if someone is rated highly on Charity Navigator they're probably pretty good! It's just good to bear in mind that most solid nonprofits put 20-30% of their money towards "operating" costs with the exception of some, like Charity:Water, which claim that 100% of their proceeds go to program costs. (Technically this is true; there's an entirely separate foundation that pays their operating costs, so your donations aren't paying salary, but someone's is. Charity:Water is a perfectly fine nonprofit, they just operate unusually in that regard.) It's also normal for a good charity's CEO to make six figures; in order to keep good talent you really do have to pay a CEO upwards of $100K/yr. If you bear these facts in mind you'll be okay when it comes to evaluating Charity Navigator's information.

Deciding on a cause to support can be intensely personal. I think we all have an imaginary "outsider" in our head who looks at us and judges us, sometimes; to that imaginary outsider, choosing animals over people can seem fucked up. But you can play that game forever, the Who Deserves It More game -- do drug addicts or domestic abuse survivors deserve it more? Should you support police watchdogs or racial equality groups? Should you give to a shelter that only provides short-term solutions or a politician who is lobbying for ones that will take a while to achieve but be more permanent?

I think a lot of Cynthia Heimel when people ask me about this. She wrote an essay about how her "thing" is dogs. She couldn't figure out where to put her time in terms of activism; she decided that you just have to pick a cause and then put on blinders to the rest. Someone's got to obsess about stray dogs and she decided it was going to be her. That helped me a lot when I was younger.

Ultimately, a lot of people are not even thinking about giving, yours or often theirs. The majority of the time, if you say "I work with this animal shelter" what is going through someone's head is "Oh man I bet they get to play with puppies" and not "Why aren't they feeding starving orphans." There's a lot of virtue signaling online that tends to imply you should only give to the most worthy cause, when in reality that's a judgement only a very few, very difficult people will make of you. Most people who hear you are supporting a nonprofit will just be pleased you are. And honestly whether or not you give, and where, is nobody's fucking business anyway.

And you can spread it around if you want! Currently, I give monthly in small amounts to the Anti Cruelty Society (animal welfare in Chicago), my alma mater (education), and the Resurrection Project (housing and homebuying aid for underserved populations in Chicago). Yearly, I buy memberships to the Art Institute for myself and the Audubon Society for my parents, and I fundraise for my employer. Sporadically, I give to local Chicago initiatives that feed underserved and unhoused communities. Whenever I publish a novel, I do a fundraiser for something thematically linked to the novel. Sometimes I give to peoples' gofundmes for moving costs or car repair or top surgery, particularly when I've gotten a little windfall.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I give to organizations that have touched me personally or touch on causes I am intensely invested in, which seem to be actively working in the communities they claim to serve, who pay their staff a decent wage and haven't got any recent scandals when I google them :D I can only recommend others do the same.

[shadow-academic]

Sorting Star Trek: The Next Generation: Part 1

I first discovered the Sorting Hat Chats through @wisteria-lodge’s excellent posts about Elim Garak and Julian Bashir, and they’ve also done a good writeup of The Original Series’s Power Trio (and Scotty), but I haven’t seen anyone do The Next Generation yet, so here I am! I intend to Sort the whole TNG cast, but that’s a lot for one post, so I’m going to split it into multiple parts. 

A more detailed break-down of the system I’m using is right here, but the basics are these:

PRIMARY (ie MOTIVE)

BADGER ~ Loyal to the group.

SNAKE ~ Loyal to yourself and your Important People.

LION ~ Subconscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to feelings and instincts.

BIRD ~ Conscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to built systems and external facts.

SECONDARY (ie METHOD)

BADGER ~ Connect with the group. Make allies, work steadily and well. Be whatever the situation calls for. If you find a locked door, knock.

SNAKE ~ Connect with the environment. Notice things. Tell people what they want to hear. If you find a locked door, get in through the window.

BIRD ~ Collect skills, knowledge, personas, useful friends. If you find a locked door, track down the key or try to pick the lock.

LION ~ Be honest, be direct, speak your truth. Either the obstacle is going down or you are. If you find a locked door, kick it in. 

Worf, Son of Mogh

Worf is perhaps the most straightforward character in the whole show. A Klingon orphan raised on Earth (in Minsk. Minsk.) by adoptive human parents, Worf held onto his Klingon heritage by adopting a Klingon code of honor. Even when he meets other Klingons, almost none of whom take that code quite so seriously, Worf holds himself rigidly to his system, checking every choice he makes to make sure it is honorable. It’s honestly the clearest Bird primary I’ve ever seen.

Worf’s secondary is also very clear. When faced with any problem, his first instinct is to charge in, phasers blazing, mek’leth at the ready. He is unflinchingly honest in all things. He’s got one of the loudest Lion secondaries in the whole franchise.

Lieutenant Commander Data

Bird primaries have a constructed system that they check their decisions against to determine whether something is right or wrong, whether it is constructed by them or something given to them wholesale, and I think Data’s ethical subroutines definitely count as a system that was given to him wholesale. But the ethical subroutines aren’t the whole of Data’s Bird primary. Data is constantly questioning the world around him, trying to understand what humanity is and what it means to be human. He is constantly gathering data (pun not intended) and evolving his system to account for it.

Speaking of gathering data, Data also has a Bird secondary. His knowledge is vast, and on the rare occasions that he lacks an appropriate toolset for a situation, his android brain can learn one very quickly. In short, Data is the Double Bird Spock can only dream of being.

Dr. Katherine Pulaski

Dr. Pulaski doesn’t get nearly as much screentime as her crewmates, only lasting for one season, but I honestly really like her character. She was very obviously conceived as “female Dr. McCoy”: an older down-home Southern doctor who wears her emotions on her sleeve and is brutally honest. But does she house-match him? Well...yeah! Like McCoy, she will go out of her way to help people because they’re people. The best example of this comes in her one and only focus episode, “Unnatural Selection”. (I’m still salty about the fact that not only is Pulaski in only one season, but it’s also the shortest season due to a writer’s strike.) Captain Picard believes the risk of contagion to his crew is too great to help the crew of Darwin Station, but Pulaski refuses to abandon them, because those are people down there. So she ends up beaming one of the patients into a shuttle where the only people aboard are her and Data (because he’s immune to disease) and even though she gets infected and has to be rescued by Chief O’Brien doing some transporter technobabble, she does solve the medical mystery of the day and saves whomever she can.

