https://youtu.be/11lPhMSulSU

Are you an artist? I don’t know many artists with your perspective, but I don’t want to say artists never have this perspective.

As someone with higher education in studio arts, I can’t speak for all artists. But I can say, in my experience, the cognitive skills that allow an artist to break a subject down into base, renderable components aren’t particularly burdened by familiarity. Like, I don’t think it’s harder to realistically paint my face, or my spouse’s face, etc. than it is to paint anyone else’s face. Part of that is just that it’s generally hard to render faces realistically without adding stylistic choices or bridging over the tricky parts, whether the face is familiar or not. Again, just my experience.

I also don’t think realism or “visually accuracy” is necessary for a good self portrait. Sometimes the self portrait is an introspective exercise. Sometimes a self portrait is not representative of our physical self at all, or is fully abstract.

This self portrait is lovely, especially since I feel like (read: don’t know for sure) based on the title that he tried to capture his expressive emotions during a vulnerable moment. It’s raw.

As an education professional: what the hell, dude? It’s not unfortunate that we aren’t just dropping struggling students without first carefully examining why they’re not succeeding.

You might be right that you can’t let some students detract from the class for other students, but the solution there is advocating for better funding and more staff to be able to give every student what they need, whether they’re above or below the expectation for their age.

Saying it’s “unfortunate” that students don’t fail (read: ruin their whole god damn lives) as often anymore is blaming our most vulnerable YOUTH for the systemic problems of our society. It’s not their job to be what the school environment wants them to be, they don’t even have a choice about whether or not they are there. It’s our (as educators, and as tax paying and voting community members) responsibility to make sure they get the education they need to be functional members of our society.

We even have huge bodies of research to reinforce this. It’s not a secret that the school environment excels at making nice workers, not critical-thinking and well-adjusted adult humans.

Take it up with the school board! Take it up with the local, state, and federal government! Take it up with the voters!

I guess this isn’t NO context but:

Innkeeper married to a nixie: “The Fey never do anything without a price…”

“… How much did you pay for your wife?”

I feel like this is true if the reader is meant to have the perspective of the person who feels that something is magic (the Hobbits, in the example from your video). However, not all magic in fiction is like this, and sometimes the reader is supposed to mostly have the perspective of Galadriel, or to gain her perspective over time.

An example is Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. The reader has the perspective of the Hobbits at first, because that is the perspective of the main character. But the story has themes of “lifting the veil” of magic, and by the end both the main character and the reader have a more similar perspective to Galadriel.

I guess what I mean is, I agree with you and the video’s author in large part… but like… to broadly say that magic “should” be used in literature in a certain way ignores how it can be used in different ways to great effect!

I think they’re making the claim that if we’re looking at “varience”, variety, etc. then pf1e has more overall variability. Pathfinder does it with a combination of classes and archetypes, where 3.5e does it with just classes. I don’t think they made the explicit claim of there being more classes in pf1e by overall number.

I find that instead of pathfinder having more “classes” by number, it feels more honest about what is a class and what is a subclass/archetype. Imo, many 3.5e classes would be archetypes in pathfinder, as they fit your definition of “instead of x, you get y” without much substantial difference. And likewise, in my experience playing different archetypes in pf can produce vastly different player experiences (some archetypes and classes more than others, for sure).

All of this is pretty subjective, though… and I personally haven’t heard anyone making fun of 3.5e for lacking classes, compared to either pf1e or 2e, but it could happen!

What organization are you researching with? Why is the submission via Gmail?

How are you handling participant data (mostly email addresses, it seems)? Can participants opt out and revoke access to the data after submission?

Do you have a conflict of interest? Do you or any of your colleagues have an affiliation with Dolby or other companies involved in the research?

Did this proposal pass IRB? I’m guessing it’s exempt, so probably yes, but do you have the approval number?

What do you plan on doing with the model? Are these data for training the model or for testing it?

I know those questions sound a lil aggro, and to be clear, I don’t think there are necessarily right answers. Maybe you’re an undergraduate or hobbiest, like… I don’t think IRB is super important for a cute cat study. But I do think this kind of info should be included in recruitment calls as a standard!

Cheers, seems cute and fun

Hi! Can you share information about the job description and compensation plan expected for the winner that joins your team? There’s a lot of info here about how to nail the “interview”, but not a lot of info about what the rest of the job is like. Expected hours? Is it part time or full time? Or is it on commission only?

I’m also curious about the more practical requirements, like if nationality/work authorization is important, if the job will be as a contractor or as an employee, etc. Any insight there?

Lastly, what kind of visibility should we expect for our example project? Like, who are the judges? Will only those judging the contest be able to see the example work? What will happen to the work after the contest? Just want to understand what I’m making before I make it!

What, in your opinion, is the semantic difference between the words plastic and polymer?

What is your word of choice to distinguish between naturally occurring and lab-made polymers?

It’s fine if you want to draw some conceptual comparisons between biological and synthetic polymers, but it’s 100% not true that “plastics” as defined as synthetic, organic polymers (I.e. acrylics, silicones, polyesters, polyurethanes, halogenated plastics, thermosets, thermoplastics et al.) are the same on a chemical basis as most biological polymers.

Like… where are you drawing the line? Are proteins a plastic? Is starch plastic? Is DNA plastic? RNA? Clearly not, by multiple definitions (bioavailability, reactivity, structure and function, persistence in the environment, etc.). Even biological compounds closer to synthetic polymers (cellulose, chitin, etc.) are definitively different, even if they do have longer persistence, lower reactivity, etc. And bioplastics (like what people mean when they say biodegradable plastics) are heat-modified biological polymers. They don’t come out of a living thing that way; they are fundamentally altered from their previous form.

I guess I just… disagree that the distinction is “arbitrary semantics”?

Yeah but like… not all polymers are plastics, right? Like… they aren’t synonyms?

Wikipedia says acrylics, polyesters, silicones, polyurethanes, thermoplastics, and thermosets are plastics. Do those exist in organic tissue? Am I missing an obvious group?

Where do you get the idea we are made of plastics? Not necessarily throwing shade, just… I’m a molecular biologist and at first pass that seems like a stretch. I’d be excited to be wrong

Thermosets and thermoplastics, right? Not sure that we have that going on in there…