#if this is the only way you can get the data you need

[androgynousblackbox]

More stuff for this AU:

-Vox is the benefactor for the hotel and was there literally from the start. Velvette send him an email just the same as the richest motherfuckers that she could find in hell with a copypasted message, not really expecting much from the king of hell himself, but was then surprised when Vox appeared at the door of her run down apartment claiming to be "intrigued" by her proposal. After Velvette sold her pitch to him, Vox gives the biggest laugh ever and gives Velvette all the money she needs to make the hotel, promising that if this idea of her works and they can actually turn sinners into winners she will receive a lot more money. Maybe they could have a whole franchise of redemption if all turns out okay! -Vox and Mammon are greed besties. -Velvette dates Verosika. Verosika is very supportive of Velvette´s project. -Valentino is still very much a pimp and trafficker of guns that works closely with Carmilla Carmine. He came to know about the project of Velvette after she gave a passionate presentation on the news, after destroying verbally everyone who mocked her. Valentino thought to himself that he just had to be friends with such a huge bitch. -Angel Dust and Husker are angels dedicated to the extermination. The extermination is kept a secret from the rest of heaven still, including his own twin sister Molly, who he lives with. -Adam is the oldest sinner on all of hell and the first official resident of the Hazbin Hotel. He fucking hates Vox for condeming him there, but Vox literally has no recollection of who the fuck is him. That must have been data that got lost on one of his many updates. Adam is so fucking tired of hell that will do anything to get the fuck out of there. -Lute is the second resident and a fallen angel who fell when she tried to make Husker fell. Angel Dust found her out before she could do much and casted her away instead. Originally she just wanted a place to crash, but ends up staying because it's not that bad of a place after all. -Velvette has a crush/hate on Charlie because "she is not even that pretty, I mean fuck, if Lucifer wanted a good looking bitch I could have been that" and Verosika is 100% the kind of girlfriend to be there, nod and say "yeah, babe, you are so right, you are so much prettier. Honestly Lucifer missed a chance when he didn't pick you up as his fake daughter." Velvette is also the number one fan of Charlie because clout (and also she is pretty, fuck it). -Alastor literally came back to the tower after reporting on some event on a mobile station and Lucifer had already adopted Charlie, on whom he dotted and pampered on as if she was his actual daughter. He didn't get it, but Lucifer seemed happy in a way he haven't seen him in a long time so of course he let it slide (after investigating on Charlie's background to make sure that she wasn't scamming Lucifer). After realizing that Charlie had no bad intentions whatsoever and didn't represent any danger for Lucifer, only then he started to warm up to her and treat her as his own surrogate daughter too. Obviously, since Lucifer was his then obviously they were going to have the same family too.

-Alastor at the start didn't want anything to do with Lucifer, prefering to do the overlord shit on his own, but Lucifer kept following him around and helping him out so much that he realized that it was for the best for the two of them remain together. Lucifer fell first, but Alastor fell harder kind of deal. -Lucifer had a wife and daughter when he was alive, but he was killed for an investigation he was conducting when his daughter was literally just a baby and he always regretted not being able to be there for her. Charlie fills that void for him, even if he knows the dates don't match up at all and Charlie could really never been his daughter. He was so lucky that Charlie herself carried on with her own daddy issues that makes her suck up all the affection like a sponge, instantly. -Both Alastor and Lucifer also received emails from Velvette offering to be sponsors for her hotel. They never even read it. Alastor has Sir Pentious as an assistant who reads all that crap for him and deleted it instantly because he thought it was a scam (and he was right). -Emily is the demon maid of the hotel and literally the only person who believes in redemption. Nobody has the heart to tell her that it's all bullshit made for profit, not even Vox.

(this AU is available for asks, btw! Maybe I can get inspired to write something else)

#radioapple #appleradio #duckiedeer #staticmoth #the vees #hazbin hotel au #swap hazbin hotel au

[lgbtlunaverse]

3zun data analysis part 2 electric boogaloo

So in my first post on 3zun data analysis I said I manually excluded all non-3zun ships in the 3zun tag to figure out how many of them were actually centered around 3zun.

