Balun Stormhands

Did I draw bloodmary/ironmary as dnd characters because I wanted to draw Simon in armor… yes, BUT he looks cool so-

Welcome to a spectacular crossover event—nay, an extravaganza! Here is: Agatha through other eyes meets Floppy Friday! In other words, this is an "Agatha through other eyes" image from page 28 of issue one of the Girl Genius comic book, by Brian Snōddy, the inker on the first three issues of the comic book and, so, the first graphic novel.

Text transcribed below the cut.

Ok. so. for the longest time I have taken this line

at face value. I accepted that Gil acted the way he did in Paris (or let his actions be perceived the way they were by tarvek at any rate) in order to cause people to underestimate him.

And while I do think that this makes sense, it doesn't perfectly gel with Gil's reaction

He lets Tarvek continue to belive this, but he is very eager to drop it. It could be that he is embarrassed by this solution, but also, it could be he is letting Tarvek belive this to cover up the more embarrassing truth that it was mostly accidental.

Yes, Tarvek sees it as a scheme, but Tarvek lives in a world where everything is a scheme, especially the actions of people who he respects the intelligence of. Because he lives in a world where it's the smartest thing to do, fool others before they fool you.

But Gil, especially at the beginning of the comic, is not really a schemer. He's an adventurer (albeit he seems a bit inexperienced at it), He is a spoiled brat, but only around his father (which is a very interesting example of his seemingly-subconscious tendency to drift into the roles others seem to expect him to occupy, and contrasts interestingly with Klaus's harshness and high expectations of him), and he's much better at fighting and sparking than having a normal conversation.

maybe I'm just fooled, but this

does not strike me as a man who can live a lie his entire college carrier.

Now, I must take into account that he apparently lived a lie from age 8 to (at least) whenever he went off to Paris, because he hid his Spark from the other students on Castle Wulfenbach.

So maybe he does have a higher ability to lie than I give him credit for, but on Castle Wulfenbach, he has the support of, at minimum, Madame Von Pinn and Klaus, and he was forced to hide it from such a young age that a fair amount of that hiding, at least at the beginning, probably more involved excuses and separating him from his classmates when he needed to Spark out. An environment of strict rules and hiding of himself enforced by the authorities in control of his life, suddenly contrasted by going off to college where those authorities no longer have influence and he no longer needs to hide what he had before.

To me that sounds like a perfect recipe for cutting loose in college.

Now, do I think he was actually as 'debauched' as Tarvek describes him? no. That doesn't gel at all with his current character. But. him imitating the behavior of the Heros of the novels he reads (he clearly reads a lot of Heroic fiction, he has all the Trelawney Thorpe books), and imitating those around him (including Bang, who I assume was assigned to guard him), causing him to genuinely affect the demeanor of a 'drunken sot' enough for Tarvek to fill in the rest? makes sense to me.

Though I do feel like while most people in-comic tend to talk about his Paris reputation negatively, the visuals in Tarvek's Paris flashbacks seem to imply at least an attempt at Heroism, and Gli's descriptions of his time in Paris (mostly relating to his memory of Zola) supports this strongly

I do!

I actually really like Razoul; in fact, he's one of my favourite characters in that franchise. I can definitely see the comparison, since they're similar characters, although Razoul definitely had a harder time accepting Aladdin than Cap had accepting Eugene. I don't think he ever really did; just a grudging understanding, like you said.

So the listing for the second book was marked as sold, but when I check the original listing, I see a banner saying that it was ended by the seller because the item is no longer available. 🤔

It's also been pointed out that the quantity seems to now be listed as 2, when I'm 99% sure it was only 1 originally? I'm wondering if perhaps the seller mistakenly listed the quantity as 2 at some point, and after one sold they quickly ended the listing.

The other possibility I can see is that they weren't satisfied with the offers they got, so they ended it to relist it as an auction, though this seems less likely.

I don't think it's impossible that they'd have 2 copies (production surplus, potentially) but the lack of another listing and them taking this one down makes me think the quantity is an error.

I also see people saying it's scammy, and while the timing is definitely odd, I'm not sure what the angle would be?

Hey, OP, I would like to direct you to this ancient post, which is about who Xavier was before the series came out, because he actually predates Tangled as a movie, and was originally a part of an earlier version of the story!

I got lunch with a bunch of former coworkers a few weekends ago, and all of us have worked loosely around AI, we were building internal LLMs way before ChatGPT took off. Some of them now work for a particular green bird language learning app literally leading the efforts in integrating AI into every part of the user experience.

I was in conversation with one of them, and she was asking me if I was worried about AI taking my job as her son is wanting to something similar to what I do. My response was basically that 1) the industry I work in deals with HIPAA so it will always be about 10 years behind technologically just as a safety precaution and 2) as of right now, AI is limited in how it goes about identifying problems and solving those problems. It can monitor a data pipeline, but identifying problems in data that /successfully/ flow through the pipeline and resolving the problematic data, an AI agent wouldn't know how to address; it just doesn't have the institutional/historical context across multiple companies and governments to know how to fix it.

