#the postmortem solution

[haoqw]

DUDEEE YOUR ART IS SO COOL I LOVE YOUR THERMOMETER OC!!

wow thanks!!! I love Therman very much here’s some more art with him

[rebeccathenaturalist]

So, here's the thing: ranching in the United States was developed in part by exterminating any large animals that could pose a threat to cattle and other livestock, whether through predation or competition for food. That includes wolves, bears, cougars, bison, etc. While it's likely there was someone along the line who tried to coexist with these wild animals while raising livestock, the prevailing solution was to kill "nuisance" species, whether by shooting, trapping, or poisoning them en masse. These animals were wiped out from much of their native range in the lower 48 states by the early 20th century, and their more recent return represents a reckoning with the way we have used and abused the land since.

Now that we have more understanding of the ecological importance of every native species that exists in an ecosystem, there's no excuse to keep defaulting to killing wolves and other predators. Conservationists have offered ranchers a wide variety of solutions to protect their stock, from wolf-proof fences and hazing protocols to livestock guardian dogs. Ranchers can request financial compensation in many Western states for wolf-killed livestock and other losses, though not every rancher wants to differentiate between a cow killed by wolves, and one that died of other causes but was scavenged by wolves postmortem. And, unsurprisingly, some ranchers file fraudulent claims to game the system.

But there also remains the attitude that ranchers should be able to let their cattle run wherever they want on private or public land, and not have to monitor them or create adequate barriers against predators. The entitlement they feel to enormous areas of land, to include public lands that are supposed to be for everyone's use, has its roots in the assumption that "taming the land" for economic profit is more important than any other use. They want any potential threat to be preemptively removed for their convenience, no matter the ecological cost--or human cost, for that matter. Don't forget that every ranch in the West was once the homeland of indigenous people who were, more often than not, forcibly and violently removed so the ranchers' predecessors could move in with their livestock.

It's time for ranchers to accept that they're going to have to adjust to the return of native animals that have lived in these ecosystems for thousands of years. It is already beyond generous that states are willing to pay ranchers for lost cattle. They need to return the favor by working with conservationists to find solutions that reduce predation without just shooting the predatory species native to their region. Ranching as it stands today can only be achieved by the elimination of native animals from the land, but it's not the only way to successfully raise livestock in wild areas. It's time for new solutions that benefit both the cattle and the wildlife alike.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The housing emergency and the second Trump term

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveill ance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/#home-team-advantage

Postmortems and blame for the 2024 elections are thick on the ground, but amidst all those theories and pointed fingers, one explanation looms large and credible: the American housing emergency. If the system can't put a roof over your head, that system needs to go.

American housing has been in crisis for decades, of course, but it keeps getting worse…and worse…and worse. Americans pay more for worse housing than at any time in their history. Homelessness is at a peak that is soul-crushing to witness and maddening to experience. We turned housing – a human necessity second only to air, food and water – into an asset governed almost entirely by market forces, and so created a crisis that has consumed the nation.

The Trump administration has no plan to deal with housing. Or rather, they do have plans, but strictly of the "bad ideas only" variety. Trump wants to deport 11m undocumented immigrants, and their families, including citizens and Green Card holders (otherwise, that would be "family separation" and that's cruel). Even if you are the kind of monster who can set aside the ghoulishness of solving your housing problems by throwing someone in a concentration camp at gunpoint and then deporting them to a country where they legitimately fear for their lives, this still doesn't solve the housing emergency, and will leave America several million homes short.

Their other solution? Deregulation and tax cuts. We've seen this movie before, and it's an R-rated horror flick. Financial deregulation created the speculative mortgage markets that led to the 2008 housing crisis, which created a seemingly permanent incapacity to build new homes in America, as skilled tradespeople retired or changed careers and housebuilding firms left the market. Handing giant tax cuts to the monopolists who gobbled up the remains of these bankrupt small companies minted a dozen new housing billionaires who preside over companies that make more money than ever by building fewer homes:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91198443/housing-market-wall-streets-big-housing-market-bet-has-created-12-new-billionaires

This isn't working. Homelessness is ballooning. The only answer Trump and his regime have for our homeless neighbors is to just make it a crime to be homeless, sweeping up homeless encampments and busting homeless people for "loitering" (that is, existing in space). There is no universe in which this reduces homelessness. People who lose their homes aren't going to dig holes, crawl inside, and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. If anything, sweeps and arrests will make homelessness worse, by destroying the possessions, medication and stability that homeless people need if they are to become housed.

Today, The American Prospect published an excellent package on the housing emergency, looking at its causes and the road-tested solutions that can work even when the federal government is doing everything it can to make the problem worse:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-tackling-the-housing-crisis/

The Harris campaign ran on Biden's economic record, insisting that he had tamed inflation. It's true that the Biden admin took action against monopolists and greedflation, including criminal price-fixing companies like Realpage, which helps landlords coordinate illegal conspiracies to rig rents. Realpage sets the rents for the majority of homes in major metros, like Phoenix:

https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mayes-sues-realpage-and-residential-landlords-illegal-price-fixing

Of course, reducing inflation isn't the same as bringing prices down – it just means prices are going up more slowly. And sure, inflation is way down in many categories, but not in housing. In housing, inflation is accelerating:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-08/inflation-housing-shortage-economy-cpi-fed-interest-rate

The housing emergency makes everything else worse. Blue states are in danger of losing Congressional seats because people are leaving big cities: not because they want to, but because they literally can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. LGBTQ people fleeing fascist red state legislatures and their policies on trans and gay rights can't afford to move to the states where they will be allowed to simply live:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/business/economy/lgbtq-moving-cost.html

So what are the roots of this problem, and what can we do about it? The housing emergency doesn't have a unitary cause, but among the most important factors is fuckery that led to the Great Financial Crisis and the fuckery that followed on from it, as Ryan Cooper writes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-housing-industry-never-recovered-great-recession/

The Glass-Steagall Act was a 1933 banking regulation created to prevent Great Depression-style market crashes. It was killed in 1999 by Bill Clinton, who declared, "the Glass–Steagall law is no longer appropriate." Nine years later, the global economy melted down in a Great Depression-style market crash fueled by reckless speculation of the sort that Glass-Steagall had prohibited.

