#meaning of ordinal number

[udable]

Learn Ordinal Numbers 1 to 100: Fun & Easy Guide for Hindi and Urdu Speaker | Udable

[nc-vb]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐙𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐔𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐬, oo. 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐳𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐫

Time is not prejudiced. It gives and takes as the ordinance of life sees fit. Time begets loss and fear, but it also spawns warmth. After centuries worth of time having passed for you, you learn that time also sires impatience, and does not wait for a lost soul to find their way. Time carries on, and flows likes the current of a river. Ironically, so, too, does blood.

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 • jing yuan x reader, blade x reader, dan heng & reader (no pronouns used this chapter)

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 • 18+ (mdni), no explicit smut but suggestive & insinuative; partially beta'ed.

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 • can be read as a gn!stand-alone fic! • extended lifespan reader; reader is the records’ master for the Seat of Divine Foresight; allusions to ptsd. • this chapter is introductory and is meant to be vague toward the true plot... the real story begins in the official first chapter. • this originally had a different title, "it ain't the heat, it's the humility" before being reformatted for the series.

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 • seat of divine foresight npcs, yanqing

𝐰𝐜 3.1k

zephyr -> a soft, gentle breeze.

𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 • 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬' 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 • 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞

It didn’t matter where you’d tried taking refuge. Your apartment, or your friends’; the streets of the Luofu, or the various fountains littering them; the Exalting Sanctum’s new little dessert parlour with the delicious ice treats, or the sparse number of trees along the way to it. Shelter is far and few, you’d been quick to learn, and none of them with enough of the protection you’d been hoping to find since two days ago when the heatwave began.

It’s hot. Too hot. Too hot for your thoughts to thread themselves into proper sentences whilst on auto-pilot. No, it takes your entire conscious focus for you to even complain about the heat, and even that works up a sweat. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting, you remind yourself as another thick bead of sweat rolls down your neck and into your shirt. So gross. No matter how many cool showers you’d taken that only had your water bill racking up in dues, no matter how popsicles you’d indulged in, or how many times you’d stared at one of the public fountains in longing and wished it could be a public pool, instead, there’d still been no means to an end when it’d came to such brutal weather.

In your many decades of life, you don’t recall it ever being this hot aboard the Xianzhou Luofu. Perhaps the Sky-Faring Commission might have a little historical insight on record temperatures, but putting your curiosity aside, looking into something like that to try and distract yourself from the current temperature? The thought exhausts you.

This only leaves you with one other option, one you’ve left as your absolute last resort, one you know will free you from the pain and suffering plaguing the Luofu and instead, tethering you to another kind of pain— returning to your post within the walls of the Seat of Divine Foresight, where the cooling system had shut down due to overheating. When it did, you conveniently disappeared without a word. Now that it’s fixed, really, you have no excuse to not return to your post.

It’s just unfortunate that it’d dawned on you two days later, the fact that you never told anyone there, including the Arbiter-General you worked directly alongside. You didn’t tell him, either, that you’d abruptly chosen to go absent without any official leave taken on account of the weather.

How does he do it? Those thick, tight clothes, that heavy armour, his thick, heavy hair— in this heat? He must have been suffering, too, you realize much too late. And I left my post and all of my work for him to… Crap.

Your pace quickens, your agility proving surprisingly capable today as you weave in and out and around the crowds littering the Exalting Sanctum until you’re finally able to break into a run. Why is it so busy today?! Why are they all out in the sun?! Are they insane?! Have they all collectively been struck by mara?! Go find shade or shelter! Maniacs! Get out of my way!!

“Chiyan!” you shout from the other end of the dock, not only startling the messenger of the Divine Foresight, but the patrons passing behind you.

Chiyan huffs, shaking his helmeted head at you as you approach.

“And here I thought you’d quit,” he dares to muse during your heat-inspired bad mood.

Nearly gasping now, you tug at the neck of your shirt to puff air down it. “I do not have the energy to tell you off right now, so move it.”

“Yeah, I bet I can guess why. You look…” He just shakes his head again. “Anyway. You’ve got great timing.”

“T-The cooling system is working again, right? That was true?”

“Should’ve placed money on that bet,” he grumbles. “That’s right. The Seat of Divine Foresight is back to its former, air-conditioned glory.” He steps aside. “Please, after you. Go on— go enjoy working in comfort, and out of this heat.”

You nod once, extremely curt with the gesture, and without guilt when you speak your farewell.

“Yeah. I will. See ya.”

For decades, you’ve said this, sworn this, but after the hell you’d gone through over the past fourty-eight hours, you now promise to never complain about the colder seasons, nor take for granted the refreshing chill they brought aboard the Luofu. You can simply throw more layers on then, but in the summer? Not like I can peel off my skin to cool down.

The noise of relief you make upon the doors of the Seat of Divine Foresight shutting behind you is loud, borderline obnoxious, and, if your coworkers were any kind of honest about it, downright pornographic. They quickly avert their eyes and return to their work and their conversations before you can catch their stares.

The difference between the temperature of this room versus even the hallway leading to it is painfully staggering. It seems like they’ve chosen to completely divert the path of the cooling system to the main chamber, you note, glancing up and around you. It’s probably only until they can fix the entire system, but it looks like even the employees of the smaller offices are working here today.

To your disappointment, so is the General. And it’s your bad fortune that it isn’t his usual hologram self.

Despite being on the complete other end of the room, he notices you right away, and the two of you lock gazes. His conversation with Qingzu ends with an abrupt raise of his hand and a brief apology— she bows away, descending the staircase to join Yong Hai and Yong Nian.

I suppose it’s time to play it on thick, you think, before clearing your throat with a harsh cough.

“General,” you call out in exasperation, voice echoing across the hall as you exaggeratedly stagger past the guards with a wave of greeting. “Generaaaaal.” They bow in return, a little too low to be considered a normal sign of respect for someone in your modest position, until you hear a snicker slip out from under one of their helmets and realize they’d been trying to hold in and hide their laughter. You pause, lips parting as if to speak, but you keep in character.

“General Jing Yuaaaaaan.”

From his spot atop the helm, Jing Yuan smiles small and sweet at your dramatic, child-like display put on just for him— the fact that the rest of the chamber gets to experience it for themselves today makes them lucky, as there are only two instances where you, the Divine Foresight’s - normally - dutiful records’ master would display yourself like this. The first instance is just this— you’ve done something wrong and at the very least, you know what it is and are now hoping that sucking up to the boss will help you work it out. The second instance? The circumstances aren’t so different. But it takes place in the privacy of your shared abode, instead of his office.

Your trudging across the floor of the massive strategy-slash-starchess board is squeaky, the soles of your shoes catching on the smooth tiling until you reach the General.

“General Jing Yuan,” you whine, still bothering to salute to him. “It’s hot.”

He chuckles, tucking his arms behind his back as he moves to descend the staircase closest to you to reach you.

“I figured that could be the only explanation behind your sudden disappearing act,” he says, still smiling. “Two whole days you were gone! Imagine my surprise when it’d been Qingzu to tell me of your absence and not you.”

You, you easily infer of him, My partner. Not just my subordinate.

You’ve heard from other outworlders and their testimonies that relationships between mortals in comparison to relationships between those with extended lifespans greatly differ. The flow of time is easily the heaviest hitter— average mortal lifespans range between eighty to one-hundred years old. As life expectancy goes for most those aboard the Xianzhou Luofu, each calendar days’ time differs, too— mortals, Foxians, and those native Xianzhou all have different clocks that tick within them.

Being on the "older" side of the spectrum of age immortality, you tend to fall into dissimilar habits, as opposed to the ones your aging friends do, such as forgetting to send a message back to someone, or informing them of an absence?

