this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

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fatpinocchio:

Source: “I’m paid biweekly, just not by leprechauns: Evaluating valid-but-incorrect response rates to attention check items”

Tags:

#survey #overly literal interpretations #fun with loopholes #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #(I *think* I’m generally pretty good at guessing what attention-check items want to hear even when there is no single right answer) #(but yeah it’s annoying when you look at one and you’re like ”there are definitely circumstances under which this could be true”) #(even more so when you’re *in* those circumstances) #(and god knows I’ve ”failed” some questions in school quizzes from overthinking them)

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overlordtulip:

A few months ago, it came to my attention that, for many people, helplessness is a central cause of anxiety, such that a good way to reduce their anxiety is to reduce their sense of helplessness.

This is deeply bizarre to me. For my part, I tend to find helplessness actively comforting, and situations of helplessness to be among those where I have the least anxiety. If there’s a situation whose outcome I’m unable to affect, then I can just relax and let it resolve itself, rather than worrying about exactly what actions to take and how they’ll affect the outcome.

(For example: asking for things from people who I’m not accustomed to asking for things from is often a high-anxiety activity for me; but waiting for a response after asking, when there’s nothing more for me to do, is low-anxiety.)

I’m now kind of curious how many other people have the arrangement I have rather than the apparently-default helplessness-increases-anxiety one. And also how the apparently-default one works, because my model of its internals is currently pretty weak.

I’ve thought about this too, and I think the way it works for me is that *uncertainty* increases anxiety. Helplessness decreases uncertainty about *what to do next* but increases uncertainty about *the outcome*: which of these effects is bigger depends on the situation.

Waiting for a response to a difficult email is worse than writing it, because if I haven’t sent the email yet I *know* there’s been no response and I at least theoretically have ways I can tweak the phrasing and such to make them more likely to respond well, but if I’ve sent it the response *might* arrive at any time and *might* be bad, and I have no further methods of weighting the probabilities in my favour.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

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etirabys:

“wow, this is a difficult pose to draw, I think I should probably strip down to underwear and photograph myself in the same pose because I’m not going to find the exact reference I need by googling”

“yeah, but what about… [vague sense that any sense that the photos on my phone are private is illusory]”

“oh… that… yes. I do feel bad about that. okay, let’s just keep guessing”

“hey, I need to borrow your single-purpose camera, it’s a long story, no I’m not going to let you see what pictures I took before I remove them from the storage drive”

Tags:

#reply via reblog #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #(I feel like this obeys the letter of the tag if not necessarily the spirit) #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

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professorsparklepants:

Won’t someone think of the children

Emma: Okay so like. The most fridge horror thing about the triwizard tournament is that they’re like “we added an age restriction!”

Emma: Not “we raised it!” Just “we added one!”

Emma: Which implies that previously, 11 YEAR OLDS COULD ENTER

Emma: Like I doubt they were ever chosen bc someone whose magical repotoir consists solely of “swish and flick” is not the best candidate for their school but what the FUCK

Meghan: AU where the Tournament happens 1st year, the other Champions are the same (17) and throw the whole competition making sure Harry doesn’t fucking die. They even let him take the Cup bc he’s so tiny and adorably earnest…

Meghan: Obviously that backfires, but Cedric isn’t dead at least.

Emma: THANKS I HATE IT

 

lullabyknell:

Oh, no, TINY HARRY in the Triwizard Tournament. That’s AWFUL. 

I love it. 

AU where the Tournament happens in 1st year? I suppose Quirrell is still the DADA prof, but you could actually have him as the Muggle Studies professor still if you wanted Fake!Moody as the DADA prof. I think Scabbers ran away before Percy could give him to Ron as a pet, if you wanted to have Peter also helping Voldemort. (Oh, man, this is a nightmare. It’s great.) 