Me: "So for now, no I'm not worried about it. The entire data architecture of not only our company, but of two states' healthcare databases and the databases of five different data vendor companies would need to be completely rebuilt and access to them granted to an AI agent for it to MAYBE have a chance at identifying these problems. An AI agent isn't going to, you know, ring up Bob at the state Medicare office to ask him if a program from 2013 is still in place and if we are accepting claims from that program."

Her: "Well, I don't know. AI agents are getting better every day. You don't think an AI agent will be able to contact the government's AI agent to solve these problems."

Me: "Um no I don't think so because I don't think the state would trust their AI agent sharing protected data with an external AI agent. Do you think an AI agent will autonomously call a doctor to ask about a claim the doctor submitted, and do you think the doctor will just... give PII healthcare data to an AI over the phone?"

Her: "Well doctor's offices are using AI more and more every day..."

Me: "Well for like.. scheduling appointments.. they're not having ChatGPT distribute HIPAA protected healthcare data to outside sources, that is a massive liability that they have almost no control over."

Her: "I don't know, I think it may be happening."

Me: "I heard the moon is Grok now."

@antimony-ore

This is a good point, and I think it is healthy to remain skeptical both of the AI evangelists and the detractors. However, maybe I'm just limited in my meatspace brain, but so much of my daily work is exactly like this:

A claim comes in with a 'GP' flag in a field for medical modifiers. No one on the team notices because it didn't cause an error, except for Donna who has worked at the company for 27 years. She knows the 'GP' flag was once used when the state implemented a financial assistance program for osteoporosis medication in 2010, but the program was phased out 4 years later. It isn't causing any errors on our end, but it might raise some eyebrows when it get to the state, best to get ahead of it now.

She knows that Charlene in Finance would know who to track down about this, because Charlene used to work in Claims Processing. Charlene says we should reach out to Dan at the state's Medicare office, but also reach out to the provider to see if the claim was submitted incorrectly. Donna also knows that we have to reach out to both the claims processing team and the database team at our data vendor company in the event that the paper claim was either transcribed incorrectly, or the data was read incorrectly when being digitized. This is one claim of the 1.5 million that were processed this week.

it’s not weird to love it and comment and leave kudos because the author will probably still see it someday and it will make them happy.

it’s not weird to like said author’s work so much that you want to go look for other fics from them.

it’s not weird to go through the authors profile and look for other fics from the ships you like (or maybe some that you’ll give a chance because you liked the author) and maybe bookmark them for later.

it’s not weird to read these other fics and like them too and comment on them because you actually like them and you want to let the author know.

it’s not weird to read fanfiction from 5, or 8, or 10 years ago and actually enjoy and engage with it because it’s perfectly normal to relate to something that’s less than a decade old!

let’s stop treating fanfiction like they’re instagram posts that stop being interesting in 24 hours! fanfiction is NOT social media, fanfiction is art!!! and art doesn’t get old in one day, one year, or even a decade!

“So... We got the exploding diarrhea. Here's my advice for anyone who doesn't have it yet:

It's going to take a minute for the government to pin down where this is coming from, and then issue a recall, because the FDA has been gutted. But, I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt : this is coming from Taylor Farms produce, and you will see them recalled.

You'll want to avoid all Taylor Farms produce in the grocery store. They supply McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, about any fast food place you can think of.

Raspberries, watermelons, cilantro, and the veggies you're hearing about are not causing this many people to get sick. It's the shredded lettuce, specifically, that's the problem. But, you'll want to stay away from every type of produce this company puts out, because one strand of shredded lettuce is all it takes to contaminate bushels.

Taylor Farms is the source. Taco Bell proactively pulled their produce from their restaurants. You're going to see other fast food places doing this, and probably will see that before the government names a source. The FDA knows this, but they can't come out and tell us all until there's proof, which takes resources and research, which takes manpower, but the FDA has been cut by about 20-30%

During the Biden term, onions at McDonald's had ecoli. We knew this because DNA testing was done quickly and they were able to narrow it down to one place that caused the outbreak. And, it was traced back to Taylor Farms. This isn't going to be solved as quickly though.

When you get this, make a virtual appointment to your PCP - a "same day sick" appointment. Tell them someone in your family just tested for this and was positive and was prescribed Bactrim. If you go in person, they're probably going to make you poop in a cup and wait until results come back to prescribe.

You'll know when you get this. Trust me on all of this.

You'll want to stay hydrated because this parasite damages the lining of the small intestine. Your small intestine, in turn, secretes more water into the gut, and less nutrients and liquid are able to remain in the body. So no matter how much you shit, you're going to want to drink. A day of this leads to dehydration if you don't increase your fluid intake, and a few days will land you in the hospital.

If you have headaches, weakness, muscle cramps, dizziness, or an increase heart rate - hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Go to the ER for fluids if you can't drink enough.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Brought to you by America's 250 birthday celebrations, workforce reduction in the FDA and CDC, and viewers like you.

Please feel free to share this.

And, MAGA - don't blow up the comment section. I argued with y'all on COVID bc I was afraid y'all would die, but I really don't care if you get explosive diarrhea.

I feel like I answered a similar question recently.

I find it impossible to lump what is technically hundreds to thousands of people (going by the movie) into a single opinion, unless that opinion is stated outright. We know what Stan and Pete think (as you mentioned), but none of the other guards even have names, let alone personalities and stated opinions about Eugene.