Unfortunately, this is why the Arbiter-General still smiles at you, why his response had been just barely teetering on passive aggressive. You know you haven’t heard anything bad from him yet, that the only reason you’ve yet to be chastised as a repeat offender is because the room remains full of other Divine Foresight employees. To the General, you aren’t just one of his most trusted allies. You’re also his lover. And to not know where and not hear from his lover even once within fourty-eight hours after existing together for so many years, you realize that you’d be agonizing over it, too.

Immediately, the act drops, your eyes widening down at your feet.

Oh, god. That’s definitely so much worse than me not saying anything as his subordinate.

“Jing Yuan.” Lip pinched between your teeth, you look to him and muster as much of an apologetic look as you can. “I’m sorry.”

A dark eyebrow raises at you inquisitively. “For?”

You bite back a huff—you already know what for. So, you decide to list everything but what he wants to hear.

“For disappearing without a word to anyone. For not requesting time off first. For not finishing my duties before leaving. For abandoning my post for two days.” To hide the smirk that’d begun to twitch onto your face at the sight of his expression growing more and more stolid, you bow your head, similar to the guards at the entrance to the chamber. “I’m sorry, General.”

He hums, and not thoughtfully. Strangely, you no longer feel his eyes on the back of your head, and by the time you raise it to find out why, you see him stalking back up to the helm.

His timing couldn’t be more perfect when a loud, mechanical groan suddenly sounds throughout the room.

“Ah!” Jing Yuan exclaims, seemingly agreeing with your wordless sentiment— he peers down at you where you stand steeping in your petulance. “The second stage of the cooling system must have kicked in. Friends,” he calls across the hall. “I do believe you should be able to return to your original chambers now; no need to linger and loiter around here any longer. In fact, how about you all take an extra break today? Starting now. A gift, on account of this weather, of course.”

Thanks and bows of appreciation are quick to be thrown to the helm where the Arbiter-General stands; unfortunately for you, your coworkers have never been ones to stare a gift horse in the mouth, and flee out the doors as quickly as they’d earlier arrived. Maybe you had no trouble playing with the General, but they’d wanted no part whatsoever in it— the look Qingzu throws over her should at you as the last person to leave confirms this.

Ah. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so petty, after all.

The sound finally settles into a dull hum, barely noticeable over the doors to the chamber slamming shut.

“Those were a lot of apologies,” Jing Yuan points out. Looking to the helm, you find him wearing a perfect poker face. “Are you sure you didn’t miss a couple?”

You sigh at him, hands on your hips now.

“You already know that I did, and you know that I did it on purpose, too.”

He matches your attitude with the crossing of his arms.

“And?”

“… and I’m sorry if I made you worry by not telling you where I’d gone,” you mumble.

“What was that, dear?”

Your cheeks burn. “I’m sorry if I made you worry. I didn’t mean to not tell you. I know that with this whole… Stellaron thing, you might’ve been busy. I didn’t want to distract you by telling you I wasn’t feeling well.”

“______. I’d want to know if you got even a paper cut.”

You can’t help yourself when a laugh bubbles up and out of your throat.

“We both agreed that we wouldn’t let things like this affect how we perform our duties, right? This is a perfect instance of that agreement; I asked you to set these boundaries with me for a reason.”

“Reporting on our well-being is much different than perhaps sending the other a picture of what we ate for lunch.” He scratches at his chin. “Although, I did want to send you what I had for mine today. I would have liked to have shared it with you.”

“Jing Yuan…” Quickly, you clamber up the steps to stand before him. “I love you with every fibre of my being. I promise not to do something so thoughtless like this again, but please… I need you to properly honour our agreement. I don’t want to have to afford anymore missteps in this lifetime. Not after… no… I-I can’t. Never again.”

To either side of your face, the General’s hands rise, claiming them in his cool palms. You sigh, your own coming up to hold them to you.

“You were on the front lines for a long time, ______,” Jing Yuan reminds you. “Even before the incident. And when we live as long as we do, the memories won’t simply fade away with time.

“I understand how you feel, exactly how you feel. And when I say to you what I am about to say, please know that I don’t wish to diminish or dismiss those feelings, either.” He thumbs your cheeks, pulling you closer into him, lips ghosting the crease between your brows and smoothing it down with his affection. “Even when I don’t hear from you, you are always on my mind. And for as long as we’ve been together, that has never changed. If you ever find yourself burdened by those feelings, I wish to share the load with you. Paper cuts and all.”

“Even over something as silly as my impromptu two day vacation…?”

“Fu Xuan did mention there’d been a nice breeze over at the Divination Commission, last I spoke to her. If only my love didn’t forget about me in their search for some shade… Surely, I could have invented some reason to send you over there…”

“Ah, so a guilt trip and not a work trip, then, huh?”

“No, not at all.” You shoot a playfully disapproving glance to the man. For a moment, he simply stares back, his one unshielded eye sparkling with obvious mischief. Little warning is given when he steps toward you again, hands reclaiming their rightful place at your waist. Fingers curl into the loops securing your belt and tug your hips to meet his.

Your cheeks instantly heat at the contact, at the knowing glance he dares to send you at such close range.

“You know,” he says, breath fanning your face. “We could always try building up a different kind of sweat— you know. To take your mind off the heat.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t give you a chance to answer, instead sliding his one hand from your side to curl beneath your right ass cheek and hoist you up into the air. Instinctively, you’d raised your legs to curl around his middle as he’d turned to carry you toward his seat. If this is my punishment, I accept it gratefully and gracefully, you think, almost dizzyingly.

“That break you sent the others on was more for you than it was for them, wasn’t it?” you ask him, hand curled around his neck as he lowers you onto the cushion. Without missing a beat and with a single hand, Jing Yuan’s fingers are deft to remove your belt and unbutton your trousers.

“Naturally, they assume their “dozing general” merely wants to take another nap…” He taps your thigh, encouraging the lift of your bottom. You shift your weight into your palms and rise, and he removes your pants to rest around your ankles. “… or that I’ll be reprimanding you.”

“I suppose it’s a relief that they’re aware you don’t pick favourites around here. Well, the exception being Yanqing. He’s everyone’s favourite, after all.”

“Not yours, I’d hope?”

“Definitely mine.”

“And why not me?” Still hovering above you, he bends over to nose at your throat— you shudder, unable to stop yourself. “Considering how I have you… and how I’m about to have you. Tell me that I’m not your favourite?”

You scoff lightly at him, even when he presses kisses deep into your throat, strong against your jawline, and gently against your lips.

“W-With how long you insist on teasing me like this…? W-Who likes a hot dinner served cold—” you’re cut off by his tongue prodding against your lips; you part them, eagerly, hungrily, the joke about eating somehow making the craving to have him have you even stronger, more obnoxious the more he makes you wait.

He is barely gentle now, showing little restraint in how his tongue plunders the inside of your mouth. Jing Yuan is a giver and a taker, of pleasure and of oxygen— your gasps are sharp, not being given a chance to breathe, a chance to win whatever battle he’d entered with you. “Jing Yu—” the butterflies that swim in the pit of your stomach are traitorous in his repetition; they know how good he makes you feel, strictly in the way he takes your breath away with each kiss, each suckle and swirl of his tongue around yours, each stroke of his calloused hands sliding to grip the fat of your thighs, and they make you weaker and weaker with each ministration.

With a final swipe of his wet muscle across your spit-soaked and kiss-numbed lips, he draws away, eyes lidded and panting.

“G-General Jing Yuan,” you rasp almost chidingly. Your hand is quick to brace him away from you; he chuckles at your weak attempt, instead returning it to where it once kept you entirely upright. You huff, every inch of your skin flaming and dewy with a thin layer of sweat. I just finally cooled down, too…

“You’re going to need that there,” he tells you, rising to his full height. He tugs on his own trousers to give them a generous amount of slack before kneeling down before you, nestled between your already shaking thighs. “We still have twenty minutes, after all. You’d better get comfortable.”

