Platinum End Theory: Who Is God And Those Mysterious Beings In The Finale Explained
Original link- https://reddit.com/platinumend/comments/sdw2rc/deleted_by_use
Repost cause the original was deleted. I'm not OP. OP is https://www.reddit.com/usemuphenz
Thanks https://www.reddit.com/usecompletelylostcase for the Pastebin link. https://pastebin.com/A8K4bJiD
DISCLAIMER: This theory will go over the entire story of Platinum End, so obvious spoilers ahead.Just a heads up, this theory is posted at the time that only a few episodes of the anime have been released. Depending on how much the anime stays like the manga, details may end up changing. Therefore, the entire theory will be based solely on the manga. I will also leave snippets of the manga with the highlighted text to support my claim. Please be sure to read those as it will help this theory make sense. This theory is completely my own original thoughts. If anyone shares this, please be sure to credit me, Muphenz. Thanks! Hello, my fellow Platinum End fans! If you’re like me, the ending completely caught me off guard and left my head-scratching. Do not worry! I’ve overanalyzed everything and made a theory to possibly explain who god and those beings at the end of the story are, so you don’t have to. Those beings at the end of the manga, chapter 58, are drum roll…humans of the future who have achieved many scientific advancements who existed well before the story of Platinum End takes place and are simulating their own world with fake humans, fake angels, and a fake god. Why are the real humans running this simulation? Simply put, they’re suicidal and no amount of therapy is going to help with that. Why are they wanting to die? In the future, it is predicted by Gaku Yoneda that within 500 years, humans will achieve immortality. Once they achieve immortality, they will eventually master time and space and will be able to do things like teleport, time travel, see the future, etc. And once humans achieve immortality and are able to know all of the future, they will discover that the future cannot be changed according to Dr. Yoneda. Just like Dr. Yoneda’s prediction, the real humans are wanting to die which is why it’s stated by one of the real humans how annoying it is that there is no death. Whatever the process was that made the real humans immortal, it seems that it cannot be reversed to restore one’s mortality. Although it’s not stated how humans will achieve immortality and allow them to control time and space, this will somehow cause humanity’s apocalypse as well, destroying the original Earth. What makes these creatures more human-like than god-like is that they admit they were born on another planet, most likely the original Earth. They are also aware that they too were created by something that is above them. How do we know Dr. Yoneda’s predictions are right? It was stated by Shuji Nakaumi that his past predictions came true. One thing to understand about science is that it’s extremely good at accurately predicting things. Example 1: With Issac Newton’s law of motion, scientists can predict the position of an object at any specific time, past, present, or future. Example 2: In the 1840s, Fitzner astronomer Urbain Le Verrier was analyzing the orbit pathway of Mercury and found that it is changing very slowly over time. With technology limited at that time, it was hard to provide proof. In 1915, the famous German physicist, Albert Einstein was able to calculate the influence of the curved space in Mercury’s orbit. That is 75 years later that science proved its prediction was right. Although science cannot tell future events like a psychic will attempt to, I believe this is what the author was using to help advance the plot for the ending. The real humans already know the future and they’re aware that no matter what they try, death is not a part of that. If they cannot do it, someone else can. That is when these simulations come in. The real humans will create simulated humans. In one of the simulations, the story of Platinum End takes place. This would not be on a computer. This process would involve terraforming an entire planet to support carbon-based life. The planet that the simulated humans live on will be similar to the original Earth as well as the history and advancement of science will be similar to the real humans. As the simulated human’s society progresses, like in Platinum End, they would eventually learn how to become immortal and learn how to control space-time which would lead to them wanting to die just like the real humans. But unlike the real humans, the simulated ones may actually achieve a way to kill themselves once they obtain immortality that the real humans could use. But as we already know stated by the real humans, this specific simulation was a failure. Nothing was created that was capable of killing them. Thus, the real humans will move on to a new simulation. Pay very special attention to this picture. Notice right after all of the humans disappear when the fake god kills himself, the buildings are slowly crumbling away since no one is here to maintain them. According to World Building, it would take an average of 250 years for a building to start to break apart since materials like wood and plastic would be destroyed by the environment if not maintained. Metal would be expanding and no longer able to keep the building's structure in place. This would cause things like windows to fall off and shatter. So after a few hundred years, the real humans return to the planet after the simulated humans disappeared due to the fake god’s suicide. It’s possible that during this time they’re running other simulations on other planets and returned when this simulation was completed. Since the real humans have achieved master over space-time, teleporting to anywhere in the universe would not be out of the question. Since they cannot die, the amount of time it would take for the real humans to travel anywhere in the universe is irrelevant as well. Even though Gaku Yoneda’s predictions about the simulated humanity’s end were wrong, he was technically right. It did come true for the real humans. If Shuji Nakaumi, as the fake god, did not kill himself and wipe out all of the fake humans, they would of most likely learned how to cheat death and to control space-time in the future. Gaku was wrong about the fake god being a product of human belief in order to live. He even admits that the composition of the fake god was wrong. If the fake god required human belief to live, then Shuji would not have erased the memories of those who were not god candidates as it would have affected the fake god's existence if fewer people believed in him. There is one thing that begs the question. Why is a fake god needed to run these simulations? Why do the simulated humans have souls? Why not just create the simulated humans and leave them to figure out how to create an immortal killing machine without the process of a false god? This is because God and souls are actually real and are necessary for life to exist. To clarify, the “God” that Shuji Nakaumi was transmuted into is not the true God that I’m referring to. I’m referring to the first cause of everything, a self-aware creator, a deistic God who existed before time and space who created the universe and does not intervene in its creation. This means no miracles, prophecy, answering prayers, divine revelation, etc. Everything in the universe is governed by physics and these laws cannot be broken. The real humans who are running the simulations are aware that they are a creation made from a creator. However, since a deistic God does not interfere in the universe, the real humans cannot know of him, at least while they are still alive. Considering the real humans can control space-time, I can say for certain at one point, at least one person went to the very beginning of time and saw something that would be evidence of an intelligent designer creating the universe. When the real humans are conversing with each other at the finale, one human suggests identifying what created them and the second one replies that seeking their creator will be a waste of time. If a deistic God won’t intervene in its creation, the real humans would be wasting time by attempting to contact him. Even though they can control space-time, if the creator exists outside of reality, they would not be able to reach this entity. Focusing on figuring out who created them means that time is wasted if they're not figuring out how to die which is why it would take them further away from death. Just as the simulated humans have souls, the real humans also have souls. At some point, the real humans discovered the soul. They are aware that this is needed for life to be sentient. The discovery of the soul could have played a key part in the real humans achieving immortality. The fake god is engineered by the real humans to create souls so that life can be sentient, mimic the universe's deistic God by allowing the simulation to run with no interference, and act as a mod to keep an eye on life with the red and white arrows. The celestial realm was created so the fake god would not be a part of the simulated world. Even though time moves differently in the celestial realm, it is the closest thing that the real humans can engineer to simulate a deist God that is separated from its creation. This fake god does not have the powers of a supreme being. The fake god does not know everything, is not everywhere at once, and does not display any sort of omnipotent ability. There is a lot of things that the fake god admits to not knowing, such as who created him, why are souls preserved, and how long does the merging process take. Although we do see the fake god have the ability to observe humanity, I would say that this is the equivalent of having admin privileges to watch humanity live-streamed on YouTube. The fake god is aware that he is created by someone. The fake god noticed that there are things that had already been created that he was not a part of just by observing everything in the universe. Although he seems to not understand what created him. He even acknowledges the idea that humanity could have created him. All the simulated souls come from the fake god. This is done through a process of emanation, which means to flow from. In the Abrahamic religions, specifically Gnosticism, Jewish Mysticism, and certain sectors of Protestantism, instead of your typical creator being separate from its creation, everything is a spontaneous outflow from God. As pieces of God emanate from him, it becomes less divine, but these pieces will eventually become an individual soul that forms into human spirits, angels, demons, as well as other things that come into reality such as heaven, hell, and the world of the living. Eventually, everything that came from God, will return back to the creator. (If you’re still confused on what emanation is, I would do more research before continuing to read as this will play a key role in understanding who the fake god is.) Emanation is how the fake god created the simulated human and their soul, the fake angels, and the celestial realm. The fake god took a piece of himself and used it to create life. Since everything emanates from the fake god is connected to him, as he is dying, most of the angels are dying too. Due to this connection, when the fake god killed himself, everything that was tied to the fake god disappeared. But because the creation of the fake god is not connected to the physical world, the planet and everything that is not life remained on it. When the simulated human beings die, the soul goes to the celestial realm. This is the returning aspect of emanation. The souls that came from the fake god are returning back to him. You always see all angels, regardless of rank, having the task of carrying the souls to the celestial realm. It seems that the main purpose of the angels is to help with the return part of the emanation process. The more that the emanence is divided, the less divine it becomes. This is why the fake humans are considered sub-celestial in the hierarchy.It appears that there is a certain order to the flow of emanation. The newest creations emanate from the fake god. Kids will be the first in the line for the emanate process and their parents will be behind them. This is why when the fake god committed suicide, the kids were the first ones to disappear, then the adults. All things that emanate from the fake god are returning to the original source in reverse order when the fake god takes his own life. When the fake god merges with a human, this appears to go against the set pattern of the emanation process by breaking the order in which the emanence flows. This is why when Shuji merged with the fake god, it felt like there was something foreign in the fake god's body similar to how an infected person's body acts when the immune system detects foreign bacteria or a virus. The only way to get around it is by the fake god merging with a simulated human and having the fake god take over the new body when the fusion is completed. It is stated by the fake god that it is nothing more than humanity's assumption that God cannot die. This may be true for the deistic God, but not for a fake god. It is already known that the real humans achieved immortality. Although the fake god could have been engineered to be immortal, that would just create another being who would eventually want to die. The fake god was designed to live a long life, compared to humans, that could be extended through the process of merging with one of its emanated counterparts until the simulation was completed. This has been done throughout time in the form of the god choosing process. The fake god confirmed to Shuji that his purpose was to create life. Professor Yoneda confirmed that the fake god was created by human imagination and that its purpose was to end life. On the surface, this may seem like a contradiction. But both of them are right. The fake god’s purpose was to create the simulated humans. God is metaphorically a creation of human imagination. It was not by the simulated human’s imagination as stated by Yoneda, but it was designed and engineered by the minds of the real humans. Since the purpose of the simulation is for the fake humans to achieve immortality and figure out how to reverse it, you can say that the fake god is a part of that process of killing humanity. Right as all of the humans are disappearing, Dr. Yoneda realizes that the composition that makes up the creature is based on a science that the simulated humans have not discovered yet. The composition of the fake god is Aether. In medieval times, a common study among scholars is alchemy, which can be best described as the forerunner for modern-day chemistry mixed with the pseudoscience of metaphysics. According to Charles Gillispie, a historian at Princeton University, in his book, The Edge of Objectivity, An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas, Aether is the fifth element, along with earth, wind, fire, and water, that are the basic building blocks of the universe. During medieval times, Aether is the substance that is believed to connect the physical world to the spiritual one. It was even a common belief that the Abrahamic God was surrounded by Aether and that all of the angels, demons, and souls that dwelled in the afterlife breathed it in as humans breathed in the air. According to Jakob Bernoulli, a mathematician from the 1600s, believed that Aether is what allowed souls to interact with their human bodies. All of these characteristics of Aether match the composition of the fake god. Aether is what allows life to become sentient, connecting all of the simulated humans back to the fake god from the physical world to the celestial realm. It seems at some point, the real humans discover this element. This discovery most likely led to the discovery of the soul. Using this element, the real humans used Aether to construct the fake god needed for the simulations. Everything that is a part of the simulation, the fake god, angels, the soul, the arrows, is made up of this element. The red arrow is what allows the god candidates to make other humans fall in love with them so much that the person who is under the influence of the arrow will do literally anything the person who is in control wants, even die for them. The white arrow has the ability to kill any life while all inanimate objects are unaffected. These were limits placed on the arrows by the fake god. According to Ogaro, the fake god can use the full power of the arrows at will. The red arrow is more than just making someone fall in love. The arrow does this by taking away their free will. The god candidates were limited to using the arrow on 14 people at once for a period of up to 33 days. With the fake god able to use the full power of the red arrow, he can enslave any or all simulated humans with a snap of his finger for as long as he desired. The red arrow also played a role in creating the first simulated life as well. The fake god stated that if life was left alone, it would multiply. The desire of falling in love and wanting to procreate was implanted by the red arrow when life was created. The white arrow is the opposite of the red arrow. This arrow can kill life instantly. The limit that was placed on this arrow is that only one white arrow can be shot at a time. Just like the red arrow, this arrow has a maximum range of 31.6 meters. When cycling the white arrow, there is a cool down period of 0.3 seconds. If these limiters are removed, the fake god can kill all humans with the white arrows with virtually no limit on distance, any number of arrows can be used simultaneously, and there would be no mandatory cool down period. The creation of the simulated humans involves two key ingredients. The first is the soul which comes from the fake god. The second is a physical body for the soul to be attached to. The real humans asked if it was worth planting another seed and another god as those are two separate things. The making of another god is obviously the fake god. But what is the seed? The seed is what makes the physical embodiment of all plants and animals that all emanence is attached to. I.E., souls attached to bodies. According to the fake god, before he created life on the fake Earth, there was some sort of micro-organism. This seed would be that micro-organism, specifically carbon-based bacteria that is capable of evolution. Around 3 billion years ago, the first life on Earth was bacteria. There are two types of bacteria, a classification of anaerobic bacteria that ate other organic compounds and simple sugars to survive. The other kind is autotrophs bacteria which is capable of self-feeding. Anaerobic bacteria would evolve into modern-day animals. Autotroph bacteria would evolve into modern-day plants that still have the ability to self-feed through a process of photosynthesis. It is possible to send bacteria through space. According to a 2020 study published in the Journal of Frontiers in Microbiology, bacteria were able to survive in space for three years. If the real humans were able to transport the seed through space in less than 3 years, it could easily survive. Considering they achieved immortality, it is within reason to think this would be a piece of cake for them. At some point, part of the anaerobic bacteria would come in contact with the fake god, who was on the fake Earth at that time to make life, recognized the fake god as food, and attempted to feed off of him to survive. The bacteria that fed off the fake god would eventually evolve into Nasse. The bacteria that did not feed off of the fake god would evolve into more complex forms of life on the fake Earth. Since Nasse was accidentally created from this event, it most likely means that she is the first angel that the fake god created. This means that she could serve as inspiration for the fake god to create angels for the celestial realm. The angels don't seem to share any ability to reproduce with each other. There is never any mention of any family heritage. It means that all of the angels were created around the same time. Since Nasse is the only angel that came from the seed/bacteria, her biological makeup differs from all the other angels. While the majority of her is angel, part of the genetic makeup is similar to carbon-based life. Although I would not say Nasse is an angel-human hybrid, she could be considered a type of Nephilim. Due to this biological difference, Nasse is the only angel that can interfere in both the physical world and the celestial realm. Much research has shown that facial expressions are innate among all animals, not just humans. The same animals that display facial expressions when expressing emotions, lying, determination, etc. use similar muscles in the face as humans do. For example, a Psychologist, Paul Ekman, studied facial expression from hours of film and ventured on to multiple isolated tribes who have very little contact with modern society. He showed them pictures of facial expressions and asked them to interpret them. These people were able to match facial expressions and their meaning with high accuracy. This is one of the many studies that show facial expressions are genetic. Even though Nasse is single-minded, she is able to understand facial expressions due to her biological relationship with the simulated life on the fake Earth. But hey, this is just a theory."