The crash of 2008 took down all kinds of industries, but none were so hard-hit as home-building (after all, mortgages were the raw material of the financial bubble that popped in 2008). After 2008, construction of new housing fell by 90% for the next two years. This protracted nuclear winter in the housing market killed many associated industries. Skilled tradespeople retrained, or "left the job market" (a euphemism for becoming disabled, homeless, or destroyed). Waves of bankruptcies swept through the construction industry. The construction workforce didn't recover to pre-crisis levels for 16 years (and of course, by then, there was a huge backlog of unbuilt homes, and a larger population seeking housing).

Meanwhile, the collapse of every part of the housing supply chain – from raw materials to producers – set the stage for monopoly rollups, with the biggest firms gobbling up all these distressed smaller firms. Thanks to this massive consolidation, homebuilders were able to build fewer houses and extract higher profits by gouging on price. They doubled down on this monopoly price-gouging during the pandemic supply shocks, raising prices well above the pandemic shortage costs.

The housing market is monopolized in ways that will be familiar to anyone angry about consolidation in other markets – from eyeglasses to pharma to tech. One builder, HR Horton, is the largest player in 3 of the country's largest markets, and it has tripled its profits since 2005 while building half as many houses. Modern homebuilders don't build: they use their scale to get land at knock-down rates, slow-walk the planning process, and then farm out the work to actual construction firms at rates that barely keep the lights on:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-the-land-stupid-how-the-homebuilder

Monopolists can increase profits by constraining supply. 60% of US markets are "highly concentrated" and the companies that dominate these markets are starving homebuilding in them to the tune of $106b/year:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3303984

There are some obvious fixes to this, but they are either unlikely under Trump (antitrust action to break up builders based on their share in each market) or impossible to imagine (closing tax loopholes that benefit large building firms). Likewise, we could create a "homes guarantee" that would act as an "automatic stabilizer." That would mean that any time the economy slips into recession, this would trigger automatic funding to pay firms to build public housing, thus stimulating the economy and alleviating the housing supply crisis:

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf

The Homes Guarantee is further explained in a separate article in the package by Sulma Arias from People's Action, who describes how grassroots activists fighting redlining planted the seeds of a legal guarantee of a home:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-why-we-need-homes-guarantee/

Arias describes the path to a right to a home as running through the mass provision of public housing – and what makes that so exciting is that public housing can be funded, administered and built by local or state governments, meaning this is a thing that can happen even in the face of a hostile or indifferent federal regime.

In Paul E Williams's story on FIMBY (finance in my back yard), the executive director of Center for Public Enterprise offers an inspirational story of how local governments can provide thousands of homes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Williams recounts the events of 2021 in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a county agency stepped in to loan money to a property developer who had land, zoning approval and work crews to build a major new housing block, but couldn't find finance. Montgomery County's Housing Opportunities Commission made a short-term loan at market rates to the developer.

By 2023, the building was up and the loan had been repaid. All 268 units are occupied and a third are rented at rates tailored to low-income tenants. The HOC is the permanent owner of those homes. It worked so well that Montgomery's HOC is on track to build 3,000 more public homes this way:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

Other – in red states! – have followed suit, with lookalike funds and projects in Atlanta and Chattanooga, with "dozens" more plans underway at state and local levels. The Massachusetts Momentum Fund is set to fund 40,000 homes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

The Center for Public Enterprise has a whole report on these "Government Sponsored Enterprises" and the role they can play in creating a supply of homes priced at a rate that working people can afford:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Of course, for a GSE to loan money to build a home, that home has to be possible. YIMBYs are right to point to restrictive zoning as a major impediment to building new homes, and Robert Cruickshank from California YIMBY has a piece breaking down the strategy for fixing zoning:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-make-it-legal-to-build/

Cruickshank lays out NIMBY success stories in cities like Austin and Minneapolis adopting YIMBY-style zoning rules and seeing significant improvements in rental prices. These success stories are representative of a broader recognition – at least among Democratic politicians – that restrictive zoning is a major contributor to the housing emergency.

Repeating these successes in the rest of the country will take a long time, and in the meantime, American tenants are sitting ducks for predatory landlords, With criminal enterprises like Realpage enabling collusive price-fixing for housing and monopoly developers deliberately restricting supplies to keep prices up (a recent Blackrock investor communique gloated over the undersupply of housing as a source of profits for its massive portfolio of rental properties), tenants pay more and more of their paychecks for worse and worse accommodations. They can't wait for the housing emergency to be solved through zoning changes and public housing. They need relief now.