© nc-vb 2023 please don’t repost! reblogs & comments are always appreciated.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

Tackling the threat from artificially generated images of child sex abuse must be a priority at the UK-hosted global AI summit this year, an internet safety organisation warned as it published its first data on the subject.

Such “astoundingly realistic images” pose a risk of normalising child sex abuse and tracking them to identify whether they are genuine or artificially created could also distract from helping real victims, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said.

The organisation – which works to identify and remove online images and videos of child abuse – said while the number of AI images being identified is still small “the potential exists for criminals to produce unprecedented quantities of life-like child sexual abuse imagery”.

Of 29 URLs (web addresses) containing suspected AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery reported to the IWF between May 24 and June 30, seven were confirmed to contain AI-generated imagery.

This is the first data on AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery the IWF has published.

It said it could not immediately give locations for which countries the URLs were hosted in, but that the images contained Category A and B material – some of the most severe kinds of sexual abuse – with children as young as three years old depicted.

Its analysts also discovered an online “manual” written by offenders with the aim of helping other criminals train the AI and refine their prompts to return more realistic results.

The organisation said such imagery – despite not featuring real children – is not a victimless crime, warning that it can normalise the sexual abuse of children, and make it harder to spot when real children might be in danger.

Last month, Rishi Sunak announced the first global summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety to be held in the UK in the autumn, focusing on the need for international co-ordinated action to mitigate the risks of the emerging technology generally.

Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF, said fit-for-purpose legislation needs to be brought in “to get ahead” of the threat posed by the technology’s specific use to create child sex abuse images.

She said: “AI is getting more sophisticated all the time. We are sounding the alarm and saying the Prime Minister needs to treat the serious threat it poses as the top priority when he hosts the first global AI summit later this year.

“We are not currently seeing these images in huge numbers, but it is clear to us the potential exists for criminals to produce unprecedented quantities of life-like child sexual abuse imagery.

“This would be potentially devastating for internet safety and for the safety of children online.

“Offenders are now using AI image generators to produce sometimes astoundingly realistic images of children suffering sexual abuse.

“For members of the public – some of this material would be utterly indistinguishable from a real image of a child being sexually abused. Having more of this material online makes the internet a more dangerous place.”

She said the continued abuse of this technology “could have profoundly dark consequences – and could see more and more people exposed to this harmful content”.

She added: “Depictions of child sexual abuse, even artificial ones, normalise sexual violence against children. We know there is a link between viewing child sexual abuse imagery and going on to commit contact offences against children.”

Dan Sexton, chief technical officer at the IWF, said: “Our worry is that, if AI imagery of child sexual abuse becomes indistinguishable from real imagery, there is a danger that IWF analysts could waste precious time attempting to identify and help law enforcement protect children that do not exist.

“This would mean real victims could fall between the cracks, and opportunities to prevent real life abuse could be missed.”

He added that the machine learning to create the images, in some cases, has been trained on data sets of real child victims of sexual abuse, therefore “children are still being harmed, and their suffering is being worked into this artificial imagery”.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said while AI-generated content features only “in a handful of cases”, the risk “is increasing and we are taking it extremely seriously”.

Chris Farrimond, NCA director of threat leadership, said: “The creation or possession of pseudo-images – one created using AI or other technology – is an offence in the UK. As with other such child sexual abuse material viewed and shared online, pseudo-images also play a role in the normalisation and escalation of abuse among offenders.

“There is a very real possibility that if the volume of AI-generated material increases, this could greatly impact on law enforcement resources, increasing the time it takes for us to identify real children in need of protection.”

[janmisali]

Number Tournament: Honorable Mentions

well, you've all asked for it, and I guess there's no point in waiting any further now that round one is almost over. here's some highlights from the numbers that didn't get enough nominations to make it into the tournament. (as you can work out from looking at how many nominations the numbers that made it into the tournament got, my cutoff was seven nominations, which left room for me to hand-pick three numbers that only got six to fill in the bottom seeds)

six nominations

these are the numbers that were the closest of all to making the cut. in the end, I picked ten, Rayo's number, and omega to fill in seeds 62-64, but four other numbers got six nominations but didn't make it:

25: perfectly fine square number. notably funnier than 24

81: another square. I only wanted one "boring normal integer" for the bottom seeds and like come on it had to be ten.

5040: Plato's favorite number, a very fun one

42069: both 420 and 69 already made the cut, so this would have been excessive

and now for some miscellaneous fun ideas that not enough people suggested to make the cut!

cool math things

c (the speed of light) could have been a strong contender, but physics fans were pretty much universally putting their efforts behind the fine-structure constant and the Avogadro constant, leaving other universal constants behind

the Euler-Masceroni constant got five nominations super early on in the process, some of which were even intentional (there are so many things named after Euler but I made the call that people who said "Euler's constant" without specifying were talking about this one) but never got any further than that

a lot of infinite ordinals more interesting than the standard omega were in the running, but given that omega itself only barely made it in, numbers like omega to the omega power never stood a chance. of course, given how well omega did in round one maybe those other bigger infinities could have held their own if only more people suggested them before the tournament began

Not a Number's presence in the tournament is I think very fun, but other floating point things were also nominated, just not as frequently. negative zero was a fun one, as are the handful of nominations for just slightly-off multiples of one tenth

besides star, a lot of game theory not-really-number numbers had a few fans supporting them, such as dud (deathless universal draw), a couple of tiny numbers, and one suggestion for {69|420}

meme numbers

fans of boobs were split between 80085, 58008, 8008135, and 5318008, so none of the boob numbers made it individually

perhaps even more disappointingly, only five people suggested 1312

1337 is a super dead meme so that one being unpopular isn't as surprising. but then literally nobody suggested 9001? weird!

the AACS encryption key (an illegal number) only got a handful of suggestions, which is a shame because that's a really fun one

only three people suggested "your credit card number" but if it made it past the cutoff I 100% would have put that in the tournament

meta jokes

a few people suggested variations of "the number that wins the tournament", which I think is a funnier meta joke than either of the ones that actually made the cut

a couple people also did versions of "the sum of all other numbers in the bracket" (or "all other numbers people suggested in this google form"), with a couple people who said that also thankfully adding in some conditions to only include numbers where you can actually do that

a couple people have asked me what the smallest natural number was that nobody suggested, and unfortunately (by which I mean I love this) I can't answer that because a couple people suggested "the smallest natural number nobody else suggests"

another fun one was "the number of notes on this tumblr post", which only one person suggested

three separate people did "five (the word five not the number)", "5 (the symbol not the number it represents)" and "V (the roman numeral)" (looking at them all together it kinda looks like this was the same person all three times but that's because I'm paraphrasing all of them)

googologisms and otherwise big numbers

shockingly, the famously large numbers googol and Graham's number didn't get nearly as much support as the googologisms that made it to the bracket

five people suggested numbers in the Busy Beaver sequence, but none of them suggested the same Busy Beaver number

there were also things like "the smallest counterexample to the Collatz conjecture", fully hypothetical numbers

"zillion", "bajillion", and "fuckton" got two nominations each, any of which would have been extremely fun to see in the tournament

other

a couple people just said "fibonacci number" which. do you mean like the whole sequence? maybe these should have counted for phi

two people suggested "a grizzly bear". I'm assuming that's a reference I'm not getting, because it's way too specific of a joke for two people to say that independently

there was one suggestion that was the coordinates to a restaurant in yemen called burger king 2

anyway there's literally thousands of these, and I have no intentions of at any point making a full comprehensive list of what people suggested, but I think this is a pretty good sample of what the nominees were like. there were a lot of really good candidates, but I think the 64 that made it into the tournament are a pretty dang good set of numbers!

thank you to everyone who suggested your favorite numbers, it was genuinely very fun reading through everyone's suggestions.