First off I am a newbie to resolve, so I apologize if this has been covered before.
I tried to do this with iMovie but that didn't seem workable and needed something with a bit more capability.
I am editing a project where I have one video that is horizontal and one that is vertical.
I want to make the Horizontal video to be the main part, with the vertical video on the right hand side.
They are both different resolutions (obviously)
How can I make this work? Nothing on YouTube matches what I am after. They obscure part of each video instead of featuring them side by side in full res.
MacOS 14.5. https://imgur.com/vOufcqZ
Davinci 1.8.6.6 build 7 free
Vertical video specs:
Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41) File size : 363 MiB Duration : 3 h 38 min Overall bit rate : 232 kb/s Frame rate : 60.000 FPS Writing application : Lavf61.1.100
Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L3.2 Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 3 h 38 min Bit rate : 226 kb/s Width : 700 pixels Height : 1 200 pixels Display aspect ratio : 0.583 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 60.000 FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.004 Stream size : 354 MiB (98%) Writing library : x264 core 164 r3190 7ed753b Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=2 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=30 / lookahead_threads=9 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=10 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=18.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00 Codec configuration box : avcC
Horizontal video specs:
Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41) File size : 9.38 GiB Duration : 3 h 38 min Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 6 140 kb/s Frame rate : 30.000 FPS Writing application : Lavf59.30.100
Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L4 Format settings : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, Reference frames : 2 frames Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 3 h 38 min Source duration : 3 h 38 min Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 6 002 kb/s Width : 1 664 pixels Height : 936 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Variable Frame rate : 30.000 FPS Minimum frame rate : 29.412 FPS Maximum frame rate : 30.303 FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.128 Stream size : 9.16 GiB (98%) Source stream size : 9.16 GiB (98%) Color range : Limited Color primaries : BT.709 Transfer characteristics : BT.709 Matrix coefficients : BT.709 mdhd_Duration : 13116901 Codec configuration box : avcC
Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC LC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity Codec ID : mp4a-40-2 Duration : 3 h 38 min Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 128 kb/s Maximum bit rate : 130 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel layout : L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 200 MiB (2%) Default : Yes Alternate group : 1
I cannot offer screenshots as I would like to keep this private. Sorry!

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I'm not sure if bout is the best term, but I feel calling it a battle bout is fairly accurate to my goal.
I've posted about this before, but I don't consider my previous version to have been high in readability. I've been trying to make a combat that approximates turn-based combat, but speeds it up by having one decision affect multiple rounds of combat. It developed into the creation of a more tournament style of fighting, as this is a style that revolves around minions fighting in place of the player character, who commands the minions, rather than a hero that can vanquish any foe on his own.

1. Select Units:
   1. Choose battle groups.
2. Situational State (affects steps 5&6):
   1. Prepared: Groups are each spotted outside 2 rounds of move.
   2. Surprised: Groups are each hidden within 2 rounds of move.
3. Determine Initiative (affects step 6):
   1. Noncombatants: Auto-lose if in a group. If in both groups, tiebreaker.
   2. Compare opposing units with lowest evasion. Check their respective moves.
      1. Higher move = +1 evasion bonus.
   3. Higher total evasion wins initiative.
   4. Tiebreaker: Roll 1d10 (odds vs. evens).
4. Determine Pairings:
   1. Select combat pairs as per "Section 10.1".
   2. Winner pairs first for skirmish, and odd numbered bouts. Loser pairs first for initiative, and even numbered bouts.
5. Skirmish Rounds:
   1. Prepared (1-3 rounds): Shooters (only) attack; Short/mid/long range shooters fire 1/2/3 times at a single target.
   2. Surprised (1 round): All units stunned, unless posessing stun-negating specials (e.g. adv. initiative).
   3. Target results determined individually. All penalties/bonuses apply (e.g. stunned).
   4. If target stats differ by at least +2/-2 points, attacker misses/hits; otherwise, glancing blow (unarmoured = minimum blow).
6. Initiative Round (1 round; tiebreaker=skip):
   1. Prepared: Initiative side attacks.
   2. Surprised: Initiative side attacks. Units are no longer stunned.
   3. Before fighting, form new combat pairings for unpaired units. Success/Failure determined as in Skirmish rounds.
7. Battle Bout:
   1. Form new pairings for unpaired units.
   2. Roll 1d10 for highest statted opposing primaries, applying modifiers.
   3. Winner: Hits every round.
   4. Loser: Hits every other round, starting based on the degree of loss.
      1. Draw (0): Rounds 2, 4, 6... armoured= no damage; unarmoured= glancing blows.
      2. Loss by 1 to 3: Rounds 1, 3, 5...
      3. Loss by 4 to 6: Rounds 2, 4, 6...
      4. Loss by 7+: Rounds 3, 5, 7...
      5. Loss by 10+: Additional saving throw vs crit at start of round 1 (negative stats also cause this).
   5. Secondary Pairings: If all secondaries are smaller, auto-hit for full damage every even round, otherwise every odd round.
   6. Bout ends when one unit is croaked (with no units incapacitated).
8. Next Bout:
   1. Form new pairings for unpaired units, and repeat step 7, until all units from one player are defeated.
9. Conclusion:
   1. Declare battle winner.
   2. Winning units gain experience points (see chapter 5).
   3. Adjust ammo stat (-1) after the battle.
   4. Check for other potential enemies. If none, units can recover 0.5 ammo.

Step 1 (select units) is just the creation of groups.
Step 2 (situational state) to set up the different main situations. Either you spotted the enemies coming, or they were hidden from view. Therefore, your group is either surprised or prepared.
Step 3 (initiative) is mainly there to determine who decides which units are paired up. I also added a bonus round of fighing at the start. I've been told that this was overly complicated before, so I hope I have simplified the process properly. Now you take the two lowest evasion statted units, and give a +1 bonus if one of them has a higher move. If it's the same, then just roll a tiebreaker, and skip initiative.
Step 4 (determine pairings) now that initiative is decided, the winner gets first choice to decide which units will be fighting each other. The exact process is not important at this time. It's basically a version of player 1 picks these two to fight (primary pairing), then player 2 picks other units to fight, and once all units have someone to fight, then you can start piling on extra units to also fight (secondary pairings)
Step 5 (skirmish rounds) was mainly made as some bonus rounds for projectile units. Range is a general term. I don't know what the exact numbers should be so I just said that long range can fire 3 times, mid range fire twice, and short range can only fire once as the groups close into each other to fight. I have an ammo stat but it tracks engagements, not individual attacks.
Step 6 (initiative round) Free attack for whomever won initiative. In order to save time, dice rolls are not done for either step 5 or 6. I'm instead doing a system of damage if stats are high, miss if they are low, and half damage if they are about the same. Oh, and damage is a set amount every round, with critical hits coming if your attack roll is 10+ points higher then the opponent, which then causes a saving throw.
Step 7 (battle bout). Each player rolls once and it determines the course of fighting until one of the minion units die. Primary pairings are units that can actually hit each other, while secondary pairings can attack with no opposition. In another time saving move, I decided that units that are not rolling just do damage every other round.
Step 8 (new bout) is just a reset. Once deaths are shown, units needs to be paired up with new units, and then another roll, and same thing. Keep repeating the process until only one side remains.
Step 9 (conclusion) after everyone is dead get exp, lower ammo, maybe collect some of the ammo that was just spent, and so on.
Here is the simplest possible example battle I can make. Pikers are the most bog standard mook unit available.

1. Select Units: Both players have 1 piker.
2. Situational State: Players 1&2 are spotted. Use prepared option for steps 5&6.
3. Determine Initiative: Evasion&move is the same, roll 1d10; odd result means player 1 wins roll, but doesn't have initiative.
4. Determine Pairings: Player1 pairs his piker with the enemy piker (only one possible choice).
5. Skirmish Rounds:: N/A (prepared; no archers; skip step 5).
6. Initiative Round (tiebreaker = skip): N/A (tiebreaker used; no initiative, skip step 6).
7. Begin Battle Bout: Player#1 wins roll with a +1 to +3 result. Player#2's piker dies at 0/4 hp, while player1's piker has 2/4 hp (1 dmg per round means 4 rounds does 4 damage, while opponent does damage during two of those rounds, doing 2 dmg).
8. Continue Battle: N/A only one group remains.
9. Conclusion: Player#1 wins. No other enemies around. No ammo to recover. Winning piker gets exp.

Of course it gets more complex but this is the absolute basis of how I've designed the fighting process. It doesn't get super complicated, as the number of moves you can have minions do is limited, but you can have various special abilites that give bonuses, and there are various traits that a unit can have.
​
Now, unit selection is a seperate process.
First thing I need to explain is that basic soldiers, like pikers, are subject to auto-attacking enemies of non-alligned sides, and that the setting is basically city state nations constantly at war with each other.
You coulc have have a group of pikers from the Queendom of Unaroyal making camp on the side of the road, and suddenly some pikers from the Kingdom of Jetstone walked on by, the two groups/stacks of pikers would immediately attack each other, except in the case where their respective monarchs had signed up for an alliance.
Pikers are considered to be auto attacking units. Therefore, this is the selection proccess for units like them.
Determine First Selector:

• Odd Bouts (includes skirmish): Initiative/tiebreaker winner selects first.
• Even Bouts (includes initiative): Initiative/tiebreaker loser selects first.

1. Primary Pairing (RegulaStunned Units Only):

• First Selector:
  • Chooses a primary pairing for all units of one class/race from each side.
• Second Selector:
  • Chooses a primary pairing for all units of one class/race from each side.
• Repeat Alternating Selections:
  • Continue alternating selections until all regulastunned units of one side have primary pairs.

1. Secondary Pairing:

• If units remain unpaired, return to Step 2.
• These become secondary pairings and include previously paired units.
• The positions of first and second selectors are reversed.
• Prioritize fewest pairings.

1. Finalization:

• Ensure all units are paired; resume battle turn order.

~Pairing Definitions:~

1. Primary Pairings:
   1. The first chosen pairings for each unit class/race.
   2. Primary pairings are the main combat interactions.
2. Secondary Pairings:
   1. Pairings in which there is no mutual ability to attack.
   2. Include units that have been previously paired in primary pairings.

It's designed as a system for small group combat, with opposing groups having 1-15 units. When both sides have 16 or more, that is generally the point where combat changes to mass combat rules, which function differently, and I'm not asking about that.
In the case of two stacks of enemy pikers. Here is the composition.
Unaroyal: Piker#1U; Piker#2U
Jetstone: Piker#1J; Piker#2J; Piker#3J; Piker#4J
They meet each other out in the field, and auto-attack compels them to start fighting, you would roll for a tiebreaker, and the side from Unaroyal wins. Pikers are a class, and the class of pikers belong to the race of humans. Therefore.

1. Primary pairings: Tiebreaking winner is the first selector. There is only one decision. Picking the Piker class vs piker class.

Unaroyal pairs Piker#1U vs Piker#1J -- Piker#2U vs Piker#2U
Unaroyal has been fully paired.

1. Secondary pairings: Tiebreaking loser is the second selector. Again, only one decision. Piker vs piker.

Jetstone pairs Piker#3J vs Piker#1U -- Piker#4J; Piker#2U
Note that fewest pairings must be prioratized for auto-attacking units so Piker#4J must attack Piker#2, not Piker#1U, because #2U already is paired twice.