That's where tenants' unions come in, as Ruthy Gourevitch and Tara Raghuveer of the Tenant Union Federation writes in their piece on the tenants across the country who are coordinating rent strikes to protest obscene rent-hikes and dangerous living conditions:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-look-for-the-tenant-union/

They describe a country where tenants work multiple jobs, send the majority of their take-home pay to their landlords – a quarter of tenants pay 70% of their wages in rent – and live in vermin-filled homes without heat or ventilation:

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/terms-of-investment/

Public money from Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac flood into the speculative market for multifamily homes, a largely unregulated, subsidized speculative bonanza that lets the wealthy make bets and the poor pay their losses.

In response, tenants unions are popping up all across the country, especially in red state cities like Bozeman, MT and Louisville, KY. They organize for "just cause" evictions that ban landlords from taking their homes away. They seek fair housing voucher distribution practices. They seek to close eviction loopholes like the LA wheeze that lets landlords kick you out following "renovations."

The National Tenant Policy Agenda demands "national rent caps, anti-eviction protections, habitability standards, and antitrust action," measures that would immediately and profoundly improve the lives of millions of American workers:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JF1-fTalW1tOBO0FhYDcVvEd1kQ2HIzkYFNRo6zmSsg/edit

They caution that it's not enough to merely increase housing supply. Without a strong countervailing force from organized tenants, new housing can be just another source of extraction and speculation for the rich. They say that the Federal Housing Finance Agency – regulator for Fannie and Freddie – could play an active role in ensuring that new housing addresses the needs of people, not corporations.

In the meantime, a tenants' union in KC successfully used a rent strike – where every tenant in a building refuses to pay rent – to get millions in overdue repairs. More strikes are planned across the country.

The American system is in crisis. A country that cannot house its people is a failure. As Rachael Dziaba writes in the final piece for the package, the situation is so bad that water has started to flow uphill: the cities with the most inward migration have the least job growth:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-10-18-housing-blues/

It's not just housing, of course. Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the rich world and get worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world. Their monopoly grocers have spiked their food prices. The incoming administration has declared war on public education and seeks to relegate poor children to unsupervised schools where "education" can consist of filling in forms on a Chromebook and learning that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.

A system that can't shelter, feed, educate or care for its people is a failure. People in failed states will vote for anyone who promises to tear the system down. The decision to turn life's necessities over to unregulated, uncaring markets has produced a populace who are so desperate for change, they'll even vote for their own destruction.

[nihilnovisubsole]

have you ever toyed with the idea of making a spin-off set in the same universe as dangerous crowns?

i did a lot more than toy with it. i got about 30,000 words into a second book in the same universe before i abandoned it. i think saying "it's not the story's fault" gives the story too much credit, but it was also a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

what do i mean by that? many things, some probably more valid than others. this got away from me and turned into a postmortem, so i'll put it under a cut for those who are curious:

2019-21, when i was trying to write the second book, was when i realized i had to get serious about advancing in the game industry. all of a sudden, i had to spend almost all of my free time applying and filling my portfolio with game work that wasn't romance. i got rejected a lot, which is not really motivating when it comes to doing your for-funsies writing on the weekend.

of course, we did also have some major world events around that time. those were also things that happened. i think we all felt a little strange.

i read some opinions on writing that made me existentially question many of my style and storytelling choices up to that point. some of it was about dangerous crowns itself. in other cases, it was people analyzing fantasy conventions as a whole. i'm not trying to be vindictive, like "some BUTTHEAD wrote a BAD REVIEW! NYEH!". i think many writers go through an experience like this sometime. they read something that challenges the way they've always worked, and it feels like re-breaking a bone to set it right. there's a period of pain.

on the other hand, i don't want to overplay the negativity or throw the baby out with the bathwater. a lot of people liked dangerous crowns for what it was. my friends argued that the bone was never broken, and these things i'd read were matters of taste. they wouldn't fix my writing, just make it different. they told me the real problem lay with trying to please everyone, and i should write with my own voice first and not worry about who took me seriously. it was good advice. even so, when you put years into making ice cream and readers think you made a toy car, you have to ask yourself whether you did something wrong.

but, yeah, it was also the story. when i looked at the second book through the lens of these new attitudes toward writing, it came up short. the plot crumbled under questions like, "why are they choosing this heroine?" "why does she have to be in Situation X with that character?" "why doesn't she do the sensible thing?" the answer, in every case, was "it has to be that way for the main couple to get together," and i found that unacceptable. i felt my old, self-indulgent impulse of "i want to get these two together, let's see where it goes" was no longer enough. i had to make sure i was saying something believable.

it's embarrassing to admit, but around this time, i grew very self-conscious about my approach to writing love stories and love interests. i've alluded to this a few times over the past few years, because i still haven't been able to extricate myself from it. i think it's because, when i write a couple, it comes from such a personal place - i explore aspects of myself in my female characters, and i always find something attractive about the men who fall in love with them. it's like i got hit with the cringe paddle: one morning, i just woke up and went "omg this is so weird! i have to hide it from everyone!" maybe the solution is exposure therapy? do i need to start churning out a ton of heavy ship art again? i don't know what to say except, lmao, don't be me.

where do i stand today? well, i think something would be cool, but i'd have to revisit my approach to genre and worldbuilding. that's why i keep chewing my nails over dangerous crowns. it can't be that easy - if you're doing Fantasy Rome, you have to make a caesar-sized mess. working at obsidian, where they push you not to make the comfort-food writing choice, has given credence to these concerns. so i have no idea. but we'll see!

