#technical degree

[ivygorgon]

I use Ground News to help me research biases in the news.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

hero/villain showdown but one of them has a spontaneous medical emergency and the battle gets put on hold while their archnemesis drives them to Urgent Care

[foldingfittedsheets]

I was talking to a coworker recently and offhandedly said I wasn’t exactly competent at a lot of things. He reared back in obvious visceral disagreement that made me stop midsentence.

“What do you mean you’re not competent?”

“I guess I mean compared to the people I’m surrounded by? I’m not very handy, I guess.”

He looked baffled.

I tried to illuminate with a story. So at the sex shop we needed to vacuum every night, right? But one time after my days off I could tell the carpets hadn’t been vacuumed since I last saw them. I asked the other girls why not. It turned out that the screw that held the handle on the vacuum had been stripped and it wouldn’t stay in. Why was that down to a single screw? Bad design.

So any attempt to vacuum meant the handle just popped off when the screw jumped ship. I looked over the vacuum. I found a junk drawer. I found the biggest screw I could that still fit in the hole wrapped it in tape to bulk it out. Then I shoved/screwed it in place. Then I duct taped the opening so that fucker couldn’t pop out. Voila, a working handle.

The other girls were utterly delighted that I’d fixed the vacuum but I was painfully aware that my solution was neither elegant nor long term.

My coworker listened. Finally he said, “I think being competent just means you have the ability to learn a skill you lack, and you can do that. Your solution worked, and you were the one that tried to fix the problem.”

I digested that and agreed, but admitted any new skill learned would prompt me to be a huge baby about it.

[velvetwyrme]

Surprise ;)!!

I decided to schedule this post randomly as well, so whenever it posts will be a surprise to me too! (Written May 9th 2023)

[aroaceleovaldez]

the dynamic of demigods thinking which other demigod is the most powerful is always amusing to me because. like, we know the big 3 kids are all the most powerful. That's just a fact of their universe. And then we know nearly every character views Percy as the strongest demigod, and most people are very rightfully intimidated by him.

and you look at the powers of the Big 3 kids and there's Percy, but then you realize Nico is just kind of objectively more powerful than him but simply chooses to hang out in Percy's shadow like he's Percy's scary dog privileges. Like, the two of them are pretty equally capable of causing multiple different apocalypses. Nico just also has like four different instakill powers and it's not like he doesn't use them. He very much uses them! Not infrequently, even! And they don't seem to take a significant amount of energy from him! And other demigods are pretty intimidated by both of them! But Nico makes a conscious point to keep his cards close to his chest and not let on exactly how dangerous and scary he can be if he wants to. People are already scared enough of him without knowing anything about him and he doesn't like that. Percy doesn't think about that nearly as much, and so usually just goes in guns blazing and that's part of why he's considered a wildcard. And then Nico himself puts Percy on a pedestal, so those who do know more about Nico's abilities then presume Nico knows something they don't about Percy that implies Percy is even stronger than him.

And even on a meta level Nico's narrative role requires him to be functionally more powerful than Percy, because he very often serves the purpose of getting Percy out of situations he can't handle on his own. That's just part of his function as a character! But also narratively he can't overshadow Percy so he just takes a backseat of his own accord and that's very amusing to me.

[angryducktimemachine]

I don't really draw/post allo Holmes a lot but I'll do it if it's funny.

[ID: a digital drawing of Sherlock Holmes, sitting on the edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and hands together, a blush on his face. There are three thought bubbles over him with either Watson laughing or a close up of Watsons arms and hands. /End ID]

[xiaq]

I work in technical sales.

Last week, one of our execs used ChatGPT to create a business value assessment for a prospect (basically, why should this prospective customer choose our tech for their business needs). The data was good—but the language was impersonal, mechanical, and didn’t include the kind of terminology that would resonate with these business folks. The exec’s boss noted these concerns while we were reviewing our two part preso+demo plan (I’m the demo-er) and said “hey, Erica is a writer, get her to look it over and get it adjusted to be more relatable.”