Speaking of Pulaski and Data, let’s address the elephant in the room. The thing that Katherine Pulaski is most infamous for is her being an enormous dick to Data in her earliest episodes. That’s very much a Badger primary falling into the trap of dehumanization, just like McCoy with Spock, but the big difference in the dynamic is that Data is not Spock. Spock can answer McCoy’s snark with snark and it’s incredibly entertaining to watch, but Data is far too innocent and earnest for that, and it just comes across as Pulaski being mean. But what all those Pulaski-haters pointedly ignore is that Pulaski goes through some really serious character development over her limited screen time. When she gets to know Data, she stops dehumanizing him, and indeed becomes one of his biggest advocates. In the episode “Pen Pals”, when Data has the personal issue of the day, it is Pulaski who argues most fervently in favor of helping him, because Data is their crewmate, he is their friend, he is a person. Pulaski even comes to believe in Data’s personhood in ways that Data himself tends to dehumanize himself. When Data explains how he cannot feel emotions, Pulaski’s like “Really? Because your reaction back there seemed pretty emotional.” Pulaski continues challenging Data throughout her screentime, but she goes from being dismissive of him to asking Data to challenge his limits in ways he hadn’t even considered.

As to Pulaski’s secondary, she has the same uncompromising Lion that McCoy had. She is going to charge in and make sure people get the medical attention they need, and nothing, neither Captain Picard nor getting infected with a fatal illness herself, is going to stop her. (Yes, I’m bringing up “Unnatural Selection” again. It’s just the best Pulaski episode.) At the beginning of “Unnatural Selection”, Counselor Troi even straight-up calls her out as being almost too dedicated to her work as a doctor.

Dr. Beverly Crusher

Speaking of doctors, let’s move on to the Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise for the rest of the show. Beverly Crusher is also a Badger primary. Her priority is her patients, and her patients are anyone who is hurt. She doesn’t care about the context; she sees someone hurt, so she charges in to heal them. (That’s her Lion secondary, too.) She’s very straightforward: charge in and heal people, no matter the consequences, which can honestly cause problems, because on multiple occasions, she ends up doing something like violating the Prime Directive, which Picard then has to call her out on.

Crusher: “I couldn’t just leave them there!” Picard: “Why not?”

The fact that this exact quote is an exchange they’ve had multiple times is, I feel, very telling for both of them. Picard knows that the rules exist for a reason, but Beverly’s not gonna let a little thing like rules get in the way of helping people.

Beverly’s also doing a spot of modeling; she’s got a Badger secondary model that comes in the fact that she kind of holds the role of “everybody’s mom.” Beverly is a caring, nurturing, maternal figure not just to Wesley but to the rest of the crew as well. But it is a model; when the chips are down, Beverly’s first move is to Charge.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Captain Picard is a phenomenally eloquent man. He’s downright famous for his speeches about how humanity can be better than anyone gives them credit for, about standing firm to ideals in the face of adversity, about never hesitating to do the right thing. This shows that he’s put a lot of thought into his own moral system; I don’t think a Felt primary would feel comfortable putting so much thought into examining their morals just to articulate them better. Picard sees value in the systems of Starfleet and the ideals of what Starfleet is supposed to stand for, and his Bird primary has incorporated them into his own personal system of what is right and wrong.

Like Kirk, and indeed like all Captains, Picard has a solid Lion secondary model; a natural necessity of the job is the skill to make snap decisions and judgment calls in the moment, and he’s quite good at them. But he only uses that model when it’s absolutely necessary. Picard’s preferred method of problem-solving is to trust in his crew. When faced with a problem, Picard will call a meeting of the senior staff and possibly the odd relevant specialist like O’Brien, and ask for their input on the issue at hand. What we’re seeing there is a Badger secondary leaning on the strengths of his community.

I’ve every intention of doing the rest of the crew at a later date, but this post is already very long, and I want to do more research (read: watch more Star Trek) before I tackle the rest of them. So, to sum up:

Worf: Bird/Lion Data: Double Bird Dr. Pulaski: Badger/Lion Dr. Crusher: Badger/Lion (Badger secondary model) Picard: Bird/Badger (Lion secondary model)

[tennessoui]

18 obikin!! Amnesia fics are super fun 🍆

18. One of them wakes up with amnesia (Option A because two people sent in this prompt number and I liked both ideas I saw for it enough to not want to pick) this involves an Obi-Wan that got deaged as well as lost his memories so he's Phantom Menace Obi-Wan. no i will not be explaining. hand wavey drabble fic writing.

--

The man has not stopped staring, but something in his intense gaze makes Obi-Wan feel safe. Almost. Well. On edge, yes, but. Protected. He has the strange feeling that he’d rather be under this man’s stare than anywhere else in the entire galaxy.

But he knows he’s never seen this man before in his life, the same way that he knows he’s twenty-five and that Qui-Gon Jinn is his Master, that he’s a Jedi knight-in-training, that he hates teas with mint leaves in them, that he’ll never say no to a drink with Quinlan, that--well.

He supposes none of that stuff could be true anymore. Vokra Che, who’s a grown and certified healer master now, had told him what had happened. An older version of himself had touched something he wasn’t supposed to. The closest translation they could find to the runes on the object was that it would transform the user back to their most balanced state. Obi-Wan’s had, apparently, been at the age of twenty-five. He hadn’t recognized the name Anakin Skywalker. He had never been to Naboo.

He throws the rest of his drink back and waves to the bartender to pour him another. He’d gone straight here from the Halls of Healing. He’d had a shadow the entire way, but the man has yet to try to talk to him at all. It’s infuriating.

His Padawan braid swings into his field of vision for a second. He tosses it over his shoulder. He’d been told. Qui-Gon had died. Obi-Wan wants to not think about it at all.

There’s a brush of a Force presence that’s both familiar and completely foreign next to him. The man has finally moved to his side. Obi-Wan’s jaw ticks at his continued reticence, the way he’s observing him but not talking to him. It just simply won’t do, but Obi-Wan isn’t feeling his kindest. He doesn’t want whatever this man is offering him with his silent, dour stares and his suffocating Force signature that keeps trying to tangle itself with Obi-Wan’s own. It’s rude is what it is.