How are you handling conflicts between individuals in this case? Does everyone always just have a retinue of willing combatants everywhere they go?

Yes. I mean, the choice to not do so it always avalable, but that would not be a good decision to make. It's a wargame setting, and the world is constantly at war. The setting is that players are considered to be army commanders, and will normally have access to soldiers to command. It's possible to not be part of a side, but the difficulty is much higher when doing that. How many soldiers you have is based on how large your side is, and how successful it has been in battle.
Currently. I have the first 3 chapters done, with many more that are still in the rough draft phase. It's a complex ruleset, running over 20k words
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/second-dawn-the-unofficial-erfworld-rpg.119514/5/reade

Dyestributor 2.0!
Almost a year and a half ago, my friend and I released our GameMaker Studio 2 game, Dyestributor, onto Steam - my friend had done the art, and I had done the programming. At the time I was nowhere near an expert in GMS2 or GML but I was very proud of the game I put out.
As time went on, I updated the game, but adding on to a shaky foundation was hard, and there came a time when I realized I needed to remake the game's backbone from the ground up. It was around March of 2024 that I started working on Dyestributor V2.0 and since the game's release in January of 2023, I had improved immensely within the confines of GMS2. I found myself fixing a ton of beginner mistakes and making baseline improvements that I thought sharing could help a beginner avoid learning the hard way!

First and foremost: Know your functions!

Knowing the tools that you have at your disposal is very important and using functions to simplify your ideas will save you countless headaches. Over time, browsing the GML manual became something I do for fun every once in a while just because functions are such an asset to your coding repertoire. Of course you don't need to do this too, but that's all to say that knowing what you have the ability to do is essential in GMS2.
Something that made me giggle when I uncovered it was old me's use of text drawing functions. When I very first started coding in GML, I made multiple versions of the same font asset with different sizes in order to customize the size of in-game text. It was soon in the original development of Dyestributor that I learned about the function draw_text_ext_transformed. This function allows extra parameters to customize how the text draws. Specifically I was looking for the xscale and yscale arguments which act as multipliers to the horizontal and vertical size of the text. I found this much easier than making multiple differently sized font assets, so I started using that function to draw all my text. An issue I found was that part of draw_text_ext_transformed are the sep and w parameters which allow you to customize when the text wraps and easily make paragraphs of text. This led me to set the w parameter to 99999 for lines of text that I didn't want to wrap. What I didn't know was that I didn't need to use draw_text_ext_transformed to get that text scaling functionality that I wanted. In GML there is also a function called draw_text_transformed. This function has the xscale and yscale arguments that I wanted, but doesn't have the sep and w arguments that I didn't want. Simply knowing this function exists made my code simpler, easier to understand, and ensured that I was using the right function for the job!

Secondly: Centralize Main Mechanics!

If possible, it's best to minimize repeating code. Try and centralize main mechanics to functions or single sections. Doing this makes the code easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to change. For example, in Dyestributor there are two scripts that handle block movement. One is the normal movement script named move_block and one is a script that handles slide movement which is called slide_block. There is a move counter in the bottom right when you're playing levels and to centralize the changing of this counter, the only spots where the moves variable is increased are once in each of the scripts. Centralizing the mechanics like this made it easy for me when I decided to add a 9999 move limit to the counter. All I had to do was simply add an if check to both scripts. Because the mechanic was centralized to the least amount of spots like this it was not only easy to make this change, but I also knew that it would work without issue because there were no other sections of code that increase move count and cause issues.

Thirdly: Surfaces... Exist!

This is less of a beginner mistake and more of a call to attention that a feature called Surfaces exists! I've found that a lot of people don't know that this feature exists and it's something that I've found to be very useful. You can find all the official information about surfaces here, but if you want a TL;DR, I'll break it down quickly. Surfaces are what GMS2 draws onto. By default, there is one surface called the application surface, which is what everything normally draws onto. Things get interesting when you start creating custom surfaces. You can customize custom surfaces to make complex and interesting effects easily. For example, a way that I use Surfaces in Dyestributor is for the hotkey list in the options of the level editor. Behind the scenes, there's a controller which creates a surface the size of the hotkey menu, draws all of the text, buttons, and other visuals to that surface, then draws that surface to the application surface. What this achieves is drawing the text and buttons to the edges of the menu box and automatically stopping them from drawing outside the box with no extra work.
This is just one of the many small but very useful features within GMS2. Explore and see what you can find!
The aforementioned hotkey menu, and an example of how surfaces can be used to create complex effects easily

Lastly: Make Your Code Your Own!

The way you code comes down to who are you and what you understand the easiest. GMS2 is extremely flexible in how it allows you to code so experiment, test different things out, and find what you like the best! What's most important is that you're comfortable and having fun!
All in all, I just wanted to show my love for GMS2 and GML since it was my first language and the software that I made my first full game in! I hope this information was at least a little bit useful to you and I appreciate you reading!
Any love towards Dyestributor would be much appreciated! Thank you!

TradingView.com.com is a popular online platform that provides a comprehensive suite of tools and resources for traders, investors, and analysts to analyze and trade financial markets. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of TradingView.com, its features, and its benefits, setting the stage for a deeper dive into the platform's capabilities in subsequent chapters.

What is TradingView.com?

TradingView.com is a cloud-based platform that enables users to analyze and trade financial markets, including stocks, forex, futures, and cryptocurrencies. Founded in 2011, TradingView.com has grown to become one of the largest and most popular trading communities in the world, with over 10 million registered users.

Key Features of TradingView.com

TradingView.com offers a wide range of features that make it an attractive platform for traders and analysts. Some of the key features include:
1. Charting and Technical Analysis: TradingView.com provides a powerful charting platform that allows users to create custom charts with various indicators, drawing tools, and annotations. Users can also access a vast library of pre-built indicators and templates.
2. Backtesting and Paper Trading: TradingView.com allows users to backtest and paper trade their strategies using historical data, enabling them to refine their trading ideas and test their performance.
3. Community and Social Trading: TradingView.com has a large and active community of users who share their ideas, strategies, and insights. Users can follow other traders, participate in discussions, and share their own ideas and insights.
4. Alerts and Notifications: TradingView.com provides a robust alert system that allows users to set custom alerts based on market conditions, technical indicators, and other criteria.
5. Data Feeds: TradingView.com offers a range of data feeds, including real-time and historical data, for various markets and instruments.
6. Scripting and Automation: TradingView.com's PineScript language allows users to create custom indicators, strategies, and automated trading systems.
7. Mobile Apps: TradingView.com offers mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, enabling users to access the platform on-the-go.

Benefits of Using TradingView.com

TradingView.com offers several benefits to its users, including:
1. Improved Trading Decisions: TradingView.com's charting and analysis tools enable users to make more informed trading decisions.
2. Access to a Large Community: TradingView.com's community provides users with access to a vast network of traders, analysts, and experts.
3. Customization and Automation: TradingView.com's scripting and automation capabilities allow users to create custom strategies and automate their trading.
4. Real-time Data and Alerts: TradingView.com's real-time data and alert system enable users to stay up-to-date with market movements and react quickly to market changes.
5. Cost-Effective: TradingView.com offers a range of pricing plans, including a free version, making it an accessible platform for traders and analysts.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have provided an overview of TradingView.com, its features, and its benefits. TradingView.com is a powerful platform that offers a range of tools and resources for traders, analysts, and investors. Whether you are a seasoned trader or just starting out, TradingView.com provides a comprehensive suite of tools to help you analyze and trade financial markets. In the next chapter, we will delve deeper into the charting and technical analysis capabilities of TradingView.com.

Chapter 2: Creating an Account and Setting Up Your Profile

As a new user, creating an account and setting up your profile is the first step in exploring the world of [Platform/Service]. In this chapter, we will guide you through a step-by-step process to create an account and set up your profile, ensuring a seamless and enjoyable experience.

Section 1: Creating an Account

To create an account, follow these steps:
1. Visit the Sign-up Page: Go to the [Platform/Service] website and click on the "Sign Up" or "Create an Account" button. This will take you to the sign-up page.
2. Enter Your Email Address: Enter a valid email address to serve as your login credentials. Make sure to use a unique and memorable email address, as it will be used to reset your password if needed.
3. Choose a Username: Choose a unique and memorable username that will be used to identify you on the platform. This can be your real name, a nickname, or a combination of letters and numbers.
4. Create a Password: Create a strong and unique password for your account. A strong password should be at least 8 characters long and include a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
5. Confirm Your Password: Re-enter your password to confirm it. This ensures that you have entered the correct password.
6. Verify Your Account: Click on the "Create Account" button to create your account. You will receive an email verification link to verify your email address.

Section 2: Setting Up Your Profile

Once you have created your account, it's time to set up your profile. Follow these steps:
1. Fill Out Your Profile Information: Fill out your profile information, including your name, birthday, and location. This information will be used to personalize your experience and connect with other users.
2. Add a Profile Picture: Upload a profile picture that represents you. This can be a photo of yourself, a logo, or an avatar.
3. Add a Bio: Write a brief bio that describes yourself, your interests, or your expertise. This will help others get to know you better and find common ground.
4. Customize Your Profile Settings: Customize your profile settings to control what information is visible to others and what notifications you receive.
5. Connect with Others: Start connecting with other users by sending friend requests or joining groups related to your interests.

Tips and Best Practices

· Use a strong and unique password for your account.
· Keep your profile information up-to-date and accurate.
· Be cautious when sharing personal information or connecting with strangers.
· Use the platform's built-in features to block or report suspicious or inappropriate behavior.
· Respect other users' privacy and boundaries.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully created an account and set up your profile. You are now ready to explore the world of [Platform/Service] and start connecting with others. Remember to keep your account information secure, be respectful of others, and have fun exploring the platform. In the next chapter, we will dive deeper into the features and functionality of [Platform/Service].

Chapter 3: Navigating the TradingView.com

Interface

As a trader or investor, it's essential to understand the TradingView.com interface to get the most out of this powerful platform. In this chapter, we'll take a comprehensive tour of the TradingView.com interface and its various components. By the end of this chapter, you'll be well-versed in navigating the platform and ready to start exploring its features.

Section 1: The TradingView.com

Dashboard

The TradingView.com dashboard is the main hub of the platform, providing an overview of your account, market data, and other essential features. Let's break down the key components of the dashboard:
1. Header Bar: The header bar at the top of the screen displays your username, account balance, and other account information.
2. Navigation Menu: The navigation menu allows you to access various sections of the platform, including your watchlists, charts, and settings.
3. Market Data: The market data section provides real-time quotes for various assets, including stocks, forex, and cryptocurrencies.
4. Alerts: The alerts section allows you to set custom alerts for specific market conditions, such as price movements or news events.
5. Watchlists: The watchlists section enables you to create and manage custom lists of symbols, making it easy to track your favorite assets.

Section 2: Charting and Analysis

TradingView.com is renowned for its powerful charting capabilities, allowing you to create custom charts with various indicators, studies, and drawing tools. Let's explore the key features of the charting interface:
1. Chart Types: TradingView.com offers a range of chart types, including line charts, candlestick charts, and Renko charts.
2. Indicators: The platform comes with a vast library of built-in indicators, including moving averages, RSI, and Bollinger Bands.
3. Drawing Tools: The drawing tools allow you to annotate your charts with lines, shapes, and text.
4. Studies: Studies are custom indicators created by the TradingView.com community, offering a wide range of trading strategies and techniques.
5. PineScript: PineScript is a programming language used to create custom indicators and strategies.

Section 3: Community and Social Trading

TradingView.com is more than just a trading platform – it's a community-driven platform where traders and investors share ideas, strategies, and insights. Let's explore the community features:
1. PineCoders: PineCoders is a community of developers who create custom indicators and strategies using PineScript.
2. TradingView.com Blog: The TradingView.com blog features articles, analysis, and insights from experienced traders and investors.
3. TradingView.com Forum: The forum is a hub for discussion, debate, and learning, where traders and investors share their experiences and ask questions.
4. Watchlists: Watchlists allow you to share your favorite symbols with others, making it easy to collaborate and learn from each other.
5. PineScript Challenges: PineScript challenges are community-driven initiatives where developers create custom indicators and strategies, and the community votes on the best submissions.

Section 4: Customization and Settings

As you become more comfortable with the TradingView.com interface, you'll want to customize your experience to suit your needs. Let's explore the customization options:
1. Theme: TradingView.com offers a range of themes, allowing you to personalize the look and feel of the platform.
2. Layout: The layout options enable you to customize the arrangement of the platform's components, such as the chart, indicators, and alerts.
3. Notifications: The notification settings allow you to customize the types of notifications you receive, including market data updates and alert notifications.
4. Security: The security settings enable you to set up two-factor authentication, password recovery, and other security measures to protect your account.

Conclusion

Navigating the TradingView.com interface is an essential step in unlocking the full potential of this powerful platform. By understanding the various components of the dashboard, charting and analysis tools, community features, and customization options, you'll be well-equipped to start exploring the platform and developing your trading skills. In the next chapter, we'll dive deeper into the world of PineScript, exploring the programming language and its applications in trading and investing.

Chapter 4: Understanding Charts and Time Frames

In this chapter, we will delve into the world of charts and time frames, a fundamental concept in technical analysis. We will explore the different types of charts, time frames, and how to use them effectively on TradingView.com. By the end of this chapter, you will have a solid understanding of how to use charts and time frames to analyze and trade the markets.

What are Charts and Time Frames?