So that's... actually not how i first went about that. Instead, I decided to, one after the other, include each 2-out-of-3zun ship, and then manually exclude every relationship not contained in 3zun. (leaving te other 2-out-of-3zun ships alone) Then, I'd figure out how many of these fics were exclusively tagged the ship I included, how many included only one of the other 2 ships, and how many included all 3, which would allow me to calculate how many 3zun fics in total had 2-out-of-3zun ships included but no other side pairings, which, upon being added to the otp:true fics, should give me the total number of 3zun fics exclusively focused on 3zun.

"Wow! That seems really inefficient" yes! But it did give me more information for this post. Because with these numbers, I can somewhat crudely estimate what 2-out-of-3zun pairing tends to get more narrative focus within 3zun fics.

Here are the results, data collected on march 18th 2024:

There are 196 3zun fics tagged with xiyao and no non-3zun relationships. Of these, 151 are also tagged nieyao, and 137 are tagged nielan.

Coincidentally, nieyao has the same number, also 196, 151 of wich are also tagged xiyao, but only 117 are tagged nielan.

Then there are 159 3zun fics tagged nielan with no non-3zun pairings, with 137 of them also being tagged xiyao and 117 nieyao. (I hope you've all noticed those numbers matching up!)

by the way, here are the raw stats in just the plain vanilla 3zun tag, no filters, for how many fics are tagged with the different ot2s.

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but for nielan and xiyao i mostly had to filter out relatively normal side pairings, a few crossovers with mxtx's other works or different danmei, nothing too weird. But the nieyao tag had THIS

JESUS/JUDAS??? IN MY NIEYAO?? It's more likely than you think!!

Anyway, to the complicated numbers! Selecting for all 3 after excluding everything else gives you 112 fics.

With these numbers you can now calculate some really fun stuff. Taking the fics tagged with both xiyao and nieyao (151) and subtracting the fics tagging all 3 (112) you get the number of 3zun fics that are only tagged as xiyao and nieyao, excluding nielan. In this case: 39

"Couldn't you just exclude nielan on ao3" you have to understand I like doing things the hard way.

Doing this gives:

Fics tagged nieyao and xiyao but not nielan: 39

Fics tagged xiyao and nielan but not nieyao: 25

Fics tagged nieyao and nielan but not xiyao: 5

Generally tagging 2 ot2 pairings in an ot3 signals that either the relationship is a V and the excluded ship are not together, or that- even if they're a triad- the excluded ship doesn't feature in the narrative much. As you can see, xiyao is by far the least likely to be excluded here.

Now doing some more math (or, if you're normal, clicking a few extra times on ao3) will give you the fics exclusively tagged with one ot2 pairing besides 3zun. Generally that means that this relationship is the narrative focus, even if all of 3zun are together.

And these results actually surprised me.

Fics exclusively tagged xiyao: 196 - 112 - 39 - 25 = 20

Fics exclusively tagged nielan: 159 - 112- 25 - 5 = 17

Fics exclusively tagged nieyao: 196 - 112 - 39 - 5 = 40

I checked the answers by actually filtering on ao3 (making all my work redundant) and uh. Yeah. I had expected that, with xiyao being the least likely to be excluded, the most commonly tagged ship in 3zun overall, and simply the most popular ship, they'd be first here too.

And yet, not only does nieyao have more fics, it has more than nielan and xiyao combined. Despite having less fics in total than either of the other 2!

Out of interest, I repeated the experiment without manually excluding all the unrelated ships.

Basically, for each 2-out-of-3zun ship, I only filtered out the two other ships. This data will give us the same insight into narrative focus, just without excluding all other non 3zun rleated side pairings.

This time I just included one ship, and excluded the other 2-out-of-3zun ships. (the hard math comes later)

Doing this gives:

3zun fics only tagged xiyao: 45

3zun fics only tagged nielan: 33

3zun fics only tagged nieyao: 59

It's a less drastic difference, but nieyao still come out on top!!