He waves down the bartender and orders a drink for the man. “If you got mint, put it in,” he tells the woman who raises an eyebrow but shrugs, one pair of her arms busy with the drink. When she gives it to him he slides it to the man next to him without even looking at him.

“What--” the man asks. “I don’t--”

“You do tonight,” Obi-Wan says bracingly, throwing back half of his own drink. “We’ve both just lost our Masters, haven’t we?”

The man beside him flinches as if Obi-Wan had skewered him with his lightsaber.

“You are him, aren’t you?” Obi-Wan lolls his head to the side to look at the man threw half-closed eyes. “My padawan.”

“Anakin,” the man says so quietly it’s almost lost to the noise of the bar. “I’m Anakin Skywalker, yeah.”

Obi-Wan takes a drink reflexively, humming in disbelief. “You don’t look like it,” he says consideringly. At Anakin’s confused look, he elaborates. “You don’t look like you could have ever been a Padawan.”

The man pulls himself up, face darkening at the perceived slight. It’s almost too easy to rile him up, but now that he has, Obi-Wan finds he has no interest in fighting this man. Quite the opposite, really. That’s...something. He can’t tell if that emotion comes from him now or the older version of him.

Either way, Obi-Wan has no desire to stand in the way of whatever storm this Anakin is building up in his head, so he turns to face him completely and pushes both hands into his blond hair, raking down the scalp gently before collecting the strands into a poor imitation of the Padawan ponytail. “That’s better, I suppose. The hair threw me off.” He lets go slowly, making sure to tug at one of the strands at the last second.

Anakin has a very strange look on his face, but he’s definitely not angry anymore. He’s even shielding much more tightly now. Obi-Wan smirks into his glass as he takes a sip. He definitely remembers that trick.

“Do you know who cut it?” he asks, catching sight of the end of his braid again. The drinks are going to his head much more quickly than he had intended. Must be all the trauma his body has gone through in the past few days. “My braid.”

“I.” Anakin stutters, caught off guard. “You did.”

Obi-Wan feels like laughing but also a bit like crying. There’s a terrifying emotion rearing its head in his chest. It threatens to swallow him whole. “Well, I suppose I never liked to stand on ceremony.”

“You cut your braid in the fresher and then called me in and braided mine,” Anakin says distantly, as if caught up in the memory. “You wouldn’t let me hold it. I thought you were so mean. But I understood at my Knighting Ceremony. It was a part of me in my hand, a...starmap of all the places I’d been and the things I’d learned during my training. And there was only one person I wanted to give it to in the whole galaxy.”

“Did you?” He asks, taking a sip to hide how important the question is, how devastating the answer could be.

“Well. Yeah. But I guess I don’t know if you kept it,” Anakin cuts his eyes away from Obi-Wan’s and runs his fingers up the long stem of his drink.

Obi-Wan chokes on a laugh. “He definitely did.”

The other man’s face settles into a frown. “You don’t know that. You’re not him.”

“I’m enough of him. I’ve got--some feelings. In my head. Impressions.”

“Of me?”

“Of how he felt about you.”

Anakin’s eyes widen and then narrow with a sudden intensity that makes Obi-Wan want to shiver. It’s like being in the eye of a storm. His hold on the delicate glass in his hand becomes dangerously tight as he leans forward into Obi-Wan’s space, as if he can’t get close enough to him.

“What do you feel when you look at me?” he asks almost breathlessly. Obi-Wan blinks, trying to figure out if he’s being seduced or not. It’s sort of working. It’s all that focus, directly on him. Obi-Wan wouldn’t mind if that’s how the night ended. But sleeping with his former padawan who he can’t remember right now doesn’t seem like the best decision he could make.

But Anakin had liked it when Obi-Wan tugged at his hair. He’d arched closer to him. And now, the distance between them has been eaten away until they’re almost pressed chest to shoulder.

“Safe,” he decides to say, even though the word feels too small. “Sad,” which is mostly true but also an oversimplification. It’s a sort of nostalgia mixed with sadness, mixed with acceptance and resignation. “Warm,” because even after being denied entry to Obi-Wan’s mind, Anakin’s force presence has curled around Obi-Wan’s like some sort of krayt dragon, content to wait and guard and treasure. He leans forward, just until his mouth brushes against the skin of Anakin’s ear. “Coveted.”

Anakin definitely shifts at that, and when Obi-Wan pulls back enough to see his face, his pupils are blown wide.

Swallowing a grin, Obi-Wan swallows the rest of his drink in one go. “Drink up,” he tells Anakin in his most demanding tone, reaching into his pockets to pull out his older self’s credits to settle the tab. “I want to go.”

Anakin obeys immediately, making a face at the taste.

They’re out in the street within a few minutes, Anakin smacking his lips as if still trying to rid himself of the flavor. “I just don’t know why you had to order me that,” he complains, falling into step on Obi-Wan’s right.

Obi-Wan pauses and leans against the very unsanitary wall of the building, spreading his legs wide enough so that Anakin can come in between them. The man doesn’t seem to notice anything different, just steps a bit closer as a crowd of loud party-goers makes their way past them.

“I wanted to see if I liked mint,” Obi-Wan shrugs, raising his hand to rest on the skin of Anakin’s neck. He can feel the way his pulse is beating incredibly fast.

“Why would my drink help you with--”

Obi-Wan rolls his eyes. He commends his older self for being able to teach this idiot anything, even though he seems to have skipped over important lessons like Recognizing When You’re Being Flirted With.

Before Anakin can finish the thought, Obi-Wan twists his other hand in Anakin’s robes and pulls him forward until their lips are a hair’s breadth apart. “May I kiss you?” he asks because it’s only polite to.

Anakin’s eyes widen and then fall shut as he gives a little nod, finally stepping forward until their bodies are pressed completely together.

At least someone, although he doubts it was the older Obi-Wan, taught Anakin how to kiss. Obi-Wan’s toes curl in his boots as Anakin takes control of the action, moving his hands so one’s pressing against the wall behind them and one’s running up his scalp. Obi-Wan takes his time licking into Anakin’s mouth, allowing Anakin to explore him in return. One of them moans, which seems like as good a time as any to break the kiss.

