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koiukiy-o · 2 months ago

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orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding. ─── 008. the email.

-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith? -> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader. -> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance. -> wc: 3.3k -> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.

-> a/n: yum. good night, see you next week <3 -> prev. || next. -> orphic; the masterlist.

On the board: a rough, sketched spiral that narrowed into itself. Then—without explanation—he stepped back and faced the room.

“The Julia Set,” he began, “is defined through recursive mapping of complex numbers. For each point, the function is applied repeatedly to determine whether the point stays bounded—or diverges to infinity.”

He turned, writing the equation with a slow, deliberate hand, the symbols clean and sharp. He underlined the c.

“This constant,” he said, tapping the chalk beneath it, “determines the entire topology of the set. Change the value—just slightly—and the behavior of every point shifts. Entire regions collapse. Others become beautifully intricate. Sensitive dependence. Chaotic boundaries.”

He stepped away from the board.

“Chaos isn’t disorder. It's order that resists prediction. Determinism disguised as unpredictability. And in this case—beauty emerging from divergence.”

Your pen slowed. You knew this was about math, about structure, but there was something in the way he said it—beauty emerging from divergence—that caught in your ribs like a hook. You glanced at the sketch again, now seeing not just spirals and equations, but thresholds. Points of no return.

He circled a section of the diagram. “Here, the boundary. A pixel’s fate determined not by distance, but by recurrence. If it loops back inward, it’s part of the set. If it escapes, even by a fraction, it’s not.”

He let the silence stretch.

“Think about what that implies. A system where proximity isn’t enough.”

A few students around you were taking notes rapidly now, perhaps chasing the metaphor, or maybe just keeping up. You, however, found yourself still. His words hung in the air—not heavy, but precise, like the line between boundedness and flight.

Stay bounded… or spiral away.

Your eyes lifted to the chalk, now smeared faintly beneath his hand.

Then—casually, as if announcing the time—he said, “The application deadline for the symposium has closed. Confirmation emails went out last night. If you don’t receive one by tonight, your submission was not accepted.”

It landed in your chest like dropped glass.

It’s already the end of the week?

You sat perfectly straight. Not a single muscle out of place. But you could feel your pulse kicking against your collarbone. A kind of dissonance buzzing at the edges of your spine. The type that doesn’t show on your face, but makes every sound feel like it’s coming through water.

“Any questions?” he asked.

The room was silent.

You waited until most of the students had filed out, notebooks stuffed away, conversations trailing toward the courtyard. Anaxagoras was still at the front, brushing residual chalk from his fingers and packing his notes into a thin leather folio. The faint light from the projector still hummed over the fractal diagram, now ghostlike against the faded screen.

You stepped down the lecture hall steps, steady despite the pressure building in your chest.

“Professor Anaxagoras,” you said evenly.

He glanced up. “Yes?”

“I sent you an email last night,” you said, stepping forward with a measured pace. “Regarding the papers you sent to me on Cerces’ studies on consciousness. I wanted to ask if you might have some time to discuss it.”

There was a brief pause—calculated, but not cold. His eyes flicked to his watch.

“I saw it,” he said finally. “Though I suspect the timing was… not ideal.”

You didn’t flinch. “No, it wasn’t,” you said truthfully. “I was… unexpectedly impressed, and wanted to follow up in person.”

You open your mouth to respond, but he speaks again—calm, almost offhanded.

“A more timely reply might have saved me the effort of finding a third paper.”

You swallow hard, the words catching before they form. “I didn’t have anything useful to say at the time,” you admit, keeping your voice neutral. “And figured it was better to wait to form coherent thoughts and opinions… rather than send something half-baked.”

He adjusts his cuff without looking at you. “A brief acknowledgment would have sufficed.”

You swallow hard, the words catching before they form. “Right,” you murmur, choosing not to rise to it.

Another beat. His expression was unreadable, though you thought you caught the flicker of something in his gaze.

He glanced at the clock mounted near the back of the hall. “It’s nearly midday. I was going to step out for lunch.”

You nodded, heart rising hopefully, though your face stayed calm. “Of course. If now isn’t convenient—”

He cut in. “Join me. We can speak then.”

You blinked.

“I assume you’re capable of walking and discussing simultaneously.” A faint, dry smile.

So it was the email. And your slow response.

“Yes, of course. I’ll get my things.”

You turned away, pacing steadily back up the steps of the hall toward your seat. Your bag was right where you left it, tucked neatly beneath the desk—still unzipped from the frenzy of earlier note-taking. You knelt to gather your things, pulling out your iPad and flipping open the annotated PDFs of Cerces’ consciousness studies. The margins were cluttered with highlights and your own nested comments, some so layered they formed little conceptual tangles—recursive critiques of recursive thought. You didn’t bother smoothing your expression. You were already focused again.

“Hey,” Kira greeted, nudging Ilias’s arm as you approached. They’d claimed the last two seats in the row behind yours, and were currently sharing a half-suppressed fit of laughter over something in his notebook. “So… what’s the diagnosis? Did fractals break your brain or was it just Anaxagoras’ voice again?”

You ignored that.

Ilias leaned forward, noticing your bag already packed. “Kira found a dumpling stall, we were thinking of-”

You were halfway through slipping your tablet into its case when you said, lightly, “I’m heading out. With Professor Anaxagoras.”

A pause.

“You’re—what?” Ilias straightened, eyebrows flying up. “Wait, wait. You’re going where with who?”

“We’re discussing Cerces’ papers,” you said briskly, adjusting the strap across your shoulder. “At lunch. I emailed him last night, remember?”

“Oh my god, this is about the symposium. Are you trying to—wait, does he know that’s what you’re doing? Is this your long game? I swear, if you’re using complex consciousness theory as a romantic smokescreen, I’m going to—”

“Ilias.” You cut him off with a look, then a subtle shake of your head. “It’s nothing. Just a conversation.”

He looked at you skeptically, but you’d already pulled up your annotated copy and were scrolling through notes with one hand as you stepped out of the row. “I’ll see you both later,” you added.

Kira gave you a little two-finger salute. “Report back.”

You didn't respond, already refocused.

At the front of the lecture hall, Anaxagoras was waiting near the side doors, coat over one arm. You fell into step beside him without pause, glancing at him just long enough to nod once.

He didn’t say anything right away, but you noticed the slight tilt of his head—acknowledging your presence.

You fell into step beside him, footsteps echoing softly down the marble corridor. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The quiet wasn’t awkward—it was anticipatory, like the silence before a difficult proof is solved.

“I assume you’ve read these papers more than once,” he said eventually, eyes ahead.

You nodded. “Twice this past week. Once again this morning. Her model’s elegant. But perhaps incorrect.”

That earned you a glance—quick, sharp, interested. “Incorrect how?”

“She defines the recursive threshold as a closed system. But if perception collapses a state, then recursion isn’t closed—it’s interrupted. Her architecture can’t accommodate observer-initiated transformation.”

“Hm,” Anaxagoras said, and the sound meant something closer to go on than I disagree.

“She builds her theory like it’s immune to contradiction,” you added. “But self-similarity under stress doesn’t hold. That makes her framework aesthetically brilliant, but structurally fragile.”

His mouth twitched, not quite into a smile. “She’d despise that sentence. And quote it in a rebuttal.”

You hesitated. “Have you two debated this before?”

“Formally? Twice. Informally?” A beat. “Often. Cerces doesn’t seek consensus. She seeks pressure.”

“She’s the most cited mind in the field,” you noted.

“And she deserves to be,” he said, simply. “That’s what makes her infuriating.”

The breeze shifted as you exited the hall and entered the sunlit walkway between buildings. You adjusted your bag, eyes still on the open document.

“I marked something in this section,” you said, tapping the screen. “Where she refers to consciousness having an echo of structure. I don’t think she’s wrong—but I think it’s incomplete.”

Anaxagoras raised a brow. “Incomplete how?”

“If consciousness is just an echo, it implies no agency. But what if recursion here is just… a footprint, and not the walker?”

Now he did smile—barely. “You sound like her, ten years ago.”

You blinked. “Really?”

“She used to flirt with metaphysics,” he said. “Before tenure, before the awards. She wrote a paper once proposing that recursive symmetry might be a byproduct of a soul-like property—a field outside time. She never published it.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “She said, and I quote, ‘Cowardice isn’t always irrational.’”