What this means, I think, is that people with nieyao as their absolute favorite side of the triangle are a lot more likely to write 3zun fics than those for whom the same is true for nielan or xiyao.

That is to say: Someone who likes all 3zun pairings equally is more likely to write 3zun where the pairings all share narrative balance. And if you really really really love xiyao, and think nieyao and nielan are pretty ok but you don't go crazy over them, you're a lot more likely to just write a solo xiyao fic than you are a xiyao-focused 3zun fic. Idem ditto for nielan. But if nieyao is your absolute fave, you wanna put those guys in a throuple anyway.

What I'm saying is I think nieyaoists are the subfandom of triangular desire. Which... *looks at my own mutuals*... is the least surprising thing i've ever said.

Anyway! I didn't stop there! I wanted to see which pairings were more likely to get tagged together again. I also decided to make things even harder for myself!

Instead of filtering one ship at a time and seeing how many of each of the others were tagged alongside it, like i did last time, I only gave myself a few figures to calculate it manually: The overall number of tags each had in the 3zun tag (348, 328, and 284, as pictured above) the afformentioned data about exclusively tagged fics, and the number of fics tagged with all three 2-out-of-3zun ships (175)

Rather than a simple subtraction, I had to... Well i'm just gonna let y'all look at my notes app. I wanna stress that i could have looked all of this up in minutes and in fact did later to check my answers! No time was saved! A lot was wasted!

But I like number so 👉👈

Tldr:

Fics tagged xiyao and nieyao but not nielan: 73

Fics tagged xiyao and nielan but not nieyao: 55

Fics tagged nieyao and nielan but not xiyao: 21

Once again, similar but slightly less drastic results.

With this I can only come to one conclusion: the fandom likes to joke about 3zun being a love triangle with xichen in the middle. But looking at these numbers? The real center is jiggy. Everything revolves around a-yao, baby!.

#as it should!! #to be clear that last line is a joke and NOT nielan slander! as you can see 3zun is overwhelmingly written about in triad form #fics were all 3 are tagged outnumber all the exclusively tagged and only 2 out of 3 tagged' categories #not to mention the fics that don't need to tag any other pairings because the ot3 ship tag says enough #mdzs #nie mingjue #meng yao #jin guangyao #lan xichen #xiyao #nieyao #nielan #3zun #long post #fandom research #fandom statistics #of course as any seasoned reader knows sometimes tags do NOT indicate actual narrative focus. #meaning this study is inherently imperfect. but the only way to get better data is to actually read all those 1K+ fics and well. #that's gonna take a bit longer #working on it though #i hope this post shows everyone my true energy: brian david gilbert at the end of an unraveled video

[synthaphone]

The Pokemon HOME app limiting random features and information to either the mobile or console versions is SO clunky and annoying.

My goal: to check which of my favorite Pokemon and shinies stored in HOME don't have the Paldea Champion Ribbon yet, so I can bring those into Scarlet and get it for them. But! You can only view what ribbons a Pokemon has on the mobile version of the software! And you can't move Pokemon to your switch games from mobile!!! So you have to:

quit out of the console app, if you opened it already because you thought this would be a relatively simple task

open the app on mobile

manually document which Pokemon don't have the ribbon- like, on a piece of paper or something

close the mobile app (you can't have both versions of the app open simultaneously)

open the app on console

move them from HOME into Scarlet, referring to aforementioned list

Now you might say "There is a custom tag feature in Pokemon HOME! You could apply a tag to the Pokemon you plan to move instead of making a physical note on a piece of paper!" But unfortunately, the only aspect of the tag you can see on the console version is the color- the name of the tag isn't visible. and I'm already using every color of tag available

(also: you can only make and apply tags on mobile. other mobile exclusive things: wonder trade and gts, viewing 90% of achievements, viewing models, switching between a pokemon's stats for different games it can go in without switching what game you're planning on moving things between)

