Crossover has been acting up lately and I cannot figure out why. I could no longer launch ClassIn, which I need for work. I tried deleting the bottle and creating a new one. When I create a new bottle, it continues to try and create the bottle for hours. I kill Crossover, and the bottle is then present upon relaunch of Crossover. It always says "Windows XP" instead of Windows 10 even though I chose Windows 10. The status of the bottle always says "scanning".
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When I try to install an application from a .exe file or from the list of recommended apps, it sits in the install stage for a very long time and the status does not change. Does anyone have any recommendations for fix attempts?
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I have attached the cxdiag output that I received from terminal when scanning /opt/cxoffice
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cxdiag output:

justin@justin-Predator:/opt/cxoffice$ ./bin/cxdiag --debug found 32-bit libfreetype.so.6 found 32-bit libXext.so.6 found 32-bit libcapi20.so.3 found 32-bit libcups.so.2 found 32-bit libdbus-1.so.3 found 32-bit libfontconfig.so.1 found 32-bit libgphoto2.so.6 found 32-bit libgphoto2_port.so.12 found 32-bit libgssapi_krb5.so.2 found 32-bit libkrb5.so.3 found 32-bit libodbc.so.2 found 32-bit libOpenCL.so.1 found 32-bit libOSMesa.so.8 found 32-bit libpcsclite.so.1 found 32-bit libresolv.so.2 found 32-bit libsane.so.1 found 32-bit libstdc++.so.6 found 32-bit libudev.so.1 found 32-bit libusb-1.0.so.0 found 32-bit libv4l2.so.0 found 32-bit libXcomposite.so.1 found 32-bit libXcursor.so.1 found 32-bit libXfixes.so.3 found 32-bit libXi.so.6 found 32-bit libXinerama.so.1 found 32-bit libXrandr.so.2 found 32-bit libXrender.so.1 found 32-bit libXxf86vm.so.1 found 32-bit libgnutls.so.30 found 32-bit libnss_mdns.so.2 found 32-bit libvulkan.so.1 [Properties] "vulkan.present"="yes" getrlimit(RLIMIT_AS) returned 0, max=-1 audio_server=PulseAudio (1) found 32-bit libpulse.so.0 found 32-bit libasound.so.2 dev_node: default is a string snd_config_search(type) failed (-2) checking /home/justin/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/registry.i686.bin found 32-bit libgstreamer-1.0.so.0 could not instantiate h264parse in the gst-plugins-bad 32-bit GStreamer plugins pack [MissingGStreamer1Bad2] "Title"="The gst-plugins-bad 32-bit GStreamer plugins appear to be missing h264parse" could not instantiate mpeg4videoparse in the gst-plugins-bad 32-bit GStreamer plugins pack found 32-bit gst-plugins-base GStreamer plugin audioconvert found 32-bit gst-plugins-base GStreamer plugin oggdemux found 32-bit gst-plugins-base GStreamer plugin videoconvert found 32-bit gst-plugins-base GStreamer plugin vorbisdec found 32-bit gst-plugins-good GStreamer plugin avidemux found 32-bit gst-plugins-good GStreamer plugin flacdec found 32-bit gst-plugins-good GStreamer plugin jpegdec found 32-bit gst-plugins-good GStreamer plugin matroskademux found 32-bit gst-plugins-good GStreamer plugin vp9dec found 32-bit gst-plugins-ugly GStreamer plugin asfdemux found 32-bit gst-plugins-ugly GStreamer plugin mpg123audiodec found 32-bit gst-plugins-ugly GStreamer plugin mpg123audiodec could not instantiate avdec_eac3 in the gst-libav 32-bit GStreamer plugins pack [MissingGStreamer1Libav] "Title"="The gst-libav 32-bit GStreamer plugins appear to be missing avdec_eac3" could not instantiate avdec_h264 in the gst-libav 32-bit GStreamer plugins pack could not instantiate avdec_vp9 in the gst-libav 32-bit GStreamer plugins pack could not instantiate avdec_wmav2 in the gst-libav 32-bit GStreamer plugins pack could not instantiate avdec_wmv3 in the gst-libav 32-bit GStreamer plugins pack found 32-bit libgcc_s.so.1 found 32-bit libpthread.so.0 found 32-bit libX11.so.6 default screen=0, planes=24 [Properties] "display.depth"="24" [Properties] "display.dpi"="96.0" found 32-bit libX11.so.6 found 32-bit libGL.so.1 glXIsDirect() is true OpenGL vendor = 'Intel' OpenGL version = '4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2' OpenGL renderer = 'Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2)' OpenGL extensions = 'GL_ARB_multisample GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_copy_texture GL_EXT_subtexture GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_texture GL_EXT_texture3D GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_point_parameters GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_ARB_framebuffer_sRGB GL_ARB_multitexture GL_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB GL_IBM_multimode_draw_arrays GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_3DFX_texture_compression_FXT1 GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_EXT_blend_func_separate GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_INGR_blend_func_separate GL_NV_blend_square GL_NV_light_max_exponent GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_NV_texture_env_combine4 GL_S3_s3tc GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_EXT_framebuffer_object GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_MESA_window_pos GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil GL_NV_texture_rectangle GL_ARB_depth_texture GL_ARB_occlusion_query GL_ARB_shadow GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_window_pos GL_ATI_fragment_shader GL_EXT_stencil_two_side GL_EXT_texture_cube_map GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color GL_NV_depth_clamp GL_NV_fog_distance GL_NV_half_float GL_APPLE_packed_pixels GL_ARB_draw_buffers GL_ARB_fragment_program GL_ARB_fragment_shader GL_ARB_shader_objects GL_ARB_vertex_program GL_ARB_vertex_shader GL_ATI_draw_buffers GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3 GL_ATI_texture_float GL_EXT_shadow_funcs GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_MESA_pack_invert GL_NV_primitive_restart GL_ARB_depth_clamp GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow GL_ARB_half_float_pixel GL_ARB_occlusion_query2 GL_ARB_point_sprite GL_ARB_shading_language_100 GL_ARB_sync GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate GL_OES_read_format GL_ARB_color_buffer_float GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object GL_ARB_texture_compression_rgtc GL_ARB_texture_float GL_ARB_texture_rectangle GL_ATI_texture_compression_3dc GL_EXT_packed_float GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object GL_EXT_texture_compression_dxt1 GL_EXT_texture_compression_rgtc GL_EXT_texture_rectangle GL_EXT_texture_sRGB GL_EXT_texture_shared_exponent GL_ARB_framebuffer_object GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil GL_ARB_vertex_array_object GL_ATI_separate_stencil GL_EXT_draw_buffers2 GL_EXT_draw_instanced GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters GL_EXT_gpu_shader4 GL_EXT_texture_array GL_EXT_texture_compression_latc GL_EXT_texture_integer GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_decode GL_EXT_timer_query GL_OES_EGL_image GL_AMD_performance_monitor GL_EXT_texture_buffer_object GL_AMD_texture_texture4 GL_ARB_copy_buffer GL_ARB_depth_buffer_float GL_ARB_draw_instanced GL_ARB_half_float_vertex GL_ARB_instanced_arrays GL_ARB_map_buffer_range GL_ARB_texture_buffer_object GL_ARB_texture_rg GL_ARB_texture_swizzle GL_ARB_vertex_array_bgra GL_EXT_texture_swizzle GL_EXT_vertex_array_bgra GL_NV_conditional_render GL_AMD_conservative_depth GL_AMD_depth_clamp_separate GL_AMD_draw_buffers_blend GL_AMD_seamless_cubemap_per_texture GL_AMD_shader_stencil_export GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility GL_ARB_blend_func_extended GL_ARB_compatibility GL_ARB_debug_output GL_ARB_draw_buffers_blend GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex GL_ARB_explicit_attrib_location GL_ARB_fragment_coord_conventions GL_ARB_provoking_vertex GL_ARB_sample_shading GL_ARB_sampler_objects GL_ARB_seamless_cube_map GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export GL_ARB_shader_texture_lod GL_ARB_tessellation_shader GL_ARB_texture_buffer_object_rgb32 GL_ARB_texture_cube_map_array GL_ARB_texture_gather GL_ARB_texture_multisample GL_ARB_texture_query_lod GL_ARB_texture_rgb10_a2ui GL_ARB_uniform_buffer_object GL_ARB_vertex_type_2_10_10_10_rev GL_EXT_provoking_vertex GL_EXT_texture_snorm GL_MESA_texture_signed_rgba GL_NV_copy_image GL_NV_texture_barrier GL_ARB_draw_indirect GL_ARB_get_program_binary GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 GL_ARB_robustness GL_ARB_separate_shader_objects GL_ARB_shader_bit_encoding