[consult-sherlockholmes]

Just a little question of curiousity: What would be the better option, injecting them with a syringe filled with liquified datura seeds or with an overdose of insulin.

I would inject them under their tongue while they sleep so the scar won't be found. Afterwards I would pack them up in my car and drive at least two hours away from where I live. There I would dig up a 12 feet hole, bury the victim halfway, put the corpse of a dead animal on top and close the hole.

If I'm feeling fancy I may cut up the victim's corpse and and bury them all halfway with animal caveses on top, far away from my home.

Anyways, what's the better poison for this?

This is all theoretical and for science's sake, it's a fun mental exercise to sometimes plan a murder so do not be concerned. An usually endogenous substance like insulin that naturally exists in the body would be much harder to determine as the murder weapon, than an exogenous poison like liquified datura seeds that usually is not present in someone's body except if they have been poisoned. Insulin isn't part of regular tox screens, so if there is no suspicion no one would go looking for it. So in that case insulin would be the better choice.

It's difficult to determine and interpret insulin levels postmortem, insulin not being very stable and autolysis or hemolysis making blood as a sample impractical, which is why vitreous humour is used. Insulin levels can be determined with immunoradiometric assay (IRMA) or liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). In the case of natural insulin levels, it should be below the detection limit in the vitreous humour, but if the levels are increased due to poisoning it should be above the detection limit of the method, thus indicating that the death was not natural.

Another way to differentiate endogenous (your own bodie's) or exougenous insulin poisoning, is by looking at the ratio of insulin to C-peptide. During the synthesis of insulin in the body, C-peptide is cleaved from the proinsulin, which means that per formed insulin molecule there is also a C-peptide molecule formed, so with an endogenous poisoning the ratio of C-peptide to insulin should be 1:1, while if the insulin has been administered exogenously the ratio is >1 (more insulin than C-peptide).

And I am not entirely sure how you would want to create a proper solution of 'liquified datura seeds' that can be properly injected, because that would require purification and extraction of the active compounds. You can't just crush some seeds and put them into a syringe with a bit of liquid, it would clog up the needle. Meanwhile insulin already exists as solutions ready for injection, much better choice. Making such a datura seed solution would mean more effort, and would be easier to trace than insulin.

An injection under the tongue sounds uneccesary. Would be quite awkward trying to open someone's mouth while they sleep to put a syringe under their tongue, they would wake up and your plan would be foiled. And neither would it scar given scars are a healed wound and if they are dead there won't be any healing or scarring anymore. And why bother hiding the injection site when you already plan to dispose the body anway in a way so no one would find it. Hiding injection sites is only necessary when someone finds the body, but if the body is burried and decayed there won't be any determination of an injection site when the tissue is decomposed. But the whole process of transport and burial sounds a bit risky and could be prone to failure.

[rlyehtaxidermist]

Just to be clear here: neither the linked article nor the study are claiming that butyrylcholinesterase deficiency is the cause of SIDS - I assume the above post is an old excerpt, as the article has been amended to conclude with

Now that this biomarker has been further confirmed, researchers can turn their attention to a solution. In the next few years, those in the medical community who have studied SIDS will likely work on a screening test to identify babies who are at risk for SIDS and hopefully prevent it altogether.

What the study did find is that butyrylcholinesterase can serve as a biomarker for elevated risk of SIDS, meaning that doctors can test for it and use it to determine which patients might be at an elevated risk - and in turn use that to make recommendations.

This is still a significant development in understanding and hopefully preventing deaths from SIDS, but it's not a cause. Causal relationships are extremely difficult to determine in any science, especially medicine, and doubly especially with postmortem studies.

They’ve found the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Babies who die of SIDS have a significantly lower level of an enzyme, the purpose of which is to rouse the baby from sleep if necessary (such as the baby stops breathing). This is extremely huge science and medicine news. There is a biological reason. It’s not random.

[failingupwardswithphelixlee]

The Set Things: Challenges of Production Part 2, Postmortem

The largest obstacle for development was the core mechanic, the manipulation of 'setting' themed variables to affect the game world. Referring to the dramatic elements introduced in Chapter 4, Fullerton touches on the paradox of control as "a key element for the enjoyment of game systems." Whilst the process of programming was difficult for me, I wanted the mechanics to balance this paradigm to appeal to the wide range of player types Fullerton describes in Chapter 4, page 104.

One profoundly unexpected obstacle was the level design. Its impact is evident in the prototype, where I focused more on developing the game mechanics, believing they would better articulate the ideas presented in the pitch. However, the game's core theme of "dysfunction" inspired my solution for this issue. Instead of imitating the structure of game UI to constitute the game world, levels would instead consist of landscapes more akin to traditional platformer conventions while aesthetically evoking the UI layout of games. This would transcribe the motif of the game mechanics into the visual representation of the game, of which said mechanics are concerned with.

Whilst the technical production of this project was of great difficulty for me, the artistic and thematic elements developed quite smoothly. The player character's design shift from an ambiguous monster (honestly shaped like an Among Us character) to a mouse themed one felt natural and befitting of the game's narrative.

These challenges forced me to be creative in my solutions. Similarly to how the rules of a game serve players as never before used tools that encourage them toward creative solutions and achievements, the limitations of my technical prowess inspired constant iteration.

[haoqw]

this freakin guy. love him

[elliott-igb-120]

Assignment 3 Postmortem

What aspects of the readings helped inspire your design process?