Charts and time frames are the foundation of technical analysis. A chart is a graphical representation of a security's price action over a specific period. Time frames, on the other hand, refer to the duration of the data displayed on the chart. In other words, time frames determine how much data is displayed on the chart and how often the data is updated.

Types of Charts

There are several types of charts, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The most common types of charts are:
1. Line Chart: A line chart connects the closing prices of a security over a specific period, creating a continuous line. This chart is useful for identifying trends and patterns.
2. Candlestick Chart: A candlestick chart displays the high, low, open, and close prices of a security over a specific period. Each candle represents a specific time period, and the color of the candle indicates whether the price closed higher or lower than the previous day's close.
3. Bar Chart: A bar chart is similar to a candlestick chart but does not display the open and close prices. Instead, it shows the high and low prices, as well as the open and close prices.
4. Renko Chart: A Renko chart is a type of chart that uses a unique algorithm to create a chart that is not based on time. Instead, it uses price movements to create a chart that is more focused on the price action.

Time Frames

Time frames determine the duration of the data displayed on the chart. Common time frames include:
1. 1-minute: A 1-minute chart displays the price action over a 1-minute period.
2. 5-minute: A 5-minute chart displays the price action over a 5-minute period.
3. 15-minute A 15-minute chart displays the price action over a 15-minute period.
4. 30-minute: A 30-minute chart displays the price action over a 30-minute period.
5. 1-hour: A 1-hour chart displays the price action over a 1-hour period.
6. 4-hour: A 4-hour chart displays the price action over a 4-hour period.
7. Daily: A daily chart displays the price action over a 1-day period.
8. Weekly: A weekly chart displays the price action over a 1-week period.
9. Monthly: A monthly chart displays the price action over a 1-month period.

Using Charts and Time Frames on TradingView.com

TradingView.com is a popular platform for charting and analyzing financial markets. Here's how to use charts and time frames on TradingView.com:
1. Creating a Chart: To create a chart on TradingView.com, go to the "Charts" tab and select the security you want to chart. Choose the chart type and time frame you want to use.
2. Customizing the Chart: Once you have created a chart, you can customize it by adding indicators, drawing tools, and other features.
3. Switching Time Frames: To switch time frames on TradingView.com, click on the "Time Frame" dropdown menu and select the desired time frame.
4. Zooming In and Out: To zoom in and out of a chart on TradingView.com, use the mouse wheel or the "Zoom" button.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have covered the basics of charts and time frames, including the different types of charts and time frames. We have also explored how to use charts and time frames on TradingView.com. By mastering charts and time frames, you will be able to analyze and trade the markets more effectively. In the next chapter, we will explore the importance of indicators and how to use them to make informed trading decisions.

Chapter 5: Technical Indicators and Studies

In this chapter, we will delve into the world of technical indicators and studies available on TradingView.com. As a trader, it is essential to understand the various indicators and studies that can be used to analyze and predict market movements. This chapter will provide an overview of the different types of technical indicators and studies available on TradingView.com, their uses, and how to apply them in your trading strategy.

What are Technical Indicators and Studies?

Technical indicators and studies are mathematical calculations based on historical price data that help traders identify trends, patterns, and potential trading opportunities. These indicators and studies can be used to analyze and predict market movements, making it easier to make informed trading decisions.

Types of Technical Indicators and Studies

There are numerous types of technical indicators and studies available on TradingView.com, including:
1. Trend Indicators: These indicators help identify trends and potential trading opportunities. Examples include the Moving Average, Relative Strength Index (RSI), and Bollinger Bands.
2. Momentum Indicators: These indicators measure the rate of change of an asset's price over a given period. Examples include the RSI, Stochastic Oscillator, and Momentum Indicator.
3. Volatility Indicators: These indicators measure the degree of price movement or volatility. Examples include the Average True Range (ATR) and Bollinger Bands.
4. Pattern Recognition Indicators: These indicators help identify specific chart patterns, such as head and shoulders or triangles. Examples include the Ichimoku Cloud and the Keltner Channel.
5. Statistical Indicators: These indicators use statistical methods to analyze market data. Examples include the Exponential Moving Average (EMA) and the Simple Moving Average (SMA).

Popular Technical Indicators and Studies on TradingView.com

Some of the most popular technical indicators and studies available on TradingView.com include:
1. Moving Average: A simple moving average calculates the average price of an asset over a given period.
2. Relative Strength Index (RSI): The RSI measures the magnitude of recent price changes to determine overbought or oversold conditions.
3. Bollinger Bands: Bollinger Bands consist of a moving average and two standard deviations plotted above and below the average.
4. Stochastic Oscillator: The stochastic oscillator compares the closing price of an asset to its price range over a given period.
5. Ichimoku Cloud: The Ichimoku Cloud is a comprehensive technical analysis system that inclues multiple indicators, including the Tenkan-sen, Kijun-sen, and Senkou Span.
6. Keltner Channel: The Keltner Channel is a volatility-based indicator that plots two lines above and below a moving average.
7. Average True Range (ATR): The ATR measures the average true range of an asset over a given period.
8. Exponential Moving Average (EMA): The EMA is a type of moving average that gives more weight to recent price data.
9. Simple Moving Average (SMA): The SMA is a type of moving average that calculates the average price of an asset over a given period.
10. Stochastic Momentum Index (SMI): The SMI is a momentum indicator that measures the rate of change of an aset's price over a given period.

How to Use Technical Indicators and Studies

To get the most out of technical indicators and studies, it is essential to understand how to use them effectively. Here are some tips:
1. Combine Indicators: Combining multiple indicators can help confirm trading signals and reduce false positives.
2. Use Multiple Time Frames: Analyzing multiple time frames can help identify trends and patterns that may not be visible on a single time frame.
3. Adjust Parameters: Adjusting the parameters of an indicator can help tailor it to your specific trading strategy.
4. Use Indicators in Conjunction with Fundamental Analysis: Combining technical indicators with fundamental analysis can help provide a more comprehensive view of the market.
5. Backtest Indicators: Backtesting indicators can help evaluate their performance and identify potential biases.

Conclusion

Technical indicators and studies are powerful tools that can help traders analyze and predict market movements. By understanding the different types of indicators and studies available on TradingView.com, traders can develop a comprehensive trading strategy that incorporates multiple indicators and studies. Remember to combine indicators, use multiple time frames, adjust parameters, and backtest indicators to get the most out of technical indicators and studies.

Chapter 6: Creating and Customizing Charts

As a trader, having the right tools and information is crucial for making informed decisions. Charts are an essential component of any trading strategy, providing valuable insights into market trends and patterns. In this chapter, we will explore the process of creating and customizing charts on TradingView.com, a popular platform for traders and analysts.

Creating a Chart on TradingView.com

Creating a chart on TradingView.com is a straightforward process that can be completed in a few steps.
1. Log in to Your TradingView.com Account: Start by logging in to your TradingView.com account. If you don't have an account, you can create one by signing up on the TradingView.com website.
2. Select the Symbol: Once logged in, navigate to the "Symbols" tab and select the symbol you want to chart. You can search for symbols by typing in the symbol name or by using the "Search" function.
3. Create a New Chart: Click on the "Create a New Chart" button to create a new chart. You can also create a new chart by clicking on the "New Chart" button in the top-right corner of the TradingView.com window.
4. Select the Chart Type: Choose the type of chart you want to create. TradingView.com offers a variety of chart types, including line charts, candlestick charts, and more.
5. Customize the Chart Settings: Customize the chart settings to suit your needs. You can adjust the chart size, grid lines, and other settings to create a chart that meets your requirements.

Customizing Charts on TradingView.com

Customizing charts on TradingView.com is an essential step in creating a chart that meets your specific needs. Here are some tips for customizing your charts:
1. Add Indicators: Add indicators to your chart to gain insights into market trends and patterns. TradingView.com offers a wide range of indicators, including moving averages, RSI, and more.
2. Add Drawings: Add drawings to your chart to highlight specific patterns or trends. You can add lines, shapes, and other drawings to your chart to create a visual representation of your analysis.
3. Add Alerts: Set up alerts on your chart to notify you of specific market events or price movements. You can set up alerts based on price movements, volume, and other market indicators.
4. Customize the Chart Grid: Customize the chart grid to suit your needs. You can adjust the grid lines, grid spacing, and other settings to create a chart that meets your requirements.
5. Save and Share Your Chart: Save and share your chart with others. You can save your chart as a template or share it with other traders and analysts.

Advanced Chart Customization

In addition to the basic customization options, TradingView.com offers advanced customization options that allow you to create complex charts and indicators. Here are some tips for advanced chart customization:
1. Create Custom Indicators: Create custom indicators using the TradingView.com PineScript programming language. You can create custom indicators that meet your specific needs.
2. Use Custom Drawings: Use custom drawings to create complex patterns and shapes on your chart. You can create custom drawings using the TradingView.com drawing tools.
3. Customize the Chart Layout: Customize the chart layout to suit your needs. You can adjust the chart size, grid lines, and other settings to create a chart that meets your requirements.
4. Use Advanced Chart Settings: Use advanced chart settings to customize your chart further. You can adjust the chart settings to suit your specific needs.

Conclusion

Creating and customizing charts on TradingView.com is a powerful way to gain insights into market trends and patterns. By following the steps outlined in this chapter, you can create complex charts and indicators that meet your specific needs. Whether you're a seasoned trader or a beginner, TradingView.com offers a range of tools and features that can help you create charts that meet your specific needs.
Chapter 7:

Introduction to Trading Strategies

As a trader, having a solid understanding of various trading strategies is crucial for making informed decisions and maximizing profits. In this chapter, we will explore popular trading strategies, their underlying principles, and how to implement them on TradingView.com. By the end of this chapter, you will have a comprehensive understanding of various trading strategies and how to apply them using TradingView.com's powerful platform.

Introduction to Trading Strategies

Trading strategies are pre-defined rules or methods used to make trading decisions. These strategies are designed to help traders navigate the markets, identify profitable opportunities, and minimize losses. Trading strategies can be categorized into several types, including:
· Trend following strategies: These strategies aim to identify and ride the trend, whether it's an uptrend or a downtrend.
· Range trading strategies: These strategies focus on identifying and trading within a specific price range.
· Mean reversion strategies: These strategies rely on the idea that prices will revert to their historical means.
· Statistical arbitrage strategies: These strategies involve identifying mispricings in the market and exploiting them.

Popular Trading Strategies

2.1 Trend Following Strategies
Trend following strategies are designed to identify and ride the trend. These strategies involve identifying the direction of the market and trading in that direction. Some popular trend following strategies include:
· Moving Average Crossover (MAC): This strategy involves identifying the crossover of two moving averages to determine the direction of the trend.
· Relative Strength Index (RSI): This strategy involves identifying overbought or oversold conditions using the RSI indicator.
· Bollinger Bands: This strategy involves identifying breakouts above or below the bands to determine the direction of the trend.
2.2 Range Trading Strategies
Range trading strategies focus on identifying and trading within a specific price range. These strategies involve identifying support and resistance levels and trading within the range. Some popular range trading strategies include:
· Support and Resistance Trading: This strategy involves identifying key support and resistance levels and trading within the range.
· Channel Trading: This strategy involves identifying and trading within a specific price channel.
2.3 Mean Reversion Strategies
Mean reversion strategies rely on the idea that prices will revert to their historical means. These strategies involve identifying overbought or oversold conditions and trading in the opposite direction. Some popular mean reversion strategies include:
· Mean Reversion Trading: This strategy involves identifying overbought or oversold conditions and trading in the opposite direction.
· Statistical Arbitrage: This strategy involves identifying mispricings in the market and exploiting them.
2.4 Statistical Arbitrage Strategies
Statistical arbitrage strategies involve identifying mispricings in the market and exploiting them. These strategies involve analyzing historical data and identifying statistical anomalies. Some popular statistical arbitrage strategies include:
· Statistical Arbitrage: This strategy involves identifying mispricings in the market and exploiting them.
· Event-Driven Trading: This strategy involves identifying and trading on specific events, such as earnings announcements or mergers and acquisitions.

3.

Implementing Trading Strategies on TradingView.com

TradingView.com is a powerful platform that allows traders to implement and backtest various trading strategies. Here are some steps to follow when implementing trading strategies on TradingView.com:
1. Create a new chart: Open a new chart on TradingView.com and select the asset you want to trade.
2. Add indicators: Add the indicators you want to use for your trading strategy. For example, you may want to add a moving average crossover indicator.
3. Set parameters: Set the parameters for your indicators. For example, you may want to set the period for your moving average crossover indicator.
4. Backtest the strategy: Backtest your strategy by running a backtest on TradingView.com. This will allow you to evaluate the performance of your strategy.
5. Refine the strategy: Refine your strategy by adjusting the parameters and testing different scenarios.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have explored popular trading strategies and how to implement them on TradingView.com. By understanding various trading strategies and how to apply them using TradingView.com, you can make informed trading decisions and maximize your profits. Remember to always backtest and refine your strategies to ensure optimal performance. In the next chapter, we will explore advanced trading strategies and how to use them to improve your trading performance.

Chapter 8:

Backtesting and Evaluating Trading Ideas

As a trader, it's essential to test and refine your trading ideas before implementing them in live markets. Backtesting and evaluating your trading ideas can help you identify potential flaws, optimize your strategy, and increase your chances of success. In this chapter, we'll explore the process of backtesting and evaluating trading ideas using TradingView.com, a popular platform for charting and backtesting trading strategies.

What is Backtesting?