GL_ARB_shader_precision GL_ARB_shader_subroutine GL_ARB_texture_compression_bptc GL_ARB_timer_query GL_ARB_transform_feedback2 GL_ARB_transform_feedback3 GL_ARB_vertex_attrib_64bit GL_ARB_viewport_array GL_EXT_direct_state_access GL_EXT_vertex_attrib_64bit GL_AMD_multi_draw_indirect GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt3 GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt5 GL_ARB_base_instance GL_ARB_compressed_texture_pixel_storage GL_ARB_conservative_depth GL_ARB_internalformat_query GL_ARB_map_buffer_alignment GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counters GL_ARB_shader_image_load_store GL_ARB_shading_language_420pack GL_ARB_shading_language_packing GL_ARB_texture_storage GL_ARB_transform_feedback_instanced GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample_blit_scaled GL_EXT_transform_feedback GL_AMD_query_buffer_object GL_AMD_shader_trinary_minmax GL_AMD_vertex_shader_layer GL_AMD_vertex_shader_viewport_index GL_ARB_ES3_compatibility GL_ARB_arrays_of_arrays GL_ARB_clear_buffer_object GL_ARB_compute_shader GL_ARB_copy_image GL_ARB_explicit_uniform_location GL_ARB_fragment_layer_viewport GL_ARB_framebuffer_no_attachments GL_ARB_invalidate_subdata GL_ARB_multi_draw_indirect GL_ARB_program_interface_query GL_ARB_robust_buffer_access_behavior GL_ARB_shader_image_size GL_ARB_shader_storage_buffer_object GL_ARB_stencil_texturing GL_ARB_texture_buffer_range GL_ARB_texture_query_levels GL_ARB_texture_storage_multisample GL_ARB_texture_view GL_ARB_vertex_attrib_binding GL_KHR_debug GL_KHR_robustness GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_ldr GL_AMD_pinned_memory GL_ARB_buffer_storage GL_ARB_clear_texture GL_ARB_compute_variable_group_size GL_ARB_enhanced_layouts GL_ARB_indirect_parameters GL_ARB_internalformat_query2 GL_ARB_multi_bind GL_ARB_query_buffer_object GL_ARB_seamless_cubemap_per_texture GL_ARB_shader_draw_parameters GL_ARB_shader_group_vote GL_ARB_shading_language_include GL_ARB_texture_mirror_clamp_to_edge GL_ARB_texture_stencil8 GL_ARB_vertex_type_10f_11f_11f_rev GL_EXT_debug_label GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch GL_EXT_shader_integer_mix GL_INTEL_performance_query GL_ARB_ES3_1_compatibility GL_ARB_clip_control GL_ARB_conditional_render_inverted GL_ARB_cull_distance GL_ARB_derivative_control GL_ARB_direct_state_access GL_ARB_get_texture_sub_image GL_ARB_pipeline_statistics_query GL_ARB_shader_texture_image_samples GL_ARB_texture_barrier GL_ARB_transform_feedback_overflow_query GL_EXT_polygon_offset_clamp GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced_coherent GL_KHR_context_flush_control GL_KHR_robust_buffer_access_behavior GL_ARB_ES3_2_compatibility GL_ARB_fragment_shader_interlock GL_ARB_gpu_shader_int64 GL_ARB_parallel_shader_compile GL_ARB_post_depth_coverage GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counter_ops GL_ARB_shader_ballot GL_ARB_shader_clock GL_ARB_shader_viewport_layer_array GL_EXT_shader_samples_identical GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_R8 GL_KHR_no_error GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_sliced_3d GL_NV_fragment_shader_interlock GL_ARB_gl_spirv GL_ARB_spirv_extensions GL_MESA_shader_integer_functions GL_ARB_polygon_offset_clamp GL_ARB_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_memory_object GL_EXT_memory_object_fd GL_EXT_semaphore GL_EXT_semaphore_fd GL_KHR_parallel_shader_compile GL_NV_alpha_to_coverage_dither_control GL_EXT_EGL_image_storage GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch_non_coherent GL_EXT_texture_shadow_lod GL_INTEL_blackhole_render GL_INTEL_shader_atomic_float_minmax GL_INTEL_shader_integer_functions2 GL_MESA_framebuffer_flip_y GL_NV_compute_shader_derivatives GL_EXT_EGL_sync GL_EXT_demote_to_helper_invocation GL_NV_ES1_1_compatibility ' [Properties] "opengl.vendor"="Intel" [Properties] "opengl.version"="4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2" [Properties] "opengl.renderer"="Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2)" [Properties] "opengl.glsl_version"="4.60" [Properties] "opengl.extensions"="GL_ARB_multisample GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_copy_texture GL_EXT_subtexture GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_texture GL_EXT_texture3D GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_point_parameters GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_ARB_framebuffer_sRGB GL_ARB_multitexture GL_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB GL_IBM_multimode_draw_arrays GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_3DFX_texture_compression_FXT1 GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_EXT_blend_func_separate GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_INGR_blend_func_separate GL_NV_blend_square GL_NV_light_max_exponent GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_NV_texture_env_combine4 GL_S3_s3tc GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_EXT_framebuffer_object GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_MESA_window_pos GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil GL_NV_texture_rectangle GL_ARB_depth_texture GL_ARB_occlusion_query GL_ARB_shadow GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_window_pos GL_ATI_fragment_shader GL_EXT_stencil_two_side GL_EXT_texture_cube_map GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color GL_NV_depth_clamp GL_NV_fog_distance GL_NV_half_float GL_APPLE_packed_pixels GL_ARB_draw_buffers GL_ARB_fragment_program GL_ARB_fragment_shader GL_ARB_shader_objects GL_ARB_vertex_program GL_ARB_vertex_shader GL_ATI_draw_buffers GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3 GL_ATI_texture_float GL_EXT_shadow_funcs GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_MESA_pack_invert GL_NV_primitive_restart GL_ARB_depth_clamp GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow GL_ARB_half_float_pixel GL_ARB_occlusion_query2 GL_ARB_point_sprite GL_ARB_shading_language_100 GL_ARB_sync GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate GL_OES_read_format GL_ARB_color_buffer_float GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object GL_ARB_texture_compression_rgtc GL_ARB_texture_float GL_ARB_texture_rectangle GL_ATI_texture_compression_3dc GL_EXT_packed_float GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object GL_EXT_texture_compression_dxt1 GL_EXT_texture_compression_rgtc GL_EXT_texture_rectangle GL_EXT_texture_sRGB GL_EXT_texture_shared_exponent GL_ARB_framebuffer_object GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil GL_ARB_vertex_array_object GL_ATI_separate_stencil GL_EXT_draw_buffers2 GL_EXT_draw_instanced GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters GL_EXT_gpu_shader4 GL_EXT_texture_array GL_EXT_texture_compression_latc GL_EXT_texture_integer GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_decode GL_EXT_timer_query GL_OES_EGL_image GL_AMD_performance_monitor GL_EXT_texture_buffer_object GL_AMD_texture_texture4 GL_ARB_copy_buffer GL_ARB_depth_buffer_float GL_ARB_draw_instanced GL_ARB_half_float_vertex GL_ARB_instanced_arrays GL_ARB_map_buffer_range GL_ARB_texture_buffer_object GL_ARB_texture_rg GL_ARB_texture_swizzle GL_ARB_vertex_array_bgra GL_EXT_texture_swizzle GL_EXT_vertex_array_bgra GL_NV_conditional_render GL_AMD_conservative_depth GL_AMD_depth_clamp_separate GL_AMD_draw_buffers_blend GL_AMD_seamless_cubemap_per_texture GL_AMD_shader_stencil_export GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility GL_ARB_blend_func_extended GL_ARB_compatibility GL_ARB_debug_output GL_ARB_draw_buffers_blend GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex GL_ARB_explicit_attrib_location GL_ARB_fragment_coord_conventions GL_ARB_provoking_vertex GL_ARB_sample_shading GL_ARB_sampler_objects GL_ARB_seamless_cube_map GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export GL_ARB_shader_texture_lod GL_ARB_tessellation_shader GL_ARB_texture_buffer_object_rgb32 GL_ARB_texture_cube_map_array GL_ARB_texture_gather GL_ARB_texture_multisample GL_ARB_texture_query_lod GL_ARB_texture_rgb10_a2ui GL_ARB_uniform_buffer_object GL_ARB_vertex_type_2_10_10_10_rev GL_EXT_provoking_vertex GL_EXT_texture_snorm GL_MESA_texture_signed_rgba GL_NV_copy_image GL_NV_texture_barrier GL_ARB_draw_indirect GL_ARB_get_program_binary GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 GL_ARB_robustness GL_ARB_separate_shader_objects GL_ARB_shader_bit_encoding GL_ARB_shader_precision GL_ARB_shader_subroutine GL_ARB_texture_compression_bptc GL_ARB_timer_query