Throughout the development of Shadowy Friend, Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop was a valuable resource, particularly her emphasis on iterative design and player feedback. Chapter 4’s discussion about balancing challenge and player engagement influenced how we refined the puzzles and mechanics to avoid frustration while maintaining interest. Additionally, the concept of “meaningful play” helped us focus on creating mechanics, like the shadow swapping, that feel impactful and encourage strategic thinking, rather than just adding complexity for its own sake.

What’s one thing you’d change about how you developed the prototype?

Looking back, I would spend more time early on refining the interaction between the player and the shadow, especially focusing on smoothing out the switching mechanics and reducing bugs related to switching places. According to Fullerton’s reading on prototyping efficiently, it’s important to identify core gameplay loops early and polish them before layering additional features. In hindsight, prioritizing a more stable and seamless player-shadow interaction would have allowed us to build new mechanics on a more solid foundation, ultimately improving the player experience and reducing development time spent fixing bugs later.

What’s one thing you’d change about the design of the prototype?

If I could change one aspect of the design, it would be to enhance the puzzle variety by adding more interactive environmental elements and challenges that better leverage the shadow’s unique abilities. Currently, some puzzles rely heavily on basic platforming and simple switch mechanics, which can feel repetitive. Drawing from Fullerton’s guidance on meaningful player choices and emergent gameplay, I would design puzzles that encourage creative problem-solving and allow multiple solutions, thus making the shadow’s presence feel more integral and engaging to the gameplay loop.

Sources

Fullerton, T. (2024). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovation Games. ProQuest Ebook. Retrieved https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=31137874&pq-origsite=primo

Student Contact Info

Student Name: Elliott Horne

Student Number: n12114545

Student Email: n12114545@qut.edu.au

[seewetter]

I mean it seems rather explainable.

The reasons given for the war were fabricated, because that is a habit for American military interventions. Vietnam was the first time this kind of deceit could be perceived by the public and the Gulf War was when new forms of propaganda were invented to fabricate reasons for war.

Why don't people talk about it all the time?

On the one hand, because a media capable of ignoring Germany's invasion of Poland and a political apparatus capable of presenting their media with false testimony by a small child (!) trained in lying (see first link) are not going to keep a memory of national failure alive if it isn't in their interests and the news cycle moves fast. (On that note: a small child testifying before Congress, but the kid is acting and the whole thing is a PR stunt to start a war -- isn't that "a catastrophe that should utterly delegitimize the society that made it happen" ? Like the Gulf War is at least as ridiculous as what happened in Iraq. I don't mean to downplay the horrors of that war, but like I sense a larger and more enduring historical pattern of "utterly deligitimizing" bullshit that people could reasonably be expected to be talking about all the time).

Another reason why people don't talk about Iraq all the time is that this pattern just never stops. Not only are there ridiculous examples of foreign policy prior to the Iraq War, there's ridiculous examples now. The so-called "Israel-Hamas War" or recently "Gaza War" (why do we call the recent attempt at intensifying the Nakba into a second Shoah a "war", even now, Wikipedia?) is no less spectacular and no less "mysterious" than the Iraq war. America's 2024 solution for a genocide: not only will they, as in previous years, supply weapons -- nope, they'll send some soldiers to help too. "This is a war that destroyed a country" -- I mean is that not something we can say about Palestine?

Richard Haass may never know why the war he advised on happened, but neocons wanted this was to happen since the 80s. The Iraq war is no less mysterious than the current ambitions of various American politicians who don't like Iran. If we ever see a military intervention or proxy war in Iran, we'll know that it's the result of decades of whining and begging on the part of people who had personal incentives to destroy that country. The postmortems of such a war would also be "uh, it's a mystery why it happened" because if some event remains unexplained and mysterious, then nobody has to make ugly confessions.

And a destabilized Middle-East seems to be part of the point, no? Why is one of the largest Middle-Eastern ethnic groups, the Kurds, a culture who aren't granted nationhood (not that I like nation states, but under normal circumstances nationhood is granted to groups like this, so this should make people think)? Do people ever benefit from a region being unstable?

Imagine if the Middle-East was a stable political region where people could, say, build trade networks between Europe and East Asia, connected through the Middle-East. Whose economy would suffer? Or say a bunch of Middle-Eastern countries were independent enough that they gave Russia nice sea access through the Red Sea or the Gulf of Oman / Arabian Sea? The US just don't like some prospect of some sort that has to do with their economic interests. I think we can be sure of this.

Now it *is* wild that the people who fabricated a claim of Saddam possessing WMDs would later go public about lying. That absolutely is wild. It's genuinely hard to understand why that was done.

But in the grand scheme of things it was mainly a costly and visibly unnecessary war. The Gaza "war" caused millions to be displaced and resulted in devastating losses to the cultural heritage of the region too. And people will also refuse to explain "why it happened", though the reasons seem fairly intuitive if one realizes what the US is getting out of this.

I missed most of the Iraq war due to being a baby, but every time I read about it I start wondering why we aren’t all talking about it all of the time

[dawnzours]

Platformer Postmortem & Playtesting [#1] - Shadow Requiem: Arise.

Shadow Requiem: Arise is a dark fantasy action-platformer game where players play as the main character - Kael aiming to achieve victory in the Abyssal Dungeon by defeating the final boss - Shadow Requiem.