You let out a soft breath—part laugh, part disbelief.

“She sounds more like you than I thought.”

“Don’t insult either of us,” he murmured, dry.

You glanced over. “Do you think she was right? Back then?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Then: “I think she was closer to something true that neither of us were ready to prove.”

Anaxagoras led the way toward the far side of the cafeteria, bypassing open tables and settling near the windows. The view wasn’t much—just a patch of campus green dotted with a few students pretending it was warm enough to sit outside—but it was quiet.

You sat across from him, setting your tray down with a muted clink. He’d ordered black coffee and a slice of what looked like barely tolerable faculty lounge pie. You hadn’t really bothered—just tea and a half-hearted sandwich you were already ignoring.

The silence was polite, not awkward. Still, you didn’t want it to stretch too long.

“I’d like to pick her mind.”

He glanced up from stirring his coffee, slow and steady.

You nodded once. “Her work in subjective structure on pre-intentional cognition it overlaps more than I expected with what I’ve been sketching in my own models. And Entanglement—her take on intersubjective recursion as a non-local dynamic? That’s… not something I want to ignore.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he said.

“I don’t want to question her,” you said, adjusting the angle of your tablet. “Not yet. I want to understand what she thinks happens to subjectivity at the boundary of recursion, where perception becomes self-generative rather than purely receptive. And many other things, but—”

He watched you closely. Not skeptical—never that—but with the faint air of someone re-evaluating an equation that just gave a new result.

You tapped the edge of the screen. “There’s a gap here, just before she moves into her case study. She references intersubjective collapse, but doesn’t elaborate on the experiential artifacts. If she’s right, that space might not be emptiness—it might be a nested field. A kind of affective attractor.”

“Or an illusion of one,” he offered.

“Even so,” you said, “I want to know where she stands. Not just in print. In dialogue. I want to observe her.”

There was a beat.

Then, quietly, Anaxagoras said, “She’s never been fond of students trying to shortcut their way into her circles.”

“I’m not trying to–.” You met his gaze, unflinching. “I just want to be in the room.”

There was a pause—measured, as always—but he understood your request.

Then, Anaxagoras let out a quiet breath. The edge of his mouth curved, just slightly—not the smirk he wore in lectures, or the fleeting amusement he reserved for Ilias’ more absurd interjections. A�� strange acknowledgment made just for you.

“I suspected you’d want to attend eventually… even if you didn’t think so at the time.” He said, voice low.

He stirred his coffee once more, slow and precise, before continuing.

“I submitted an application on your behalf.” His eyes flicked up, sharp and clear. “The results were set to be mailed to me—” After a brief pause, he says, “I thought it would be better to have the door cracked open than bolted shut.”

Your breath caught, but you didn’t speak yet. You stared at him, something between disbelief and stunned silence starting to rise.

“… And?”

He held your gaze. “They approved it.” He said it matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t a gesture of profound academic trust. “Your mind is of the kind that Cerces doesn’t see in students. Not even doctoral candidates. If you ever wanted to ask them aloud, you’d need space to make that decision without pressure.”

Your heart skipped a beat, the rush of warmth flooding your chest before you could even fully process it. It wasn’t just the opportunity, not just the weight of the academic favor he’d extended—it was the fact that he had done this for you.

You looked down at your tablet for a beat, then back up. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t sure it would matter to you yet.” His tone was even, but not distant.

Your chest tightened, heart hammering in your ribcage as a strange weight settled over you.

You leaned back slightly, absorbing it—not the opportunity, but the implication that he had practically read your mind.

You swallowed hard, fighting the surge of something fragile, something that wanted to burst out but couldn’t quite take form.

“And if I’d never brought it up?” you asked.

“I would have let the approval lapse.” He took a sip of coffee, still watching you. “The choice would have always been yours.”

Something in your chest pulled taut, then loosened.

“Thank you,” you said—quiet, sincere.

He dipped his head slightly, as if to say: of course.

Outside, through the high cafeteria windows, the light shifted—warmer now, slanting gold against the tiles. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward.

You’re halfway back to your dorm when you see them.

The bench is impossible to miss—leaning like it’s given up on its academic potential and fully embraced retirement. Dog is curled beneath it, mangy but somehow dignified, and Mydei’s crouched beside him, offering the crust from a purloined sandwich while Phainon gently brushes leaves out of its fur.

They clock you immediately.

“Look who’s survived their tryst with the divine,” Mydei calls out, peeling a bit of bread crust off for the dog, who blinks at you like it also knows too much.

“Ah,” he calls, sitting up. “And lo, they return from their sacred rites.”

You squint. “What?”

“I mean, I personally assumed you left to get laid,” Ilias says breezily, tossing a leaf in your direction. “Academic, spiritual, physical—whatever form it took, I’m not here to judge.”

“Lunch,” you deadpan. “It was lunch.”

“Sure,” he says. “That’s what I’d call him too.”

You stop beside them, arms loosely crossed. “You’re disgusting.”

Mydei finally glances up, smirking faintly. “We were betting how long it’d take you to return. Phainon said 45 minutes. I gave you an hour.”

“And I said that you might not come back at all,” Ilias corrects proudly. “Because if someone offered me a quiet corner and a waist as sntached as his, I’d disappear too.”

You roll your eyes so hard it almost hurts. “You’re projecting.”

“I’m romanticizing,” he counters. “It’s a coping mechanism.”

“So,” you ask, settling onto the bench, “Mydei, did you get accepted?”

Mydei doesn’t look up. “I did.”

Phainon sighs and leans back on his elbows. “I didn’t. Apparently my application lacks ‘structural focus’ and ‘foundational viability.’” He makes air quotes with a dramatic flourish, voice flat with mockery. “But the margins were immaculate.”

Ilias scoffs immediately, latching onto the escape hatch. “See? That’s why I didn’t apply.”

“You didn’t apply,” you repeat slowly, side-eyeing him.

“I was protecting myself emotionally,” he says, raising a finger.

“Even after Kira asked you to?” you remind him.

“I cherish her emotional intelligence deeply, but I also have a very specific allergy to what sounds like academic jargon and judgment,” he replies, hand to chest like he’s delivering tragic poetry.

You snort. “So you panicked and missed the deadline?”

“Semantics.”

The dog lets out a sleepy huff. Mydei strokes behind its ear and finally glances up at you. “I still can’t believe you didn’t apply. The panel was impressive.”

You hesitate, staring down at the scuffed corner of your boot, when your phone dings.

One new message:

From: Anaxagoras Subject: Addendum Dear Student, I thought this might be of interest as well. – A.

There’s one attachment.

Cerces_MnemosyneFramework.pdf

You click immediately.

Just to see.

The abstract alone hooks you. It’s Cerces again—only this time, she’s writing about memory structures through a mythopoetic lens, threading the Mnemosyne archetype through subjective models of cognition and reality alignment.

She argues that memory isn’t just retentive—it’s generative. That remembrance isn’t about the past, but about creating continuity. That when you recall something, you’re actively constructing it anew.

It’s dense. Braided with references. Challenging.

You hear Ilias say your name like he’s winding up to go off into another overdramatic monologue, but your focus is elsewhere.

Because it’s still there—his voice from earlier, lodged somewhere between your ribs.

"A brief acknowledgement would have sufficed."

You’d let it pass. Swallowed the dry implication of it. But it’s been sitting with you ever since— he hadn’t needed to say more for you to hear what he meant.

You didn’t know what to say. Maybe you still don’t.

But you open a reply window. anyway.

Your thumb hovers for a beat.

Re: Still interested Nice paper, Prof. Warm regards, Y/N.

The moment it sends, you want to eat your keyboard.

He replies seconds later.

Re: – “Warm” seems generous. Ice cold regards, – A.

The moment it sends, you want to eat your keyboard.

It’s a small, almost imperceptible warmth spreading across your chest, but you force it back down, not wanting to make too much of it.

Then you laugh. Not loud, but the sort of surprised, almost nervous laugh that catches in your chest, because somehow, you hadn’t anticipated this. You thought he’d be... formal. Distant. You didn’t expect a bit of humor—or was it sarcasm?

Your fingers hover over your phone again. Should you reply? What do you even say to that? You glance up, and that’s when you see it—Ilias’ eyes wide, his face scrunched in disbelief, like he’s trying to piece together the pieces of a puzzle.”