[ryin-silverfish]

What are monks and what do they do?

are they religious leaders like priest or are they schoolers or something else?

How did someone become a monk in ancient times? Was it a boys only position? Could just anybody become a monk or did you have to do something or be something to qualify?

By monk, I assume you mean "Buddhist monks"?

Well, they are members of the Sangha, one of the "Three Jewels" (三宝) of Buddhism, which consists of the Buddha, the Dharma (Buddhist Teachings), and the Monastic Community.

(Once again, I can only talk about Mahayana Buddhist monks in imperial China. If you want more info, I recommend talking to an actual Buddhist.)

Usually, when we say "monk" (僧/和尚), we don't just mean "adherents of the Buddhist religion", since you can offer incense at a temple, copy sutras, or have a statue of Bodhisattva Guan Yin on your private altar without becoming a monk.

These are people who 1) have gone through the relevant ordination rites and swear to abide by a set of religious vows, and 2) are part of a monastic community.

In other words, they are "cloistered" (出家人), leaving their home to learn and practice their religion in a temple, as opposed to lay practitioners (在家人) who carry out their religious activities in daily life.

And no, it's not a boy-only position——there are plenty of Buddhist nuns (比丘尼/尼姑) too.

Officially, to become a monk, you need to leave your worldly life behind. Which means, if your parents are still alive, you need to get their permission, if you are a court official, you need to quit your job, and if you are married, well, you cannot remain married.

Also, living in a monastic community means you were no longer considered viable for conscripted labor or taxation, and temples owned private lands, the increase of which could, well, depriving the imperial court of available land.

(This is one main motivation for historical prosecutions of Buddhism by certain emperors: the seizing of temple property + returning the monks and nuns back into the taxable population.)

As such, the imperial court tended to keep a firm control on the number of monks and the size of the temple. Basically, you need an official permit (度牒) from the state too, given out to each temple by the officials, and the monks didn't have the authority to make you one of their own in private.

Those who have committed one of the five grave crimes——killing their father, killing their mother, killing an arhat, destroying the unity of the monastic community, and "wounding the Buddha"——cannot become a monk either.

The most visible change one must make is shaving their head, like, entirely bald.

Those above the age of 7 but under 20 can become monks-in-training, called 沙弥/沙弥尼, but not formal member of the clergy because they are still considered too young to endure the physical and mental hardships.

(Similarly, adults who seek to become a formal monk must also pass through this training stage first.)

An aspiring monk, after receiving his permit, must first find a respectable monk, answer a series of questions that assess his fitness for monastic life, pay his respect to the Buddha and the monks of the temple he's joining, then becomes the disciple of one of those monks.

One monk will shave his head and bath him, while his master clothes him in his monk robes. Then, on the next day, he will receive his ordinations inside a temple hall, in front of the entire community, where he recites the monastic percepts (read: rules a monk must follow) and agrees to abide by them.

At this point, he has become a monk-in-training, which is a prerequiste stage for formal monk ordination, 比丘戒.

Usually, the latter ceremony is carried out at an actual altar, and the candidate must have already bought the "six necessasities" of monkhood ——three sets of robes, almsbowl, sitting cushion, and water container.

In Chinese Buddhism post-Yuan dynasty, the ordination rites may also include using burning incense sticks to leave a bunch of little marks (usually 12) onto one's head.

(Source: 《中国古代僧人生活》)

[eretzyisrael]

The National (UAE) reports:

Gaza's Health Ministry has said it will stop co-ordinating with the World Health Organisation in evacuating patients and medical staff from hospitals, following the arrest of the director of Al Shifa Hospital, the largest in the besieged enclave. “We condemn the arrest of Muhammad Abu Salmiya and a number of medical personnel held by the occupation forces. He left the complex with the UN and WHO following evacuation orders from the occupation with dozens of patients and health workers,” Gaza's Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told The National. “We are calling all sides to take responsibility to release the doctor and those with him. This is a crime against humanity."

Hamas called the IDF "Nazi" for the arrest.

This arrest comes after weeks of Salmiya's strenuous denials that Hamas operated from the hospital. 

Now, as journalists report on the large tunnel complex underneath Shifa, there is no question that Salmiya knew about the tunnels, since they used electricity siphoned from the hospital itself. Even Haaretz's headline says, "Did Hamas Operate Under Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital? A Tour of the Tunnels Leaves No Room for Doubt: Israeli journalists were shown a conduit under the facility stretching over 170 meters. There's no way the hospital's managers didn't know what was going on"

Which means that not only was Salmiya aware of Hamas' use of the hospital, but he was actively supportive of it, and tried to cover it up. For the entire month Salmiya was whining to the media about Shifa being hours away from running out of electricity, he knew that Hamas was using the hospital's electricity for military purposes.

That is direct support for terrorists - terrorists who murdered Noa Marciano on the hospital grounds. 

Moreover, Dr. Salmiya clearly supported Hamas using his staff as human shields. 

Beyond  that, Salmiya and the other senior staff at the hospital who were aware of Hamas' presence were all  voluntary human shields for Hamas, which makes them - according to many interpretations of international law - effectively participants in hostilities themselves.

Salmiya crossed the line from allowing Hamas to use his staff and patients as human shields into actively supporting this use by Hamas. "Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations" is a war crime.

Any real supporter of international law should be celebrating Salmiya's arrest as a step towards justice for victims of Hamas brutality.

But the "human rights" groups  have no interest in human rights when it comes to Gazans endangered by Hamas and their supporters. Not when Jews are in the vicinity, 

Hamas' cutting ties with WHO and the UN is also a message to all NGOs in Gaza: they only exist to support Hamas terrorism, and if they don't actively defend Hamas they are endangering their own work in Gaza. 

That little detail will not be mentioned by the mainstream news media.

[luveline]

for the steve zombie au requests 🙏🏼 how about the first night when they finally get their own place at the college? ily

thanks so much for your request! steve zombie!au | fem!reader ♥︎ 1.1k

"My arms are crying," you say. 

"Keep moving," Steve demands. "It's only another minute." 

"I'm spoiled, Steve, you know this." 

Steve is doing most of the work, dragging your double mattress through the series of doors that lead from the first wing of Little Hawkins to the second, where you and Steve have finally been given a room after sharing with Robin for two weeks and three days. You regret your happiness — Robin has proved to be exactly the kind of person worth walking the earth for. She's funny and zesty and a secret sweetheart. She's a lot like Steve, minus his moods. 

Steve trusts her implicitly. You do not. You haven't slept properly in the days you've shared a room with her, and everyone can tell. It's why Steve isn't actually mad at your half-hearted pushing. 

When your new front door is in view you stop pushing. Steve sighs and heaves it to the door jam. He turns to look at you as he finishes, wiping his hands together. You give the mattress a weak kick. 

Steve, despite the image he projects, feels very sorry for you in that moment. You can see it in the soft wrinkle between his thick brows, and the immediacy with which he extends his hands. 

"Celebratory hug," he says, kissing your temple quickly as he pats your back. 

His hugs are two extremes. Swift and friendly or languid and long. This hug is the former, and you'd wanted the latter. 

"Where's the key?" 

You dig in your pocket for the key. There's a piece of white tape wrapped around the head with the apartment number and a sticker on the teeth, where you assume Jeremy, the communities co-leader, to have written your name in marker. 

"See this?" you ask, brandishing the sticker at him with a peppy smile. "Know what that means? This is my room, Harrington. You're just sharing." 

"Yeah?" 