GL_ARB_transform_feedback2 GL_ARB_transform_feedback3 GL_ARB_vertex_attrib_64bit GL_ARB_viewport_array GL_EXT_direct_state_access GL_EXT_vertex_attrib_64bit GL_AMD_multi_draw_indirect GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt3 GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt5 GL_ARB_base_instance GL_ARB_compressed_texture_pixel_storage GL_ARB_conservative_depth GL_ARB_internalformat_query GL_ARB_map_buffer_alignment GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counters GL_ARB_shader_image_load_store GL_ARB_shading_language_420pack GL_ARB_shading_language_packing GL_ARB_texture_storage GL_ARB_transform_feedback_instanced GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample_blit_scaled GL_EXT_transform_feedback GL_AMD_query_buffer_object GL_AMD_shader_trinary_minmax GL_AMD_vertex_shader_layer GL_AMD_vertex_shader_viewport_index GL_ARB_ES3_compatibility GL_ARB_arrays_of_arrays GL_ARB_clear_buffer_object GL_ARB_compute_shader GL_ARB_copy_image GL_ARB_explicit_uniform_location GL_ARB_fragment_layer_viewport GL_ARB_framebuffer_no_attachments GL_ARB_invalidate_subdata GL_ARB_multi_draw_indirect GL_ARB_program_interface_query GL_ARB_robust_buffer_access_behavior GL_ARB_shader_image_size GL_ARB_shader_storage_buffer_object GL_ARB_stencil_texturing GL_ARB_texture_buffer_range GL_ARB_texture_query_levels GL_ARB_texture_storage_multisample GL_ARB_texture_view GL_ARB_vertex_attrib_binding GL_KHR_debug GL_KHR_robustness GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_ldr GL_AMD_pinned_memory GL_ARB_buffer_storage GL_ARB_clear_texture GL_ARB_compute_variable_group_size GL_ARB_enhanced_layouts GL_ARB_indirect_parameters GL_ARB_internalformat_query2 GL_ARB_multi_bind GL_ARB_query_buffer_object GL_ARB_seamless_cubemap_per_texture GL_ARB_shader_draw_parameters GL_ARB_shader_group_vote GL_ARB_shading_language_include GL_ARB_texture_mirror_clamp_to_edge GL_ARB_texture_stencil8 GL_ARB_vertex_type_10f_11f_11f_rev GL_EXT_debug_label GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch GL_EXT_shader_integer_mix GL_INTEL_performance_query GL_ARB_ES3_1_compatibility GL_ARB_clip_control GL_ARB_conditional_render_inverted GL_ARB_cull_distance GL_ARB_derivative_control GL_ARB_direct_state_access GL_ARB_get_texture_sub_image GL_ARB_pipeline_statistics_query GL_ARB_shader_texture_image_samples GL_ARB_texture_barrier GL_ARB_transform_feedback_overflow_query GL_EXT_polygon_offset_clamp GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced_coherent GL_KHR_context_flush_control GL_KHR_robust_buffer_access_behavior GL_ARB_ES3_2_compatibility GL_ARB_fragment_shader_interlock GL_ARB_gpu_shader_int64 GL_ARB_parallel_shader_compile GL_ARB_post_depth_coverage GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counter_ops GL_ARB_shader_ballot GL_ARB_shader_clock GL_ARB_shader_viewport_layer_array GL_EXT_shader_samples_identical GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_R8 GL_KHR_no_error GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_sliced_3d GL_NV_fragment_shader_interlock GL_ARB_gl_spirv GL_ARB_spirv_extensions GL_MESA_shader_integer_functions GL_ARB_polygon_offset_clamp GL_ARB_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_memory_object GL_EXT_memory_object_fd GL_EXT_semaphore GL_EXT_semaphore_fd GL_KHR_parallel_shader_compile GL_NV_alpha_to_coverage_dither_control GL_EXT_EGL_image_storage GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch_non_coherent GL_EXT_texture_shadow_lod GL_INTEL_blackhole_render GL_INTEL_shader_atomic_float_minmax GL_INTEL_shader_integer_functions2 GL_MESA_framebuffer_flip_y GL_NV_compute_shader_derivatives GL_EXT_EGL_sync GL_EXT_demote_to_helper_invocation GL_NV_ES1_1_compatibility " [Properties] "opengl.core.vendor"="Intel" [Properties] "opengl.core.version"="4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2" [Properties] "opengl.core.renderer"="Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2)" [Properties] "opengl.core.glsl_version"="4.60" [Properties] "opengl.core.extensions"="GL_3DFX_texture_compression_FXT1 GL_AMD_conservative_depth GL_AMD_depth_clamp_separate GL_AMD_draw_buffers_blend GL_AMD_gpu_shader_int64 GL_AMD_multi_draw_indirect GL_AMD_performance_monitor GL_AMD_pinned_memory GL_AMD_query_buffer_object