You could only make this work in fanfiction, but I would LOVE to try and combine books 1, 3, and 4. (I don’t think Lucius would have thrown the Diary into the mix of this, so we thankfully don’t have a basilisk slithering around too, and I don’t think Dumbledore would bring the Philosopher’s Stone into this. Although you could add those for the ULTIMATE nightmare scenario.) 

I’m thinking like, “Harry, you’re going to wizard school! And you’ve been tossed into a death game where all your competition is 17! And since your photo was in the paper, your mass-murderer godfather escaped prison! And now the dementors have been stationed around the school to keep this Tournament from going even more horribly, horribly wrong!” 

I’d love to combine this with the Veela!Viktor & Werewolf!Fleur AU (obvs if Viktor takes Hermione to the Yule Ball, it’s purely so Harry can have friends there). Throw Remus Lupin into the mix as another DADA prof? With Fake!Moody? If you wanted to pull a “give Hogwarts more staff” AU just to add to the chaos, so you can have both (evil!)Quirrell and Burbage as Muggle Studies professors. 

Oh man, your readers would be screaming at you the entire time, because tiny Harry would be surrounded by so many danger elements and they would have no idea how everything combined would unfold. Cedric, Viktor, and Fleur would probably be mild audience!inserts for this fic, doing everything they can to keep the littlest Champion safe (because clearly this is a plot to kill the BWL) even though he’s insisting that he can do this himself and doesn’t need help. 

“GET THE BABY BOY OUT OF THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO NOW, PLEASE,” says the audience. “Lol, no,” says the author. 

 

professorsparklepants:

Knell you have an evil, evil mind, and I’m dying. (I am laughing over the idea of Victor Krum, international Quidditch star with magical love powers, taking an eleven year old girl who doesn’t care about sports as his date to the Yule ball, as a favor to the tiny eleven year old champion who does care about quidditch. Ron called first dibs as Harry’s date and regrets it.)

Throwing in Sirius is such a terrible awful move. Everyone is talking about the mass murderer who broke out of jail and the sinister omen of death spotted during all the tasks and tongues are waggling like crazy.

 

lullabyknell:

Prof, that is absolutely the picture I am going for here. Viktor Krum is the ultimate gentleman to his date (a twelve-year-old girl who has no idea who he is) and is having a great time listening to her chatter about her first-year classes. Veela!Viktor and little!Hermione dancing together is melting my heart. 

#HP tag #fic ideas #I love this#I also want to know how the HECK do we get Harry out of the graveyard alive?#does it involve Sirius? I think it involves Sirius#I can see his efforts to protect Harry landing him there too#smash up Voldie’s return with the Truth Of Who Betrayed The Potters#but this time it’s told gloatingly#Voldie doesn’t kill Sirius asap because ‘aw Bella would have more fun’#‘don’t you agree Wormtail?’ #yeesh I gave myself the creeps (tags via @mzminola)

Min, I love you. 

Can you imagine, Cedric and tiny Harry in front of the Triwizard Cup in the center of the maze, and Sirius Black shows up? (After people have been gossiping like mad, egged on by Skeeter, over the terrible death omens looming over the Boy-Who-Lived.) Let’s say that the Cup was always intended to be a Portkey back to the beginning of the maze, so Sirius overhears this piece of information and realizes that the Cup is the perfect opportunity for something to go terribly wrong. But Harry is obviously not going to listen to “Mass-Murderer Sirius Black” desperately telling him not to take the Cup. 

Sirius tries to tackle Harry, but they both end up in the graveyard. (Cedric is panicking back in the maze.) Peter and Sirius recognize each other immediately. Harry has no idea what’s going on. 

Then you have to choose how you want the rest of this AU to go. (Voldemort obviously gets to give the Classic HP Final Confrontation Explanation of what’s been going down behind-the-scenes all year.) Does Voldemort get resurrected in Harry’s first year? Or is Voldemort’s resurrection foiled by Harry and Sirius somehow and put off for some future plot? 