You don't like the sound of that. 

He takes a step toward you as you take a retroactive one back, and your foot scags on the curved corner of the mattress. Steve throws his hand out to make sure you don't fall, and you grab his arm in turn, key digging into his forearm. 

"For me? You shouldn't have," he says, pleased. 

You roll your eyes and fork over the key. Steve opens the door, and everything feels much less scary, because he waits for you to take his hand before he walks inside. It's a very small room, meant for one person, and the bed frame is a single — your mattress won't fit. 

"Oh," you say with a laugh. 

"Don't worry, I asked Hopper about it, he said there's some crates behind the town hall." 

"The town hall," you say. He's already using all the terminology, like he's been here for months. 

"We can clear out the frame." He rubs the back of your hand with his thumb unconsciously. "We'll keep the desk though?" 

"For what?" 

"For stuff. We can have stuff. Books and clothes and stuff." 

"Stuff." 

He steps in front of you and turns, forcing you to meet his eyes. He watches you watch him, and he rubs under your eyelashes with a careful fingertip. 

"Sit down, baby." 

You feel strangely like crying. The soft but ordinate tone he uses with you in moments like this is shocking, the memory of his recent I love you thrumming at the front of your head. He loves you. You can feel it. 

You sit down in a puddle of dust on top of the desk. It holds your weight no problem, only creaking quietly when you start to slouch in on yourself, cheek pressed to the side of one of the storage cupboards above it. It's cold, and it smells like a holiday home, or a hotel. 

Steve lifts the bed frame all by himself, the muscles of his back bulging and shifting underneath his shirt. He peels it off and you rouse from your dozing to whistle, delighted by his scandalised face and the follow up smirk. He flexes his bicep and you laugh softly. 

"Oh wow," you drawl, meaning it one hundred percent. 

"Right?" 

"Very impressive, Stevie. You've always been a loveboat, you know?" 

"Tell me more." 

He pushes the bed frame out into the hallway. You wait for him to appear again, though the mattress comes first, Steve pushing it inside your room like it doesn't weigh a thing. It is, admittedly, very hot. 

"Even when we didn't like each other, I thought you were handsome. Hot," you admit. 

He pushes the mattress down. It lands with a puff of dust so thick you both wince and lean back. The dust settles, and Steve sidles into the space between your legs, shirtless and a little bit sweaty, a smile on his pretty mouth. 

"I've always thought you were pretty, but not so much anymore." You flinch as a pit opens in your stomach, alarmed and hurt that he would say that you. Steve takes your face into his hand, and he tilts his head to the side and says, "These days I think you're beautiful. Capital B." 

"Smaller pause next time." 

The tips of your noses kiss. He doesn't close his eyes, so you keep yours open. 

"You get prettier every day. I feel real lucky that I get to see it." His smile turns bashful, the facade of his confidence fading away. "I can't believe we're here, and I know everything is different, and that it's been hard. I'm sorry." 

"Don't be sorry," you say, eyebrows pinching together.

"I want you to be happy," he says. 

You pull his face closer to yours, impossibly closer, not an inch of room between you. "I am." 

"I want you to sleep," he says knowingly. 

You grin, and kiss him blindly, missing his lips a little. He's gracious enough to correct you, and to return it with an adoring ferocity. 

You push him away so he can see your smile. 

"I'll sleep just as soon as my boyfriend makes the bed." 

Steve looks electrified with purpose. "I'm gonna make our bed so well," he promises. "Gonna make that shit into a sport. If they ever throw an Olympics again, they'll add a bed making category, and I'll win the gold for you, babe." 

Our bed. Despite your worries, your impulsive fears, and your propensity for suspicion, you have to admit it: 'our bed' sounds pretty damn good. 

[max1461]

I believe that the following philosophical argument in favor of the second order Peano axioms as ultimately "correct" works:

We know from Gödel that no effectively definable formal system can capture the full behavior of the "true" natural numbers. That is, it's impossible, as finitistic beings, to give a formal definition which precisely characterizes the standard natural numbers. We will always "leave out some details" in the definition, among these the Gödel sentence in the given system and so on.

This makes the meaning of the phrase "the standard natural numbers" itself philosophically problematic. In the context of a given meta-theory (say ZFC), we can take the standard naturals to be some particular meta-theoretic construction (say, the von Neumann ordinals). In this context, the incompleteness theorems as internalized in the meta-theory say that no effectively definable formal system as internalized in the meta-theory can prove all the true facts about our chosen standard model. But of course this doesn't save us, because the incompleteness theorems "on the outside" of the meta-theory say that it can't prove everything there is to know about the "true" external standard model of the naturals, whatever it is.

Of course this last part is possibly bullshit and may rely on some kind of Platonism to make sense. So to be a conservative as possible one should stick to just asserting the meta-theory-internal version of the incompleteness theorems. After that you can, if you want, let them inspire by implication a sort of fog of uncertainty in the reader about what fucked up epistemic shit is going on "outside" the meta-theory, even though that perhaps does not make sense (or perhaps it does...). Of course you can make "outside the meta-theory" make sense by internalizing the meta-theory in a meta-meta-theory, but then you just get the same situation one level up.

So, ok, the point is that you are never going to be able to write down a formal system that unambiguously defines what you mean by "the true standard model of the naturals", such that exactly the statements which can be derived from this system (=definition) are exactly the true ones. Which sucks! That's lame, because math is supposed to involved being precise about what we mean by shit.

There are a couple of ways out. One is to just take some effectively definable formal system like first order PA and say "this is what we mean by the naturals, we mean the shit that can be proved from this. Yeah that leaves a lot of stuff hanging, a lot of statements about arithmetic of-ambiguous-truth-value, but whatever". Because, you know, PA is not categorical, so it has many inequivalent models. Or you can say "I will take second order PA as internalized in ZFC (so basically, the von Neumann ordinals) as my definition of the naturals". Which I think is more powerful(?) but still suffers from the same problem when you look at it "from the outside" of ZFC. Actually, you can do that for any (expressive enough) meta-theory M, you can put second-order PA inside it and take that as your naturals.

With the stage set, a brief digression:

I think that, informally, we should all be able to agree on the following about the "true" set of natural numbers, if such a thing can be said to exist (and imo it sort of must, because it's implicitly invoked in a meta-way when we define formal systems to begin with, and so on):

1. The number 0 is a natural number 2. If n is a natural number, then the successor of n (that is, n+1) is also a natural number 3. If m and n are two natural numbers and they have the same successor (that is, n+1 = m+1), then m = n 4. There is no natural number whose successor is 0 5. If P is some property which might or might not hold of a natural number, and we know that P holds of 0, and we furthermore know that whenever P holds of one number it must hold for the next number, then we know that P must hold for every natural number

Some people are philosophical uncomfortable with the last one, but I think it's intuitively undeniable. Like imagine a fucking... guy hopping from one number to the next, and he never stops. Can you pick a number he never gets to? No you fucking can't. You believe in induction.

So, ok, back to models and shit: both first order and second order PA try to formalize this intuition, and the key way that they differ is in terms of what a "property" (mentioned in (5)) is. First order PA says that a "property" is a first order formula. This is very powerful because we can effectively define the set of first order formulas over a given language. They are finite objects and we can work with them direction. From this flows all the nice properties of first order logic, like completeness and so on. But this effectively definability also makes it susceptible to the incompleteness theorems, and so first order PA ends up "leaving stuff out".

Second order PA defers the notion of a "property" to the meta-theory. It basically says "a property is whatever you think it is, big guy ;)" to ZFC or whatever theory it's being formulated in. ZFC thinks a property is a ZFC-set. Meta theory M thinks a property is an M-set. And second order PA as formalized in M agrees. Mathematically this makes second order PA harder to study as an object in itself. But philosophically I think it's kind of desirable?