Backtesting is the process of applying a trading strategy to historical market data to evaluate its performance. It allows you to test your trading idea on past data to see how it would have performed in real-time. By backtesting your strategy, you can:
1. Identify potential flaws in your strategy
2. Optimize your strategy for better performance
3. Refine your strategy to improve its accuracy
4. Evaluate the strategy's risk-reward ratio

Why Backtest?

Backtesting is crucial for several reasons:
1. Risk management: Backtesting helps you identify potential risks associated with your trading strategy.
2. Strategy optimization: Backtesting allows you to refine your strategy to improve its performance.
3. Performance evaluation: Backtesting enables you to evaluate the performance of your strategy and make data-driven decisions.
4. Confidence booster: Backtesting gives you confidence in your strategy, reducing the risk of emotional trading decisions.

How to Backtest on TradingView.com

TradingView.com offers a range of tools and features for backtesting trading ideas. Here's a step-by-step guide to get you started:
1. Create a new chart: Open TradingView.com and create a new chart for the asset you want to backtest.
2. Select the data range: Choose the time period for which you want to backtest your strategy. You can select a specific date range or use the default settings.
3. Add the strategy: Click on the "Indicators" tab and add the strategy you want to backtest. You can use built-in indicators or create your own custom indicators.
4. Set the parameters: Configure the strategy's parameters, such as the number of bars to look back, the number of trades to take, and the stop-loss levels.
5. Run the backtest: Click the "Run" button to start the backtest. TradingView.com will apply your strategy to the selected data range and provide performance metrics.
6. Analyze the results: Review the backtest results, including the strategy's profit/loss, drawdown, and other performance metrics.

Evaluating Trading Ideas

Evaluating your trading idea is a crucial step in the backtesting process. Here are some key metrics to consider:
1. Profit/Loss: Calculate the total profit or loss generated by your strategy.
2. Drawdown: Measure the maximum loss experienced by your strategy.
3. Sharpe Ratio: Calculate the Sharpe Ratio to evaluate the strategy's risk-adjusted performance.
4. Sortino Ratio: Use the Sortino Ratio to evaluate the strategy's risk-adjusted performance, focusing on the maximum drawdown.
5. Information Coefficient: Calculate the Information Coefficient to evaluate the strategy's ability to generate profits.

Best Practices for Backtesting

To get the most out of backtesting, follow these best practices:
1. Use a robust data set: Ensure your data is accurate and free from errors.
2. Test multiple scenarios: Test your strategy on different time frames, assets, and market conditions.
3. Monitor performance metrics: Keep track of your strategy's performance metrics and adjust as needed.
4. Refine your strategy: Continuously refine your strategy to improve its performance.
5. Avoid overfitting: Be cautious of overfitting, where your strategy performs well on the training data but poorly on new data.

Conclusion

Backtesting and evaluating trading ideas is a crucial step in the trading process. By using TradingView.com and following best practices, you can refine your trading strategy, optimize its performance, and increase your chances of success. Remember to evaluate your strategy's performance using relevant metrics and refine it continuously to improve its performance. With practice and patience, you'll develop a robust trading strategy that can withstand the challenges of the markets.

In recent years, sports betting has exploded in popularity, evolving from a niche activity into a mainstream form of entertainment. With the rise of online betting platforms and the legalization of sports gambling in many jurisdictions, enthusiasts and newcomers alike are delving into this dynamic world. However, success in sports betting requires more than just luck; it demands knowledge, strategy, and informed decision-making. Check out: 먹튀폴리스
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Utilizing Resources: In the digital age, a wealth of resources is available to sports bettors to aid in their decision-making process. These include sports analytics websites, betting forums, social media communities, and expert analysis from seasoned bettors and industry professionals. Leveraging these resources can provide valuable insights, tips, and strategies to improve your betting performance.
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For many businesses seeking to expand, obtaining a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan can be an attractive option. An SBA loan provides access to capital with more favorable terms than traditional financing. However, there are certain considerations investors should take into account before taking on this type of loan.

Research Your Options Carefully

Before you make any decision about your business’s finances, it’s essential that you take the time to research your options thoroughly. With so many different types of loans available, it’s important to find one that meets your specific needs and goals. To help in this endeavor, the U.S. Small Business Administration has a comprehensive list of lenders who specialize in SBA loans as well as information about the different types of loans available and their associated requirements. It’s also important to consider the total cost of borrowing when weighing your options—including not only interest rates but also any fees associated with the loan itself.

Understand Eligibility Requirements

In order for a business to qualify for an SBA loan, they must meet a few basic criteria, such as having fewer than 500 employees and less than $7.5 million in revenue for most standard 7(a) loans or less than $2 million for microloans. Additionally, businesses must meet other requirements, including being able to demonstrate sufficient cash flow and having good credit scores or collateral to back up their loan application. Before applying for an SBA loan, it’s important that you are aware of all eligibility requirements so that you have a sense of whether or not it is worth pursuing. Figuring out SBA loans can be a bit complex for small business owners. SBA 7a and SBA 504 both have different variables that go into the calculations, so it's easy to end up making the wrong decision. Thankfully, the SBA Loan Calculator can help small business owners make sense of it all. Not only does it simplify the complex details, it helps you determine what type of SBA loan is best suited for meeting your needs and calculating potential loan payments in advance. With this tool, you can finally say goodbye to struggling to understand complicated formulas and focus more on running your business efficiently.

Gather Necessary Documentation

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Taking out an SBA loan can be beneficial for businesses looking to grow or expand their operations; however, there are certain considerations investors should take into account before taking on this type of financing option. From researching different options carefully to understanding eligibility requirements and gathering necessary documentation beforehand, taking care with these steps can help ensure that your business gets off on the right foot with its new financing arrangement. With careful consideration and thoughtful planning ahead of time, businesses can ensure they get the best possible terms while minimizing potential risks associated with taking out an SBA loan.