“Well?” Anakin pants, diving in to place a short kiss onto Obi-Wan’s lips. “What do you think?”

The short answer is that Obi-Wan isn’t. He noses back towards Anakin’s mouth hopefully, sliding his hand down from his neck to rest on his hip.

“About mint,” Anakin elaborates when Obi-Wan doesn’t respond immediately.

“Inconclusive. Need more data,” Obi-Wan tries to kiss him but Anakin’s smiling too hard.

“Then next time you can get the awful drink, and you can get me the Alderaan Sunset,” Anakin is complaining, but he’s laughing too and that’s nice. Obi-Wan thinks that making Anakin Skywalker laugh is one of the best feelings in the galaxy, and he thinks his older self would agree, if the warmth sparking up in his very soul means anything at all.

[smells-like-mettaton]

Tali’s Alphys-Centric Fic Rec List

I’ve been meaning to make this for a while!! All fics are oneshots unless marked as a series or with a chapter count.  Thanks to everyone who recced several of these to me on my 12am begging-for-alphys-fics post dfdksdl. These aren’t in any particular order. The “notes” section is my commentary about each fic. No fics are based on full AUs (ex. underswap, horrortale, etc). The only endgame Alphys ship included is Alphyne, though most of the fics listed are gen. Hope you can find something you enjoy here!

Extra Credit by FriedCatfish

Rating: G // Word count: 1,206 Summary: Undyne loses track of time watching anime. Set before the events of the game. Notes: Cute Alphyne oneshot! Short and sweet, very nice characterization

world comes pouring through by feralpheonix

Rating: G // Word count: 1,655 Summary: Alphys reunites with some old friends on the way home from taking care of business. Notes: 2nd person Alphys pov but it surprisingly works? A small moment with Alphys, Bratty, and Catty, which I literally NEVER see content for so it was really refreshing!! Takes place at/near the end of the pacifist route.

white lies to the dead by MiniNephthys

Rating: T // Word Count: 580 Summary: Alphys walks through Waterfall, talking to someone who's not there. Notes: Queen Alphys ending; Alphys “talks” to Undyne after she’s been killed. Hits me right in all the emotions ;;

Found Soul by LibraLibrary

Rating: T // Word Count: 1,331 Summary: Self-worth is a slippery, fleeting little devil, and the bastard flower that killed you isn't helping. Takes place during the final fight of the True Pacifist run, following Alphys from one purgatory to the next. Notes: Very angsty, definitely make sure you’re ready to handle Alphys’s suicidal thoughts, but a very good read! I love seeing the Lost Soul battle from her POV.

And I Feel Fine by Masu_Trout

Rating: T // Word Count: 1,685 Summary: The fallen human is human is fast approaching The Core, and Mettaton is ready to finally take the stage. Now, if only Alphys would stop worrying so much. Notes: Alphys & Mettaton friendship in the no mercy route, but manages to be surprisingly not depressing. Mettaton POV but definitely still deserves to be here. This fic does a great job of characterizing them both and it’s always great to see Alphys working in her element.

Experimentation by pickledragon

Rating: G // Word Count: 1,531 Summary: Alphys is, above all, a scientist. She may watch anime with religious fervor and make horrible Undernet shitposts in her free time, but she is good at her job. She knows what they say about her, behind her back. But when she stands there, time open before her, she resolves to collect data. Each experiment, intentional or not, brings new opportunities to change certain variables and observe others. Alphys is a scientist, after all. Notes: THIS FIC. it’s technically part of a series but it stands on its own (it’s the only one i’ve read by this author). EXCELLENT alphys characterization and writing style. Some Sans & Alphys friendship too which is always stellar. If you didn’t gather from the summary, it’s an alphys starts to remember resets fic.

Memory by Ash_yeet

Rating: T // Word Count: 19,962 // Chapters: 5/20 Summary: It's been two years since monsterkind have joined the humans on the surface, and Alphys is happier than she's ever been. But things can't stay great forever. She starts having nightmares, lapses in memory, flashbacks to things that have never happened. She hopes it will pass... sans is doing his best to adjust to life. When Alphys reaches out to him about her nightmares, he doesn't expect much. He quickly changes his tune. Someone is trying to come back. And they aren't what they used to be.sans and Alphys are trying to move on. But there's one thing they forgot: No matter how hard you try, you can't run from your past. Notes: I’ve only read chapter one so far, but it’s been really good! Looks like it’s going to involve Gaster in some way. Says it’s on short hiatus but was updated in April so doesn’t look abandoned.

Hot and Cold Blooded (Alphyne series) by perniciousLizard

Rating: varies by fic, usually G but a few T and one E // Word count: 36,516 // Works: 18/18 Summary: This series is a place to put all my Alphys/Undyne stories that aren't part of another series. Notes: this series has something for everyone; you can pick and choose which works to read. Most are feel-good fluff and humor, some hurt/comfort too. Some connect to the author’s Sansby series (which i also can’t recommend enough)

When Life Hands You Enantiomers by Kaesa

Rating: T // Word Count: 2,739 Summary: Alphys has a half-finished tile maze puzzle, reams of useless data, and a bunch of piranhas that can't tell the difference between lemon and orange scent. Sans has donuts. Notes: ONE OF MY VERY FAVORITES. Fun puns, science, alphys & sans friendship, piranhas, the opportunity to actually understand organic chemistry references,, it’s so good and fun

Friendshipping by AyuOhseki

Rating: G // Word Count: 4,564 Summary: Sans finds Alphys's secret Sans/Grillby RPF. This won't get weird or awkward or anything, we're sure. Notes: Hilarious Alphys narration, great characterization, it’s just so silly and warms my heart. I love terrible fanfic writer Alphys

social links by simplycarryon

Rating: G // Word Count: 2,525 Summary: Friendship's pretty neat, or so your video games and anime dictate. But you are not an anime protagonist, and you're not sure you know what friendship is any more. Notes: more solid sans & alphys friendship :D