First of all because, at a basic level, "property" seems like a much more fundamental notion to me than "natural number", and one I am much more willing to accept an intuition based definition of. Like, I don't know what you mean if you say "the true natural numbers". That seems pretty wishy-washy! But if you say "the real-world, ordinary definition of 'a property'", I can kinda be like "yeah, properties of things. I know how to reason about those!". And then second order PA, because it's categorical, will tell me "great: since you know what a property is, here's what a natural number is". And that's something I can work with.

This was overly long-winded I think. But in other words, what I am basically advocating for is conceptualizing second order PA as a function from "notions of property" to "notions of the natural numbers". And because models of PA are unique up to isomorphism (in whatever (sufficiently powerful) meta-theory you formalize it in, not "from the outside" of course) this means you can take up SOPA as your definition of the natural numbers and then "lug it around with you" into whatever different foundational system or meta-theory you fancy. And when you lug it into the real world, where "properties" mean actual properties of things, you get the real, true natural numbers.

This is all purely philosophizing of course. But I think this is about the situation.

[ltwilliammowett]

"Two, six - heave"

As is usual with sailors, the person at the head of the team usually calls out the "two, six" part. All members move their hands up the line, ready to pull. This is followed in a natural rhythm by the "lift", which is shouted by the whole team together. At this moment, the team simultaneously leans back on the line and uses its leg muscles to exert a powerful pull on the line. This coordination takes some practice, but the difference in applied force between a group pulling as individuals and a skilled team pulling together is very large.

There is no standardised tempo or cadence for the term as this depends on the task at hand. For example, hauling in the topsail requires a long, heavy pull; if the team is not to be exhausted halfway through, the leader must ensure that the pace is slow enough to keep the whole job going. Hauling in a clew line, on the other hand, is relatively quick and easy, so the singing can be quite fast. It is also not always necessary to use this type of hauling for the entire job; often the first part of the job can be done by simply pulling hand over hand, while moving to a co-ordinated hoist for the final tightening.

After a line has been pulled taut on a ship, it is usually attached to a belaying pin.

In the UK, the term has a broader meaning and is often used in any situation where co-ordinated hauling is required, often involving seafarers, but almost as often when 'civilians' are working together.

It is widely believed that the term dates back to the orders used when firing shipboard guns in the British Royal Navy. According to this story, the team of six gunners had numbered roles. Once loaded, it was the job of the men numbered two and six to hoist the cannon (co-ordinated) out of the gun port for firing, requiring a simple effort for light guns and one pulley per man for larger guns. However, there are a number of problems with this theory: Firstly, two men would not be enough to pull out a cannon that could weigh more than two and a half tonnes. Secondly, the numbers two and six would be on the same side of the gun (the even numbers on one side and the odd numbers on the other). Thirdly, the use of the begirff, because in the literature before the First World War, but especially before 1911, the term is not mentioned and certainly not in the nautical sense. The first nautical use of the term only dates back to 1968, before which it was often associated with prisoners and railway construction work in Asia.

In square-rigged sailing circles, the idea was expressed that it could be a shortening of the French "tout de suite", which is often anglicised colloquially to "toot sweet" and means "immediately". It has also been surmised that it was originally the French "toutes six houle" (all six heave), but what "six" means is unclear as there is no evidence that it was an order to a gun crew.

[daily-hyosatsu]

Something very unusual today! An apartment building name: 㐧五勝又ビル. I had never seen 㐧 before and assumed it was an obsolete variant of katakana オ, but it turns out to be a simplified way of writing 第! Which means that this apartment is called だいごかつまたびる, or Katsumata Building #5

㐧 is derived from the grass script version of 第. You can't type it in normally so I had to look up how to use Unicode for this post! You put your input into kanji mode, type 3427, and then hit F5 (or maybe Fn+F5), and blammo: 㐧. Try it! I'd never done that before.

第 is a prefix for ordinal numbers. It's usually read ダイ, rarely デイ, and it has no kun-yomi. Its radicals are ⺮ bamboo and 弟 brother, with which it shares the reading ダイ.

五 means 5. It's read いつ, いつ.���, or ゴ.

勝 means victory/win, prevail, or excel. It's read か.つ, かつ, -が.ち, まさ.る, すぐ.れる, or ショウ.

又 means again, or/alternatively, furthermore, or on the other hand. It’s read また, また.の-, or ユウ.

Putting them together, 勝又 Katsumata is a reasonably common name: it belongs to about 23,700 people in the country. And ビル, of course, means building.

Finally, be careful not to confuse 第 with 代, a suffix for numbers which we covered the other day and which is also read ダイ.

[vexwerewolf]

Hello, it is I once again, here with a weird meme build. How would you go about building a hacker Swallowtail at LL6? Standard or Ranger, it doesn't matter which

As it happens, Hacktail isn't a meme build at all - due to the Swallowtail's expansive 20 Sensors and innate +1 tech attack, it's an extremely viable Support pick.

-- SSC Swallowtail @ LL6 -- [ LICENSES ] SSC Swallowtail 2, SSC Dusk Wing 1, HORUS Goblin 1, HORUS Minotaur 2 [ CORE BONUSES ] The Lesson of the Held Image, Full Subjectivity Sync [ TALENTS ] Hacker 3, Spotter 2, Skirmisher 2, Field Analyst 1, Nuclear Cavalier 1 [ STATS ] HULL:2 AGI:2 SYS:2 ENGI:2 STRUCTURE:4 HP:15 ARMOR:0 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:6 REPAIR:6 TECH ATK:+3 LIMITED:+1 SPD:7 EVA:14 EDEF:12 SENSE:20 SAVE:13 [ WEAPONS ] FLEX MOUNT: Assault Rifle AUX/AUX MOUNT: Nexus (Light) / Nexus (Light) [ SYSTEMS ] H0R_OS System Upgrade I, Neurospike, Metafold Carver, Personalizations, Lotus Projector, Manipulators

I call this one Hacking The Omninet.

Firstly, let's discuss the basics. This build is fragile, as all systems-first Swallowtail builds are going to be. This mech needs heavy co-ordination with your team to focus down threats. Employ cover rigorously, stay behind the lines and make liberal use of the Invisibility from Integrated Cloak. Low survivability is the price you pay for being able to turn an enemy comp inside out.

Your armament is not going to be used very much, and so is very simple - an Assault Rifle for Reliable damage, and dual Light Nexi for enemies with high Evasion. Oracle LMG-Is consume 1 SP a pop and we're not going to sacrifice system space for guns we might never fire.

We have Personalizations on there for a tiny bit of extra HP, and Manipulators for one simple reason: sacrificial system. We don't want to lose our hacking systems, and so if we take Structure damage and lose a system, we dump the robo-hands.

With all that out of the way, let's get to the meat and potatoes of this build: the hacking tools.

We start with H0R_OS System Upgrade I, possibly the best control tool in the game, definitely the best hacking tool in the game. Puppet System lets you reposition enemies in a straight line equal to their Speed any number of times, and unlike every other form of involuntary movement in the game, it triggers reactions, meaning you can open enemies up to Overwatch attacks from your allies. Meanwhile, Eject Power Cores inflicts Jammed, shutting down an enemy's weapons and tech attacks. It isn't repeatable on the same enemy, but this often doesn't matter - shutting down a heavy hitter's weapons for a single turn often buys enough time for your team to kill them outright.