GL_AMD_seamless_cubemap_per_texture GL_AMD_shader_stencil_export GL_AMD_shader_trinary_minmax GL_AMD_texture_texture4 GL_AMD_vertex_shader_layer GL_AMD_vertex_shader_viewport_index GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt3 GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt5 GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility GL_ARB_ES3_1_compatibility GL_ARB_ES3_2_compatibility GL_ARB_ES3_compatibility GL_ARB_arrays_of_arrays GL_ARB_base_instance GL_ARB_blend_func_extended GL_ARB_buffer_storage GL_ARB_clear_buffer_object GL_ARB_clear_texture GL_ARB_clip_control GL_ARB_compressed_texture_pixel_storage GL_ARB_compute_shader GL_ARB_compute_variable_group_size GL_ARB_conditional_render_inverted GL_ARB_conservative_depth GL_ARB_copy_buffer GL_ARB_copy_image GL_ARB_cull_distance GL_ARB_debug_output GL_ARB_depth_buffer_float 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GL_NV_depth_clamp GL_NV_fragment_shader_interlock GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil GL_NV_texture_barrier GL_OES_EGL_image GL_S3_s3tc" justin@justin-Predator:/opt/cxoffice$ 

​

III. Changing Modes of Making It: From Horatio Alger to the Happy Hooker
…
From “Self-Culture” to Self-Promotion through “Winning Images”
In the nineteenth century, the ideal of self-improvement degenerated into a cult of compulsive industry. P.T. Barnum, who made a fortune in a calling the very nature of which the Puritans would have condemned (“Every calling, whereby God will be Dishonored; every Calling whereby none but the Lusts of men are Nourished: …every such Calling is to be Rejected”), delivered many times a lecture frankly entitled “The Art of Money-Getting,” which epitomized the nineteenth-century conception of worldly success. Barnum quoted freely from Franklin but without Franklin’s concern for the attainment of wisdom or the promotion of useful knowledge. “Information” interested Barnum merely as a means of mastering the market. Thus he condemned the “false economy” of the farm wife who douses her candle at dusk rather than lighting another for reading, not realizing that the “information” gained through reading is worth far more than the price of the candles. “Always take a trustworthy newspaper,” Barnum advised young men on the make, “and thus keep thoroughly posted in regard to the transactions of the world. He who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species.”
Barnum valued the good opinion of others not as a sign of one’s usefulness but as a means of getting credit. “Uncompromising integrity of character is invaluable.” The nineteenth century attempted to express all values in monetary terms. Everything had its price. Charity was a moral duty because “the liberal man will command patronage, which the sordid, uncharitable miser will be avoided.” The sin of pride was not that it offended God but that it led to extravagant expenditures. “A spirit of pride and vanity, when permitted to have full sway, is the undying cankerworm which gnaws the very vitals of a man’s worldly possessions.”
The eighteenth century made a virtue of temperance but did not condemn moderate indulgence in the service of sociability. “Rational conversation,” on the contrary, appeared to Franklin and his contemporaries to represent an important value in its own right. The nineteenth century condemned sociability itself, on the grounds that it might interfere with business. “How many good opportunities have passed, never to return, while a man was sipping a ‘social glass’ with his friends!” Preachments on self-help now breathed the spirit of compulsive enterprise. Henry Ward Beecher defined “the beau ideal of happiness” as a state of mind in which “a man [is] so busy that he does not know whether he is or is not happy.” Russell Sage remarked that “work has been the chied, and you might say, the only source of pleasure in my life.”
Even at the height of the Gilded Age, however, the Protestant ethic did not completely lose its original meaning. In the success manuals, the McGuffey readers, the Peter Parley Books, and the hortatory writings of the great capitalists themselves, the Protestant virtues - industry, thrift, temperance - still appeared not merely as stepping-stones to success but as their own reward.