See You Another Time by decamarks

Rating: T // Word Count: 18,500 // Chapters: 1/14 Summary: “Have you ever thought of a world where everything is exactly the same... Except you don’t exist? Everything functions perfectly without you.” Alphys spent a lot of time thinking about what it’d be like to start over. It wasn’t fair for someone like her to escape consequences. She knew that, yet the thought never left her mind—the thought that maybe, just maybe, she could get another chance; that she could abandon her life, her failures—everything—and start anew. But that would never happen. Sometimes, Alphys wondered. Would the world be better off without her? When unexplainable anomalies appear and begin to warp the world around her, Alphys discovers something she was never meant to know: the identity of the former Royal Scientist, and how he met his demise. Doctor W.D. Gaster vanished without a trace; he was erased from reality after an experiment ended in disgrace. Forgotten by the world, shattered across time and space—it’s like he never existed in the first place.And Alphys can’t imagine a better fate. Notes: This is a monster of a first chapter but definitely worth the read!! So much good stuff happening already. I’m a total wuss but I still love the cosmic/existential horror bits going on so far. Great Sans & alphys friendship and Undyne & alphys friendship so far.  All the amalgamates also feel incredibly well written. Can’t wait to see more of this one

(And here are a few of my own Alphys-centric fics as well)

Seventh Time’s the Charm by Taliax

Rating: G // Word Count: 1,519 // Chapters: 1/7 Summary: Six bad "dates" Alphys has been on, plus one that is actually pretty good. Notes: Alphys is my favorite and I love giving her a bad time. First chapter is a “date” she has with Sans. Next chapter which I have in progress is going to be Papyrus. (Alphyne is still endgame of course.) Set mostly before the events tof the game. Get ready for lots of second-hand embarrassment sdlfkjds

Support Character by Taliax

Rating: T // Word Count: 1,814 Summary: If Sans is determined to fight the human, Alphys is going to make sure he's prepared. Notes: Sans & Alphys no mercy route friendship, based on the headcanon that Alphys was the one to give Sans the powers/magic he uses to fight the human.

it's your best life (if it's the life that you're living right now) by Taliax

Rating: T // Word Count: 4,046 Summary: Through messages saved to Sans's phone, Queen Alphys gets a glimpse at lives that might have been.  With so many possibilities... how did this timeline go so wrong? Notes: Sans & Alphys friendship, Queen Alphys ending, mostly angst/hurt/comfort. I’m really proud of this one and it uses my main headcanon for how Sans knows about resets.

The Trans-Underground Alphys-Carrying, Match-Making Road Trip by Taliax

Rating: G // Word Count: 5,713 Summary: From her secret security camera, Alphys gets too invested in Sans's relationship with the voice behind the door.  This wouldn't be a problem if Mettaton didn't decide to take her ship into his own hands. Trying to catch up with a battery-powered robot is hard work, but telling the truth is even harder. Notes: This is a really silly fic with some hurt/comfort sprinkled in. Has some Soriel and Papyton in the background. Has some Alphys & Papyrus friendship as well which is always underrated in my opinion.

[synesindri]

Survey Writing Guide: Fandom Edition

Sooo! People are collecting survey data on fandom! Makes sense — fandom is an interesting population to study, and getting data on attitudes/behaviors/etc is a great way to try to find out the truth about popular points of contention about media. To get unbiased, meaningful data, though, you’ll want to make sure your survey is in good shape. This is a guide to try to help you do that.

I am assuming, if you are reading this, that you want your survey to be unbiased and interpretable, sampling from as many viewpoints as possible and getting data on opinions you might agree and disagree with. In other words, I am assuming that you want to do your fandom research in good faith. If that is not why you are making a fandom survey, then you can ignore this whole post. I would ask you to reconsider running a bad-faith fandom survey, but I can’t stop you. But just know that my assumption is that you’re out here in the honest pursuit of truth.

I’m not accusing a survey of being done in bad faith if it doesn’t follow my suggestions. I also realize most people are conducting these surveys in their spare time because they’re passionate & curious, not for the purpose of serious publication or whatever. I’m not telling you that you have to follow all or even any of the advice here. Do what you feel good about doing. Fandom should be fun! 

This guide is only about surveys themselves, and will not help you get a good sample of your fandom. In other words, none of this advice will make sure your survey reaches obscure corners of your fandom, insular communities you aren’t in, or casual fans. A good survey is important, but it’s only one part of getting accurate data, and participation recruitment is a whole other thing. 

This is also only intended to help with survey setup, not analysis or results reporting. You can write a great, unbiased, easy to understand survey, and still present your results in a way that is biased/doesn’t include good information/is hard to understand. Furthermore, once your results are public, they’re out of your hands: you might be well-meaning, but please keep in mind that some people might use your data to make unfair or incorrect assumptions about others, support biased arguments, or generally behave unpleasantly. That’s just part of survey work; don’t let it stop you, but don’t be surprised if/when it happens.

Now, onto the survey tips ~

Think about how to structure your questions

Use multiple choice answers/avoid free response answers as much as possible. This is going to be really helpful for you when it’s time to analyze your data: it’s so much easier to analyze responses that are just clicks of a box than responses that require you to read someone’s long explanation of an opinion and try to figure out what they mean. It also makes answering easier on your participants: clicking a box is a lot easier for them than writing out what they think. Giving an option for them to expand on their answer in a free response text box is great, but try to capture as many possible responses as you can in multiple choice questions.

Consider: should participants be able to give more than one response per question? A good rule of thumb for this is if different responses to a question are mutually exclusive or not: if they are mutually exclusive, only give people the option of clicking one box; if they’re not, let them choose as many as they want. For example, if you want to know somebody’s ONE favorite season of a show, only let them choose one season. If you want to know ALL the seasons they like, give them the option to choose multiple.

Only include one question per question 

A LOT of surveys ask questions that are actually several questions in one, and that makes answering them difficult! For example, you might THINK you’re only asking one thing if you say “Are you introverted or shy?” as a yes/no question, but that is actually two questions: some people are introverted but not shy; some people are shy but not introverted; some people are both introverted and shy, and some people are neither. People who respond “yes” might mean they are one or the other or both, and people who respond “no” might mean they are one or the other or neither — and you’ll have no way of knowing, because your question was too ambiguous.