#pokemon home #pokemon #i need a text post tag #i have more complaints too. i should make a comprehensive list. just for me #like: shinies don't have any symbol marking them as such on the GTS. so for the really subtle shinies? you just have to look REAL careful #whenever you import pokemon from Bank they automatically get tagged with a new tag with the name of the Box that they were imported from #which is maybe useful to somebody but its just super annoying for me to have to keep deleting the 'Kanto 1' tag from all of my Bank imports #the lighting in the model viewer is really fucking bad and makes the pokemon look flat and undefined #overlapping areas that are the same color blend together visually #for that matter; the HOME renders are really fucking ugly. compare them to the sugi art they're posed after sometime. terrakion. its WILD #the lag when moving between pages of boxes on the console version when you have a lot of pokemon stored in HOME is MISERABLE #the mobile app and console app have different sets of achievements that are only viewable on their respective apps???? its weird #can't reorder pokemon's box positions on mobile; you just get a big list that you can sort different ways #this doesn't affect their box placement at all #the tags seem really useful at first but if you're moving pokemon between HOME and games a lot? #you have to reapply the tags to those pokemon every time you put them back in HOME because that data is lost once they leave the app #they never fixed the Spinda problem with BDSP; they just made it so that you can't bring Spinda in or out of those games

[friendrat]

But I don't wanna live in a dystopian world!!!

#i just saw this video about amazon having this pay with your palm technology #guys why would you give away your biometric data for convenience?!?! #we're really at this point where we will sell our privacy to save 30 seconds #and i know people have been saying this for forever #but what happens when that becomes the only way to pay? #like we are getting so close to what they describe in revelations it's scary #and yeah i get that people said that about barcodes and credit cards #but having your payment method be your literal hand? #that's too close for comfort #and it's literally not smart to give these companies that info #if they have a data breach who knows what a hacker can do with that? #i know this is a crazy scenario but what if a hacker gets ahold of your fingerprints and currupts the digital record for a crime? #on top of that you only need your fingerprints registered with the police for a few reasons like if you are a criminal or work with kids #you have the right to not have the government have your info without reason #but what happens when the government demands that Amazon (or Apple or any other company pulling this crap) give over their records? #now they have that whether you are a criminal or gave your permission or not #that would be a violation of your 4th amendment rights: to be secure in your person houses papers and effects against unreasonable seizures #don't think the government would do that? police in my area will absolutely violate that right by running plates #to see if you have an expired registration even if you weren't doing anything that required they run your plates #so yeah i fully believe the government would violate the 4th amendment #and what's more... i don't even think that they would have to demand the info i think amazon or apple would offer to sell that info to them #ok sorry for the rant #this world is just getting scary y'all

[seagullcharmer]

owwwww

#libra.txt #today is going! not great! #i am so very tired and frustrated and i hate being in pain #and this is new pain! i don't like it!!!!! #i'm not even 23 how did i develop varicose veins!!!!!! #on the other hand did discover charles martinet will be at the con i'm going to next month so that's exciting #i'd like to get smth signed by him this time #but idk what........ #i know they usually have generic posters and stuff you can get signed but like... i want smth Special #the main option rn would just be like. my case for smo? #idk if i have time to draw smth #and since smo is the only game i've actually played there aren't a lot of idea options #especially since i still REALLY need to work on my fi cosplay #and i haven't finished my data art for brent spiner (even though i'm thinking of just! starting over!!!) #which i don't wanna do #i'm tired and i hurt and i'm hanging on by a thread and i hate it!!!! #if i didn't have the pain in my hip things would be a lot easier. alas. #if anyone has art ideas feel free to send them my way

[you-have-made-a-fatal-error]

need to shell out for a new laptop before the end of the year - for a lot of reasons but mainly bc support ending for win8.1 makes fixing the current beast rather pointless :/ (and. admittedly. there is a lot to fix. she's old and she has suffered.)