The spirit of self-improvement lived on, in debased form, in the cult of “self-culture” - proper care and training of mind and body, nurture of the mind through “great books,” development of “character.” The social contribution of individual accumulation still survived as an undercurrent in the celebration of success, and the social conditions of early industrial capitalism, in which the pursuit of wealth undeniably increased the supply of useful objects, gave some substance to the claim that “accumulated capital means progress.” In condemning speculation and extravagance, in upholding the importance of patient industry, in urging young men to start at the bottom and submit to “the discipline of daily life,” even the most unabashed exponents of self-enrichment clung to the notion that wealth derives its value from its contribution to the general good and to the happiness of future generations.
The nineteenth-century cult of success placed surprisingly little emphasis on competition. It measured achievement not against the achievements of others but against an abstract ideal of discipline and self-denial. At the turn of the century, however, preachments on success began to stress the will to win. The bureaucratization of the corporate career changed the conditions of self-advancement; ambitious young men now had to compete with their peers for the attention and approval of their superiors. The struggle to surpass the previous generation and to provide for the next gave way to a form of sibling rivalry, in which men of approximately equal abilities jostled against each other in competition for a limited number of places. Advancement now depended on “will-power, self-confidence, energy, and initiative” - the qualities celebrated in such exemplary writings as George Lorimer’s Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son. ” By the end of the nineteenth century,” writes John Cawelti in his study of the success myth, “self-help books were dominated by the ethos of sales-manship and boosterism. Personal magnetism, a quality which supposedly enabled a man to influence and dominate others, became one of the major keys to success.” In 1907, both Lorimer’s Saturday Evening Post and Orison Swett Marden’s Success magazine inaugurated departments of instruction in the “art of conversation,” fashion, and “culture.” The management of interpersonal relations came to be seen as the essence of self-advancement. The captain of industry gave way to the confidence man, the master of impressions. Young men were told that they had to sell themselves in order to succeed.
At first, self-testing through competition remained almost in-distinguishable from moral self-discipline and self-culture, but the difference became unmistakable when Dale Carnegie and then Norman Vincent Peale restated and transformed the tradition of Mather, Franklin, Barnum, and Lorimer. As a formula for success, winning friends and influencing people had little in common with industry and thrift. The prophets of positive thinking disparaged “the old adage that hard work alone is the magic key that will unlock the door to our desires.” They praised the love of money, officially condemned even by the crudest of Gilded Age materialists, as a useful incentive. “You can never have riches in great quantities,” wrote Napoleon Hill in this Think and Grow Rich,” unless you can work yourself into a white heat of desire for money.” The pursuit of wealth lost the few shreds of moral meaning that still clung to it. Formerly the Protestant virtues appeared to have an independent value of their own. Even when they became purely instrumental, in the second half of the nineteenth century, success itself retained moral and social overtones, by virtue of its contribution to the sum of human comfort and progress. Now success appeared as an end in its own right, the victory over your competitors that alone retained the capacity to instill a sense of self-approval. The latest success manuals differ from earlier ones - even surpassing the cynicism of Dale Carnegie and Peale - in their frank acceptance of the need to exploit and intimidate others, in their lack of interest in the substance of success, and in the candor with which they insist that appearances - “winning images - count for more than performance, ascription for more than achievement. One author seems to imply that the self consists of little more than its “image” reflected in others’ eyes. “Although I’m not being original when I say it, I’m sure you’ll agree that the way you see yourself will reflect the image you portray to others.” Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
<The American Religion by Harold Bloom (California Orphism)>
The Apotheosis of Individualism
The fear that haunted the social critics and theorists of the fifties - that rugged individualism had succumbed to conformity and “love-pressure sociability” - appears in retrospect to have been premature. In 1960, David Riesman complained that young people no longer had much social “presence,” their education having provided them not with “a polished personality but [with] an affable, casual, adaptable one, suitable to the losing organizations of an affluent society.” It is true that “a present-oriented hedonism,” as Riseman went on the argue, has replaced the work ethic “among the very classes which in the earlier stages of industrialization were oriented toward the future, toward distant goals and delayed gratification.” But this hedonism is a fraud; the pursuit of pleasure disguises a struggle for power. Americans have not really become more sociable and cooperative, as the theorists of other-direction and conformity would like us to believe; they have merely become more adept at exploiting the conventions of interpersonal relations for their own benefit. Activities ostensibly undertaken purely for enjoyment often have the real object of doing others in. It is symptomatic of the underlying tenor of American life that vulgar terms for sexual intercourse also convey the sense of getting the better of someone, working him over, taking him in, imposing your will through guile, deception, or superior force. Verbs associated with sexual pleasure have acquired more than the usual overtones of violence and psychic exploitation. In the violent world of the ghetto, the language of which now pervades American society as a whole, the violence associated with sexual intercourse is directed with special intensity by men against women, specifically against their mothers. The language of ritualized aggression and abuse reminds those who use it that exploitation is the general rule and some form of dependence the common fate, that “the individual,” in Lee Rainwater’s words, “is not strong enough or adult enough to achieve his goal in a legitimate way, but is rather like a child, dependent on others who tolerate his childish maneuvers”; accordingly males, even adult males, often depend on women for support and nurture. Many of them have to pimp for a living, ingratiating themselves with a woman in order to pry money from her; sexual relations thus become manipulative and predatory. Satisfaction depends on taking what you want instead of waiting for what is rightfully yours to receive. All this enters everyday speech in language that connects sex with aggression and sexual aggression with highly ambivalent feelings about mothers.