If you’re asking a question about a nuanced topic, make sure your question and possible responses are nuanced too

People in fandom have a lot of complex views, and giving them only a black-and-white way to tell you about those views means you will miss out on nuance and get inaccurate results. If you are wondering about opinions on a controversial pairing, asking “Do you think it’s okay to ship Reylo?” (for example) and only letting people respond yes or no is not going to capture the range of opinions that exist on Reylo. If you can include multiple answer boxes for people to click, do that! 

Analyzing free response data (where people can write their own answer) is hard on you, as the survey writer, and people might not feel like explaining their opinions. Definitely include a free response box if you want, but also provide a lot of options for responses. 

The more controversial the topic you’re asking about, the more nuance you should let your participants give in their responses. People in fandom often have very strong and very complex opinions about certain issues; you’ll want to make sure not to flatten those opinions too much, while still keeping them simple enough to analyze. Asking “do you enjoy reading fluff?” is (probably) not going to be too complicated, and you’ll likely be fine giving people 2-3 response options (yes/always, sometimes, no/never). But you should give a lot more response options if you’re asking “is it ever acceptable to ship two siblings together?”: some people will be fine with “yes, always” or “no, never,” but a LOT of people are going to want to specify conditions like “only if they are not blood relatives” or “only if it is framed as being bad” or “it’s acceptable sometimes but I personally avoid it,” etc. Make sure people without clear-cut opinions have the ability to give you their opinions too.

Use simple, clear language

Use language that is as simple and precise as possible. Keep questions short when you can. Avoid using a lot of slang and regional idioms: people come from all over the place in fandom, and might not know what you mean. People also have a lot of different reading levels: you want to make sure most of your participants can understand what you’re asking them. 

There are some terms you can assume everyone in your sample will know, and some that you can’t: it’s up to you to figure out which terms are which. For example, most people in tumblr fandom space will understand what a ship is. They might not know what “IC” means though, so you might need to write it out as “in character.” Further, pretty much everyone in the MCU fandom might know what “Stucky” is, but not as many will know what “Coulwhip” is. You can make these kinds of technical terms easier for people to understand by just writing out all abbreviations and writing all pairings in the Name/Name format.

Use neutral language and keep your personal opinions out of it

Avoid inserting your own opinions into your survey, even if you expect that almost everyone participating will agree with you. Even “obvious” jokes won’t read as jokes to everyone; you might upset/offend/put off some group of participants disproportionately such that they won’t complete the survey, and you’ll miss a chunk of data you want. This is a problem, because say, for example, you really want to know if people’s favorite Supernatural ship has any correlation to fans’ personality traits — but if you poked fun at Dean somewhere else in your survey in a way that made Dean fans click off the page, then you’re going to lose a lot of Dean fan data that it would have been really useful for you to have, since Dean is a very popular character to ship with a lot of other characters. 

A good-faith survey is also not the place to moralize. Fandom can be a very polarized place; you are not going to be able to predict which things you ask about are going to be morally objectionable to your participants, and if they’re going to agree with your moral judgments. Your results might surprise you! A survey where you hope to get accurate data is not the place to defend a problematic character you like or to call some group of shippers gross. Your best bet for not causing issues is to include stuff that’s controversial and to be as neutral about it as possible — for example, if you are asking about ships people like, include every reasonably popular ship (potentially excluding rarepairs/extreme rarepairs just because it’s hard to include all of those), even the ones you hate/think are harmful/whatever, and don’t comment on the goodness or badness of any of them. 

Avoid “leading” questions to avoid bias

If you say, “Do you love this awesome TV show?” that’s going to be awkward to respond to for everyone whose answer is anything other than “yes.” Something like “What is your opinion of this TV show?” (with responses like: I love it, I like it, I have mixed feelings about it, I am neutral toward it, I dislike it, and I hate it) will give you a better sense of people’s genuine thoughts.

Select your multiple choice options thoughtfully

Be as egalitarian as possible in the options you provide to your fandom-specific questions that aren’t free response. If you leave out a major character on a list of favorite characters, for example, your participants are going to wonder why you did that — and you might not get data about that character, especially if you don’t include a free response option. 

Avoid bias in your multiple choice answer options

If you ask people for their favorite and least favorite [something], make sure the list of [something] options for both of those questions is identical. For example, if you’re asking about people’s most liked and most disliked ships, make sure the list of ships you include for both questions is the same. Including Sylvie/Loki only on the “ship you most dislike” but not the “ship you most like” list might seem like a reasonable move to you if you don’t know anybody who (openly) likes Sylvie/Loki, but doing that will bias responses and make your data inaccurate. Some people will stop filling out the survey, some people who like Sylkie just won’t want to bother filling in the blank, some people might forget that they like Sylkie unless it’s right in front of their eyes as one of the response options, some people will feel judged and so they won’t answer your survey honestly, etc. 

Follow common best practices advice for demographic information

Collecting information on respondents’ ages, genders, race/ethnicity, employment status, education history, etc is, luckily, very common, so there are a lot of standard questions about those things. I’ll just go ahead and list what I sometimes collect in my own surveys:

Age: for anonymous fandom surveys, I suggest using age groups (under 13, 13-18, 19-25, 26-35, etc) instead of asking people for their precise ages. Just make sure to include all possible age brackets. For example, don’t assume everyone in fandom is under 50.

Gender: unless you want a lot of nuance in your responses, it’s typically enough to include a list like: man/boy or male, woman/girl or female, nonbinary, genderfluid or bigender, and other. If you are interested in trans people specifically, I suggest asking that in a separate question (like: “Do you identify as transgender?”), rather than including binary trans identities in addition to binary cis identities in the same question. The exception to this is if you are including a very long list of gender options.

Race/ethnicity: (disclaimer that most of the data I collect comes from the US, so my best practices are most suited to that population. I welcome any feedback about the best way to ask about this for an international and/or non-US population.) I typically ask something like: “Which category best describes you?” and then give the options: American Indian or Native Alaskan, Asian, Black, Hispanic or Latinx, Middle Eastern or North African, Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian, White, and other. Ideally, this list should allow multiple responses, so that multiracial/multiethnic people can give accurate reports.

Employment status: “What is your employment status?” with responses: employed full time, employed part-time, unemployed and looking for work, unemployed and not looking for work, self-employed, homemaker, student, and retired. If possible, let this be multiple choice, so that, for example, people who are students AND work can select both applicable options.