He points at you like he’s discovered some deep, dark secret. “You’re laughing?”

You groan, dragging a hand over your face, trying to will the heat out of your cheeks.

He doesn’t even try to hold back the mock horror in his voice after peeping into your phone. “Anaxagoras is the one that;s got you in a fit of giggles?”

Ilias gasps theatrically, pressing a hand to his chest. “Wait. Wait wait wait. Is he funny now? What, did he send you a meme? ‘Here’s a diagram of metaphysical collapse. Haha.’” He deepens his voice into something pompous and dry: “Student, please find attached a comedic rendering of epistemological decay.”

You’re already shaking your head. “He didn’t even say hello.”

“Even better,” Ilias says, dramatically scandalized. “Imagine being so academically repressed you forget how greetings work.”

He pauses, then squints at you suspiciously.

“You know what?” he says, snapping his fingers. “You two are made for each other.”

Your head whips toward him.

He shrugs, all smug innocence. “No, no, I mean it. The dry wit. The existential despair. The zero social cues. It’s beautiful, really. You communicate exclusively through thesis statements and mutual avoidance. A match made in the archives.”

“I’m just saying,” he sing-songs, “when you two end up publishing joint papers and exchanging footnotes at midnight, don’t forget about us little people.”

You give him a flat look. “We won’t need footnotes.”

“Oh no,” Ilias says, pretending to be shocked. “It’s that serious already?”

You stomp on his foot.

-> next.

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thydungeongal · 3 months ago

Note

dnd players looking into other games often seem to ask for the least maths and the most improv, what if im someone who wants to look into more rpgs but wants the opposite

what are some games, or some genres of game to look up, with the most maths and the least improv even in talking to people? Like ik its a newbie question (and ig this might be a case where you say ive been misled by the dnd culture etc lol) but whats the right design terminology to use for a game with very concrete rules and outcomes for all the "verbs" a player can interact with it through

Nah this is pretty clear, while D&D already is quite crunchy it's not the crunchiest game out there.

If you basically want the same exact genre as D&D but even more mechanical structure, Pathfinder 2e is worth a look. A lot of it should be familiar owing to the fact that Pathfinder is literally based on an older version of D&D and has simply just gone to do its own thing. Whereas 5e went for a looser structure, Pathfinder chose to codify more and more things. Its rules are also available for entirely free online.

My favorite game, Rolemaster, isn't quite as strict;it doesn't have specific rules for codifying everything, but very similarly to 5e, it provides the GM with broadly applicable methods for resolving tasks, and while some tasks get extremely detailed writeups most tasks are handled via a simple table. That table looks like this by the way:

Anyway so the point being that while it doesn't have specific spelled out rules for everything, what it does handle it does with mathematical rigor. However, the edition of Rolemaster known as Rolemaster Standard System did very much try to provide extremely detailed procedures, down to how each individual skill worked. It's also very much in the same broad genre of action fantasy as D&D and Pathfinder.

Someone has been slowly uploading all of Rolemaster Standard System on GitHub.

There's also HERO System which again doesn't have exacting procedures for everything, but what it does handle it does with a lot of granularity. But I think Pathfinder 2e might already do the trick, and Rolemaster is also a good option.

#thydungeongal answers #rolemaster

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talenlee · 2 months ago

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The Whole Sort of General Mish Mosh of AI

I’m not typing this.

January this year, I injured myself on a bike and it infringed on a couple of things I needed to do in particular working on my PhD. Because I had effectively one hand, I was temporarily disabled and it finally put it in my head to consider examining accessibility tools.

One of the accessibility tools I started using was Microsoft’s own text to speech that’s built into the operating system I used, which is Windows Not-The-Current-One-That-Everyone-Complains-About. I’m not actually sure which version I have. It wasn’t good but it was usable, and being usable meant spending a week or so thinking out what I was going to write a phrase at a time and then specifying my punctuation marks period.

I’m making this article — or the draft of it to be wholly honest — without touching my computer at all.

What I am doing right now is playing my voice into Audacity. Then I’m going to use Audacity to export what I say as an MP3, which I will then take to any one of a few dozen sites that offer free transcription of voice to text conversion. After that, I take the text output, check it for mistakes, fill in sentences I missed when coming off the top of my head, like this one, and then put it into WordPress.

A number of these sites are old enough that they can boast that they’ve been doing this for 10 years, 15 years, or served millions of customers. The one that transcribed this audio claims to have been founded in 2006, which suggests the technology in question is at least, you know, five. Seems odd then that the site claims its transcription is ‘powered by AI,’ because it certainly wasn’t back then, right? It’s not just the statements on the page, either, there’s a very deliberate aesthetic presentation that wants to look like the slickly boxless ‘website as application’ design many sites for the so-called AI folk favour.

This is one of those things that comes up whenever I want to talk about generative media and generative tools. Because a lot of stuff is right now being lumped together in a Whole Sort of General Mish Mosh of AI (WSOGMMOA). This lump, the WSOGMMOA, means that talking about any of it is used as if it’s talking about all of it in the way that the current speaker wants to be talked about even within a confrontational conversation from two different people.

For people who are advocates of AI, they will talk about how ChatGPT is an everythingamajig. It will summarize your emails and help you write your essays and it will generate you artwork that you want and it will give you the rules for games you can play and it will help you come up with strategies for succeeding at the games you’ve already got all while it generates code for you and diagnoses your medical needs and summarises images and turns photos of pages into transcriptions it will then read aloud to you, and all you have to focus on is having the best ideas. The notion is that all of these things, all of these services, are WSOGMMOA, and therefore, the same thing, and since any of that sounds good, the whole thing has to be good. It’s a conspiracy theory approach, sometimes referred to as the ‘stack of shit’ approach – you can pile up a lot of garbage very high and it can look impressive. Doesn’t stop it being garbage. But mixed in with the garbage, you have things that are useful to people who aren’t just professionally on twitter, and these services are not all the same thing.

They have some common threads amongst them. Many of them are functionally looking at math the same way. Many or even most of them are claiming to use LLMs, or large language models and I couldn’t explain the specifics of what that means, nor should you trust an explainer from me about them. This is the other end of the WSOGMMOA, where people will talk about things like image generation on midjourney and deepseek (pieces of software you can run on your computer) consumes the same power as the people building OpenAI’s data research centres (which is terrible and being done in terrible ways). This lumping can make the complaints about these tools seem unserious to people with more information and even frivolous to people with less.

Back to the transcription services though. Transcription services are an example of a thing that I think represents a good application of this math, the underlying software that these things are all relying on. For a start, transcription software doesn’t have a lot of use cases outside of exactly this kind of experience. Someone who chooses or cannot use a keyboard to write with who wants to use an alternate means, converting speech into written text, which can be for access or archival purposes. You aren’t going to be doing much with that that isn’t exactly just that and we do want this software. We want transcriptions to be really good. We want people who can’t easily write to be able to archive their thoughts as text to play with them. Text is really efficient, and being able to write without your hands makes writing more available to more people. Similarly, there are people who can’t understand spoken speech – for a host of reasons! – and making spoken media more available is also good!

You might want to complain at this point that these services are doing a bad job or aren’t as good as human transcription and that’s probably true, but would you rather decent subtitles that work in most cases vs only the people who can pay transcription a living wage having subtitles? Similarly, these things in a lot of places refuse to use no-no words or transcribe ‘bad’ things like pornography and crimes or maybe even swears, and that’s a sign that the tool is being used badly and disrespects the author, and it’s usually because the people deploying the tool don’t care about the use case, they care about being seen deploying the tool.

This is the salami slicer through which bits of the WSOGMMOA is trying to wiggle. Tools whose application represent things that we want, for good reasons, that were being worked on independently of the WSOGMMOA, and now that the WSOGMMOA is here, being lampreyed onto in the name of pulling in a vast bubble of hypothetical investment money in a desperate time of tech industry centralisation.

As an example, phones have long since been using technology to isolate faces. That technology was used for a while to force the focus on a face. Privacy became more of a concern, then many phones were being made with software that could preemptively blur the faces of non-focal humans in a shot. This has since, with generative media, stepped up a next level, where you now have tools that can remove people from the background of photographs so that you can distribute photographs of things you saw or things you did without necessarily sharing the photos of people who didn’t consent to having their photo taken. That is a really interesting tool!