X. Paternalism Without Father
…
The Managerial and Professional Elite as a Ruling Class
As even the rich lose the sense of place and historical continuity, the subjective feeling of “entitlement,” which takes inherited advantages for granted, gives way to what clinicians call “narcissistic entitlement” - grandiose illusions, inner emptiness. The advantages the rich confer on their children dwindle down to money alone. As the new elite discards the outlook of the old bourgeoisie, it identifies itself not with the work ethic and the responsibilities of wealth but with an ethic of leisure, hedonism, and self-fulfillment. Although it continues to administer American institutions in the interests of private property (corporate property as opposed to entrepreneurial property), it has replaced character building with permissiveness, the cure of souls with the cure of the psyche, blind justice with therapeutic justice, philosophy with social science, personal authority with an equally irrational authority of professional experts. It has tempered competition with antagonistic cooperation, while abolishing many of the rituals in which aggressive impulses formerly found civilized expression. It has surrounded people with “symbolically mediated information” and has substituted images of reality for reality itself. Without intending to, it has created new forms of illiteracy even in the act of setting up a system of universal education. It has undermined the family while attempting to rescue the family. It has torn away the veil of chivalry that once tempered the exploitation of women and has brought men and women face to face as antagonists. It has expropriated the worker’s knowledge of his craft and the mother’s “instinct” for childrearing, and has reorganized this knowledge as a body of esoteric lore accessible only to the initiated. The new ruling class has elaborated new patterns of dependence as effectively as its forebears eradicated the dependence of the peasant on his lord, the apprentice on his master, and the woman on her man.
I do not wish to imply a vast conspiracy against our liberties. These things have been done in broad daylight and have been done, on the whole, with good intentions. Nor have they arisen as a unified policy of social control. Social policy in the United States has unfolded in response to a series of immediate emergencies, and those who make policy seldom see beyond the problems at hand. The cult of pragmatism, moreover, justifies their unwillingness or inability to make far-reaching plans for the future. What unifies their actions is the need to promote and defend the system of corporate capitalism from which they - the managers and professionals who operate the system - derive most of the benefits. The needs of the system shape policy and set the permissible limits of public debate. Most of us can see the system but not the class that administers it and monopolizes the wealth it creates. We resist a class analysis of modern society as a “conspiracy theory.” Thus we prevent ourselves from understanding how our current difficulties arose, why they persist, or how they might be solved.
Progressivism and the Rise of the New Paternalism
The new paternalism emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, found political expression in the progressive movement and later in the New Deal, and gradually worked its way into every corner of American society. The democratic revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, culminating in the Civil War, not only did away with monarchy but undermined established religion, landed elites, and finally overthrew the slaveholding oligarchy in the South. The revolution gave rise to a society based on individualism, competition, and the pursuit of the main chance. It also generated demands for further change, which came to a head in the period immediately following the Civil War. Having destroyed slavery in the name of free labor, the leaders of the democratic movement inadvertently encouraged northern workers to ask for the freedom to control the terms of their work, not merely to sell their labor at ruinous prices. The logic of democracy demanded the confiscation of Confederate estates and their distribution among the freedmen; it demanded woman suffrage; it demanded, in short, a more sweeping reorganization of society than its leaders had contemplated. Seeking merely to free property from its feudal and mercantile restrictions, bourgeois radicals in the 1860s and early 1870s found themselves confronted with an incipient attack on property itself, from which most of them recoiled in horror.
After the collapse of reconstruction and the radical agitation associated with it, American liberalism no longer spoke for the artisan, the small farmer, and the independent entrepreneur - the “producing classes” that had been the backbone of the democratic movement. Faced with unrest at home and with the spectacle of the Paris commune abroad, liberalism now identified itself, in the words of E. L. Godkin, with “the more well-to-do and observing classes.” It undertook to reform society from the top down - to professionalize the civil service, break the power of the urban machine, and put “the best men” into office. When such measures failed to stem the rising tide of labor militancy and agrarian radicalism, reformers brought forward their own version of the “cooperative commonwealth” in the name of progressivism: universal education, welfare capitalism, scientific management of industry and government. The New Deal completed what progressivism had begun, solidifying the foundations of the welfare state and adding much of the superstructure as well. In industry, scientific management gave way to the school of human relations, which tried to substitute cooperation for authoritarian control. But this cooperation rested on management’s monopoly of technology and the reduction of work to routines imperfectly understood by the worker and controlled by the capitalist. Similarly the expansion of welfare services presupposed the reduction of the citizen to a consumer of expertise.
American progressivism, which has successfully countered agrarian radicalism, the labor movement, and the feminist movement by enacting selective parts of their program, has now lost almost all trace of its origin in nineteenth-century liberalism. It has rejected the liberal conception of man, which assumed the primacy of rational self-interest, and has installed in its place a therapeutic conception which acknowledges irrational drives and seeks to divert them into socially constructive channels. It has rejected the stereotype of economic man and has attempted to bring the “whole man” under social control. Instead of regulating the conditions of work alone, it now regulates private life as well, organizing leisure time on scientific principles of social and personal hygiene. It has exposed the innermost secrets of the psyche to medical scrutiny and has thus encouraged habits of anxious self-scrutiny, superficially reminiscent of religious introspection but rooted in anxiety rather than a guilty conscience - in a narcissistic rather than a compulsive or hysterical type of personality.
Liberal Criticism of the Welfare State
The new modes of social control associated with the rise of progressivism having stabilized capitalism without solving any of its underlying problems - the gap between wealth and poverty, the failure of purchasing power to keep pace with productivity, economic stagnation. The new paternalism has kept social tensions from assuming political form, but it has not removed their source. As those tensions increasingly find expression in crime and random violence, critics have begun to ask whether the welfare system delivers all it promised. The system, moreover, has become more and more expensive to operate. Even those who remain loyal to the underlying premises of American capitalism have begun to express alarm about the mounting cost of maintaining it. Proposals to replace the welfare system with a guaranteed income or a negative income tax have gained a sympathetic hearing. In his book on old age, David Hackett Fischer argues that a national inheritance system, whereby a gift of capital at birth would accumulate interest and provide for the citizen in his old age, would prove “cheaper than present arrangements.” The modification or abandonment of the welfare system now presents itself not as a Utopian dream but as a matter of sound business practice.
The health and welfare industries, which have done so much to promote the new paternalism by professionalizing activities formerly carried on in the workshop, the neighborhood, or the home, have themselves begun to harbor second thoughts about the results of their own labors. Members of the “helping professions” have begun to question the efficiency of the public institutions and welfare agencies that monopolize the knowledge formerly administered by ordinary citizens - the hospital, the mental asylum, the juvenile court. The medical profession, after upholding the hospital as an indispensable alternative to the family, now begins to think that patients might be better off if they were allowed to die at home. Psychiatrists have been speculating along similar lines, not only because existing facilities are overcrowded but because they have failed to achieve the high rates of cure once predicted with such confidence. Lawyers have begun to criticize the courts for removing “neglected” children from their homes without evidence that such children suffer serious harm and without proof that institutionalization or transfer to foster parents provides any solution. Even the school’s claim on the child has begun to give way to parental claims. In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that Amish parents have a right to keep their children out of the public schools. “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” the court said; “those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Even with the best intentions, however, those who criticize the welfare state within the assumptions underlying a capitalist economy cannot bring themselves to confront the revolution in social relations that abandonment of the welfare system would require. Liberal criticism of the new paternalism resembles the “humanization” of the workplace, which tries to give the worker the illusion of participation while leaving management in undiminished control. The attempt to mitigate the monotony of the assembly line by allowing the worker to perform more than a single operation does not alter the condition that degrades work - the monotony of the assembly line by allowing the worker to perform more than a single operation does not alter the condition that degrades work - the monopoly of technical knowledge by means of which management designs all phases of production, while the worker merely carries out the bidding of the planning department. Recent proposals to modify the welfare system suffer from the same kind of limitation. Thus a study of the family commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation takes issue with the conventional assumption of parental incompetence while leaving unchallenged the definition of parents as consumers of professional services. Kenneth Keniston and the other authors of the Carnegie report, conscious of belonging to “an emerging consensus,” hold that parents “are still the world’s greatest experts about the needs of their own children.” They recognize that many of the agencies ostensibly ministering to the family have undermined the family instead. The parental “malaise,” according to Keniston, lies in “the sense of having no guidelines or supports for raising children, the feeling of not being in control as parents, and the widespread sense of personal guilt for what seems to be going awry.”
The rehabilitation of parenthood, it appears, implies an attack on professionalism and the welfare state. Yet Keniston stops well short of such an attack. He takes for granted the family’s dependence on experts and seeks merely to regularize and regulate this relationship. “Few people would dispute that we live in a society where parents must increasingly rely on others for help and support in raising their children.” The family economy has disappeared; children represent a financial liability rather than an asset; the school has taken over the family’s education functions; and the medical profession has assumed most of the responsibility for health care. These changes, according to Keniston, leave parents in the position of “executives in a large firm - responsible for the smooth coordination of the many people and processes that must work together to produce the final product.”
This line of analysis leads to the conclusion not that parents should collectively assert their control over childrearing but that federal policy should seek to equalize the relationship between experts and parents. Yet Keniston’s own reasoning shows that parents occupy a position closer to proletarians than to executives. As things now stand, according to Keniston, “parents have little authority over those with whom they share the task of raising their children”; they “deal with those others from a position of inferiority of helplessness.” The obvious reason for this is that the state, not the parents, pays the bill for professional services, or at least signs the paychecks. (The citizens, as taxpayers, pay in the end.) If parents organized and hired their own experts, things might be different.
It goes without saying that such solutions do not commend themselves to members of the policy-making establishment. Measures of this kind are too closely associated with populism, localism, and residual resistance to centralized progress. They have become doubly objectionable, and for reasons the force of which even enemies of the establishment must acknowledge, in the wake of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville battle of the late sixties, when “community control” degenerated into reverse racism and education into racial propaganda. Yet the alternative to community control is more bureaucracy. Instead of confronting the choice, liberal reformers try to have things both ways. While advocating an expansion of government services to the family, a federal guarantee of full employment, improved protection of children’s legal rights, and a vastly expanded program of health care, they propose to strengthen “parent participation” in all these programs. They treat the ascendancy of experts as an unavoidable condition of industrial society, even when they seek to qualify they ascendancy of experts as an unavoidable condition of industrial society, even when they seek to qualify this ascendancy by improving the position of consumers. They assume that the requirements of a complex society dictate the triumph of factory production over handicraft production and the ascendancy of the “helping professions” over the family.
Bureaucratic Dependence and Narcissism
Recent studies of professionalization show that professionalism did not emerge, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in response to clearly defined social needs. Instead, the new professions themselves invented many of the needs they claimed to satisfy. They played on public fears of disorder and disease, adopted a deliberately mystifying jargon, ridiculed popular traditions of self-help as backward and unscientific, and in this way created or intensified (not without opposition) a demand for their own services. The evidence of professional self-promotion can no longer be dismissed by reasserting the sociological truism that “modern society involves the individual in relations … that are vastly more complex than [those] his ancestors … had to content with.”
The family’s dependence on professional services over which it has little control represents one form of a more general phenomenon: the erosion of self-reliance and ordinary competence by the growth of giant corporations and of the bureaucratic state that serves them. The corporations and the state now control so much of the necessary know-how that Durkheim’s image of society as the “nourishing mother,” from whom all blessings flow, more and more coincides with the citizen’s everyday experience. The new paternalism has replaced personal dependence not with bureaucratic rationality, as theorists of modernization (beginning with Max Weber) have almost unanimously assumed, but with a new form of bureaucratic dependence. What appears to social scientists as a seamless web of “interdependence” represents in fact the dependence of the individual on the organization, the citizen on the state, the worker on the manager, and the parent on the “helping professions.” The “consensus of the competent,” as Thomas L. Haskell refers to the professions in his study of the professionalization of social science, came into being by reducing the layman to incompetence.
As retributive justice gives way to therapeutic justice, what began as a protest against moral oversimplification ends by destroying the very sense of moral responsibility. Therapeutic justice perpetuates childlike dependence into adulthood and deprives the citizen of legal resources against the state. Formerly law rested on an adversary relation between the state and the offender and acknowledged the superior power of the state by giving important procedural advantages to the defendant. Medical jurisprudence, on the other hand, implicates the offender in his own control. Relieved of moral responsibility when certified into the sick role, he cooperates with the doctors in his own “cure.”
The psychiatric critique of the law, like the therapeutic attack on authority in general, makes a virtue of substituting personal treatment for the impersonal, arbitrary authority of the courts. Thus a specialist in the sociology of law, acknowledging his intention to “substitute scientific therapies for legal sanctions - for ‘justice’” - once deplored the irrationality of legal procedures: “There is in the concept of justice an element of ‘fate’, which is absent in the concept of scientific treatment. The offender simply gets what he himself initiated…. Society as a whole is blameless. The criminal himself was the one who chose.” Whereas “the lawyer’s way of handling a human problem is typically non-scientific,” therapy treats the criminal or patient as a victim and thus puts matters in their proper light. The shift from “sin” to “sickness,” according to this writer, represents the first step toward “the introduction of science and personal reactions [into] human conflicts” and to the recognition of social problems as medical problems, in which “cooperation with the therapist” becomes “probably the most critical problem for the deviant.”
Medical justice shares with enlightened childrearing and pedagogy a tendency to promote dependence as a way of life. Therapeutic modes of thought and practice exempt their object, the patient, from critical judgment and relieve him of moral responsibility. Sickness by definition represents an invasion of the patient by forces outside his conscious control, and the patient’s realistic recognition of the limits of his own responsibility - his acceptance of his diseased and helpless condition - constitutes the first step toward recovery (or permanent invalidism, as the case may be). Therapy labels as sickness what might be judged as weak or willful actions; it thus equips the patient to fight (or resign himself to) the disease, instead of irrationally finding fault with himself. Inappropriately extended beyond the consulting room, however, therapeutic morality encourages a permanent suspension of the moral sense. There is a close connection, in turn, between the erosion of moral responsibility and the waning of the capacity for self-help - in the categories used by John R. Seeley, between the elimination of culpability and the elimination of competence. “What says ‘you are not guilty’ says also ‘you cannot help yourself.’” Therapy legitimates deviance as sickness, but it simultaneously pronounces the patient unfit to manage his own life and delivers him into the hands of a specialist. As therapeutic points of view and practice gain general acceptance, more and more people find themselves disqualified, in effect, from the performance of adult responsibilities and become dependent on some form of medical authority.
The psychological expression of this dependence is narcissism. In its pathological form, narcissism originates as a defense against feelings of helpless dependency in early life, which it tries to counter with “blind optimism” and grandiose illusions of personal self-sufficiency. Since modern society prolongs the experience of dependence into adult life, it encourages milder forms of narcissism in people who might otherwise come to terms with the inescapable limits on their personal freedom and power - limits inherent in the human condition - by developing competence as workers and parents. But at the same time that our society makes it more and more difficult to find satisfaction in love and work, it surrounds the individual with manufactured fantasies of total gratification. The new paternalism preaches not self-denial but self-fulfillment. It sides with narcissistic impulses and discourages their modification by the pleasure of becoming self-reliant, even in a limited domain, which under favorable conditions accompanies maturity. While it encourages grandiose dreams of omnipotence, moreover, the new paternalism undermines more modest fantasies, erodes the capacity to suspend disbelief, and thus makes less and less accessible the harmless substitute-gratifications, notably art and play, that help to mitigate the sense of powerlessness and the fear of dependence that otherwise express themselves in narcissistic traits.
Our society is narcissistic, then, in a double sense. People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognizes no boundaries between the public and the private realm. The beautiful people - to use this revealing expression to include not merely wealthy globetrotters but all those who bask, however briefly, in the full glare of the cameras - live out the fantasy of narcissistic success, which consists of nothing more substantial than a wish to be vastly admired, not for one’s accomplishments but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reservation.
Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone. It does this in many ways: by displaying narcissism so prominently and in such attractive forms; by undermining parental authority and thus making it hard for children to grow up; but above all by creating so many varieties of bureaucratic dependence. This dependence, increasingly widespread in a society that is not merely paternalistic but maternalistic as well, makes it increasingly difficult for people to lay to rest the terrors of infancy or to enjoy the consolations of adulthood.
The Conservative Critique of Bureaucracy
Criticism of the new paternalism, insofar as it remains imprisoned in the assumptions of political liberalism, objects to the cost of maintaining a welfare state - the “human cost” as well as the cost to the taxpayers - without criticizing the ascendancy of the managerial and professional class. Another line of attack, which singles out bureaucracy as the overriding evil, arises out of a conservative idealization of old-fashioned individualism. Less equivocal in its opposition to bureaucratic centralization - except when it comes from right-wingers who denounce government regulation of industry and still plead for a gigantic military establishment - the conservative critique of bureaucracy superficially resembles the radical critique outlined in the present study. It deplores the erosion of authority, the corruption of standards in the schools, and the spread of permissiveness. But it refuses to acknowledge the connection between these developments and the rise of monopoly capitalism - between bureaucracy in government and bureaucracy in industry.
“The general historical conflict between individualism and collectivism is dividing mankind into two hostile camps,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in his study of bureaucracy. Capitalist free enterprise, he argued, rests on the rational calculation of profit and loss, whereas bureaucratic management “cannot be checked by economic calculation.” Extended beyond its legitimate domain of law enforcement and national defense, bureaucracy undermines individual initiative and substitutes “government control for free enterprise.” It substitutes the dictatorship of the state for the rule of law. Free-market capitalism, by turning labor into a commodity, “makes the wage earner free from any personal dependence” and detaches “appraisal of each individual’s effort … from any personal considerations.” Bureaucratic collectivism, on the other hand, undermines the “cool rationality and objectivity of capitalist relations” and renders the “plain citizen” dependent on the “professional propagandist of bureaucratization,” who confuses the citizen with his “empty catchwords” and esoteric obfuscation. “Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.” But under socialism - and “there is no compromise possible between these two systems,” according to Mises, “no third system” - the “way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.”
This argument suffers from the conservative’s idealization of the personal autonomy made possible by the free market and his willingness to concede enormous war-making powers to the state, so long as they do not interfere with “private” enterprise.” It cannot explain the spread of bureaucracy into industry itself. “The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business,” according to Mises. “It is an outcome of government meddling with business.” Such is his reply to the liberal argument that the inexorable trend toward economic concentration gives rise to a growing gap between ownership and control of the corporation, creates a new managerial elite, and calls into being a centralized state as the only agency capable of controlling it. The liberal analysis itself, however, needs modification. It is not the “divorce between ownership and control” that has created the managerial oligarchy but the divorce between production and planning. Having achieved a complete separation of handwork and brainwork, management monopolizes technical knowledge and reduces the workers to a human machine; but the administration and continual elaboration of this knowledge require an ever-growing managerial apparatus, itself organized on the principles of the factory with its intricate subdivision of tasks. Studies of progressivism and the New Deal have shown that government regulation of business often arose in response to the demands of businessmen themselves. Regulatory agencies draw most of their personnel from business. Neither the regulatory nor the welfare policies of the state rest on “an implacable hatred of private business and free enterprise,” as Mises claims. On the contrary, regulation controls competition and stabilizes the market, while the welfare system socializes the “human costs” of capitalist production - rising unemployment, inadequate wage scales, inadequate insurance against sickness and old age - and helps to forestall more radical solutions.
It is true that a professional elite of doctors, psychiatrists, social scientists, technicians, welfare workers, and civil servants now plays a leading part in the administration of the state and of the “knowledge industry.” But the state and the knowledge industry overlap at so many points with the business corporation (which has increasingly concerned itself with every phase of culture), and the new professionals share so many characteristics with the managers of industry, that the professional elite must be regarded not as an independent class but as a branch of modern management. The therapeutic ethic, which has replaced the nineteenth-century utilitarian ethic, does not serve the “class interest” of professionals alone, as Daniel P. Moynihan and others have argued; it serves the interests of monopoly capitalism as a whole. Moynihan points out that by emphasizing impulse rather than calculation as the determinant of human conduct, and by holding society responsible for the problems confronting individuals, a “government-oriented” professional class has attempted to create a demand for its own services. Professionals, he observes, have a vested interest in discontent, because discontented people turn to professional services for relief. But the same principle underlies all of modern capitalism, which continually tries to create new demands and new discontents that can be assuaged only by the consumption of commodities. Moynihan, aware of this connection, tries to present the professional as the successor to the capitalist. The ideology of “compassion,” he says, serves the class interest of the “post-industrial surplus of functionaries who, in the manner of industrialists who earlier turned to advertising, induce demand for this own products.”
Professional self-aggrandizement, however, grew up side by side with the advertising industry and must be seen as another phase of the same process, the transition from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism. The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer. Thus the medical and psychiatric assault on the family as a technologically backward sector went hand in hand with the advertising industry’s drive to convince people that store-brought goods are superior to homemade goods. Both the growth of management and proliferation of professions represent new forms of capitalist control, which first established themselves in the factory and then spread throughout society. The struggle against bureaucracy therefore requires a struggle against capitalism itself. Ordinary citizens cannot resist professional dominance without also asserting control over production and over the technical knowledge on which modern production rests. A reassertion of “common sense,” according to Mises, will “prevent man from falling prey” to the “illusory fantasies” of professional bureaucrats. But common sense is not enough. In order to break the existing pattern of dependence and put an end to the erosion of competence, citizens will have to take the solution of their problems into their own hands. They will have to create their own “communities of competence.” Only then will the productive capacities of modern capitalism, together with the scientific knowledge that now serves it, come to serve the interests of humanity instead.
In a dying culture, narcissism appears to embody - in the guise of personal “growth” and “awareness” - the highest attainment of spiritual enlightenment. The custodians of culture hope, at bottom, merely to survive its collapse. The will to build a better society, however, survives, along with traditions of localism, self-help, and community action that only need the vision of a new society, a decent society, to give them new vigor. The moral discipline formerly associated with the work ethic still retains a value independent of the role it once played in the defense of property rights. That discipline - indispensable to the task of building a new order - endures most of all in those who knew the old order only as a broken promise, yet who took the promise more seriously than those who merely took it for granted.