Education level: “What is your highest level of education?” with responses: some high school, high school diploma or equivalent, some college, college degree, some graduate education, Master’s degree, Doctorate degree, professional degree (e.g. M.D., J.D., M.Div, etc) 

Sexual orientation: like with gender, you probably don’t need to provide a long, comprehensive list unless your survey is about sexual orientation specifically. Something like the following is probably enough to cover most of your respondents: “What is your sexual orientation?” with responses: straight/heterosexual, gay/lesbian/homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, and other. 

Other questions: just try to make sure you are providing response options that will cover the majority of your participants, and include an “other” option if you’re not sure you’ve covered everything. There are a fair number of basic best practices documents for common demographics questions that you can find through Google, so if you’re not sure how to ask something, give it a quick search. You can also ask people you know who might know more about some specific demographic quality than you do to weigh in!

That’s it for now! I hope you find this helpful, either in writing your own surveys, or in evaluating surveys you are participating in!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Machine learning's crumbling foundations

Technological debt is insidious, a kind of socio-infrastructural subprime crisis that’s unfolding around us in slow motion. Our digital infrastructure is built atop layers and layers and layers of code that’s insecure due to a combination of bad practices and bad frameworks.

Even people who write secure code import insecure libraries, or plug it into insecure authorization systems or databases. Like asbestos in the walls, this cruft has been fragmenting, drifting into our air a crumb at a time.

We ignored these, treating them as containable, little breaches and now the walls are rupturing and choking clouds of toxic waste are everywhere.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas

The infosec apocalypse was decades in the making. The machine learning apocalypse, on the other hand…

ML has serious, institutional problems, the kind of thing you’d expect in a nascent discipline, which you’d hope would be worked out before it went into wide deployment.

ML is rife with all forms of statistical malpractice — AND it’s being used for high-speed, high-stakes automated classification and decision-making, as if it was a proven science whose professional ethos had the sober gravitas you’d expect from, say, civil engineering.

Civil engineers spend a lot of time making sure the buildings and bridges they design don’t kill the people who use them. Machine learning?

Hundreds of ML teams built models to automate covid detection, and every single one was useless or worse.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/02/autoquack/#gigo

The ML models failed due to failure to observe basic statistical rigor. One common failure mode?

Treating data that was known to be of poor quality as if it was reliable because good data was not available.

Obtaining good data and/or cleaning up bad data is tedious, repetitive grunt-work. It’s unglamorous, time-consuming, and low-waged. Cleaning data is the equivalent of sterilizing surgical implements — vital, high-skilled, and invisible unless someone fails to do it.

It’s work performed by anonymous, low-waged adjuncts to the surgeon, who is the star of the show and who gets credit for the success of the operation.

The title of a Google Research team (Nithya Sambasivan et al) paper published in ACM CHI beautifully summarizes how this is playing out in ML: “Everyone wants to do the model work, not the data work: Data Cascades in High-Stakes AI,”

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/0d556e45afc54afeb2eb6b51a9bc1827b9961ff4.pdf

The paper analyzes ML failures from a cross-section of high-stakes projects (health diagnostics, anti-poaching, etc) in East Africa, West Africa and India. They trace the failures of these projects to data-quality, and drill into the factors that caused the data problems.

The failures stem from a variety of causes. First, data-gathering and cleaning are low-waged, invisible, and thankless work. Front-line workers who produce the data — like medical professionals who have to do extra data-entry — are not compensated for extra work.

Often, no one even bothers to explain what the work is for. Some of the data-cleaning workers are atomized pieceworkers, such as those who work for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, who lack both the context in which the data was gathered and the context for how it will be used.

This data is passed to model-builders, who lack related domain expertise. The hastily labeled X-ray of a broken bone, annotated by an unregarded and overworked radiologist, is passed onto a data-scientist who knows nothing about broken bones and can’t assess the labels.

This is an age-old problem in automation, pre-dating computer science and even computers. The “scientific management” craze that started in the 1880s saw technicians observing skilled workers with stopwatches and clipboards, then restructuring the workers’ jobs by fiat.

Rather than engaging in the anthropological work that Clifford Geertz called “thick description,” the management “scientists” discarded workers’ qualitative experience, then treated their own assessments as quantitative and thus empirical.

http://hypergeertz.jku.at/GeertzTexts/Thick_Description.htm

How long a task takes is empirical, but what you call a “task” is subjective. Computer scientists take quantitative measurements, but decide what to measure on the basis of subjective judgment. This empiricism-washing sleight of hand is endemic to ML’s claims of neutrality.

In the early 2000s, there was a movement to produce tools and training that would let domain experts produce their own tools — rather than delivering “requirements” to a programmer, a bookstore clerk or nurse or librarian could just make their own tools using Visual Basic.

This was the radical humanist version of “learn to code” — a call to seize the means of computation and program, rather than being programmed. Over time, it was watered down, and today it lives on as a weak call for domain experts to be included in production.

The disdain for the qualitative expertise of domain experts who produce data is a well-understood guilty secret within ML circles, embodied in Frederick Jelinek’s ironic talk, “Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up.”

But a thick understanding of context is vital to improving data-quality. Take the American “voting wars,” where GOP-affiliated vendors are brought in to purge voting rolls of duplicate entries — people who are registered to vote in more than one place.

These tools have a 99% false-positive rate.

Ninety. Nine. Percent.

To understand how they go so terribly wrong, you need a thick understanding of the context in which the data they analyze is produced.

https://5harad.com/papers/1p1v.pdf

The core assumption of these tools is that two people with the same name and date of birth are probably the same person.

But guess what month people named “June” are likely to be born in? Guess what birthday is shared by many people named “Noel” or “Carol”?

Many states represent unknown birthdays as “January 1,” or “January 1, 1901.” If you find someone on a voter roll whose birthday is represented as 1/1, you have no idea what their birthday is, and they almost certainly don’t share a birthday with other 1/1s.

But false positives aren’t evenly distributed. Ethnic groups whose surnames were assigned in recent history for tax-collection purposes (Ashkenazi Jews, Han Chinese, Koreans, etc) have a relatively small pool of surnames and a slightly larger pool of first names.

This is likewise true of the descendants of colonized and enslaved people, whose surnames were assigned to them for administrative purposes and see a high degree of overlap. When you see two voter rolls with a Juan Gomez born on Jan 1, you need to apply thick analysis.

