#or about specific problems/concepts

[excludedmiddle]

hey congrats on reaching CM (? wanted to find the post where you mention that to confirm but tumblr search misbehaves). was curious as to how many problems you've solved on cf? I primarily picked it up cause ik it helped friends with interview stuff but I'm 2 months in stuck at ~1200 so wondering if I should be doing things differently. on one hand most problems <1400 are greedy or math so I worry an actual interview will be more "algorithmic" and I'll be unprepared (maybe leetcode is better in this regard?). on the other hand it's soo much easier to fantasise about being good at cp than actually practicing. so. anyway wondering if you had any advice on this? CM in one year does not sound like the journey of your average cf-er. congrats again. cheers!

Thank you!

(full disclosure: I've kind of fallen off with competitive programming - I haven't competed on codechef since January and codeforces/leetcode since April)

My solving totals, ratings, and number of contests are:

Leetcode: 824 problems, 2571 rating, 41 contests

Codeforces: 69 problems, 2000 rating, 14 contests

Codechef: 32 problems, 2046 rating, 4 contests

If you're looking for interview prep I would skip codeforces. Leetcode problems are closer to what you'll get in interviews, and their contests are much less of a time commitment. I also code in Rust on CF/CC and Python on Leetcode, and I much prefer to take interviews in Python.

If you snoop around a bit on reddit and the leetcode forums, you can often find lists of problems people have seen at a specific company's interviews to get a flavor of what you're up against. I really recommend this - the problem I struggled with the most in getting my current job was on one such list for my company and I wish I'd gone through the list. This was before I got really good, though.

I think my rapid growth was fueled by three things:

I did math competitions all the way through college that have a similar skillset

My college classes taught a lot of competitive programming concepts (I learned what a SegTree was in class!)

I had a period of 5 months between graduating and starting my job where I was unemployed and highly motivated, and I did a ton of grinding during that period. Most of my leetcode solves are from that time

If you're looking to improve but don't have a ton of time to burn, here's the regimen I recommended to another asker:

[lazylittledragon]

Not trying to be rude or anything but you shouldn't use the word 'manic' or 'manic period' etc. unless you actually have manic/depressive episodes because it downplays how severe those disorders can actually be. They're just words but unlearning harmful terminology like that can help destigmatise mental illness and I would hope youi would want to do that.

yeah it's almost like i used those words specifically because i DO understand how severe they are

[nabaath-areng]

I have way too many alts that I keep to myself (which is why I generally refrain from posting them), but I'm going to ignore that habit for a moment just because I'm feeling particularly insane about this guy.

[bonefall]

are amphibians like newts and frogs considered aquatic? i know crustaceans & mollusks would be

Yes they are! Generally, the more time it spends on land, the closer it will be to 5 calories than 4. The estimate was actually based on frogs and tadpoles, I had to make an educated guess.

My best source was a feeding chart from a reptile food website which sells whole small prey for consumption by snakes. It perfectly lists out the values of dozens of small animals, but no fish. So I took a note of the 4 calorie estimate, observed that an adult frog increases in calories compared to tadpoles (bucking the trend with the others on the list where younger animals are worth more caloric value) and went on to do more research

I couldn't find a source that broke down WHOLE prey caloric value like the chart, so I ended up comparing caloric value between rabbit fillets, chicken fillets, and fish fillets on human-centric nutrition websites. My hypothesis was mostly consistent, even with more species added. Fish (perch, flounder, pike) < Wild Mammal (rabbit, squirrel) < Poultry (chicken, turkey, quail). There was overlap between "classes", certain fish getting over the 100 hump, but generally there was a trend I boiled down into 4/5/6

This is consistent with how a lot of fish meat is actually water. In fact, cats quench a lot of their thirst from the food they eat. I also learned some very interesting stuff about the fat distribution in fish which is going to blow a bit of a hole in some of my Clan culture stuff lmaoooo, but I'll furiously swim across that obliterated bridge when I get there

But funfact! Fish oil is rendered fish fats and it is the form that unsaturated fat takes, whereas lard is what saturated fats become. I need to do more research into this topic to understand what kind of difference it would make in a wild cat's diet.

There was one big bucked trend though: salmonid meat was WAAAAY higher in fat and calories. Like, absurdly high. Like 150 cal trout fillet vs 110 cal of rabbit fillet vs 88 cal of perch fillet.

I do not know why that is. My guess is that maybe it's because they were taking the number from farmed salmonids? Maybe it's because they're particularly fatty fish? Perhaps this is just the raw power of salmon slammin'.

Anyway, at one point I was trying to estimate exact caloric value per popular prey species, but decided I didn't have the "backing" to get so exact with the numbers since I was doing estimates with the fish. I'll do the work if it comes down to it, but for now, 4/5/6 is a quick, easy guideline you can use for just about any WC project.

[sojourner-between-worlds]

.