DAY: MAY 30 2024
5-30-2024

WHAT ARE NOOTROPICS AND DO THEY REALLY BOOST YOUR BRAIN?

Humans have long been searching for a “magic elixir” to make us smarter, and improve our focus and memory. This includes traditional Chinese medicine used thousands of years ago to improve cognitive function. Now we have nootropics, also known as smart drugs, brain boosters or cognitive enhancers. You can buy these gummies, chewing gum, pills and skin patches online, or from supermarkets, pharmacies or petrol stations. You don’t need a prescription or to consult a health professional. But do nootropics actually boost your brain? Here’s what the science says. What
5-30-2024

STUDY REVEALS IMPORTANT HEALTH MARKERS

BIPS has made significant progress in identifying health markers that are crucial for a long and healthy life. Led by Prof. Dr. Krasimira Aleksandrova and in close collaboration with the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke (DIfE), the research provides valuable insights for healthy aging. In the study published in the journal Age and Ageing, Aleksandrova and her team analyzed specific combinations of molecular markers reflecting various biological processes as possible indicators of healthy aging. The focus was particularly
5-30-2024

STUDY SHOWS AI HEALTH COACH LOWERS BLOOD PRESSURE AND BOOSTS ENGAGEMENT IN PATIENTS WITH HYPERTENSION

Architecture of data transmission. Participant data were collected from Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure (BP) monitors, wearable devices, and a mobile app–based questionnaire. Data were uploaded through the respective application programming interfaces (APIs) to our app server, where the individualized analysis was carried out before delivering recommendations to participants. A new study in JMIR Cardio shows that a fully digital, artificial intelligence (AI)–driven lifestyle coaching program can effectively reduce blood pressure (BP) in adults with hypertension. This AI-based program leverages data from wearable activity trackers and
5-30-2024

SNAPPING PHOTOS OF OUR FOOD COULD BE GOOD FOR US, STUDY SUGGESTS

New Curtin University research reveals taking pictures of food isn’t just content for our social media feeds, but could be the key to improving people’s diets. The feeding study saw researchers measure the weight of meals, which were then provided to participants over a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. “Accuracy of energy and nutrient intake estimation versus observed intake using four technology-assisted dietary assessment methods: a randomized crossover feeding study” was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Participants compared different technology-assisted methods to recall what they had
5-30-2024

PARENTS ARE INCREASINGLY SAYING THEIR CHILD IS ‘DYSREGULATED.’ WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?

Welcome aboard the roller coaster of parenthood, where emotions run wild, tantrums reign supreme and love flows deep. As children reach toddlerhood and beyond, parents adapt to manage their child’s big emotions and meltdowns. Parenting terminology has adapted too, with more parents describing their child as “dysregulated.” But what does this actually mean? More than an emotion Emotional dysregulation refers to challenges a child faces in recognizing and expressing emotions, and managing emotional reactions in social settings. This may involve either suppressing emotions or displaying exaggerated and intense emotional responses
5-30-2024

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHYNESS AND SOCIAL ANXIETY?

The terms “shyness” and “social anxiety” are often used interchangeably because they both involve feeling uncomfortable in social situations. However, feeling shy, or having a shy personality, is not the same as experiencing social anxiety (short for “social anxiety disorder”). Here are some of the similarities and differences, and what the distinction means. How are they similar? It can be normal to feel nervous or even stressed in new social situations or when interacting with new people. And everyone differs in how comfortable they feel when interacting
5-30-2024

EYE EXERCISES TO IMPROVE SIGHT—IS THERE ANY SCIENCE BEHIND THEM? AN OPHTHALMOLOGIST IS SKEPTICAL

You may have seen advertisements claiming to eliminate the need for eyeglasses through vision therapy or vision training—basically, eye exercises. These exercises include putting pressure on or palming the eye; eye movement exercises; or straining to read by using the wrong prescription glasses to “train” the eyes. As a professor of ophthalmology—and as an eye doctor who has seen thousands of patients—I can tell you that no study to date shows strong evidence that these exercises eliminate the need for glasses or offer any long-term significant benefits. The science simply
5-30-2024

HOW COMMUNITY STRESS AFFECTS BLACK AMERICANS’ MENTAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Residential segregation is an example of the long history of structural racism in the United States. Black Americans are more likely to live in low-quality neighborhoods, which contributes to disparities in health outcomes. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at how community stress affects the mental and emotional health of Black men and women in the U.S. “Community stress refers to the effects of living in disadvantaged areas. This includes objective aspects, such as buildings in disrepair and lower median income. There is also a subjective
5-30-2024

GENE VARIANTS FORETELL THE BIOLOGY OF FUTURE BREAST CANCERS, STUDY FINDS

A Stanford Medicine study of thousands of breast cancers has found that the gene sequences we inherit at conception are powerful predictors of the breast cancer type we might develop decades later and how deadly it might be. The study challenges the dogma that most cancers arise as the result of random mutations that accumulate during our lifetimes. Instead, it points to the active involvement of gene sequences we inherit from our parents—what’s known as your germline genome—in determining whether cells bearing potential cancer-causing mutations are recognized and eliminated by
5-30-2024

PTSD, ANXIETY IS RISING AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS

America’s college students seem to be more stressed than ever, with a new report finding a sharp rise in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and acute stress disorder (ASD) on campuses across the country. In a “national sample of U.S. college students, we found a notable increase in the prevalence of PTSD and ASD,”
5-30-2024

NIGHT OWL BEHAVIOR COULD HURT MENTAL HEALTH, SLEEP STUDY FINDS

Night owls, brace yourselves. A new study by Stanford Medicine researchers has found that following your natural inclination to stay awake until the early morning hours is a bad choice for your mental health. In a survey of nearly 75,000 adults, researchers compared the participants’ preferred sleep timing, known as chronotype, with their actual sleep behavior. They determined that regardless of one’s preferred bedtime, everyone benefits from turning in early. Morning larks and night owls alike tended to have higher rates of mental and behavioral disorders if they stayed up
5-30-2024

STUDY CONFIRMS EFFECTIVENESS OF ‘WATCH-AND-WAIT’ APPROACH TO PROSTATE CANCER

For a large percentage of men with prostate cancer, the tumor may be so slow-growing that doctors advise a “watch-and-wait” approach instead of active treatment. Now, a study of almost 2,200 patients followed for up to a decade finds that for most, that decision may be a wise one. “In this study, 10 years after diagnosis, 49% of men remained free of progression or treatment, less than 2% developed metastatic disease and less than 1% died of their disease,” reported a team led by Lisa Newcomb, a cancer prevention researcher
5-30-2024

RESEARCHERS HARNESS THE POWER OF AI TO MATCH PATIENTS WITH THE MOST EFFECTIVE ANTIDEPRESSANT FOR THEIR UNIQUE NEEDS

Researchers at George Mason University’s College of Public Health have leveraged the power of artificial intelligence (AI) analytical models to match a patient’s medical history to the most effective antidepressant, allowing patients to find symptom relief sooner. The free website, MeAgainMeds.com, provides evidence-based recommendations, allowing clinicians and patients to find the optimal antidepressant the first time. “Many people with depression must try multiple antidepressants before finding the right one that alleviates their symptoms. Our website reduces the number of medications that patients are asked to try. The system recommends to
5-30-2024

NEW CANCER-RELATED FATIGUE TREATMENT GUIDELINES URGE EXERCISE, TALK THERAPY, MINDFULNESS, TAI CHI

The clinical practice guidelines, which came about after an extensive review of 113 published clinical trials by a panel of experts, conclude that doctors should recommend exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness-based programs, Tai chi, qigong, and American ginseng to reduce fatigue severity during cancer treatment. After completion of cancer treatment, the guidelines also suggest that exercise, CBT, and mindfulness-based
5-30-2024

STUDY FINDS THAT BETTER SLEEP IS ASSOCIATED WITH LOWER LONELINESS

A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found that better sleep health was associated with lower levels of loneliness, and this association was stronger among younger adults. Results indicate that better sleep health was associated with significantly lower total loneliness, emotional loneliness and social loneliness. While better sleep health was associated with lower total and emotional loneliness across ages, this association was stronger for younger adults. However, age did not moderate the association between sleep health and social loneliness. “Loneliness is an urgent public health
5-30-2024

SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND SLEEP DURATION CONNECTED TO BRAIN ACTIVITY IN TEENS

A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found a distinct relationship between sleep duration, social media usage, and brain activation across brain regions that are key for executive control and reward processing. Results show a correlation between shorter sleep duration and greater social media usage in teens. The analysis points to involvement of areas within the frontolimbic brain regions, such as the inferior and middle frontal gyri, in these relationships. The inferior frontal gyrus, key in inhibitory control, may play
5-30-2024

HOW DOES THE WORD ‘NOT’ AFFECT WHAT WE UNDERSTAND? SCIENTISTS FIND NEGATION MITIGATES OUR INTERPRETATION OF PHRASES

When we’re told “This coffee is hot” upon being served a familiar caffeinated beverage at our local diner or cafe, the message is clear. But what about when we’re told “This coffee is not hot”? Does that mean we think it’s cold? Or room temperature? Or just warm? A team of scientists has now identified how our brains work to process phrases that include negation (i.e., “not”), revealing that it mitigates rather than inverts meaning—in other words, in our minds, negation merely reduces the temperature of our coffee and does
5-30-2024

IS GUT HEALTH LINKED TO MENTAL HEALTH? WE KNOW THEY’RE CONNECTED BUT HOW REMAINS A MYSTERY, RESEARCHER SAYS

Rebecca Carrier, associate chair of research in the Department of Chemical Engineering, researches retinal and gut epithelial repair in the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex on Jan. 24, 2023. It was an act of desperation: A woman with irritable bowel syndrome was looking for relief from her symptoms. She decided to try an at-home fecal microbiota, aka a “poop transplant.” Used to treat C. diff bacterial infections, this treatment can help introduce “good microbiomes” to the gut to ease gastrointestinal symptoms. But the woman told Netflix
5-30-2024

STUDY LINKS SLEEP APNEA TREATMENT AND HAPPIER, HEALTHIER RELATIONSHIPS

when individuals with obstructive sleep apnea use their positive airway pressure machine more regularly, it benefits their relationship with their partner. Results show that greater adherence to PAP therapy was associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction and lower levels of relationship conflict. Higher sleep efficiency among patients also was associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction as reported by both the patient and their partner. “Recognizing that sleep and sleep disorders have an impact on
5-30-2024

CDC REPORTS THIRD DAIRY WORKER INFECTED WITH BIRD FLU, RISK TO PUBLIC REMAINS LOW

Amid an ongoing outbreak of bird flu in dairy cows, there’s been a third case of H5N1 avian flu confirmed in a dairy worker, U.S. health officials reported Thursday. The previous two human cases—the first in Texas, the second in Michigan, where this latest case also occurred—involved only a brief discomfort of the eyes, linked to conjunctivitis (“pink eye”). However, this third case is the first to present with more typical respiratory symptoms, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted in a health update. “The patient reported upper
5-30-2024

RECOMMENDATIONS ISSUED FOR PALLIATIVE RADIATION THERAPY FOR SYMPTOMATIC BONE METASTASES

In a clinical practice guideline issued by the American Society for Radiation Oncology and published in Practical Radiation Oncology, evidence-based recommendations are presented for the use of palliative external beam radiation therapy (RT) for symptomatic bone metastases. Sarah Alcorn, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and colleagues developed evidence-based recommendations for palliative external beam RT in symptomatic bone metastases. Five key questions regarding palliative RT were addressed. The authors noted that RT is recommended for managing pain from bone metastases and spine metastases with or without
5-30-2024

CAUSE OF COMMON TYPE OF HEART FAILURE MAY BE DIFFERENT FOR WOMEN AND MEN

Graphical abstract. Credit: Cardiovascular Research (2024). DOI: 10.1093/cvcvae070 A new study from the UC Davis School of Medicine found striking differences at the cellular level between male and female mice with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). The findings could determine how HFpEF is treated in women compared to men. With HFpEF, the heart muscle contracts normally but the heart is unable to fully relax and refill properly between beats. This condition is known as diastolic dysfunction. It can occur if the heart is too stiff or if the