The main development idea comes from the study concept - "Story & Character Design", which I learned to create a storyline for my game and respective corresponding character that fulfill my storyline. Thus, I decided to create a storyline attaching with the story content interactions between the main characters and other character (i.e. monster mobs, Shadow Requiem, background story of Kael etc.). The reason of creating a storyline for this game is to provide a clear view and understanding about the whole game & reason/purposes of the whole game flow plot.

Other than that, I've also included some unique features in the game such as 'summon ability' and some enemy attacks. According to the study of 'Core Mechanics & Gameplay' concept study, adding different features especially special and unique features can attract the interest of players to play the game. They will feel excited while playing with the abilities and experience it with joy and satisfaction.

1. Things Went Well ✅:

Soul absorbing - Player (Kael) is able to absorb the Souls that was dropped from Monster Mobs after being eliminated.

Unique ability [Summon] - Summoning features that allowed players to summon ally skeleton by consuming Souls absorbed.

Enemies Attack - Enemies (i.e. Monster mobs & Shadow Requiem [Boss]) are able to perform well attacks under a fixed duration and cooldown of time period and deal damage to player (Kael).

2. Things Can Be Improve ❌:

Cooldown Setup - Dashing in the game now has no limited cooldown, which means player can spam on 'E' Key to dash without limit. In this case, a cooldown setup (i.e. 5 seconds cooldown after using Dash skill) will be a perfect solution against this issue.

Additional Features [Healing Method] - According to the playtesting research result from 10 different players, I found that the level difficulty design for this game is a little exceed that expected. There's different ways to overcome this issue, either reduce the difficulty of the game or adding in different supporting tools. For the first method, reducing the difficulty of the game will make the game feels boring to play. Thus, I've planned to make a good use of supporting tools development, such as Healing Tool Box Drops. This tool allows player (Kael) to heal themselves in the match so the survival rates will increase compared to before, which is an excellent ways to overcome the current difficulty issue.

Additional Abilities [Buff/Offensive/Defense/Support] - By considering the feedback from 10 different players throughout the playtesting, I've came out with a general conclusion - It's better to have more unique abilities rather than 1 of it (Summon Ability). Thus, I've also planned to develop more unique abilities from different categories such as Buff abilities, Offensive abilitites, Defensive abilities and Support abilities. One of the planned example of ability to be added is "Providing Buff to Summoned Ally Skeleton, gaining them to have 2x damage when attacking".

In conclusion, I will be focusing on the 'things can be improve' during the final assignment - Playtesting Group Project. I'm planning to create new unique abilities along with other group members, which one of it was the one I listed above under Buff ability categories. A blog content will be posted which record about the process of playtesting 2nd phase [#2] and result/feedback/details of it in the future. General planning is to develop most of the features that I've mentioned such as unique abilities, healing tool drops and cooldown setup. Looking forward to post the playtesting blog log later!

[pb-dot]

Thereafter Book 1 Postmortem

I kind of don't like the term Postmortem for posts like these, the vibe feels a bit judge-y, but if the shoe fits I suppose one might as well wear it. I'm now done with writing and releasing book 1 of Thereafter, The City After The End. For the most part I'm happy with it. Unexpectedly happy with it in fact. I don't generally talk up my own writing (Mea Maxima Scriptoris Culpa,) but honestly I think it turned out to have a good little plot considering I pantsed it way harder than I usually do. (Also, here be Thereafter 1 spoilers below the cut. I try to talk around the bigger stuff, but don't say I didn't warn ya)

When writing an introductory story to a fantasy world, like TCATE undoubtedly is, I find it important to strike a balance between introducing the world and the plot and characters. I feel I could have spent a little bit more time at introducing the anarchic world I've created, but this could also be a consequence of the light touch worldbuilding I try to do. The world of Thereafter is young and very centered on survival, but I do feel I've perhaps left a touch too much up to the imagination re: the culture of the city. Humans, after all, can't help themselves from forming cultures and habits no matter how dire things get, and I can't imagine the elves and elephant men are much different in that regard.

There is, however, plenty of time to get into the ways in which culture forms and malforms at a later date. Without getting too much into spoiler levels of detail, a minor plot point in book 2 will get into how a cultural idea of what being a young adult means among Alicia's Steppefolk clashes with the material realities of the world's only fantasy space station. Now is this all part of my medium-term plans to get the status quo where I need it as we move to the finale? Oh of course, ya boy peebs always has the endgame in mind, but it's some fun worldbuilding all the same.

As for characters, I'm very happy with the batch I've made. The Exalted Heroes are fun to write and hopefully equally fun to read about. They're somewhat falling prey to my tendency to nuance my characters into neurotic mulch, but I think I've managed to make them a fun bunch that has a bit of nuance to them. Lex is a mischevious sex gremlin, but also clearly on the top of things in the planning and communication department. Felipe is a testy fuckboy, but also quite loving under the right conditions. Alicia is kind of intense and compulsive, but also very kind and the moral center of the group. Michael, well, Michael is a bit of a mess, but he does try his best. I do feel like I'm kind of underestimating the lad because he's the character who's the most similar to myself for better and also worse.

An important theme in book 1 is failure and disappointment, and I do find those interesting themes to work with. By "interesting" I do mean "very hard and frustrating," but also "actually interesting." I don't love stories where the protagonists just lose, but not as much as I hate stories where the protags do win, but it just doesn't seem to "take" in the status quo, or doesn't really vibe with the setting or what have you. I try to navigate something kind of between these two. It's important to me that our exalted heroes struggle with being heroes, not so much because they're bad or flawed people, although they unmistakably are flawed, but because the question of whether it's at all possible to be a hero, as an unambiguous force for good, in a world where it's deeply ambiguous whether good choices actually exists or not.

