If you ever question the depths of depravity available to you in Skyrim please refer to this story;
I am unable to finish the Thieves Guild quest because I accidentally killed an essential quest npc. Erikur in Solitude, you probably know him because his sister wont shut up about it. Erikur was the last quest giver I needed to become the master of the Thieves Guild. He is suppose to be essential, as in he cannot be killed ever because important npc is important.
‘So where is he?’ I hear you asking.
He is gone.
Gone into my characters tummy. You see, I was fooling around with the glorious weapon that is the Wabbajack and happened to turn Erikur into a sweetroll….and then I ate him. I ate Erikur. He’s gone forever. Into my tummy.
I glitched out a main questline because I turned a man into a sweetroll and then I c o n s u m e d h i m.
Suppose you placed a baby in a room with a snake and a spider. Would they play with these creatures or leave them well alone?
This is not a hypothetical question. Researchers in the study of fear are actively looking into it.
It is already well-known that babies find live animals much more interesting than stuffed ones. Research has found that this interest persists even if those animals are snakes and spiders.
Studies like this are giving new insights into the nature of fear itself, and just how and when it is acquired.
[Fear of snakes is common (Credit: Alamy)]
A fear of snakes is one of the most common and intense fears in the world, according to fear researcher Judy DeLoache of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, US, who was not involved in the new study.
The team set out to startle the babies to see how they would react
The simplest view, and one that many people would assume is true, is that we are innately scared of them. The idea is that, because some snakes are deadly, we have evolved to react to them all with fear.
Seemingly in line with that, 11-month-old infants were shown images of a snake paired with either a fearful or happy voice. The babies looked at snakes for longer when a fearful voice was presented than when a happy voice was heard.
Another study found similar results when using fearful versus happy faces, suggesting that young infants associate fear with snakes.
[We have good reason to be scared of some deadly snakes (Credit: Carlos Díaz/CC by 2.0)]
However those studies were not hard proof, and we can’t ask babies if they are actually scared of snakes.
A new study re-assesses how babies react to snakes. Its authors are seeking to overturn the idea that babies – and therefore us – are innately scared of them.
The team measured babies’ physiological responses as they watched videos of snakes and elephants, paired with both fearful and happy voices.
They then set out to startle the babies to see how they would react. They presented them with a “startle probe”, which in this case was an unexpected bright flash of light as they watched a video.
[Not all snakes are venemous (Josh henderson/CC by 2.0)]
A startle like this would be more intense if the babies were already scared: just like when we watch scary films, and jump more if we are already tense.
“What we found is that their startle responses were not bigger when watching a video of a snake, even when paired with a fearful voice,” says co-author Vanessa LoBue at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.
The babies’ startle response was actually lower. Their heart response was also lower, which also indicates that babies were not scared.
In other words, though the babies paid more attention to the snakes, this did not invoke fear.
[This pit viper is certainly very deadly (Credit: Ephotocorp/Alamy)]
LoBue expected this result. Both human babies and monkeys are known to be more interested in snakes than other animals, suggesting that snakes are somehow special.
It is this heightened interest in snakes that can more easily be turned into fear in certain circumstances.
Children do not have an innate fear of snakes, agrees DeLoache. “Rather, they have a predisposition to detect and respond rapidly to snakes.” For example, studies have shown that young children will quickly detect the presence of a snake in a photo among many other non-snake photos.
[Some snakes are quite cute (Credit: Tambako The Jaguar/CC by 2.0)]
Far from this fear being hard-wired, for LoBue it is now clear that fear of snakes and spiders is culturally conditioned.
“While we find differential responses to snakes early on, meaning they are special, it doesn’t seem to be related to fear early in development,” she says. “It’s possible that paying more attention to something might make fear learning easier later on. It facilitates fear learning.”
LoBue says it is a good thing that we have not evolved an inborn fear of certain things. “It’s not adaptive to have any hard-wired fear,” she says, because it would limit a young infant’s desire to explore new things.
Instead, we have evolved to quickly learn to be afraid of something if it turns out to be dangerous.
Scientists throw toddlers into pit of vipers and are surprised with the results.
Something I’m working on for my Patreon upload this month! Just the sketch for now, but this will be colored.
This scene was so iconic of the finale, and demonstrated a whole new level of badass. Dash was just so epic looking. And so were Maud and Pinkie, but Dash has always been one of my favs, and her look here just sings to an aesthetic I love. I HAD TO DRAW IT.
In myth, Hades’ most remarked upon traits are 1) how responsible/reliable he is, 2)how sober-minded he is, 3)how dedicated, implacable, and long-remembering he is, and 4)how boring and grim most of the other Olympians think he is to be around. Oh and notably, that if you play him a song he likes, he’ll basically give you anything you ask for(though not without conditions).