Moving on to Neurospike, a much slept-on Invade system from the Dusk Wing. We're mostly in this for Shrike Code, which is a very powerful control tool in Lancer's mid-to-late game. At Tiers 2 and 3, a lot of enemy NPC classes get multiattacks, allowing them to use their weapon twice or even thrice every time they attack with it (including during Overwatch). But Shrike Code applies 2 heat per attack, not per action, meaning that a multiattacker who attacks twice will accrue 4 heat in addition to the (at least) 2 heat you put on them with Invade, which can put them close to or at their heat cap. Neurospike also provides the more situational but still useful Mirage, which allows you to make a member of your team (including you) Invisible to a member of the enemy team.

The third and final Invade suite, Metafold Carver, is the weirdest and most difficult to use correctly, but once you master it, it becomes one of the most effective support tools in the game. The biggest trick here is that the primary targets for both of its options are not your enemies - they're your allies. Your allies can choose to accept an Invade from you without taking heat and without it counting as an attack. Once you understand this, your third eye will open and the absurd power of Metafold Carver will be unlocked.

Ophidian Trek allows you to teleport your target a minimum of 2 and a maximum of seven spaces directly towards you. This is impossibly useful for yanking your allies out of melee combat or dangerous terrain, or summoning help if you're getting flanked. You generally don't want to use this on enemies who are already close to you, but pulling hostile backliners towards your team's melee specialist is exceptionally cool and funny.

Fold Space completely removes its target from the battlefield until they start their next turn. The problem with using this on enemies is that they can decide when their turn starts, and if they have an activation remaining, it will often be "immediately after your turn ends," wasting this power - although if they've already taken their turn, you can use it to ruin enemies that rely on reactions to be useful, such as the Sentinel or Archer.

The primary utility of Fold Space, however, is that it's without a doubt the most powerful ally-focused Invade in the game. This ability can quite literally be a lifesaver. Ally went too hard on their reactor and became Exposed? Fold Space. Ally took a bad structure roll and became Stunned? Fold Space. Ally being swarmed by melee NPCs? Fold Space. Ally messing up the shot of your team's artillery? Fold Space. Ally talking too much? Fold Space. You make them completely invulnerable at the "cost" of removing them from the battlefield, which they only even care about if they're a reaction-focused build, and they decide how long they want to stay on vacation, because they can return to the battlefield at any time by starting their turn.

In terms of other support abilities, we have a beautiful SSC/HORUS combo: at the start of an ally's turn, you can Lock On to an enemy as a reaction with Lesson of the Held Image and use your Prophetic Scanners frame trait to inflict Shredded as well. This lets you strip all damage reduction off an enemy just before your ally winds up to hit them, with no chance to react or clear it.

You also have Lotus Projector to help your allies deal with Invisible enemies - standard Swallowtail stuff.

As for talents, we have Hacker to give you even more Invade options (mostly Hack./Slash for shutting down enemy tech attackers) and help with heatgunning (Nuclear Cavalier 1 is in there too, just for kicks), Spotter to provide aim assist and hand out free Lock Ons and Field Analyst to help avoid "missed it by that much" situations.

As previously stated, this is a heavily team-focused build. You are a Support/Controller to the maximum here. Expect to go entire fights without doing a single point of damage. Coordinate heavily with your team to focus targets down and ensure that you stay safe while lighting targets up for them.

[thefeastandthefast]

After watching 29 episodes but having accidentally spoiled myself about what comes next, it makes me emotional thinking about Ruyi's names.

She started as 壬辛, two characters used as part of an ancient numbering system, characters used for the counting of days and hours. 壬 has no meaning other than to signify the ordinal ninth. 辛 is the ordinal eighth, with the additional meaning of hard labor, suffering, bitterness. 壬辛 - no surname, not a name for a person, but for an instrument of death.

Then, when Ruyi earned the right to rename herself after becoming Left Emissary, she chose to add the radical 人 (meaning human) to 壬, to become 任 (an actual surname and also a character meaning to shoulder, to take responsibility for, a duty).

Left Emissary 任辛 - One who shoulders the responsibility of bitterness

Then, 任辛 burns and rises anew as 如意 Ruyi, two characters meaning to be gratified as one wishes. It was the blessing spoken by both the Empress and Ning Yuanzhou, the two people she most loves. And in her dream state in episode 26 as she meditates on the crossroads of her vengeance, she hears her Empress call her 如意 Ruyi for the first time.

任如意 - One who has the duty to be happy, as she wishes.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Concordia students set to strike to protest against tuition hike: 'We're not going to sit back'

At least 6,000 students plan to walk out on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday — and more strikes could follow.

Thousands of Concordia students are set to strike for three days this week, saying they’re worried a 33 per cent tuition hike for out-of-province students will reduce accessibility and further damage the university’s shaky finances.

The strike — from Wednesday, Jan. 31 through Friday, Feb. 2 — will only affect programs whose students have voted to strike.

As of last Friday, groups representing about 6,000 students had opted to take part.

That number could rise to almost 11,000 as more votes are taken, said Angelica Antonakopoulos, academic co-ordinator for the Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA).

That means almost one-quarter of Concordia’s 46,000 students could be out of class. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[janmisali]

Number Tournament: OMEGA vs NEGATIVE ONE

[link to all polls]

omega

seed: 64 (6 nominations)

previous opponent: seven

class: infinite ordinal

definition: the first number that goes after all the natural numbers

-1 (negative one)

seed: 33 (15 nominations)

previous opponent: twenty-three

class: negative unit

definition: the first number that goes before all the natural numbers. I mean assuming that you're counting zero as a natural number, which it isn't always. and also ignoring all the non-integers. whatever these two have a duality thing going on you get the idea

[youareprobablywrong]

Is the Gaza Ministry of Health Lying about Casualty Data?

No. There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Arguably, the real time reporting on the ground would indicate that the data is likely very accurate, if not still underreported. The MoH (Ministry of Health) has been verified in previous conflicts has having been accurately reported. This verification has been done by independent parties, but most specifically Israel and the United States.

What would be some red flags for faked data?

Some noticeable trends would be:

Absence of statistical outliers

Near uniformity in reporting

Increases/decreases that do not make sense given contexts

First and second order digit comparisons

Why would MoH or anyone lie about casualty data?

Those who have attempted to cast doubt on Gaza's reporting have done so to delegitimize their entire system. They allege that Gaza's Ministry of Health has in their best interest (for the sake of propaganda and to sway the world) to fabricate through casualty reporting the severity of the destruction so as to paint Israel as the aggressor.

While the motive is surely true, the data at present does not support the idea that this is what the MoH is doing.

What is true is that the quality of data being reported has decreased over time. This is in part driven by the near total collapse of the health system in Gaza. It is the health system (actual doctors and nurses) that is responsible for reporting deaths. Their method for reporting is consistent with other countries (like Israel, United States, EU, etc.) in which they have a name, and a personal identification number (Palestine's version of a social security number). This information is verifiable.

There is also satellite imagery that validates the level of physical destruction. This objective means of assessing the spread of damage would, for reasonable people, give the impression that there would be significant numbers of dead and injured.

As of today, that number stands at more than 110,000 casualties (34,000+ dead and 76,900+ injured).

The facts are that the average daily number of people killed and injured has decreased significantly over time. This is while also seeing a higher ratio of killed over injured which suggests that the IDF is using better intelligence and better ordinance to strike legitimate targets. To be fair, two months of carpet bombing that occurred from the outset has left the IDF with no other choice as doing this also diminished Israel's capacity to perpetually monitor every single person within the Gaza Strip.

So, if you hear someone alleging that the Gaza Ministry of Health is fabricating their casualty numbers, kindly tell that person to fuck off. This is simply a rhetorical device that is meant to divest the people of Gaza of any legitimacy, indeed their humanity.

If, as the news has been reporting for several weeks now, Israel executes a ground assault into Rafah, we should expect to see casualty numbers increase with significant spikes, followed by precipitous decreases.