Ideologically, I’m really in favor of the idea that you should be able to opt out of being included on the internet. It’s illegal in France, for example, to take a photo of someone without their permission, which means any group shot of a crowd, hypothetically, someone in that crowd who was not asked for permission, can approach the photographer and demand recompense. I don’t know how well that works, but it shows up in journalism courses at this point.

That’s probably why that software got made – regulations in governments led to the development of the tool and then it got refined to make it appealing to a consumer at the end point so it could be used as as a selling point. It wouldn’t surprise me if right now, under the hood, the tech works in some similar way to MidJourney or Dall-E or whatever, but it’s not a solution searching for a problem. I find that really interesting. Is this feature that, again, is running on your phone locally, still part of the concerns of the WSOGMMOA? What about the software being used to detect cancer in patients based on sophisticated scans I couldn’t explain and you wouldn’t understand? How about when a glamour model feeds her own images into the corpus of a Midjourney machine to create more pictures of herself to sell?

Because admit it, you kinda know the big reason as a person who dislikes ‘AI’ stuff that you want to oppose WSOGMMOA. It’s because the heart of it, the big loud centerpiece of it, is the worst people in the goddamn world, and they want to use these good uses of this whole landscape of technology as a figleaf to justify why they should be using ChatGPT to read their emails for them when that’s 80% of their job. It’s because it’s the worst people in the world’s whole personality these past two years, when it was NFTs before that, and it’s a term they can apply to everything to get investors to pay for it. Which is a problem because if you cede to the WSOGMMOA model, there are useful things with meaningful value that that guy gets to claim is the same as his desire to raise another couple of billions of dollars so he can promise you that he will make a god in a box that he definitely, definitely cannot fucking do while presenting himself as the hero opposing Harry Potter and the Protocols of Rationality.

The conversation gets flattened around the basically two poles:

All of these tools, everything that labels itself as AI is fundamentally an evil burning polar bears, and

Actually everyone who doesn’t like AI is a butt hurt loser who didn’t invest earlier and buy the dip because, again, these people were NFT dorks only a few years ago.

For all that I like using some of these tools, tools that have helped my students with disability and language barriers, the fact remains that talking about them and advocating for them usefully in public involves being seen as associating with the group of some of the worst fucking dickheads around. The tools drag along with them like a gooey wake bad actors with bad behaviours. Artists don’t want to see their work associated with generative images, and these people gloat about doing it while the artist tells them not to. An artist dies and out of ‘respect’ for the dead they feed his art into a machine to pump out glurgey thoughtless ‘tributes’ out of booru tags meant for collecting porn. Even me, I write nuanced articles about how these tools have some applications and we shouldn’t throw all the bathwater out with the babies, and then I post it on my blog that’s down because some total shitweasel is running a scraper bot that ignores the blog settings telling them to go fucking pound sand.

I should end here, after all, the transcription limit is about eight minutes.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Making

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commodorez · 1 year ago

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What kind of work can be done on a commodore 64 or those other old computers? The tech back then was extremely limited but I keep seeing portable IBMs and such for office guys.

I asked a handful of friends for good examples, and while this isn't an exhaustive list, it should give you a taste.

I'll lean into the Commodore 64 as a baseline for what era to hone in one, let's take a look at 1982 +/-5 years.

A C64 can do home finances, spreadsheets, word processing, some math programming, and all sorts of other other basic productivity work. Games were the big thing you bought a C64 for, but we're not talking about games here -- we're talking about work. I bought one that someone used to write and maintain a local user group newsletter on both a C64C and C128D for years, printing labels and letters with their own home equipment, mailing floppies full of software around, that sorta thing.

IBM PCs eventually became capable of handling computer aided design (CAD) work, along with a bunch of other standard productivity software. The famous AutoCAD was mostly used on this platform, but it began life on S-100 based systems from the 1970s.

Spreadsheets were a really big deal for some platforms. Visicalc was the killer app that the Apple II can credit its initial success with. Many other platforms had clones of Visicalc (and eventually ports) because it was groundbreaking to do that sort of list-based mathematical work so quickly, and so error-free. I can't forget to mention Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC compatibles, a staple of offices for a long time before Microsoft Office dominance.

CP/M machines like Kaypro luggables were an inexpensive way of making a "portable" productivity box, handling some of the lighter tasks mentioned above (as they had no graphics functionality).

The TRS-80 Model 100 was able to do alot of computing (mostly word processing) on nothing but a few AA batteries. They were a staple of field correspondence for newspaper journalists because they had an integrated modem. They're little slabs of computer, but they're awesomely portable, and great for writing on the go. Everyone you hear going nuts over cyberdecks gets that because of the Model 100.

Centurion minicomputers were mostly doing finances and general ledger work for oil companies out of Texas, but were used for all sorts of other comparable work. They were multi-user systems, running several terminals and atleast one printer on one central database. These were not high-performance machines, but entire offices were built around them.

Tandy, Panasonic, Sharp, and other brands of pocket computers were used for things like portable math, credit, loan, etc. calculation for car dealerships. Aircraft calculations, replacing slide rules were one other application available on cassette. These went beyond what a standard pocket calculator could do without a whole lot of extra work.

Even something like the IBM 5340 with an incredibly limited amount of RAM but it could handle tracking a general ledger, accounts receivable, inventory management, storing service orders for your company. Small bank branches uses them because they had peripherals that could handle automatic reading of the magnetic ink used on checks. Boring stuff, but important stuff.

I haven't even mentioned Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General, or a dozen other manufacturers.

I'm curious which portable IBM you were referring to initially.

All of these examples are limited by today's standards, but these were considered standard or even top of the line machines at the time. If you write software to take advantage of the hardware you have, however limited, you can do a surprising amount of work on a computer of that era.

#computer history

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headmate-ideas · 1 month ago

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(we r intersex and 18+ bodily) intergender non-binary shy, sensitive headmate pack 2 help with substance dependence ?? objectum, palette, and all the extended details would help !! ��🏒💾🦾🎨 🌐🥊🧬🌃 🖌️ 💿

[Brought to you by: Mods Venn and Chem!]

🩻 HEADMATE TEMPLATE 🏒

✦ Name(s): Dee, Art, Cy ✦ Pronouns: any pronouns, likes the following neos: vae/vaer/vaers/vaerself, ix/ixs/ixself, e/em/eir/eirs/emself, x/xs/xself ✦ Species: human ✦ Age: five years older than body ✦ Role(s): addiction holder, addiction manager, forportian, charge, artist, interest holder, symptom holder (optional) ✦ Symptoms experienced: infodumping (optional) ✦ Labels: intergender, pxngender, duaric, gay ✦ Xenos: music, the internet, shadows ✦ Likes: sports, science, art ✦ Dislikes: having to be quiet ✦ Music taste: indie rock, classic rock, math rock ✦ Aesthetic(s): techcore, medicalcore, sci fi aesthetic ✦ Objectum attraction(s): technology, music, jewelry ✦ Kins: x-ray machines, cyborgs, opossums ✦ Color palette: silver, black, pale blue, muted dark blue ✦ Emoji proxy: 🩻🏒

✦ Details:

Dee is a geneticist who holds interests concerning both science and sports. X also holds the system's addictions but is better at managing them than other headmates may be. Ix is logical and practical, and ix tends to be rather organized. They also like wearing silver jewelry.

✦ Role performance:

While Dee is subject to the system's addictions, e is better at managing their use, practicing harm reduction, and setting and following rules about substances. E also fronts when the system are especially high to make sure no harm befalls them. They are very aware of their feelings, and while they are bad at reaching out to large groups of people, they are good at asking for help from people within their system or that the system trusts.

✦ Personality:

Dee is shy and sensitive, and while she isn't very good at making friends, she is good at asking for help from people she trusts (namely within his own system). Ix is very passionate about ixs interests (namely science and sports) and likes sharing about them at any opportunity, infodumping if applicable. X is also very logical and rational, and x can help the system determine what is realistic to expect and defuse cognitive distortions.

✦ Identity:

Dee is intergender, as the body is intersex, and this influences vaer sense of identity. In particular, being intersex gives them a paradoxical disconnect and strong connection to the concept of binary gender, so they identify as all and no genders at once. They use all pronouns but enjoy neopronouns the most. Given that vae identifies as all genders and no genders at once, vae considers all their attraction both gay and straight.