but my current beastie is from the last gen of laptops with a disc drive and the thought of using an external/usb disc drive is enough to make me cry tears of blood

#really though it is time to upgrade #and i hate to say it because she /runs/ fine it's all hardware issues w parts that can absolutely be replaced #but if i can't use it to run the programs i need then shelling out the money for those parts would ultimately be a waste #but also the fact that this machine that runs fine is no longer worth fixing bc some google-based bullshit just won't support win8.1 anymor #is ALSO a fucking waste & a pile of planned obsolescence bullshit! and i hate it! #but uh. even though she runs fine and she totally does. she does need. uh. #new keyboard (only 1/3 of keys work; currently use usb keyboard) #new trackpad ribbon cable (trackpad does not currently work; using external usb mouse) #new power button and connecting ribbon cable (turning it on involves opening it up and causing an intentional short-circuit every time.) #(a problem largely solved by simply never turning her completely off- except she also needs) #a new battery (current battery does not charge at all; machine needs to be constantly plugged in or it shuts down immediately) #...ok i might be the 'this is fine' dog about this #but i am still upset! that i will no longer have a disc drive inside my damn laptop. #that's the disc drive's natural habitat; that's where it should be; it's weird and offputting to have it connected via usb! #ack. why do tech companies fuck everything up. #and that's without getting into the way new devices offer less harddrive space so people will use the fucking cloud or whatever??? #yeah sorry no i'm not using your goddamn data mining corporate off-site storage i want to keep my shit on my own goddamn machine #go to actual hell if you're trying to sell me a pc with less than at least 500GB of storage i swear to fuck #...in essence you could say the whole process is leaving me rather grumpy

[girlwiththegreenhat]

tell me you've never had to use skype without telling me you've never had to use skype: you complain about discord

#liz blogs #what am i doing that i am actually completely 100% ok with the way discord runs right now and what they have behind paywalls #what am i doing that other people seem to not be doing that they get frustrated #i hate corporations more than the next guy but they do. still have to make money. to Function #its just bad when the app barely functions Without giving it money #its the difference between having a basic car and having four wheels 1 seat and a steering wheel. only the latter is bad #but the vanilla discord experience is... just fine?? you're not losing out on any Necessary features without it #it's Nice having custom colors and profile themes and funny icons but you don't Need them #the objectively best feature of nitro is the emojis and i am fine shelling out $30 A Year to use them where and however i want #in the basic nitro tier because i cannot fathom how much money it must cost #to run discord and host the insane amount of data it does. can you even Comprehend the sheer Size of what it stores #it is in fact the Only subscription to Anything i currently have #i think the 'fuck corporations fuck capitalism' attitude is Excellent but i think when most people Cannot think critically at all #everything is just black/white to them and they see Any service trying to make money as Bad and start screaming about it #tumblr and discord are on my very short list of services that i am actually very happy with and fine letting them make money #i feel strange watching the internet turn on discord the last couple years. it's still the same app. nothing has changed #literally trying to encorporate n//fts and AI is the only real Shit Move i can think they've ever made and to be fair #like every fucking company is jumping on that right now out of ignorance and not malice #nitro is not the problem though 🥴 are y'all ok #yes i saw people pissing and shitting their pants about discord giving nitro users more themes and thought they were insane #dark mode/light mode is just fine for basic functionality. you dont Need colors. shut up and go burn down an amazon warehouse instead

[likeabxrdinflight]

I have a friend who's still highly cautious around covid because she's high risk but she keeps posting all these screenshots of tweets about covid studies on her instagram in an attempt to convince people that covid is still very dangerous

and it's not that covid isn't still potentially dangerous, but one quick google search has allowed me to find every study that she has referenced, and without fail, every single one of them has been working with pre-vaccine, pre-omicron data. the most recent one she's posting about is about cardiac conditions post covid, and wouldn't you know, the entire sample was taken from people who caught covid between march 2020 and january 2021.

