writing can’t be that hard. all it is is just putting words in front of each other, right?
update: the wrong words are in front of each other. This is the worst thing ever to happen.
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GUYS THIS IS AMAZING
SERIOUSLY
6000 YEARS
STORIES THAT ARE OLDER THAN CIVILIZATIONS
STORIES THAT WERE TOLD BY PEOPLE SPEAKING LANGUAGES WE NO LONGER KNOW
STORIES TOLD BY PEOPLE LOST TO THE VOID OF TIME
STORIES
GUYS LOOK AT THIS
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS
GUYYYYYSSSS
“Here’s how it worked: Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (and the analysis revealed they might), for example, chances are the story can be traced back to the “last common ancestor.” That would be the Proto-Western-Indo-Europeans from whom both lineages split at least 6800 years ago. The approach mirrors how an evolutionary biologist might conclude that two species came from a common ancestor if their genes both contain the same mutation not found in other modern animals.”
How do they control for stories that were borrowed, which almost certainly happened?
“ Unlike genes, which are almost exclusively transmitted “vertically”—from parent to offspring—fairy tales can also spread horizontally when one culture intermingles with another. Accordingly, much of the authors’ study focuses on recognizing and removing tales that seem to have spread horizontally. When the pruning was done, the team was left with a total of 76 fairy tales.”
This article doesn’t say how, but I bet those methods are in the paper.
For this, they used a library of cultural traits for each culture a fairy tale occurred in, and then measured the likelihood that trait t occurs in culture c due to either phylogenetic proximity (inheritance) or spatial proximity (diffusion), using autologistic regression:
(Autologistic regression is a graphical model where connected nodes have dependencies on each other, except instead of an undirected graph, ALR is a special case that requires sequential binary data and assumes a spatial ordering. In this case, the binary data are the cultural features).
Cultural traits states are generated using Monte-Carlo simulation and phylogenetic or spatial influence are fitted as local dependencies between the nodes in the graph representing cultural traits. I can’t find this in the paper (though it may be mentioned in the citation of the method they used), but presumably if the spatial influence exceeds the phylogenetic influence by a certain threshold, the trait is removed.
THE GRATEFUL ANIMALS IS OLDER THAN DIRT!!! I FUCKING KNEW IT!!!
happy to reblog this version with paper attached!
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- Leave no online footprint of searches or purchases. Digital Defense Fund’s abortion privacy guide is your go-to resource for this. Using private browsers, two-factor authentication, encrypted messaging, strong passwords, etc. is critical. Google searches have been presented as evidence in an SMA trial before. Do not leave a digital trail.
- Use the medications properly to prevent interactions with healthcare providers. The pills are very effective, but they have to be used right. Carefully follow the instructions provided on the How to Use Abortion Pill website. Note that misoprostol tablets should always be taken by dissolving them under the tongue. Do NOT insert misoprostol vaginally if you are self-managing an abortion. While this is medically safe, it can leave incriminating pill remnants that can be detected in the vagina during a pelvic exam if you end up needing to seek medical care.
- If it’s not an emergency but you need expert health advice, use a free calling service like Google Voice to call or text the Miscarriage + Abortion Hotline at 1-833-246-2632. Medical complications are very uncommon with abortion pills, but they’re not impossible. The M+A Hotline is safe to use and is staffed by trustworthy clinicians who volunteer their time to help those who choose SMA. Do not use your own phone number to call as this will create a record that is visible to your cell service provider.
- Don’t disclose any information about SMA to emergency room staff if you do need to seek medical care. This is how most people who are arrested for SMA are reported. Healthcare providers are almost always who calls the police in cases of SMA criminalization. Contrary to popular belief, HIPAA does not protect your private health information from being shared with police if you are suspected of doing something that could be considered a crime. If you believe you need to seek urgent medical care, do not hesitate to go. Say “I think I’m having a miscarriage” and provide your symptoms. Do not mention any use of or purchase of abortion pills. There is no widely available test to detect misoprostol in your bloodstream. If you do not disclose it, there is no way for a medical provider to tell the difference between a medication abortion and a spontaneous miscarriage.
- Do not talk to the cops. Period. Do. Not. Talk. To. The. Cops. If you are questioned by police you should state, “I am exercising my right to remain silent, and I wish to speak with an attorney.” Do not speak again or nod in response to a question. Contact the Repro Legal Helpline as soon as possible for expert legal advice: 1-844-868-2812. Do not agree to questioning or speak to any law enforcement official without a lawyer present.
Protecting Yourself from Criminalization for Self-Managed Abortion — OARS
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Write through it first and then go back to pick out the places that seem to be going too fast. Here are some reasons for why they seem rushed:
- Word Choice: Your word choice determines the way a sentence flows by itself and how it flows with other sentences. If a section of your writing seems too fast, rewrite it and rearrange it until is sounds right.
- Not Enough Something: If you look at a scene that is much shorter than you thought it would be, you might be missing detail or story. You can add more to the story by introduce subplots, adding in a little bit more conflict, or adding something else that puts more space between the beginning and the end. For tips on detail, go through the description tag on the tags page.
- Pacing: Your pacing is probably off. This goes back to the above points. If you need help with pacing, go through the pacing tag on the tags page.
- No Down Time: You need some down time in a story. The action scenes can go fast, but after that something should slow the story. The reader needs time between fast paced scenes to wrap their head around what had just happened, but this doesn’t mean it should be a pattern of fast-slow-fast-slow. Mix it up. Entire chapters or scenes shouldn’t be fast or slow. They can be a combination. There can be little moments of quiet in an action scene where you can catch up on everything that happened within the narration and where you can put in more detail about the world around your character.
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when cat does leg thing
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“Man decays, his corpse is dust. All his kin have perished; But a book makes him remembered through the mouth of its reciter.” – The Immortality of Writers (Papyrus Chester Beatty IV)
Thank you for everything, Kazuki Takahashi
☆
AUTHOR | HISTORIAN | ARTIST 