My inner anarchist also loves to get into the topic of what power and authority actually means. The Council of Thereafter are a thing mostly on account of their abilities with magic, but as the council knows all too well, magic is not an one-size-fits-all solution even when it does work normally, and the current state of things certainly isn't normal. If anything, failing to get into exactly how magic is acting weird is probably the thing I regret most about book 1. I chose to not focus much on it and basically go "take my word on this, things are fucky wrt magic, we'll get into it once we get into the POV of an actual magic user."

Briefly returning to the Council, it's also a take on the Vague Fantasy Council trope, and an attempt at getting into the politics of what a circle of mages would get up to if placed entirely in charge. It's not the enlightened magical meritocracy one would hope for, for better or worse it's a bunch of academics with only a partial idea about what governing entails, and that shows in the shit they get up to. I feel I am a bit mean to the council, Eltern in particular, but I guess I have a lot of Notes about the "all-knowing quest giving wizard"-style character. It's a very ripe position for bias and the frailties of human perception, is all I'm saying.

So what is next for Thereafter? Well, Alicia is next up with the POV bat, and we're going to take a closer look at the scavenging parties going to the Void Between worlds. Needless to say, something is going to go seriously wrong, and I am going to communicate to you, my dear reader, how fucking terrifying space is. Granted, the Void does pull some punches, in that pressure and radiation won't be a threat for Magic Worldbuilding Reasons, but the absence of gravity and atmosphere is certainly going to be A Challenge. I am excited to share some of the action beats and character drama I'm cooking up, but on the other hand I am noting that I have set myself up to write both a thorny sapphic romance and action setpieces involving complex physics and three-dimensional movement and the various ways these interact. For reasons of my nature I'm not personally familiar with the first, and for reasons of my specific Brain Problems I find the second challenging. I'm still looking for a good way to sketch out the 3D Space Action and save my brain from overclocking itself into pudding, but worst come to worst I'll just make it confusing and scary. Hell, I may make it confusing and scary even if I do know exactly what's going on, confusing and scary can be fun in its own way after all.

I'm also planning to post a bit more about Thereafter, especially during the May-June hiatus. I don't have an artistic (type visual) bone in my body, but in lieu of homemade fanart, I do plan to share some video game characters I've made in my dear blorbos' images, maybe some tag game business too.

Also in closing, by the off-chance that you've read Thereafter Book 1 without subscribing to the newsletter, please do consider subscribing for book 2. Every chapter is available through the archives, and I do not plan on changing that, but since I get no metrics re: pageviews or stuff like that on my buttondown, I do appreciate it when readers do subscribe. You can also subscribe if you don't read, but I don't quite see what you get out of this arrangement.

[a5green]

Racing - Postmortem

I think this game was probably the hardest out of all the games for me to complete. I think idea for this game was too ambitious, trying to incorporate an AI opponent for the player to race against especially was way too ambitious. But it was a fun challenge to try to figure out how that would work and to come up with my own solution to this problem.

Some things I could have improved while making this prototype was doing a lot more playtesting. I did get a few people to playtest, but I think the prototype definitely would have benefited a lot from lots more playtesting. Since this game’s moment-to-moment gameplay is controlling the character and racing around the track, this is what I should have mainly focused on in this prototype. I improved it after the playtesters found that they were struggling a lot with the controls and they found the controls to not be smooth at all. But this could be improved a lot more if I got more people to playtest it in its current state now to determine how the controls can be improved even further.

If I could change one thing about my racer prototype, I would remove the coded opponent and change the game’s objective to be racing and competing against other player’s times. I believe this objective would engage players more since they are competing against another player’s score instead of the opponent I have programmed which is very limited and always behaves the same way.

[pallavinovel]

Structured Incident Response in SRE: Site Reliability Engineering

Incident Management in SRE: A Structured Approach to Reliability

In the world of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)  incident management is a fundamental practice that ensures services remain reliable, resilient, and performant. An incident is any unplanned disruption or degradation of service that affects users. Efficient incident management involves detecting, responding to, resolving, and learning from these disruptions to minimize their impact and prevent recurrence.

The Role of SRE in Incident Management

SRE teams are responsible for maintaining the health of large-scale systems. They use engineering approaches to automate operations and improve system reliability. When incidents occur, SREs lead the response efforts, applying a structured and measured approach to restoration.

SREs focus on reducing Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR). These metrics help gauge the speed and efficiency of the incident management process. The ultimate goal is not just to fix the issue, but to do so in a way that maintains user trust and organizational reputation.

Stages of Incident Management

Detection and Alerting Early detection is crucial. SREs set up robust monitoring systems and define Service Level Indicators (SLIs) that trigger alerts when thresholds are breached. Alerts should be actionable, relevant, and prioritized based on severity.

Response and Triage Once an alert is triggered, incident responders assess the scope and severity of the issue. They assign roles such as incident commander, communication lead, and subject matter experts. Clear roles prevent confusion and enable a faster, coordinated response.

Mitigation and Resolution The team works to mitigate the issue, either through automated rollback, failover systems, or manual intervention. The key is to restore service quickly, even if the root cause isn’t fully addressed yet. A temporary fix can be followed by a more permanent solution later.