this was pre-vaccine, pre-omicron, hell, it was pre-delta variant (remember that one). this was the wild type covid, which our bodies were least immune to. it was the type that was most known to be causing cardiac symptoms and blood clots. besides delta, it was the most deadly. and no one was vaccinated.

so yes, in that group of people, who were unfortunate enough to catch covid during that period, the results of this study are likely very valid- they are at increased risk of heart disease. and that should be talked about and studied more and if those people end up with cardiac symptoms they need to be receiving proper care.

but we should not be assuming, without further study, that these risks are still the same for those who've been vaccinated, or who only caught covid after the omicron variant became dominant (the omicron lineages have been pretty different from the wild type and other pre-omicron variants, so it's worth noting that). like this is a study that must be replicated with a post-vaccine, post-omicron sample before you will even remotely convince me that those cardiac risks are the same as they were before.

and it is driving me crazy that my friend, who is also fucking trained in how to read science, is posting this shit seemingly without looking at the actual papers or thinking about the context at all. like it is driving me absolutely bananas. these posts aren't even like, direct quotes from the papers, they're screenshots of randos on twitter talking about these papers, as if twitter rando knows jack shit about what they're talking about. like it's all well and good to still care about covid but could you at least do it with less of the fear mongering?

#that's what bothers me I think #these posts always have a flavor of 'you should still be just as afraid of this virus as you were in march 2020' #and that's just...not true #that is patently not true #even if you're high risk the situation has changed a bit it's not as dire as it was though you should still be more concerned obvs #like I'm still all for wearing masks in public spaces #especially crowded ones #but the fear mongering has to stop we cannot talk about this like it's 2020 anymore #and the solutions cannot be the 2020 solutions anymore either #like I agree the government just dropped covid like a hot potato and way too quickly but just...why can't we just say that? #I have enough health anxiety I don't need these kinds of studies thrown in my face when they're all backlogged #...that's probably my real issue is that I read this shit and then get sent all into a tizzy because I had covid last summer #only to go and fact check shit and find out that the data isn't even useful or applicable to someone like me #who caught covid after three vaccines and during the BA.5 omicron wave #arguably one of the mildest of the variants #so it's just like #can you not #and there's no fucking filters on instagram

[yngai]

they should've never made ada a hacker (specifically with her intercepting luis' emails to his college friend & that one scene in damnation where she forces the elevator to svetlana's laboratory to open to help leon & sasha + herself escape the self destruction sequence she intentionally activated) because i've taken it now to mean (i watch way too many computer software review & repair videos) she will be annoying about her preferred linux distributions to anyone who will listen, fellow spies, hackers & whichever partner wakes up to ada typing away on her laptop in their living room looking like she hasn't slept the whole night

#* file // : OOC — ( 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑'𝐒 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐀𝐃𝐄 . ) #* file // : 004 — ( 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 . ) #i'm very sorry but any technical skill/proficiency with computers instantly makes you a little bit of a nerd #it's law #that's one of her many secretive hidden traits very few will fully realize because she has to keep her mystique & allure at the forefront #it's inciting & disarming because often people's perceptions of attractive women's intellect run opposite to their looks #& while being underestimated is workable it is as equally deadly depending on who sees her as lesser #it is not always empowering to demolish the preconceived notions forced onto you #especially for a woman like her #i've talked before about how useful her hacking ability is in the context of corporate espionage as a way to remove the need for a handler #or paying off others to do the research ada can very well do herself #but it is also a skillset that allows her to get employed under her various personas & aliases as a data analyst or a cybersecurity expert #(with faked credentials hosted on an unsuspecting previous employer's websites for however long her credibility needs to last) #to strike at the core of a corporation's private data #she's very talented #i like to think that during one of these assignments she ran into ethan winters sometime in the late 2000s #& it was just a random coincidence where she thought nothing of him beyond being a fellow systems engineer working in a gray office complex #only for him to become such a central figure in the BSAA's dulvey coverup her eyes perked up reading their internal documentation #thinking it all a little too funny #all this without even mentioning her later relationship with mia that me & les (terrorgone) have plotted out