✦ Interests and hobbies:

Dee has a mix of "nerd" and "jock" hobbies. For example, vae is fascinated by science, especially genetics and anatomy, and e likes reading books and watching documentaries about such topics. However, e also enjoys sports a lot, including boxing and hockey, and enjoys watching and/or playing these sports. X also likes art and drawing.

[These can be edited and changed as needed, and headmates will almost definitely not turn out EXACTLY as described.]

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sarkariresultdude · 8 days ago

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Combined Graduate Level Exam: Eligibility Rules You Must Know

The Combined Graduate Level (CGL) Examination, carried out by way of the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), is one of the maximum prestigious and sought-after government recruitment checks in India. It opens the doorways to a wide range of Group B and Group C posts in various ministries, departments, and subordinate offices below the Government of India. Each 12 months, lakhs of aspirants from across the u . S . A . Compete for a limited number of vacancies, making it one of the most competitive tests inside the nation.

Combined graduate level examination eligibility

1. Objective of the SSC CGL Exam

The examination guarantees a transparent and benefit-based totally selection procedure for jobs that provide stability, security, and the status of operating for the government.

The posts consist of roles like:

Assistant Section Officer (ASO)

Inspector of Income Tax

Assistant Audit Officer

Central Excise Inspector

Statistical Investigator

Auditor

Junior Accountant

Divisional Accountant, and plenty of more.

2. Eligibility Criteria

To apply for SSC CGL, applicants have to fulfill the subsequent primary eligibility criteria:

a) Educational Qualification

A bachelor’s diploma in any area from a diagnosed university is the minimal requirement.

For positive posts, unique qualifications can be wanted (e.G., Statistics degree for Statistical Investigator).

B) Age Limit

Age varies depending at the publish, generally between 18 to 32 years.

Age rest is provided to candidates belonging to reserved classes (SC/ST/OBC/PwD).

C) Nationality

Candidates need to be Indian residents or belong to other eligible categories as described by way of the SSC.

Three. Structure of the Exam

The SSC CGL exam is conducted in four tiers:

Tier-I: Preliminary Examination

Objective kind, online

Total Marks: 200

Time: 60 mins

Tier-II: Main Examination

Objective type, on-line

Papers encompass:

Paper I: Quantitative Abilities

Paper II: English Language and Comprehension

Paper III: Statistics (for relevant posts)

Paper IV: General Studies (Finance & Economics, for AAO put up)

Negative marking applies

Tier-III: Descriptive Paper

Pen and paper-based

Essay/Letter/Precis writing

Marks: a hundred

Language: English or Hindi

Duration: 60 mins

Conducted for unique posts

4. Syllabus Overview

a) General Intelligence & Reasoning

Analogies, type, coding-deciphering, puzzle solving, syllogisms, and sample reputation

b) Quantitative Aptitude

Number gadget, percentage, mensuration, earnings & loss, ratio and percentage, time & paintings, algebra, geometry, trigonometry

c) English Comprehension

Grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, sentence correction, cloze assessments

d) General Awareness

Current affairs, history, geography, polity, economics, standard technological know-how

five. Preparation Strategy

Preparing for the SSC CGL exam requires consistent effort, a strategic take a look at plan, and smart time management.

A) Understand the Exam Pattern

Know the weightage of every section

Practice through previous year query papers

b) Focus on Basics

Strengthen your fundamentals in math and English

Make short notes for revision of GK and modern affairs

c) Regular Practice

Attempt day by day mock exams

Improve pace and accuracy

d) Stay Updated

Read newspapers, observe monthly contemporary affairs magazines

Use apps and on-line systems for daily quizzes

6. Job Roles and Perks

SSC CGL-decided on candidates get located in prestigious positions with the Government of India. Some of the blessings consist of:

Attractive Salary Packages: Ranging from Rs. 35,000 to Rs. 70,000 depending on the submit and place.

Job Security and Pension: Government jobs offer unrivaled task safety and post-retirement advantages.

Growth Opportunities: Regular promotions and opportunities to take departmental checks.

7. Challenges Faced via Aspirants

Despite the appeal of the CGL examination, aspirants face several demanding situations:

High Competition: With over 20 lakh applicants annually, opposition is fierce.

Changing Exam Patterns: The SSC on occasion modifies patterns and syllabus, requiring adaptability.

Limited Seats: With just a few thousand vacancies, handiest the maximum organized applicants prevail.

Preparation Time: It requires long-time period steady guidance, often for over a 12 months.

Eight. Recent Changes and Reforms

The SSC has been working to make the CGL examination extra obvious and efficient:

Online Application and Computer-Based Tests: To reduce mistakes and accelerate processing.

Normalization of Scores: Ensures fairness throughout extraordinary shifts.

Single Year Calendar: SSC now releases an annual calendar for all assessments, allowing better planning.

9. Role of Coaching and Self-Study

Many aspirants be part of training institutes to prepare for the CGL exam, especially for help in math and reasoning. However, with the rise of virtual learning platforms, self-study with online resources, YouTube tutorials, and ridicule test collection has come to be a popular and effective technique for many.

#regular college students #correspondence college students #Combined graduate level examination eligibility

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isfjmel-phleg · 2 months ago

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Random OC facts: Rietta [Revised and updated]

This is a combination of two earlier lists, with the addition of some new facts!

Can speak three languages and do elaborate math problems in her head.

Nevertheless, is not at her best in the role of student and most of her governesses and tutors have lost patience with her inability to focus and stick to tedious tasks.

Talkative, outgoing, and loves people but has been brought up in isolation her whole life and fills that void by talking to just about anyone/thing, including but not limited to: insects, graves of people she doesn’t know, strangers from the other side of the blackberry bushes, and no one at all.

Dreams of experiencing these new-fangled motorcars and taking voyages. Get her on a train, though, and she is a Nervous Wreck.

Can and will “adopt” people within moments of acquaintance.

Decent pianist (a required accomplishment for a girl of her class) with a secret preference for rag. Would rather listen to music than play it, though.

Due to absorbing every travel book she can for the vicarious experience, has minute knowledge of the geography of her world and keeps a large map on her bedroom wall with pins in it for all the places she’s visited. There’s currently only one pin.

Incredibly stressed, mostly about her mother, but is either in denial about it or so used to it that she can’t recognize it as stress.

The most responsible, conscientious, worried person to ever be reckless, impulsive, and light-hearted.

An awesome big sister. Has no siblings.

Has none of Delclis’s scientific background in botany but still possesses a good practical knowledge of plants from her gardens at home. Ask her to show you the Knot Garden and the Not Garden sometime if you’re in the neighborhood.

Plays tennis against a wall and has come to view this opponent as her nemesis.

Prone to inconvenient spontaneous nosebleeds due to particularly delicate nasal blood vessels.

Keen bicyclist who’s tough enough to manage it in her ankle-length skirt and corset.

Never play charades against her. You haven’t a chance.

Does not like blackberries and would likely be diagnosed with an allergy to them if she lived in our world.

Avid studier of newspapers and amasser of clippings from them. Does she understand much of the news? Is there any system to what she saves? Nope, but she’s not going to let a thing like that stop her.

Has been trying to pinpoint a suitable husband since approximately age ten, to the point of writing application letters to other monarchs presenting herself as a worthy candidate for their sons’ hand in marriage. It’s not that she’s boy-crazy or wants a wedding for its own sake. A marriage would be both a shrewd political move and her ticket out of isolation.

A fan of Amarantha’s father’s mystery stories and has written him eleven (11) fan-letters under various pseudonyms. Has never received a reply.

Has been given pocket money only once in her entire life and spent the entire thing on lemon drops. No regrets.

Curious about the Otionovian side of her heritage but is hindered by her mother’s being forbidden to discuss her homeland with her more than necessary. They are not allowed to speak the language together, and Rietta accidentally created scandal once by ordering a formal dress inspired by traditional Otionovian design.

On her father’s and brother’s birthdays, goes with her mother to the royal crypt to pray at their graves. Although she and her mother always go there together, they visit separately too. Rietta prefers to chat to her brother about life in general and play card games “with” her father.