[porcelainvino]

rereading the same fanfictions over and over again because i don’t believe in Change

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[miodiodavinci]

i saw that you used to hint at oc stuff on twitter (don't ask me why im digging im looking for zola stuff lmao) why don't you post more about them?

i am simply terrified that if i post oc things online someone will steal the concept and run with it faster and better than i ever could have and then i will be devastated forever and ever

more seriously i have very little to show for any of my oc things (adhd brain making life difficult as per usual awawawawawa) and every time i've shared oc things in the past i've ended up never following up on it and it makes me feel bad and guilty so i've just convinced myself i will Never talk about my ocs until i have something substantial i can put out there

[princeof-flowers]

Emmrich in my Lust Demon Abomination AU: No matter how much sex I have, no matter with how many people, it never seems enough. 😞

Hyun-woo, my OC for this AU: It's because the Qi and Jing aren't balanced right.

Emmrich, Nevarran (white) man: The what now

Hyun-woo: 😮‍💨

[kil9]

everypony hates me for my complete and utter disrespect of authority

[yavieriel]

Really, really wish people would stop blaming "capitalism and hyper individualism" for anything and everything, when there is absolute reams of evidence that the problems in question have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism and hyper individualism.

Humans have been shit at processing our emotions since always. This isn't new! It's not about capitalism! Lots of mammals have similar emotional issues, they have simpler emotions but even less capacity to process them. Anyone who works closely with animals knows that they form emotional responses of all kinds, trauma responses, and anxieties, and part of being a responsible caretaker is to prevent the creation of negative emotions in the first place whenever possible. And when it's not possible, we help the animals work through negative emotional responses because it's not something they can generally do on their own.

It's also not about individualism! If anything, more collective identities tend to encourage subordination of personal feelings to group cohesion to the detriment of the individual. Sometimes group emotional processing can be helpful, but in more collectivist societies, you don't get to pick the group you're processing with. This frequently forces the individual to fit into a narrative that doesn't align with their own emotions. Grieving a parent is a classic - we still find something like "I'm glad my mom died" to be a shocking and provocative statement, because it disrupts conventional narratives about the family, but at least it can be said!

This stuff isn't about "capitalism and hyper individualism", and if anything, capitalism and hyper individualism have facilitated the whole field of psychology and therapy and self-actualization.

There are lots of things that capitalism is at fault for, I'm not defending capitalism as an unmitigated good. But misidentifying the root causes of problems is not helpful to actually solving those problems.

[maxinemartinsdrill]

in the interests of making tzniut fun and not annoying I might get really into 1920s fashion.

[word-problem-posting]

Love the word problems. I wasn't taught math properly so I'm using your blog to practice. I don't know how to do some of the word problems, would you consider like, putting keywords or something at the bottom at the bottom so I can look up relevant tutorials? Like calculating average amount of money gained from the 99% vs 1% button pressing word problem, I don't know how to do that and I don't even know what to look up to learn how to.

Thank you.

I think this was sent a while ago; sorry I didn't see it. But honestly the arithmetic algebra and calculus trinary probably isn't the best organizational structure?

Going forwards, I'll try to be more specific about what exactly each word problem is about.

[moe-broey]

I am in the infinite abyss

[raioken]

IN REGARDS : THE ONMITSUKIDŌ. if the thirteen court guard companies operate openly, the secret remote squad patrols and conducts surveillance in enemy territory and carries out top-secret operations, such as assassinations and the execution of shinigami who have broken the law.

often referred to as the special operations corps or secret remote squad, the onmitsukidō is one of the three primary branches of the soul society’s military system ( alongside the gotei 13 and the kidō corps. ), the second largest force that shinigami can be assigned to following their graduation from the shin’ō academy, and is tasked with performing a wide variety of covert operations vital to the keeping of peace within the soul society, smoking out conspiracies and tending to dangerous personnel as needed, as well as gathering information from both within and outside of the seireitei.

CLASSIFIED. many of the operations and duties carried out by members of the onmitsukidō are unknown to the gotei 13 and kidō corps, with even captains having only a vague understanding of the tasks given to its members and the overall scope of their dealings within the seireitei and soul society at large. although the captain-commander is often advised on situations that would be better handled by the gotei 13, as well as receiving general information pertaining to the gotei 13 and its members.

members of the onmitsukidō are masters of various hakuda and hohō techniques, trained to be able to combat the various abilities of zanpakutō and kidō spells that they may be deployed against in their duties ; members often forgo the use of a zanpakutō themselves in favor of an exclusively hakuda-based combat style, however they are trained in swordsmanship all the same and retain their zanpakutō despite not carrying it as a primary weapon in the majority of cases.