[mrtheinsatiable]

Hell yeah automatic renewal on my library book

#I'm only half way through #turns out taking detailed notes takes a damn long time #especially when you're essentially transcribing the entire book into a bullet point format #girl i need this information and the book has to go back so I'm writing the whole damn thing down #plus it helps me actually absorb the information when i have to read every sentence 2-3 times and also write it myself #learning about the neuroscience of human communication 👍 #having actual mechanical knowledge of complicated concepts like my own consciousness makes it easier to troubleshoot and resolve issues #it's like “hey when you're experiencing this emotion here's what's happening and why and how you can slowly change that reaction” #i wasn't born with the intuitive understanding of emotional connection allistic people apparently have #but I've always been a powerhouse in the classroom #i have full confidence in my ability to absorb information and to learn to apply it appropriately in various situations #i have the pattern recognition to tell when someone's feeling a way with pretty good accuracy #Chinese dramas are really good for studying facial expressions and emotion because they do a lot of acting with their eyes #my main problem is not having the mirror neurons that simulate the emotions of other people in my own brain #so i have the information and i understand what it means #but i also can't help thinking it's odd to feel that way because only the data comes across and not the emotion itself #but if i get a detailed enough understanding of human behavior i think i can make up for that #and with enough applied effort over time i might be able to build those networks in my own brain on purpose #bc it's not like I'm fully missing them #when someone in a show or book is sad i do cry #but i think my defenses are up too high in person to let anything through #i have noticed increased understanding and something like empathy developing lately #still not feeling the feelings but i can recognize and accommodate them which is a lot better than i used to be

[monstermoviedean]

oh my fucking god

#OH MY FUCKING GOD????????? #okay so first off. the data isn't bad your reporting template was bad. #second. you don't get to say how scared you are about fudging data when you are doing that elsewhere. #third. we have not solved any of the reporting problems and you're going to get bad data again and i will have no sympathy. #I literally tried to warn you!!!!! #fourth. read your goddamn email and NOT during meetings. #fifth. having something exist only in your head prevents me from putting it in documents #and i need you to get it out of your head before i can do that and NO i can't do it for you #SIXTH. oh my god. if you could just like fucking DO something on your own you wouldn't have meetings all the time #seventh. my patience tank is so empty and I have my stupid fucking performance review thursday #and it'll probably be fine but that doesn't stop me from freaking the FUCK out about it all week #eighth and finally i'm trying to keep things in perspective but oh my fucking god this is all so aggravating and so preventable #and i KNOW you don't like granular details and you are above all that or whatever but SOMEBODY has to worry about the details and it's me #and it's also the guy at our partner org who is BEGGING for help from you #and making me provide it instead is NOT the way to go

[smirk47]

...

#OK! #well I had to redo like ... 20 different tables and figures because I only just caught an issue in my dataset WAYYYYY upstream #of most of the stuff I need for this article #BUT at least I've gotten way faster at all the data viz stuff #and managed to knock all the corrections out today #tomorrow I just need to take my hella detailed outline and turn it into complete sentences #so I think I'm on track to get an actual draft sent off by the end of the day #which is HUGE #please send me all the 'good time management' vibes you can spare! #dissertation blogging

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

#chrissy speaks #long post #-gestures broadly-

[arolesbianism]

Sigh. Why must you have died Aris, now I have to actually think abt what your abilities are instead of just sweeping it under the rug and calling it good enough