Has never had a coronation despite technically ruling for the last thirteen years or so, since Faysmondian monarchs cannot be coronated until they come of age. There was an instatement ceremony to mark her ascension instead, famous for a photograph taken of her as a three-year-old spontaneously hugging her Prime Minister’s leg.

Surrounded by all male cousins–her father’s sister’s twins, two years her senior; and the sons of her two great uncles, one year older and three years younger. All of them are healthy, well-liked, and full-blooded Faysmondians (…not exactly true, but as far as the public is concerned).

Visited a hospital on her ninth birthday and impulsively decided to give her unusually grand new doll to one of the little girl patients who had admired it. Everyone was very proud of her for her generosity, and she didn’t regret doing a good deed, but a significant part of her wanted more than anything to take that doll back. She is rather ashamed of this.

Is technically supposed to have a governess but is perpetually “between” them because her mother and the head of her regency council can never agree on a suitable one. She has no objection to this arrangement, since it gives her more freedom.

One of her more exciting days was a state visit from her uncle Minin and aunt Ilaris, King and Queen of Otionovia. The visit was highly controversial, and the monarchs had to meet on an island off the coast of Faysmond. She had never met anyone from her mother’s side of the family and eagerly of the family and eagerly entertained these relatives, whom she was disappointed to find she didn’t much care for.

Still fondly remembers the Christmas that she was allowed to go to the ice rink in the capital city (Dorin), which was infinitely superior to the pond she skates on at home every winter.

Is encouraged by the head of her regency council to spend an afternoon at least every month in the company of her three great-aunts (one of whom is her godmother). The intention is for her to absorb more of traditional Faysmondian thinking, but these visits usually end in her getting into heated arguments after her aunts have said or insinuated something rude about her mother.

Very fond of animals but not allowed to have her own pet since they’re too expensive. Instead, persistently tries to befriend Piebald, the castle cat, who quite frankly hates her.

Her choice to pose as the "Sleeping Maiden" at the time that Rachel meets her wasn't a random choice--it's her favorite fairy tale. She has always related to the protagonist, who is spirited, determined, creative, but trapped and isolated by forces beyond her control and manages to find and bond with someone whom she guides toward getting her out.

Has shown an interest in experimenting with cooking or baking but is forbidden to on the grounds that her chaotic attempts would be more than the household food budget could handle.

Has an excellent memory for names and has memorized all the families of the court/the nobility, as well as most of her extended family on both sides. She could tell you exactly how she's related to most of the royal families on the Continent.

Her favorite photograph that she has ever taken is a candid shot of her mother smiling broadly. Rietta caught her off-guard and snapped the picture before the joy could vanish.

Reminds her mother strongly of both of her late brothers, and that scares Tietra a little.

#The Blackberry Bushes #The Blackberry Bushes OC facts #Rietta Valencourt

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catsushinyakajima · 3 months ago

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i see math major 👀 i have to take brief calculus in the fall after not taking a single math class in 5 years… any tips to not overwhelm myself??

hi! okay sorry for the late response, I was gearing up to respond throughout the week and drafting good advice. disclaimer: I wrote A LOT. I promise it's not very scary and if it feels overwhelming, please digest it in bits. I just yap a lot and I wanted to cover all my bases.

Five years is a long time without math and enough time to forget lots of things! It's good that you're getting a good head start so there's no need for you to worry.

I'd start by practicing basic algebra: systems of equations, algebraic expressions (solving for x and stuff), linear/quadratic/exponential equations, etc. I will say, even if you once knew how to do this and used to be very good at it, there is a chance that you forgot a lot and lost your touch. Do not be deterred by that. It is OKAY. I've taken many levels of calculus, didn't take any math for a year, and then completely forgot how to factor an equation. It just happens- math is something you have to work your way back into by making a habit of it.

Then you should review trigonometry, more advanced algebra topics, etc: this is algebra II/pre-calculus. In my opinion, it's just a more extended version of basic algebra. You can review matrices too (part of alg II), but it's not very relevant to calculus unless you're taking differential equations (calc 4). But definitely, DEFINITELY, review trigonometry (sin/cos/tan, triangles, rules for their equations, the UNIT CIRCLE).

I'd say that's a good summary of things to catch up on. Once again, it is okay if you mess up some ridiculously "easy" review problems. It's seriously so, so normal, and it doesn't mean that you're set back too far or have an arduous journey ahead of you. The more you get used to doing math, the more you'll get better at it!

Here's a quick overview of topics taught in calculus I: limits, derivatives, applications of derivatives, integrals, applications of integrals.

If you have time, you could totally look into the topics that'll be taught during your semester too. You're already getting a head start by looking into reviewing things, but this would push you even forward.

Here are links to some free resources for you to use for ANY topic you choose to review (you might know some of them):

Khan Academy: has lots of videos and tutorials. Breaks topics down really well. Has review problems with answers and breakdowns of solutions. The review problems are generally basic compared to in-class test questions, but it's good for building a foundation

Organic Chemistry Tutor: This guy is the goat. His youtube videos are really thorough and he's good at explaining things and he'll walk you through different problems.

symbolab: this is an online calculator that can solve lots of different types of equations, including calculus equations! You can input the most tough, weirdest looking equations with ten variables, and as long a it's solvable it'll give you an answer

desmos: online graphing calculator! It's amazing for visualizing equations and functions.

If you have access to whatever textbook your teacher might use in the fall too, that's also great! Also, feel free to reach out to ME for any math help. I am the biggest math nerd ever so I would probably get excited to help you AHAH. I've done one of my mutuals physics homework before so I promise you wouldn't be overstepping if you asked me for anything else. Good luck on your studies!

#math #asterikamaymath #guys i love math #my friend told me i should add klance to the tags #thats evil tho I wont do that ik yal mfs dont wanna see math on your fyp #one of my fav asks honestly ahhhhhh #lowkey im cooked for my own math midterms though AHAH

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kimplosion · 3 months ago

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Day 70

Instead of a drawing today, I'm gonna go over the fairly simple RPG system I made out of the bones of other systems! I call it...

Boss Rush!

BASICS The intention for this system is to be able to quickly make a character, get into a fight with a big bad enemy, and do cool things at them until they're dead. To that end, there's very little combat math (unless you count "which number is bigger?"). Disclaimer: I largely improvised this system precisely one time 3 months ago, and I didn't really write down the rules, so it's bound to be a mess. But it's a fun mess!

THE GOLDEN RULE Many of these systems will likely be exploitable, and that's ok.

The important thing is that everyone's having fun and telling a good story.

Describe your actions as full scenes! Be as evocative as you can muster! I'm not here to shame players who "hit the bad guy with my sword again", I have been that player. But if you can add any spice, your group will appreciate it.

THE DICE Actions in this game use dice to determine success. Novel concept, I know. Most of these dice will be able to be increased (d4->d6->d8->d10->d12) or decreased (d12->d10->d8->d6->d4). There is, however, one die that cannot be changed in such ways.

THE D20 You cannot increase to a d20. You cannot decrease The D20. The D20 will be rolled, no matter what, in any Action you take. All praise to The D20.

CHARACTER CREATION Start with a notecard. Write your name at the top, and the 5 STATS where you'll see them. Assign each stat one of your dice. In total you have d4, d6, d6, d8, and d10.

Nearby, write a header called "BONUSES". Write in 3 Bonuses, assigning 2 d6 and 1 d8. Optionally, you can make your Bonus a Activated Bonus, increasing the die from d6 to d8, or from d8 to d10.

Your GM will tell you your Level, and by extension how much XP you have to spend (hint: it's the same number). Optionally, you can take up to 2 Drawbacks, each one giving you an additional XP.

You can spend 1 XP to increase a Bonus or Stat die to the next biggest size (maximum of d12), or 2 XP to add a new die at d4, either to a new Bonus or an existing Bonus or Stat. This means, yes, a high-level character can dump all their XP into Strength and roll 5d12 every time they punch something. Insert Saitama joke.

You can also not spend XP. For each unspent XP at the start of a fight, you get a Cool Point.

STATS Every character has 5 stats, known as STATS!

Strength: Can you lift that truck? Will the bouncer be intimidated by your muscles? How many pieces will the opponent's ribcage be left in when you're done with it? Strength is how you find out!

Toughness: This counts for armor, stamina, and good ol' determination.

Agility: If you're more often dodging incoming fireballs than tanking them, Agility is the way to go. Also useful for knife throwing and skateboard tricks. At the same time if you're good enough!