* FIVE BRANCHES OF THE ONMITSUKIDŌ.

while the onmmitsukidō is headed by the supreme commander at the top of command, who oversees the other branches on a wide level, as well as personally commands the punishment force in daily operations, each of the other four branches under the onmitsukidō is led by its own corps commander, who sees to the branch’s daily operations, but ultimately reports to the supreme commander.

in circumstances where the supreme commander also serves as captain of a company within the gotei 13, corps leaders are also given seated ranked beneath the commander, in accordance with their rank in their branch, however other members of the onmitsukidō are not necessarily also given ranks within the gotei 13 as a default and operations at large remain separate from their duties as shinigami of the gotei 13. the shihōin clan has headed the onmitsukidō for generations, since the corps creation, and as such the position of the supreme commander is considered to be something of an unofficial birth right within the clan, with the heir often being trained from a young age to take up the position. additionally, the lower-ranking fēng clan has served alongside the shihōin clan for generations and its members are typically found within the ranks of the onmitsukidō.

broken into five branches that make up the whole of the force, each branch of the onmitsukidō is given specialized responsibilities befitting the branch’s purpose within the force, with each branch ranked by level of importance and the corps commander of higher ranking branches holding more power than ones of lower-ranked branches, although all branches fall under command of the supreme commander at the end.

PUNISHMENT FORCE. led by the supreme commander, ranked captain when within the gotei 13. tasked largely with missions that require direct combat, including assassinations, the carrying out of punishment on shinigami that break the law, and acting as forward scouts for teams in the field in battles against hollows and other threats.

INTELLIGENCE FORCE. led by a corps commander, ranked assistant captain when within the gotei 13. tasked with the collection of information on enemy movements, both from within and outside of the seireitei, identifying conspiracies against the soul society and carrying out espionage missions in the rukongai and human world as needed during times of war. they are additionally tasked with aiding in the recapture of escaped prisoners.

CONTAINMENT FORCE. led by a corps commander, ranked 3rd seat when within the gotei 13. tasked with the imprisonment of shinigami and other personnel who have been deemed a threat to the soul society with their actions, but who have not committed any crime for which they could be officially charged. under urahara kisuke, some rehabilitation attempts for prisoners were made.

SURVEILLANCE FORCE. led by a corps commander, ranked 4th seat when within the gotei 13. tasked primarily with keeping watch over shinigami and other personnel that have officially left their posts, either temporarily or permanently, to keep an eye on their continued loyalty and watch for conspiracy among displaced individuals. typically disguised in other positions around the people they’re tasked with watching and therefore they possess a wide range of unrelated duties to maintain their ruse.

COMMUNIATIONS FORCE. led by a corps commander, ranked 5th seat when within the gotei 13. tasked with the swift passing along of important orders and information throughout the seireitei, primarily to and from captains, assistant captains, and seated officers. each company is assigned a small squad of communications force members to quickly aid in this task should they require it, with additional personnel deployed as needed.

* UNIFORMS.

the onmitsukidō is known primarily for the attire worn by the punishment force, in which members are dressed head-to-toe in all black with nearly no variation between members that may make them easy to identify, and the attire worn by the communications force, dressed in maroon and carrying packs containing a number of vital items they may require in their duty.

while the vast majority of members of the onmistukidō wear uniforms indistinguishable from each other, the supreme commander of the corps presently wears the keisen shōzoku uniform, special battle attire worn exclusively by the supreme commander of the onmitsukidō. it was designed to leave the back and shoulders exposed to minimize the waste of fabric in those areas upon activation of the shunkō ability that is the ultimate hakuda technique and the signature of the last two commanders of the corps. the keisen shōzoku is a relatively new uniform to the corps, having only been worn by its last two supreme commanders and first worn by former member shihōin yoruichi, roughly 110 years ago.

* NOTABLE MEMBERS.

PUNISHMENT FORCE. sui-fēng, supreme commander. formerly. shihōin yoruichi, supreme commander ( abandoned position. ).

INTELLIGENCE FORCE. ōmaeda marechiyo, corps commander. formerly. ōmaeda marenoshin, corps commander ( undefined leave ).

CONTAINMENT FORCE. tba. formerly. urahara kisuke, corps commander ( promoted. ).

SURVEILLANCE FORCE. tba.

COMMUNICATIONS FORCE. tba.

* ADDITIONAL NOTES.

while the onmitsukidō does have its own headquarters from which it can operate separately, when its connection to the gotei 13 is deepened through the supreme leader serving as a captain, primary operation shifts to the company quarters and offices to ease the burden on the leader and corps commanders. personnel not additionally assigned to positions within the company continue to live out of the original headquarters.

despite the shihōin clan’s long history of leading the corps, it is not a strict law that only a member of the shihōin clan can hold the position ; it’s merely much more difficult for an outsider of the clan to obtain the position, due to heirs' extensive training and the high level of powerful members that are produced from the clan.

whether led by a captain or not, the onmitsukidō will share important information with the gotei 13 as needed, acting as an intelligence force for and deferring to the captain-commander in general military matters.

the onmitsukidō exists directly beneath the central 46, only taking direct orders from the compound, when something requires their handling from outside connections. in joint operations with the gotei 13, however, squads from the onmitsukidō typically work under the gotei 13 officers for ease of command.

[asfdhgsdkjhgb]

i'll be glad that i made it out, and sorry that it all went down like it did // in the end it's better for me, that's the moral of the story. // know it's for the better, know it's for the better, know it's for the better, know it's for the better.

(motion sickness - phoebe bridgers, moral of the store - ashe, waiting room - phoebe bridgers)