[spanishskulduggery]

Adjective Placement in Spanish Overview

With regards to adjective placement, I know I linked that bigger post I made about what the placement of adjectives generally mean but I'll give a very brief overview and if anyone has any specific questions please let me know.

IN GENERAL for like 70-ish percent of the time, adjectives go behind the noun in Spanish. These are your basic everyday adjectives that just describe nouns; el gato negro "the black cat", la mujer alta "the tall woman", los datos importantes "the important data", las tormentas peligrosas "the dangerous storms"

And again, IN GENERAL, if an adjective precedes the noun it is as if you bolded or italicized the adjective. It makes the adjective really stand out because of how out of the ordinary it is. It's very commonly used in poetry, writing, or for hyperbole:

La cruel realidad = The cruel reality La fea verdad = The ugly truth Mis sinceras disculpas = My sincere apologies Mi más sentido pésame = My most heartfelt condolences/regrets

If you were looking at it more poetically you could think of "blue sky"... el cielo azul "the blue sky" is everyday Spanish, very typical. Saying el azul cielo "the blue sky" draws the eye to azul making it seem like "blue" is the most important or noteworthy thing about it

You typically see this kind of construction in everyday Spanish with expressions of gratitude, grief, horror, deep love, or any very strong emotions or when you're trying to make an impact

(More below)

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Note: This will impact certain aspects of grammar, such as the nouns that are actually feminine but take a general masculine article such as el agua, el arma, el hada, el hambre, el águila etc.

As an example:

El hada madrina = Fairy Godmother La buena hada = The good fairy

To further explain this rule - el hada is written with a masculine article. This is because it has its vocal stress on the first syllable and begins with A- or HA- [where H is silent]; and treating it as feminine would cause the sounds to run together, so the el adds a kind of phonetic break to preserve the sound; but in plural it will be las hadas "fairies/fey"

A word like this would still retain its normal functions as a feminine word, thus el agua bendita "holy water", el águila calva "bald eagle", el ave rapaz "bird of prey", and then in this case el hada madrina "fairy godmother"

By adding a separate word in front, you interrupt that la + A/HA construction and create a hiatus in the sounds already... so you can then treat it like a normal feminine noun, la buena hada "the good fairy"

You might also see this with grande "big" and its other form gran "great/large", el águila grande "the big eagle" vs. la gran águila "the great eagle"

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Moving aside from the normal grammar, we now enter the exceptions. First - determiners.

There are a handful of adjectives that are known as determiners which come before the noun and they provide an important function in communicating things like number, possession, and location

The most common determiners include:

Definite articles [el, la, los, las]

Indefinite articles [un, una, unos, unas]

Possessives [mi, tu, su, nuestro/a, vuestro/a]

Demonstratives [este/esta, ese/esa/, aquel/aquella]

Interrogatives [qué, cuál/cuáles, cuánto/a] (Also work as exclamatory determiners which just means ¡! instead of ¿?)

Cardinal numbers [uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco etc]

Ordinal numbers [primer/primera, segundo/a, tercer/tercera, cuarto/a, quinto/a, etc]

There are also a few determiners of quantity such as mucho/a "a lot/many/much", todo/a "all/every", cada "each", vario/a "various/many", poco/a "few/less", tal "such", tan "so much" / tanto/a "so many", algún/alguna and ningún/ninguna etc.

And it will generally apply to más and menos "more" and "less", and sometimes mejor/peor "better/worse"

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Note: With possessives is that there are two forms depending on adjective placement:

mi amigo/a = my friend mis amigos / amigas = my friends un amigo mío = a friend of mine una amiga mía = a friend of mine [f] unos amigos míos = a few friends of mine unas amigas mías = a few friends [f] of mine

All the pronouns have their own version of this possessive pattern

mi(s) and mío/a, tu(s) and tuyo/a, su(s) and suyo/a, and then nuestro/a and vuestro/a are the same but the adjective placement is different

As an example - nuestro país "our country" vs. el país nuestro "the country of ours", or nuestros familiares "our family members" vs. unos familiares nuestros "some family members of ours"

A common religious example - Nuestra Señora "Our Lady" and then el padrenuestro "the Our Father prayer"

The possessives that come after the noun are usually translated as "of mine/yours/his/hers/ours" etc.

You can also see a few determiners/adjectives in different places in a phrase like - un viejo amigo mío "an old friend of mine" vs. mi viejo amigo "my old friend"

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As mentioned in the very beginning there are a handful of exceptions

Most notably:

viejo/a = old / elderly

antiguo/a = ancient, old / antique, old

mismo/a = same / self

gran = great, grand grande = large

And includes propio/a "own / appropriate", as well as bueno/a "good" or malo/a "bad". I discussed a lot of these in more depth in the previous posts and in the one linked above

In many cases the exact meaning is different, even if it's slight - such as el hotel grande "the big hotel" vs. el Gran Hotel "the Grand Hotel"

bueno/a and malo/a are generally either "good" and "kind", or "bad" and "unkind", though the meanings can kind of blur together... as something like la buena hada "the good fairy" isn't so far off from el hada buena "the nice fairy"

When places before though bueno/a turns to buen + masculine, and malo/a turns to mal + masculine

As an example - un buen augurio "good omen", un mal presagio "a bad omen/portent"

.....but in feminine it looks like you'd expect: buena suerte "good luck" vs. mala suerte

Similarly, and one I didn't include the first time is cualquier/cualquiera

cualquier persona = any person una persona cualquiera = an ordinary person

cualquier in front - regardless of gender - means "any", literally "whichever"

cualquiera in back comes out as "ordinary" or colloquially "any old" [such as un beso cualquiera "an ordinary kiss" / "any old kiss"], or in the case of people it could be like "a person of dubious/unknown background" sort of like "they could be anyone"...

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And then you run into what I would consider "collocations" which is another word for a set noun or expression

There are some words/expressions that have the adjective in a specific place and you can't really change it or it sounds weird, so you sort of have to learn them as specific units to remember:

las bellas artes = fine arts [lit. "beautiful arts"]

(de) mala muerte = "backwater", "poor / middle of nowhere", a place of ill repute or somewhere very remote or inconsequential [lit. "of a bad death"]

a corto plazo = short-term

a largo plazo = long-term

(en) alta mar = (on) the high seas

alta calidad = high quality

baja calidad = low quality

Blancanieves = Snow White (the character/fairlytale)

la mala hierba, las malas hierbas = weeds [lit. "bad grasses"; plants that grow without you wanting them to or that grow in bad places etc]

los bajos fondos = criminal underworld [lit. "the low depths"]

el más allá = "the great beyond", "the afterlife" [lit. "the more over there/beyond"]

buen/mal augurio = good/bad omen buen/mal presagio = good/bad omen

buena/mala suerte = good/bad luck

...Also includes all the greetings like buen día / buenos días or buenas noches etc. they're all considered set phrases

There are also many collocations that use adjectives in their normal place that also can't be separated such as los frutos secos "nuts", or el vino tinto/banco "red/white wine" etc.

A collocation just means that they are treating multiple words as set phrases or a singular unit

And again, some history/geographical terms will have these as well:

la Gran Muralla China = Great Wall of China

la Primera Guerra Mundial = First World War

la Segunda Guerra Mundial = Second World War

el Sacro Imperio Romano = Holy Roman Empire

la Antigua Grecia = Ancient Greece

el Antiguo Egipto = Ancient Egypt (el) Alto Egipto = Upper Egypt (el) Bajo Egipto = Lower Egypt

Nueva York = New York

Nueva Zelanda = New Zealand

Nuevo México = New Mexico

Nueva Escocia = Nova Scotia [lit. "New Scotland"]

la Gran Manzana = the Big Apple [aka "New York"]

Buenos Aires

There are many such terms