Technique: More mental, interpersonal, and metaphysical abilities. If it's a thing most people can't do, and it's not tied to a gadget, it's Technique.

Stuff: How much equipment you have, and how good it is. Usually used for Actions involving gadgets, but also applicable for "do I happen to have handcuffs?"

BONUSES A Bonus is something that sets your character apart from the rest. Superpowers, future tech, sweet abs, the usual. Bonuses should be specific enough that you can't use them for every Action you take without coming up with creative uses.

Iron Man's Armor, for example, is probably too broad for a single Bonus, but you could split it up into Plating, Weapons Platform, and JARVIS.

ACTIVATED BONUSES Some abilities are meant to be brought out halfway through a fight to raise the stakes. "This isn't even my final form!" is the most obvious use, but it also applies to finishing moves, and even calling in allies.

If a Bonus is an Activated Bonus, it begins a fight Deactivated, and must be activated during the fight by taking a successful Action to do so, using an Opportunity die of equal or greater size, or spending a Cool Point.

DRAWBACKS Drawbacks are anything that will in some way hinder your character in a fight. Glasses? Drawback. Old football injury? Drawback. Glass bones and paper skin? Probably don't bring that character to a fight, actually.

Whenever a Drawback is deemed relevant to hinder an Action, the GM increases the Difficulty die to the next highest size. If the Difficulty die was already a d12, you'll need to spend a Cool Point to attempt the Action in the first place, at which point the Difficulty die will be a d20.

TURN ORDER Each player makes an Action roll collectively opposed by the GM's single The D20. The highest single die goes first, ties broken by the second-highest, further ties broken by the size of the Stat or Bonus die rolled, followed by the size of the other die, and if there's STILL somehow a tie, laugh at the absurdity of it all and decide amongst yourselves. The GM will never win ties, as they have no second die.

After your turn, play is passed to a player or GM who hasn’t gone that round. If everyone’s gotten their turns, a new round begins and you can pick anyone but yourself.

ACTIONS On your turn, you get one Action, with which you can do one of the following:

Anything you can come up with.

After selecting your Action, take one die from your STATS, one die from your Bonuses (if applicable), and The D20 and roll them all.

STOP! Do not do math! Do not add the numbers!

The GM will then roll their The D20 and the Difficulty die. They will also do NO MATH at this stage!

Now take your highest-rolling die and compare it to the GM's, then do the same with your and their second-highest.

If your highest beats their highest, the Action succeeds! If your second-highest beats theirs, you create an Opportunity die. These are not mutually exclusive!

If both your dice are lower than the GM's, the Action fails. Better luck next time.

SUCCESS This is a big silly fight game, so generally success will be inflicting a Wound on the giant monster you're fighting. However, depending on the Action taken, you can also make a narratively permanent* Bonus die of a size equal to your highest non-The D20 die, Activate a Deactivated Bonus, or otherwise narratively alter the fight in a way the GM deems reasonable.

*"narratively permanent" means permanent until 1. the end of the fight or 2. a plot development makes it no longer relevant.

CRITICAL SUCCESS If The D20 rolls a 20, or if your highest die beats the GM's by 10 or more, it's a Critical Success, effectively doubling the effectiveness of your Action. 2 Wounds, make the Bonus available to your entire party, make even more ludicrous changes, or take 2 Success options at once.

OPPORTUNITIES Opportunities, when created, go in a pool in the middle of the table (or whatever digital equivalent you use over Discord). Before rolling an Action, a player can take an Opportunity die from the pool and add it to their roll (note: add in a physical dice way, not a math way)

CRITICAL OPPORTUNITIES Similar to success, Opportunities can also be Critical if the second-highest die beats the GM's by 10. A Critical Opportunity increases the Opportunity die to the next size, but if the die was already a d12, it becomes a Success!

FAILURE It wouldn't be much of a game without the chance of failure, and sometimes the dice are against you. You can still describe it in a cool way, though! Remember the golden rule, have fun with it, and make it a good story.

CRITICAL FAILURE If you roll a 1 on The D20 and fail the Action, it becomes Critical, giving the GM a Success out of turn!

COOL POINTS Cool Points are used to buff up important rolls even after the GM has rolled, but if you use them you MUST describe the Action as dramatically as possible! These are moments that turn the tide of battle, not to be used willy-nilly.

1 Cool Point can be spent to:

Reroll your entire dice pool

Flip a non-The D20 die to its highest face

Add 10 to The D20

Activate a Deactivated Bonus

Declare 1 fact to be true about the fight (At the GM's discretion)

AND THE REST There are more caveats to the game, but it's getting late, so more on those (as well as GM rules) tomorrow!

#kim’s daily art 2025 #rpg #homebrew ttrpg

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transgenderer · 8 months ago

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But what is most prized is not elegant verbal trickery, but rather the putting into words of a cosmic truth. This aspect of Vedic religion has been much discussed -- and much disputed -- especially in the last fifty years or so. The discussions have centered around two terms, bráhman- and tá-. The neuter noun bráhman- is the derivational base to which the masculine noun brahmán- 'possessor of bráhman-' and ultimately bråhmaa-, the name both of the priestly caste and of the exegetical ritual texts. Bráhman- has been the subject of several searching studies by eminent 20th century Vedicists, e.g. Renou and Silburn 1949, Gonda 1950, Thieme 1952, Schmidt 1968. Philological examination of the gvedic passages seems especially to support the view of Thieme that bráhman refers originally to a "formulation" (Formulierung), the capturing in words of a significant and non-self-evident truth.66 The ability to formulate such truths gives the formulator (brahmán-) special powers, which can be exercised even in cosmic forces (see Jamison, 1991, on Atri). This power attributed to a correctly stated truth is found in the (later) "*satyakriyå" or 'act of truth', seminally discussed by W. Norman Brown (1941, 1963, 1968), which is in fact already found in the RV and has counterparts in other Indo-European cultures (see e.g. Watkins 1979). Such formulated speech (bráhman) must be recited correctly, otherwise there is danger of losing one's head (as explained in the indraśatru legend TS 2.4.12.1, ŚB 1.6.3.8), and it must be recited with its author's name.

[above regards early vedic, below regards middle vedic]

So, it is clear that the elevation of the ritual in the middle Vedic period has affected every aspect of the religious and a large section of the social realm. In turn, the new power of the ritual derives from the strengthening of the system of identifications we discussed briefly above. The ritual ground is the mesocosm in which the macrocosm can be controlled. Objects and positions in the ritual ground have exact counterparts in both the human (i.e. microcosmic) realm and the cosmic realm -- e.g. a piece of gold can stand for wealth among men and the sun in the divine world. The recognition of these bonds of identification -- many of which are far less obvious than the example just given -- is a central intellectual and theological enterprise, the continuation of the 'formulation of mythical truths' discussed above. The universe can be viewed as a rich and often esoteric system of homologies, and the assemblage, manipulation, and apostrophizing of homologues in the delimited ritual arena allows men to exert control over their apparently unruly correspondents outside it. This "ritual science" is based on the strictly logical application of the rule of cause and effect, even though the initial proposition in an argument of this sort ("the sun is gold") is something that we would not accept.69 Ritual Science received a seminal discussion by Oldenberg 1919 and also by Schayer 1925 and has frequently been treated since, e.g. in the most recent extensive treatment by B. K. Smith 1989; for references to other lit., see Smith 1986 : 95, n. 44.70

Vedic Hinduism, Witzel and Jamison

"the formulation of significant and non-obvious truths via the drawing of connections" is a natural category to me. obviously cf say, kabblah, but also the use of clever mappings between disparate objects in math

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caustic-splines · 6 months ago

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Experiment 0000 Perspective Theory

Accelerating Rate of TSECpm development, complexity, and density The challenge of the exponential increase of TSECpm can be approached using concepts, philosophies, and applications of TSECpm itself and they can be applied in a way that accommodates many different, and different types of belief systems via suspension of disbelief resulting in a perspective meta space is a model of sets, axioms, edges, and nodes

Applying concepts from TSECpm and the individual treating their own life as an on going engineering project using methods, externally reviewed via the scientific and statistical analysis and subject to peer review and cybernetic modulation. This will should provide a host of benefits including raising the quality of an individual personal experience much higher level and quality of self actualization and also bestowing the ability adapt to novel or challenging/stressful situations effectively and efficiently a significantly faster rate

The total amount of all past and current human experience and the interactions of their respective axioms integrated significance, culture is impossible to measure and understand. With the exponential increase in the rate of TESCpm being created the current human faces a staggering amount of information and problems to manage and the challenges facing humanity are only going to grow in number and complexity If you reduce and classify all of human experience into a few manageable well defined domains with (e.g. technology, engineering, science, culture, philosophy, medicine, maths statistics.. ect.)