Hades is, canonically, a gigantic nerd. If they’d had trainsets, he’d have been the Olympian who collected trainsets, meticulously corrected with exacto knife and hobby-paints the errors toy-makers introduced to those trainsets, and then endlessly talked about those trainsets to anyone sat next to him at Thanksgiving Dinner 😐 When he wasn’t trying to rope them into an interminable discussion about gardening or divine law, that is 😐 😐 He’s the sort of god who frequently handed out punishment like giving someone a million-piece puzzle where every piece is shaped the same, that resets itself at the start of every day if you don’t complete it, and then he keeps the last piece on his person at all times as a secret private joke for eternity because he finds you personally distasteful(not even because he’s mad at you or hates you particularly; he just doesn’t like you as a person) 😐 😐 😐 He is. A Gigantic. Nerd.
He’s also like one of the only gods who is faithful to his wife. And he listens to her like when she asks for a soul to be released and he’s like “But honey, the rules.” And she just gives him that look and he goes “Yes dear,” and lets the soul go with the easiest freaking instructions ever in a myth. And the human still fucks it up. Not his fault Persephone, not Hades’ fault this time. Essentially, Hades is sorta like the accountant suburban dad who collects really specific figurines and gets really grumpy when people mess up his lawn. Do you know how hard his wife worked on those roses? He is calling his attorney. Oh wait, he is also an attorney.
Filed under: Favorite Myths
Everybody knows it’s Persephone that you’ve got to watch out for.
I don’t care what someone has done, the moment you start telling people to die and kill themselves, you’re pretty much down there with racist, homophobic shitheads.
As far as I’m concerned, someone who does that invalidates their entire position the instant they type it up.
I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.
(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)
But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.
There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:
Novice
Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:
w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)
Intermediate
Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:
If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.
Programming problems
Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems
If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial – it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.
I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.
If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:
If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.
If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.
Best of luck!
I’d also like to add some more specialized resources!
SpriteKit (2D) and SceneKit (3D) which are built into the official compiler to create iOS apps (see iOS apps for more resources)
also all of the above game engines (cross-platform)
Game console development:
Game Maker Studio (with a paid subscription)
Unity
Unreal
CryEngine
Note that games can also be created on more general platforms like iOS and Android apps, but the resources listed above are specialized for game development.
iOS apps:
In order to develop iOS apps, you’ll need to purchase an iOS developer program membership for $99 a year, which requires an Apple account. Here are some general resources:
Xcode (the official IDE for iOS apps; can be installed on OS X)
Xcode also has SpriteKit, SceneKit, and Metal built in, all of which are incredibly useful for creating apps that require elaborate graphics, particularly games.
Also, in order to publish iOS apps, you’ll have to juggle certificates, app ids, and provisioning profiles. This process can be convoluted at times so here are some resources:
Blender (can also be used to create games; Python script; free and open-source; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Maya (specialized script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux to an extent)
3ds Max (Python script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows and OS X)
RenderMan (specialized script; free for non-commercial/educational use and pay-per-license for commercial use; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Misc. resources:
Stack Overflow is an ask-and-answer community for programmers. It’s amazing and will save your life. Sign up and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Github offers a student pack (here) if you create an account and prove you’re a student. This gives you free access to a bunch of great programming resources for free for a certain period of time, such as Unreal Engine. Also, Github in general is a site that you can host your code on. Other users can see it, and “fork” it to make a copy of your code and modify it.
Parse is a backend service that allows you to store data in databases it hosts on its own servers. It lets you use push notifications, create users, store and retrieve data, etc. It’s compatible with iOS apps, Android apps, Windows apps, Xamarin, React, Unity, OS X, Windows, JavaScript, PHP, .net, Arduino, and Embedded C. It’s free up to a certain limit that depends on the services you use.
Cloud9, Codebox, and Squad are online IDEs that allow for real-time collaboration and support a variety of languages, so they’re useful for team projects.
And some general advice:
Your program will not work right away, 99% of the time. That’s okay. Do your best to figure out where the error is. Here is some advice on debugging (written for PHP but the methods can be generalized).
If you’re stuck, Google. Google like there’s no tomorrow.
Ask questions on a community like Stack Overflow.
For that matter, browse relevant Stack Overflow questions. You can probably find some solutions there.
Don’t be afraid to copy and paste.
Take breaks sometimes if you’re getting burned out. But don’t stay away from your projects for too long or you’ll lose track of its status.
Backup your code. On the cloud, on a USB drive, wherever. If your IDE has a backing up feature like snapshots, use it whenever you hit a milestone.
If your project is big, split it up into milestones and set goals. Don’t tackle everything at once.
Like the OP said, coding isn’t just for professionals and “geeks” anymore. Anyone can learn it if you really try, and with the rapidly expanding tech industry, learning coding can really broaden your opportunities.
If any of the links are broken, or you have a question or some information/resources to add, you can contact me through the askbox or the OP through his Twitter (as mentioned in his post).
If you’re interested, try some of these out and best of luck!
Great work expanding on my humble list to include a much fuller collection of resources for learning how to code! Cheers!
Usually there’s a big bandwagon announcement that i see getting reblogged, but i haven’t seen one so far.
EX is on sale for like 85 or something, which is what i use, but the only real benefit i get out of EX over the standard version is book management, for organizing entire comic projects. Check out videos detailing the differences, but if you’re looking to get it and want to actually buy your art software, maybe this is good news!
I can’t recommend CSP enough, frankly. I work in it basically every day.