Postmortem and Analysis After resolution, SREs conduct a blameless postmortem. This review documents the timeline, root cause, impact, and resolution steps. It also identifies process improvements and preventive measures. Blameless culture encourages transparency and learning, rather than fear and blame.

Best Practices in SRE Incident Management

Runbooks and Playbooks: Predefined procedures guide responders through common incidents, reducing response time and error.

On-Call Rotation: SREs take turns being available 24/7 to ensure quick response to critical issues.

Automated Monitoring and Alerting: Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and PagerDuty enable fast, data-driven decision-making.

Communication and Coordination: Keeping stakeholders informed during incidents maintains trust and reduces panic.

Continuous Improvement: Post-incident insights are used to improve system design, monitoring, and team processes.

Conclusion

Incident management in SRE is not just about fixing problems—it’s about building a culture of reliability, accountability, and continuous learning. By following a disciplined process and leveraging automation, SRE teams can manage incidents effectively, reduce downtime, and deliver high-quality user experiences even in the face of unexpected failures.

[kantokutot]

Platformer Postmortem

My biggest lesson was shifting from "making it work" to "making it fun." Early attempts at features like monster-splitting focused only on technical implementation, resulting in dull gameplay. I learned that good design requires considering player experience first.

Initially, I manually adjusted each game object - a nightmare with just 20+ enemies. Learning object grouping was revolutionary, boosting efficiency 10x. Animation challenges exposed my weak art skills, but state machines helped bridge the gap. UI design was equally tough - balancing information clarity took multiple iterations.

Three core lessons:

Prioritize player experience over technical perfection

Master tools to work smarter

Find solutions for skill gaps

Focus areas moving forward: game pacing, UI/UX polish, and art-programming integration. The real value wasn't in specific techniques learned, but in developing a player-centric design mindset.

[literaturereviewhelp]

Introduction   The role of radiology in autopsy has been extended to include multidetector computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. According to Thali et al (2003), the term Virtual Autopsy or Virtopsy refers to the technique of postmortem imaging with multidetector CT and/ or MR imaging. Conventionally, in forensic investigation and autopsy, the use of full-body radiography is well established and routinely applied to document “fractures, injury patterns, occult injuries, and foreign body and metallic fragmentation localization” (Levy, Abbott, Mallack et al, 2006, p.522). Full body radiography also helps in identification of human remains when conventional methods such as fingerprinting or DNA analysis cannot be used, or are not available. Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the new development of virtual autopsy in forensic science, and identify its advantages and disadvantages over conventional autopsy procedures that have been employed until recently. Virtual Autopsy with the Help of Multidetector Computed Tomography The application of imaging methods for non-invasive documentation and analysis of relevant forensic findings in living and dead persons has not kept abreast of enormous technical development of imaging methods. Forensic radiology is now a rapidly growing interdisciplinary subspeciality of both forensic medicine and radiology. The new modalities that are now increasingly being promoted for use in forensic investigations include Computer Tomography (CT) including spiral multislice, and Magnetic Reso-nance Imaging or MRI (Thali et al, 2007). The VIRTOPSY project aims to utilize radiological scanning to upgrade low-tech documentation and autopsy procedures in the contemporary high-tech field of medicine. The purpose of this is to improve scientific value, and to increase significance and quality in the forensic field. The term VIRTOPSY is the combination of the terms virtual and autopsy.   OR Human—machine interfaces consist of the multimodal devices used to present information to VT users. For multimodal VT applications, advances in peripheral connections to the computer are the single largest issue. When an input device is connected, such as а body or limb tracker, а serial port is generally utilized, а port typically designed for character input and not high-speed data transfer. А solution to the input device connectivity issue that is available on commodity computing is the great unsolved problem. At some point, this input-port speed problem needs to be solved, and that resolution must be included on mass-marketed PCs or their descendents. Visual displays, especially head-mounted displays (HMDs), have come down substantially in weight but are still hindered by cumbersome designs, obstructive tethers, suboptimal resolution, and insufficient field of view, see the “HMD/VR—Helmet Comparison Chart, ” Bungert, 2001. ) Recent advances in wearable computer displays (е.g., Microvision, MicroOptical), which can incorporate miniature LCDs directly into conventional eyeglasses or helmets, should ease cumbersome design and further reduce weight (Lieberman, 1999). There are several low- to mid-cost HMDs (InterSense's InterTrax i-glasses, Olympus Eye-Trek FMD, Interactive Imaging Systems' VFX3D, Sony Cybermind, Sony Glasstron, and Kaiser ProViewXL) that are lightweight (approximately 39 g to 1,000 g) providing а true resolution of only about 60 K pixels.. For multimodal VT applications, advances in peripheral connections to the computer are the single largest issue. When an input device is connected, such as body or limb tracker, serial port is generally utilized, port typically designed for character input and not high-speed data transfer. solution to the input device connectivity issue that is available on commodity computing is the great unsolved problem. At some point, this input-port speed problem needs to be solved, and that resolution must be included on mass-marketed PCs or their descendents. Visual displays, especially head-mounted displays (HMDs), have come down substantially in weight but are still hindered by cumbersome designs, obstructive tethers, suboptimal resolution, and insufficient field of view, see the "HMD/VR-Helmet Comparison Chart, " Bungert, 2001. ) Recent advances in wearable computer displays (.g., Microvision, MicroOptical), which can incorporate miniature LCDs directly into conventional eyeglasses or helmets, should ease cumbersome design and further reduce weight (Lieberman, 1999).   Read the full article