#rat rambles #eternal gales #like I do have stuff in mind but Ive been needing to flesh it out a bit more even if it doesnt rly come up much #basically shed the other side of the information translation coin that is tali #tali translates information into smth readable to people and aris translates information into smth usuable for a universe's purposes #im theory anyways aris doesnt actually get that much use out of that stuff since she only died once or twice #tali also only died once or twice but she had her connection to her role amplified by the whole scar debacle #if youve seen the blue string stuff in my eg art before then thats the stuff put in her face and eye #its basically just smth the narrator uses to gather and transfer information from different universes #so tali got tapped into that a lot more forcefully than most tali's in ither universes are #aris on the other hand mostly has her abilities expressed in a lot less immediately noticable ways #mostly just in her far too late newfound immunity to The Goop™ #most of the others never rly directly get to use their theoretical abilities due to the fact they never die lol #bloom did die tho so congrats girlie you get to finish off the information triangle #she acts as the data storage itself 👍 #great ability for a nine year old who just bled out and died #the others abilities get to be seen in their au counterparts at least #au snek being the most in your face one in that regard due to having died the most by a longshot #most of the others died only a handful of times with mostly no physical alterations from their abilities #au snek can still appear mostly normal but she always has splits between different sections of skin from when she is in meat snake mode #most of the others physical alterations are either just general universe chanres or aren't directly from their abilities #such as owl being all goopy from eating her original universe and au aris being all goopy because thats how she died #the goop™ is basically just a defense mechanism of the universe core btw #anyways au mase looks all edgy and shit because hes storing a shit ton of ppl in him #and then au fydd tali and bloom all just look different from being different agaes and going through different shit #au fydd is abt 15 au tali is abt 18 and au bloom is somewhere in her mid 30s #au sier is also around 18 and au aris is 14 #au mase and snek get to be the odd ones out as the only two who are the same ages as their main universe counterparts #I should rly get around to actually drawing all the au antags sometime soon its been like 5 or so years they desperately need drawn #I technically did draw them way Way back but that was all the crusty dusty original versions of them

[getvalentined]

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed*. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

Response to the Update

Under the cut for readability, because everything said above still applies.

I already said this in a reblog on the post itself, but I'm adding it to this one for easy access: people read it that way because that's what you said.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.

People read it that way because that is what you said.

*The final results of the poll, after 24 hours:

136,635 votes breaks down thusly:

An algorithm based feed where I get "the best of tumblr." @ 1.3% (roughly 1,776 votes)

Chronological feed that only features blogs I follow. @ 95.2% (roughly 130,077 votes)

This doesn't affect me personally. @ 3.5% (roughly 4,782 votes)

#tumblr dot com #tumblr staff

[gauntletqueen]

Hi Zoey. Asking from a place of ignorance, could you please explain why Threads is dogshit?

Threads is the Hot New Garbagedump by Certified Scum Of The Earth and Facebook/Meta owner Zuckerburg. It is like if twitter was even worse.

There is ONLY a For You page, meaning you can never just see the posts from your followed accounts who, yknow, you followed for the purpose of seeing their posts.You can't see those. you have to see the algorithm's posts ONLY. You also require an instagram to get full access to all the features like Posting Images. You need a separate social media account to properly access this new social media. And once you've done so, the only way to delete your Threads account, is to delete you instagram account. The Whole Thing. For Some Fucking Reason. Not to mention, obviously since it's zuckerburg, the thing syphons your personal information like crazy, worse still than twitter.

Like ALL your data. as much as it can get. (Love that it says "Other Data" btw. Nice subtle way of saying "whatever else we want") ALSO wouldn't you know it? It's fucking banned in the EU because it violates a bunch of fucking privacy laws!! So it's DEFINITELY not safe to use!

It is as predatory and exploitative as can be, created by someone that we collectively agreed Sucks Shit and Has No Empathy For Human Life and Individuality, and nobody should be touching it with a ten foot pole let alone sign up for it. Not even to test the waters or because it's where everyone is heading, or to see how bad it is for yourself. It doesn't matter if you're joining to get an account ready in case the platform ends up the new big thing. You're feeding the statistics. Even if you're not using that account, Zuckerburg can show the number of signups to shareholders and investors to prove to them that it's viable. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon in case it succeeds, inform people why they shouldn't join, to reduce its chance of success! It's like strikes and protests; The more of us get the word out, the more effective it'll be!

#threads #meta #social media #twitter