Either way, I think it’s highly necessary that Sirius punches someone in the face. If Voldemort is resurrected, then it’s definitely Voldemort. If Voldemort isn’t resurrected, then it’s probably Peter. These fists were made for punching and that’s just what they’ll do. “STAY AWAY FROM MY GODSON.” *CRACK*

If Voldemort is resurrected, then Sirius probably gets to witness Harry’s Priori Incantatum with Voldemort! (Would a Priori Incantatum work with Peter if Harry doesn’t get to duel Voldemort? Since Peter used Voldemort’s wand to kill Cedric?) OH MAN, THE DELICIOUS, DELICIOUS PAIN OF SIRIUS BLACK GETTING TO SEE A REMNANT OF JAMES AND LILY POTTER. I WOULD DIE. I would be FACE-DOWN on the FLOOR. People would be poking me like, “LK, are you okay?” And I’d be like, “Absolutely not.” 

In either scenario, I think everyone escapes. Peter and Voldemort escape. Sirius picks up Harry and just books it. (Maybe Sirius has Harry’s Firebolt for some reason? Would Sirius still send Harry the Firebolt? I know the Firebolt didn’t come out until 1994, but the idea of an 11-year-old getting a Firebolt is so funny. Hermione has no idea why everyone at the Yule Ball is freaking out over Harry’s new broomstick; it can’t be that good, surely.) 

Harry ends up stranded out in the countryside with the godfather who never actually betrayed his parents, getting to know Sirius, and is probably actually really relieved to have an adult handling the situation (Sirius is… not the best adult, but Harry is eleven here) and to get some family. Voldemort might be back and that’s awful, but Harry’s actually kind of having an alright time? He’s away from all the stress of Hogwarts and the Tournament for once. 

Meanwhile, Cedric Diggory has alerted everyone back at Hogwarts that Sirius Black has kidnapped Harry Potter and they are LOSING THEIR MINDS. 

 

phi-of-two:

I love this concept, and I wonder what an equally speedrunny sequel would look like. Books 2 and 5 seem like they’d mash up pretty well? 

Harry comes back in September, and no one believes his story about what happened at the end of the last task, because it’s frankly pretty unbelievable. Also he’s apparently a serial killer apologist now? Dumbledore’s backing his story, yeah, but the Prophet’s been saying for months that Dumbledore’s a liar.

And that’s before the petrifications start to happen and it comes out that Harry’s a parselmouth.

The kids close to Harry’s age mostly shun him as evil, but also concerned older Hufflepuffs start to approach him, saying that they don’t know exactly what happened over the summer but Sirius Black is not a person to look up to, and they know Harry’s just a kid but petrifying people to impress your serial killer idol is not okay actually. 

On top of all that, Umbridge is the DADA teacher, and she’s a lot more intimidating to a twelve-year-old.

(something DA-like could still happen. Being twelve, Harry’s too young to be teaching it himself, even if people were willing to be taught by the probable Heir of Slytherin. But he talks about Umbridge to Sirius and Sirius talks to Lupin and Lupin knows the castle, he can sneak in if he needs to help these kids that he got attached to last year. And yes, sneaking is required, because Umbridge does not want filthy halfbreeds in her castle.)

Tags:

#story ideas I will never write #fanfic #Harry Potter #long post #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

harry potter books rated by number of animals-are-actually-people reveals

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

goosegoblin:

katrinageist:

goosegoblin:

harry potter 1: this cat is actually a teacher at hogwarts. solid beginning, pretty good work here. 7/10.

harry potter 2: this tree is actually a monster that’ll destroy your car, and this book is actually uhhhh a teenage boy’s ghost, but no animals. disappointing. 3/10.

harry potter 3: this evil dog is actually a man and your godfather. this large wolf is your year 9 teacher. that deer is your spirit from the future/past due to a time travel loop. your best friend’s pet is a war criminal. this is where we completely and totally peaked, folks. 11/10.

harry potter 4: this cup is actually a portkey and this man is actually a completely different man. the original man is locked in a trunk. nobody is a cat BUT rita skeeter is a beetle, and now she lives in a jar. 6/10

harry potter 5: uncertain how much tonks can become an animal, but even if she did it would just make her a furry, so 0/10.