It was quick work for us to retool the language. The director was pleased with the new version, and the presentation was incredibly well-received by the customer. They even asked to get a copy of the BVA to share internally. We’re now in contract negotiations with that prospect.

Our director spent ten minutes reviewing that document on our team meeting this afternoon emphasizing the importance of writing and editing skills and warning the team not to rely entirely on AI because it doesn’t understand customers the same way a human can.

Writing skills are important. Editing skills are important. If you are young, please hear me when I tell you that putting in the work to develop solid communication skills will benefit you in nearly ANY career path.

[akaikali]

I know everyone says Needles is the Michael of TMAGP but I'm gonna be totally honest, I think Needles is MUCH more like Nikola than Michael.

Someone should draw Michael being cool and mysterious and then there's his weird cousins Nikola and Needles just being. themselves in the background

Additional note: i do actually have a fear of needles which probably makes this post all the funnier

[l0verseyes]

cringe is dead so heres my gf self-insert

[e-rated-beardo]

Oh guys, oh guys oh guys ohguysohguys

I found out a thing yesterday that's making me so very very very excited

And just in case you're the type who'd get excited too and like me two days ago you also don't know this important fact:

The Organization for @transformativeworks (OTW; the parent org of AO3) publishes a peer-reviewed academic journal, completely open-access, i.e. free for you to read

Cancel all my appointments forever this is where I'm going to be for the foreseeable lifetime gfasdafdhfgadgd

This post brought to you by "beardo needs to write a literature review about a certain number of a certain type of peer-reviewed paper, on otherwise whatever topics he likes, vaguely contained inside the concept of of 'library or information services', and yesterday he Found His Topic"

I'm so happy everyone, I'm going to write so many academic papers about fanfiction my lecturers are going to get sick of me 🥹🤩

I am Aziraphale rn

Relatedly, I've also just learnt that Dr Lyn Robinson, co-author of a book that's mandatory reading for like 80% of the courses in the academic programme I'm enrolled in, has published research about AO3. Not only does she seem to be into the same sort of information science stuff that I am, she's also researched fanfiction. She's my new idol

[macking-cheese]

It would appear that the day of Valentine is upon us and for my contribution I'm posting this before I can overthink it again and leave it to continue to rot in my folder

Woe, Swinbee lunch date be upon ye! Don't ask how Swindle managed to set this up because idk either bro. He just like that

Based on this picture lol

Happy valentine's day everyone! I'll just be here suffering with my hyperfixations as per usual

[xxbrightshadowxx]

Don’t get me wrong, I like Timebomb but Ekko got pushed to just being Jinx’s love interest in season 2. It’s not as bad as other cases I’ve seen of this, *cough* invincible *cough* but it’s still there. Ekko is in about three episodes out of the nine and the episode that is suppose to be his is more timebomb focus. The show forgets everything else he has going on. The firelights are shoved to the side which sucks because they had a lot of narrative potential.

[cannibalcloset]

Kylar: stalking, panty stealing, masturbating on top of PC, sniffing bedsheets, maybe murder

Me: light work no reaction

Kylar: *chews meat and tries to spit in my mouth*

Me: EURGH BROTHER EURGHHH

I drew more I'm a liar lmao

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I'm going to explain my kind of boring marine biology research to you while forgetting to not use jargon and get really sad if you don't seem interested

[electrozeistyking]

Fun fact about In Rot and Infection: Loop has no idea there’s a mystery sickness going around until after Siffrin loops back from it for the first time. Needless to say they are quite baffled. A little surprised, even.

On the plus side, Loop is definitely immune to it! On account of being a nonbinary star person, of course! So that’s one thing they’ve got going for them.

(Hurray, name reveal for the sickness in IRAI!! It’s called “pourrir disease” because I like how it looks, not because it’s an actual disease. It can also referred to as “pourrir” for short. :3)

[boyromeo]

Swordsmanship