Unless, of course, you don’t care about purging the people who are most likely to face structural impediments to voter registration (such as no local DMV office) and who are also likely to be racialized (for example, migrants whose names were changed at Ellis Island).

ML practitioners don’t merely use poor quality data when good quality data isn’t available — they also use the poor quality data to assess the resulting models. When you train an ML model, you hold back some of the training data for assessment purposes.

So maybe you start with 10,000 eye scans labeled for the presence of eye disease. You train your model with 9,000 scans and then ask the model to assess the remaining 1,000 scans to see whether it can make accurate classifications.

But if the data is no good, the assessment is also no good. As the paper’s authors put it, it’s important to “catch[] data errors using mechanisms specific to data validation, instead of using model performance as a proxy for data quality.”

ML practitioners studied for the paper — practitioners engaged in “high-stakes” model building reported that they had to gather their own data for their models through field partners, “a task which many admitted to being unprepared for.”

High-stakes ML work has inherited a host of sloppy practices from ad-tech, where ML saw its first boom. Ad-tech aims for “70–75% accuracy.”

That may be fine if you’re deciding whether to show someone an ad, but it’s a very different matter if you’re deciding whether someone needs treatment for an eye-disease that, untreated, will result in irreversible total blindness.

Even when models are useful at classifying input produced under present-day lab conditions, those conditions are subject to several kinds of “drift.”

For example, “hardware drift,” where models trained on images from pristine new cameras are asked to assess images produced by cameras from field clinics, where lenses are impossible to keep clean (see also “environmental drift” and “human drift”).

Bad data makes bad models. Bad models instruct people to make ineffective or harmful interventions. Those bad interventions produce more bad data, which is fed into more bad models — it’s a “data-cascade.”

GIGO — Garbage In, Garbage Out — was already a bedrock of statistical practice before the term was coined in 1957. Statistical analysis and inference cannot proceed from bad data.

Producing good data and validating data-sets are the kind of unsexy, undercompensated maintenance work that all infrastructure requires — and, as with other kinds of infrastructure, it is undervalued by journals, academic departments, funders, corporations and governments.

But all technological debts accrue punitive interest. The decision to operate on bad data because good data is in short supply isn’t like looking for your car-keys under the lamp-post — it’s like driving with untrustworthy brakes and a dirty windscreen.

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CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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[gospelofme]

Sex Ed with Professor Fives

The Diagram

Clone trooper cadets spent most of their young lives learning. The learning helmets they had worn on Kamino had helped them process massive amounts of data in a short timeframe. But there was one subject they lacked in. It wasn’t that they didn’t teach them this important subject. They knew the basics. Like the basic basics. The mechanics if you will. The A + B = C.

There was a good-sized munitions room down in the bowels of the Resolute. It was fairly large and Fives had managed to make it work. He’d found an old plot board, the edges still lit up brightly, and some grease pens. He also managed to get three medium-sized tables into the room too. The attendees could sit on crates. Space was limited and he had a full roster. One by one, troopers hurried in. This wasn’t a sanctioned class, but it was one that was very popular with the troops. So popular that he had some 212th and 104th boys that will attend this session. Once everyone was seated, Fives began.

“Okay class, today we will learn about sex education. First off, who knows what sex is?” Everyone raised their hands. Good, at least he won’t have to give some troopers The Talk like last semester.

“Excellent.” Fives picked up a stack of flimsi from his “desk”.

“Second, I want you all to label the parts of the female reproductive system. I need to see what I’m working with.” He handed out the diagrams, drawn by him, and gave each trooper a graphite stylus.

As he watched his class work, Rex covering his diagram up as Boil tried to peak at it, Fives straightened the little name plate on his desk.

“I don’t think you’re a real professor, Fives.” Sinker had said when he walked in. He shut up when Fives threatened to throw him out of class. Soon the men were done and Fives collected their papers, looking them over as he reclined in his chair and propped his legs up on his desk. He sighed when he finished,

“Just as I thought, blank slates.” He said shaking his head. “But I can work with that.”

Fives drew the same diagram on the plot board, using a stick to point to each part.

“Okay, what’s this?” He asked.

“That’s the hoo-ha, sir.” Waxer replied, raising his hand when Fives gave him a stern look.

“No, that’s the vagina.” Fives replied. Boil looked confused.

“But I thought the whole thing was the vagina…” he spoke up.

“Nope, this portion is the uterus. Now what are these here?”

“Female testicles!” Came a reply.

“Sinker, raise your hand! And no. Well, technically yes…I guess. But they’re called ovaries.”

The labeling went on with: endoskeleton for the vaginal wall, exoskeleton for the labia, and A-F spots.

“I told you endoskeleton was wrong.” Wolfe looked at Cody, who shrugged.

“I swear I’ve seen the word somewhere…” the Marshal Commander said defensively.

“Well it wasn’t in regards to the vaginal wall.” Fives replied, wiping off the labels.

He then drew a bump on the upper portion of the diagram. He then circled it a couple times.

“Alright men, this is the clitoris.” He announced.

“Find it!” He added fiercely.

“What if we can’t find it?” Came a voice from the back of the room.

“Then you-Anakin, what the kriff?! Get the hell out of here! I told you the class was full!” Fives said, throwing an extra grease pen at the Jedi. “But I don’t wanna wait!” The Force user whined.

“You aren’t even in your own seat! Bacara clearly doesn’t want to share with you.” Fives explained. Anakin looked over at the other Marshal Commander, who was distancing himself from the Jedi by sitting on the very edge of his crate. Defeated, Anakin trudged out, vowing to be the first one to sign up for the next class. Obiwan shook his head, he had been the one to take the last slot.

“I told him he needed to sign up quickly.” He said to Doom.

“Anyways, in answering Anakin’s rogue question: if you can’t find it, then ask. There’s no harm in that boys.” Fives assured his students.

“Also, when you do find it….don’t be like this.” Fives added. He pressed a button on a remote and a projector turned on. The machine was facing a screen on the wall, the video showing Anakin mashing down a button on a holo desk.

“You gently massage it, like a ripe berry. Unless she tells you otherwise. Your partner knows what she likes.” Fives explained.

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