5-30-2024

CANCER CAN BE CAUSED BY REVERSIBLE MOLECULAR CHANGES, STUDY SHOWS

Though 1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime, there’s still much we don’t know about this disease. But thanks to continued research efforts, we keep learning more about the biology of cancer. One of these recent discoveries could even transform our understanding of how cancers develop. But before we talk about the new discovery, let’s first discuss the classical theory that attempts to explain why normal cells become cancer cells. This theory posits that DNA mutations are the primary cause of cancers. It’s well
5-30-2024

HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM DESTROYS THE CEREBELLUM

Neurologist Professor Dr Kurt-Wolfram Sühs has discovered a new form of severe cerebellitis caused by autoantibodies. Cerebellar ataxia is a neurological disorder of the cerebellum. This important area at the back of the brain acts as a conductor, so to speak, coordinating our movements and keeping us in balance. This ability is impaired in cerebellar ataxia. Affected people can have difficulties walking, speaking and grasping or even with controlled eye movements. In some cases, the damage begins gradually and develops over a period of years.
5-30-2024

PEOPLE WHO ARE EASILY ABSORBED IN AN ACTIVITY MAY HAVE BETTER MENTAL AND CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH

Have you ever lost all sense of space and time when redecorating a room? How about being so focused while playing an instrument that the worries that weighed you down a minute ago just evaporated? Then you’ve probably experienced “flow.” Flow is a term used in psychology to describe a state of heightened concentration, in which you are completely absorbed in an activity. It exists somewhere between boredom and stress—usually experienced during activities which are somewhat challenging but still meet our skill levels. When we experience flow, we tend to
5-30-2024

SCIENTISTS FIND ‘GOLDILOCKS’ BINDING STRENGTH DETERMINES ANTI-CANCER T-CELL EFFICACY AND FATE

Immunotherapy, treatments that reinvigorate immune cells’ anti-cancer activity or reprogram T cells to target cancer, has shown promise in treating leukemias but has not yet been realized in solid tumors. One reason for the stymied success is the conversion of potential cancer-killing T cells into an inactive “exhausted” state near the tumor. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists found that how tight a parental T cell grabs a cancer
5-30-2024

IN THE BRAIN AT REST, STUDY INDICATES NEURONS REHEARSE FUTURE EXPERIENCE

Some dreams may, in fact, predict the future: New research has found that during sleep, some neurons not only replay the recent past but also anticipate future experience. The discovery is one in a series of insights afforded by a study on sleep and learning published in Nature by a team of researchers from Rice University and the University of Michigan. The research offers an unprecedented view of how individual neurons in the hippocampus of rats
5-30-2024

• 5-30-2024STUDY FINDS EVEN LOW LEAD LEVELS IN US WATER ARE LINKED TO LEAD POISONING AMONG SUSCEPTIBLE PEOPLE
• 5-30-2024STUDY PROMOTES DIGITAL HELP FOR ADULTS WITH ADHD
• 5-30-2024IN THE BRAIN AT REST, STUDY INDICATES NEURONS REHEARSE FUTURE EXPERIENCE
• 5-30-2024AI AND MATH CAN HELP PREPARE FOR NEW INFECTIONS IN CHANGING CLIMATE, NEW THESIS SHOWS
• 5-30-2024GUILLAIN-BARRE SYNDROME ‘MORE COMMON THAN EXPECTED’ WITH RSV VACCINE IN OLDER PEOPLE, CDC REITERATES
• 5-30-2024REWRITABLE, RECYCLABLE ‘SMART SKIN’ MONITORS BIOLOGICAL SIGNALS ON DEMAND
• 5-30-2024UNDERSTANDING PROTEIN MUTATIONS THAT AFFECT GENE EXPRESSION TO PROMOTE CANCER PROGRESSION
• 5-30-2024STUDY REVEALS THAT GASTRIC CANCER SURGERY MAY REDUCE HEART DISEASE RISK
• 5-30-2024STUDY SHOWS EFFECTIVENESS OF UPDATED COVID-19 VACCINES WANES MODERATELY OVER TIME, IS LOWER AGAINST CURRENT VARIANTS
• 5-30-2024SCIENTISTS FIND ‘GOLDILOCKS’ BINDING STRENGTH DETERMINES ANTI-CANCER T-CELL EFFICACY AND FATE
• 5-30-2024STUDY FINDS SUICIDE RATES AMONG CANCER PATIENTS ARE FALLING
• 5-30-2024EXISTING DRUG SHOWS PROMISE AS TREATMENT FOR RARE GENETIC DISORDER
• 5-30-2024STUDY SUGGESTS ASTROCYTES INDUCE SEX-SPECIFIC EFFECTS ON MEMORY
• 5-30-2024STUDY OF 16 COUNTRIES SHOWS HIGHER TAXES WOULD HELP YOUNG SMOKERS QUIT OR CUT DOWN
• 5-30-2024RURAL FAMILIES AND CLINICS FEEL MEDICAID CUTS
• 5-30-2024CANCER CAN BE CAUSED BY REVERSIBLE MOLECULAR CHANGES, STUDY SHOWS
• 5-30-2024NOVEL VACCINE CONCEPT GENERATES IMMUNE RESPONSES THAT COULD PRODUCE MULTIPLE TYPES OF HIV NEUTRALIZING ANTIBODIES
• 5-30-2024ANOTHER MICHIGAN DAIRY WORKER HAS BIRD FLU, THE THIRD US CASE THIS YEAR
• 5-30-2024COULD ULTRA-PROCESSED FOODS BE ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR INSOMNIA?
• 5-30-2024RESEARCHERS DEVELOP EASY-TO-USE SCREENING TOOL TO HELP IMPROVE FAMILY ACCESS TO FEDERAL NUTRITION PROGRAMS
• 5-30-2024‘STICKY AND STRAIN-GRADIENT ARTIFICIAL EPINEURIUM’ CAN HEAL SEVERED NERVES IN ONLY ONE MINUTE, STUDY CLAIMS
• 5-30-2024STUDY SUGGESTS IT’S A SAFE AND EFFECTIVE GENDER-AFFIRMING HORMONE THERAPY FOR TRANS MEN
• 5-30-2024STUDY EXAMINES PRESCRIBING PATTERNS OF DRUG ASSOCIATED WITH COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT
• 5-30-2024RESEARCHERS FIND KNOWLEDGE A FACTOR IN CLOSING BLACK-WHITE COVID-19 VACCINATION GAP
• 5-30-2024MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS IS ON THE RISE IN AUSTRALIA, BUT IT’S NOT ALL BAD NEWS
• 5-30-2024DRUGS CAN REDUCE RECURRENCE AFTER BOWEL CANCER SURGERY, NEW THESIS SUGGESTS
• 5-30-2024DEVELOPING HEALTHIER AND MORE CLIMATE-FRIENDLY PROTECTIVE FOOTWEAR
• 5-30-2024RESEARCHER FINDS INCREASED DEMENTIA RISK IN OLDER ADULTS WITH A CRIMINAL BACKGROUND
• 5-30-2024EXAMINATIONS OF MAJOR SALIVARY GLANDS AND HEART REVEAL PATHOPHYSIOLOGICAL PROGRESSION OF PARKINSON’S
• 5-30-2024RESEARCHERS IDENTIFY FACTORS THAT HEIGHTEN RISK FOR CATHETER-ASSOCIATED URINARY TRACT INFECTIONS AND SEPSIS
• 5-30-2024TELEHEALTH STUDY MAY HELP IMPROVE ACCESS TO AUTISM ASSESSMENTS
• 5-30-2024ACCESS TO TARGETED LUNG CANCER DRUG IS COST-PROHIBITIVE GLOBALLY
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• 5-30-2024CALL FOR JOURNALS TO BAN RESEARCH BY THE FIRMS, THEIR SUBSIDIARIES
• 5-30-2024TINY WORM HELPS UNCOVER LONG-LASTING PRENATAL EFFECTS FROM AMPHETAMINES
• 5-30-2024NEW MEASURE OF VALUE CAN HELP ACCOUNTABLE CARE ORGANIZATIONS DELIVER BETTER HEALTH OUTCOMES FOR LESS MONEY
• 5-30-2024HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM DESTROYS THE CEREBELLUM
• 5-30-2024SYSTEMATIC SURVEY REVEALS UNANNOTATED HUMAN GENE THAT’S OVEREXPRESSED IN PITUITARY TUMORS
• 5-30-2024NEW ELECTROSTATIC SAMPLER BOOSTS INDOOR VIRUS DETECTION SPEED
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The "Calc Time" task in Tasker is a powerful tool for performing complex time calculations. Whether used directly or with expressions, this task allows you to obtain precise results in different formats.

Input Parameters:

• Parameter 1 (%par1): Time expression to be calculated. It can include units of hours (h), minutes (m), seconds (s), and arithmetic operations (+, -, *, /).
• Parameter 2 (%par2): Desired return type.
  • Duration (Default): Returns the result in time format (d,h,m,s).
  • Seconds ('s'): Converts the result to seconds.

Return Variable:

• %ctd: Contains the calculated values in CSV format (days, hours, minutes, seconds).
  • %ctd.m: Returns only the calculated minutes, for example.

Usage Examples:

1. Simple Calculation:
   
   • Perform task:
     • Name: Calc Time
     • par1: 1h - 15m + (30m / 3)
     • Return: 55m
2. Conversion to Seconds:
   
   • Perform task:
     • Name: Calc Time
     • par1: 1h - 15m + (30m / 3)
     • par2: s
     • Return: 3300
3. Using the %ctd Variable:
   
   • After executing the task with the expression 1h - 15m + (30m / 3), the variable %ctd will contain the values in CSV format.
   • %ctd.m: Will retrieve only the minute value, which will be 55.

Utilization

To use the "Calc Time" task, simply configure the desired parameters and execute the task. The results will be returned according to the defined parameters and will be available for use in additional variables such as %ctd.
This task is ideal for automating time calculations in your Tasker workflows, making time management more efficient and accurate.

Import Task

Apologies in advance for a long post.
I am terrible at math, started really struggling around 4th grade. Managed to pass through pre-calc in high school and stats in college and be able to continue my education because all my strengths are in literacy and that made up for poor math grades.
I wish I hadn’t done this, but I also cheated at some points. Not an excuse, but I wasn’t going to be stuck with not being able to get into college or go further with the skills I do have, based on one subject. A close friend had a similar deficit in writing skills because of a TBI and being an immigrant, so we worked together and would usually edit/correct/copy each other’s work in weak areas. I also received occasional accommodations for extra exam time and to take them by myself, which was less stressful but also allowed me to hide how long it takes to do the basics and any cheating.
My dad tried to help me with math, but often would be angry, so the whole subject is very stressful. Any privileges growing up were also completely subject to my math grades (well, overall grades, but my usual B- or C+ was always in math). We know more about effects of screen time now, but as a Millennial, it was so limited due to my grades that I was socially isolated (most people used instant messaging at the time), and a lack of being allowed to do anything fun made my health suffer. Doing math makes me physically anxious.
I have a non-math tertiary degree. People respect it and see me as competent and someone you would want your kid to marry. I’m well-read. I work in my field.
But between my poor foundational skills and not using it much in daily life, it’s a problem. I’d estimate I’m somewhere around 3rd or 4th grade level.
I cannot:

1. Do my own taxes (I might be able to if I absolutely had to, but the penalties for messing up seem so dire that I left it to my dad, then my spouse).
   
2. Calculate somewhat complex everyday math, such as figuring out “if I use x amount of y per day, when will I need to buy more?” Usually I over-buy the basics and store carefully.
   
3. I often do shopping for my family, and cannot hold or approximate multiple items and costs in my head for budgeting. Use a calculator, and tend to usually pick the cheaper food option because I worry about overspending.
   
4. Calculate my daily life math in my head. I am trying to be healthier, but cannot subtract or multiply distance or other workout metrics, or keep track of calories, without a calculator. I cannot seem to “carry” numbers in my head, so I have a lot of problems with anything requiring that.
   
5. Although I understand red tape and paperwork well, I cannot make financial decisions or be involved in them the way I want to be. There seems to be an inability to do long-term math or understand what is the best deal for things like cars, vet treatment for a pet, credit payments, etc. My spouse handles household finances, but I would like to be able to know more. I worry about a bad decision and feel unable to put aside money for my personal wants, because I don’t understand finances well but am able to worry about there not being enough.
   
6. Accurately feed or dose animals. I care for many animals, including ones needing formula or medicine at times. I can usually accurately feed them based on their own cues and knowing “Y animal of Z age usually eats X every W hours” but am terrified I’ll hurt or kill one if I mess up a med dosage, as some are based on amounts per kilo. Don’t worry, not a vet though.
   
7. Convert metric to imperial. I can bake and use some fractions, but struggle with conversions. My family are closely tied to a European country and receive many family recipes and other information in metric.
   
8. Accurately do math involved in some games I play. I will buy too few or too many seeds in Stardew Valley, or have a hard time in Skyrim figuring out what least valuable items to drop to save on carrying capacity.
   
9. Use my own costs and finances to figure out how much to charge for independent work using my degree and skill. I can approximate this by asking others what they charge, but don’t have all the information I need.
   
10. Help children with homework. I do not yet have children, but often help neighbors and relatives with children. I tell them to ask their parents rather than admit I also do not know the answer.
    
11. Fully understand something I am interested in. I’m fascinated and terrified by nuclear energy and disasters, but am not able to learn enough physics (again, math), to understand how the reactions and such work.
    

How can I improve? Not looking to be Einstein, just learn more about basic skills, finances, and basic physics. Preferably online, because no one but my spouse and close friend know how bad my math skills are.

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