harry potter 6: harry was far too busy being obsessed with draco this book to do anything else. harry wouldn’t have noticed if hedwig was actually morrissey. unrateable.

harry potter 7: in a horrifying twist of events, we have a person revealed to actually be an animal as Bathilda Bagshot turns out to be a giant fucking snake in a human costume. Who let that happen? Who cleared that? I need names and answers. -2/10

post-books information about nagini: no. -10/10

+1 for book 4, you forgot that Malfoy was briefly a ferret

i’m a fraud and a fool. harry potter 4: both a beetle AND a ferret. 8/10

Tags:

#Harry Potter #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

andalwaysburning:

badjokesbyjeff:

I was applying for Australian citizenship and the interviewer asked, “Do you have a criminal record?”

I said, “No. Is that still required?”

Oh my God.

Tags:

#Australia #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

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adzolotl:

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Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #high context jokes #(in addition to the backslash thing adzolotl was also just talking about the Crusades) #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

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slatestarscratchpad:

birdblogwhichisforbirds:

apricops:

Imagine being told “you can escape the wrath of the inquisition if you can prove that the witnesses would have reason to slander you, but we’ll never tell you the names of those witnesses” and you respond with “no problem, here’s my list of one-hundred and fifty-two mortal enemies”

and it works

@etirabys

Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.[1][2] This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.[3] By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships.

Tags:

#Christianity #history #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #torture cw? #abuse cw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

unknought:

the-lost-alchemist:

worldsworstfather:

me n my angel gf

me, bleeding from my eyes nose and ears: bb ur hand is so…….so……….uh,

her: Ḓ̬̱͘͢ͅO̸͉̳̖͉̙ ͔͜N͓̮̦̱͝O̧͇̙̲̜͔T͇̯̮̦̖̖ ͙͇͇̖̝̹͜B̧҉͍͈̭̭̰̳͙ͅE̴̗̱̫ ̛̞͞ͅA̶̡͙̞̪̞̻̰̬̦F̛̗͙̗̲̦͕̟̙́R̶͍͉̠̖͖̮̀́A̦̠̮̜̺͟I͓̻͢͞Ḓ̹͇̮̬͈

Okay, I want to break down what’s going on in these posts, at least for me.

The aesthetic being invoked here is of what Tumblr calls “eldritch angels”. “Eldritch”, in turn, calls to mind H. P. Lovecraft, who really liked the word and prior to whom I think “eldritch” was basically a synonym of eerie. But now the word invokes something vast and strange and terrifying, such that the mere perception or understanding of it is dangerous to one’s body or mind.

Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors are representative of an uncaring universe. On the scale of the cosmos, humans don’t matter, goodness doesn’t matter, nothing matters. The universe is huge and amoral and ruled by a blind idiot god.

Eldritch angels, on the other hand, say there is an ultimate and objective source of goodness, that there is a divine plan, but it’s one that’s vaster and stranger than you can understand. It’s not an uncaring universe, but it’s one that cares a lot less about you than you might have hoped. A lot of what’s truly, objectively good is barely recognizable as such or beyond your comprehension entirely.

So in this context, the “angel gf” fantasy does a couple things. First, it flips the script. Yes, you’re a microscopic part of an incomprehensible cosmic plan, but also the angel gf cares about you specifically. You (in particular) matter (cosmically) because you matter to her.

Second, romance is, to a significant degree, about letting in the Other. There’s someone who cares about different things than you, does different things, has a whole life separate from yours… and then all of that comes to be a part of your life too. Like, forget the mysteries of the cosmos, I’m not sure the human mind is capable of truly, fully comprehending the idea of a whole entire life separate from one’s own. The draw of the numinous and the draw of romance are both about taking something outside yourself, greater and more important than you can fully understand, and drawing it close to your heart and understanding it as much as you can.

Tags:

#interesting #meta #angels #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what