“Any open or closed system that can and perceive, assign, remove or modify meaning to parts of own system or other any other systems are a candidate for personal engineering Current philosophy is extremely biased towards the human first person pov perspective and if groups of people implement this system their lives there could be unprecedented new levels of complexity of communication between actors

This model of human experience I proposed can be understood with the study of perspective in art. Using mathematics, deductive, inductive and abductive logic in abstraction in parallel with reduction along with any basic form of taxonomy.

It is possible to turn most things that can be described or observed to be remade into an axiom. This includes the external and internal and the objective, subjective, and inductive.

One point can be described with multiple axioms and suspension of disbelief can be used to reduce conflicts.

These axioms can be arranged via taxonomic/set theory (logic) principles to form a network or grouping of axioms which can have any logical rules assigned to any axiom arranged in any order or arrangement described in mathematics.

The axiom systems themselves can be abstracted or reduced into new axioms to form systems of infinite complexity for various purposes.

However before you get carried away it would be a lot easier to start using already defined axioms. Sciences, and normatively defined areas of human knowledge and experience and so on.

Perspective in art can be used to get a more realistic and accurate representation of a perceived subject

To get an idea of how this theory would work in vivo. In perspective drawing the subject is drawn to appear more realistic one or more vanishing points to give the illusion of perspective on a flat surface As seen here each perspective in this case changes the eventually projected diagram of the box. It is the same box in each case, just in this case different points of axioms have been chosen to construct the final image. Perspective theory just means adding in new axioms as a point of perspective to construct a new model from. Adding and Removing axioms can radically change the resultant model allowing for deep insight into interesting relationships

Oral Human language of just spoken word and no visual contact is conventionally one dimensional and there are many ongoing efforts to create polydimensional communication systems

Roughly speaking We see a “3d” world in two dimensions However humans can think and operate in many dimensions, in this context include modular/non modular examples (define and provide examples). Due to the vast interconnectedness in the brain conscious experience is not truly 3d either rather conscious experience follows a dense interconnected and twisted wireframe model making it difficult to visualize purely 3d shapes from a first person perspective

An axiom in perspective theory can be a science or a branch of the sciences such as physics, biology, and chemistry. Going through day to day life with these Axioms in the forefront of your mind can fundamentally change the way how you view yourself, your experience, and environment throughout a day functionally employing PE

Traditionally perspective in art has been used in a Euclidean sense however if you roll with subjectivity for a bit you could represent anybody's view or any way of looking at the world as a new dimension/axiom. Using the systems described earlier you can paint or model a “picture” in your mind of a subject (x) described in many “dimensions” 3d perspective, colour, biology, its materials, its physical properties, the general public opinion, and any other sets you come up with while minimising the occurrence of cognitive dissonance and keeping the total model logically consistent Theoretically allowing any consciousness to utilize a method that could be potentially more effective at describing more aspects reality than science (Due to the equal importance and use of deductive, inductive abductive logic and a small pinch of subjectivity held in check by the principles of pure logic and mathematics)

Everything we are consciously aware of (Thoughts, feelings, internal narrative, sensations, senses and perceptions) is a highly abstracted model. An edited and streamlined UI (selected for by natural selection to reduce the cost of adapting to a complex environment and promoting choices best for the organism's fitness), the system of the brain that has executive control decisions aka “you” the end user.

Math modeling, abstraction, go into detail and make clear.

A healthy humans body, including the brain is a complicated machine and powerful supercomputer

Everything we are consciously aware of (Thoughts, feelings, internal narrative, sensations, senses and perceptions) a highly abstracted model. An edited and streamlined gesalt UI (selected for by natural selection to reduce the cost of adapting to a complex environment and promoting choices best for the organism's fitness), the system of the brain that has executive control decisions aka “you” the end user.Input is done on conscious attention and focus of the executive control system on certain aspects of the UI.

This model can predict the nature of some of the structures of the brain and their function The selection pressure offered as an explanation for the evolution and development of consciousness will also yield some hypotheses to be tested.

This model is abductive in nature and need to pass critical tests and become highly corroborated considered to have the status of a true scientific theory However even if the model isn’t robust it still has some applications as a conceptual model to utilize in personal endeavors.

Assuming this model to be true or suspending disbelief, this model can be abstracted to form an axiom or “single unit” in a completely different model using a form of mathematics and logic..

Each domain can be abstracted to an axiom

These core axioms of human experience can be used to construct an easy to manage, modify and comprehend model of the totality of experience and to study the interactions of the axioms and any emergent properties.

Theoretically with this sort of modeling. With the same axioms and the same rules of interaction and logic. People would be able to avoid a lot of the issues of subjectivity.

Due to its nature, the model is not purely a truth seeking enterprise and has some aspects of mathematics

Assumptions-Definitions Cybernetics is loosely defined as any open or closed system that can and perceive, assign, remove or modify meaning to parts of own system or other any other systems (not really)

Some philosophy is extremely biased towards the human perspective

However the model of human experience I proposed earlier can be more easily understood with the study of perspective in art. Using mathematics, deductive, inductive and abductive logic in abstraction in parallel with reduction along with any basic form of taxonomy .Anything* that can be described can be remade into an axiom. These axioms can be arranged via taxonomic principles to form a network or grouping of axioms which can have any logical rules assigned to any axiom arranged in any order or arrangement described in mathematics. The axiom systems themselves can be abstracted or reduced into new axioms to form systems of infinite complexity.

However before you get carried away it would be a lot easier to start using already defined axioms. Sciences and so on

In perspective drawing the subject is drawn to appear more realistic one or more vanishing points to give the illusion of perspective on a flat surface

Human language is traditionally one dimensional We see a “3d” world in roughly two dimensions However humans can think in multiple more dimensions and experience intertextuality In this context, an axiom supergroup such as science or the general shared culture of human a demographic can be represented as a dimension

Perspective in art is can be to get a more realistic and accurate representation of a perceived subject

However in all human experience can be argued to be perceived Traditionally perspective in art has been used in a Euclidean sense however if you roll with subjectivity for a bit you could represent anybody's view or any way of looking at the world as a new dimension. Using the systems described early you can paint a “picture” in your mind of a subject described in many “dimensions” 3d perspective, colour, biology, its materials, its physical properties, the general public opinion while minimising the occurrence of cognitive dissonance.

Input is done on conscious attention and focus of the executive control system on certain aspects of the UI

This model can yield predictions and hypotheses that can be subjected to the scientific method This model can predict the nature of some of the structures of the brain and their function The selection pressure offered as an explanation for the evolution and development of conscious will also yield some hypothesis to be tested

This model is abductive in nature and need to pass critical tests and become highly corroborated considered to have the status of a true scientific theory

However even if the model isn’t robust it still has some applications as a conceptual model to utilize in personal endeavors

Assuming this model to be true or suspending disbelief this model can be abstracted to form as an axiom or “single unit” in completely different model using in a form of mathematics and logic

The total amount of all past and current human experience, culture is impossible to measure and understand. With the exponential increase in the rate of TESC being created the current human faces a staggering amount of information and problems to manage and the challenges facing humanity are only going to grow in number and complexity

If you reduce and classify all of human experience into a few manageable well defined domains with (eg technology, engineering, science, culture, philosophy, medicine, maths statistics.. ect.)

Each domain can be abstracted to an axiom

Hopefully the model can provide an individual with a far greater and deeper understanding of themselves, others, society and the universe they live in. The model also can be used to make and test predictions As the model is based on axioms, the model itself can be changed in a similar way by removing axioms, adding new ones or changing existing ones potentially allowing for very powerful and complex simulations for exploring the big questions and even the small ones.

Theoretically with this sort of modeling. With the same axioms and the same rules of interaction and logic. People would be able to avoid a lot of the issues of subjectivity.

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