In some ways middle-class society has become a pale copy of the black ghetto, as the appropriation of its language would lead us to believe. We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition, the most important feature of which is a widespread loss of confidence in the future. The poor have always had to live for the present, but now a desperate concern for personal survival, sometimes disguised as hedonism, engulfs the middle class as well. Today almost everyone lives in a dangerous world from which there is little escape. International terrorism and blackmail, bombings, and hijackings arbitrarily affect the rich and poor alike. Crime, violence, and gang wars make cities unsafe and threaten to spread to the suburbs. Racial violence on the streets and in the schools creates an atmosphere of chronic tension and threatens to erupt at any time into full-scale racial conflict. Unemployment spreads from the poor the white-collar class, while inflation eats away the savings of those who hoped to retire in comfort. Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security. The propaganda of death and destruction, emanating ceaselessly from the mass media, adds to the prevailing atmosphere of insecurity. Far-flung famines, earthquakes in remote regions, distant wars and uprisings attract the same attention as events closer to home. The impression of arbitrariness in the reporting of disaster reinforces the arbitrary quality of experience itself, and the absence of continuity in the coverage of events, as today’s crisis yields to a new and unrelated crisis tomorrow, adds to the sense of historical discontinuity - the sense of living in a world in which the past holds out no guidance to the present and the future has become completely unpredictable.
Older conceptions of success presupposed a world in rapid motion, in which fortunes were rapidly won and lost and new opportunities unfolded every day. Yet they also presupposed a certain stability, a future that bore some recognizable resemblance to the present and the past. The growth of bureaucracy, the cult of consumption with its immediate gratifications, but above all the severance of the sense of historical continuity have transformed the Protestant ethic while carrying the underlying principles of capitalist society to their logical conclusion . The pursuit of self-interest, formerly identified with the rational pursuit of gain and the accumulation of wealth, has become a search for pleasure and psychic survival. Social conditions now approximate the vision of republican society conceived by the Marquis de Sade at the very outset of the republican epoch. In many ways the most farsighted and certainly the most disturbing of the prophets of revolutionary individualism, Sade defended unlimited self-indulgence as the logical culmination of the revolution in property relations - the only way to attain revolutionary brotherhood in its purest form. By regressing in his writings to the most primitive level of fantasy, Sade uncannily glimpsed the whole subsequent development of personal life under capitalism, ending not in revolutionary brotherhood but in a society of siblings that has outlived and repudiated its revolutionary origins.
Sade imagined a sexual utopia in which everyone has the right to everyone else, where human beings, reduced to their sexual organs, become absolutely anonymous and interchangeable. His ideal society thus reaffirmed the capitalist principle that human beings are ultimately reducible to interchangeable objects. It also incorporated and carried to a surprising new conclusion Hobbes’s discovery that the destruction of paternalism and the subordination of all social relations to the market had stripped away the remaining restraints and the mitigating illusions from the war of all against all. In the resulting state of organized anarchy, as Sade was the first to realize, pleasure becomes life’s only business - pleasure, however, that is indistinguishable from rape, murder, unbridled aggression. In a society that has reduced reason to mere calculation, reason can impose no limits on the pursuit of pleasure - on the immediate gratification of every desire no matter how perverse, insane, criminal, or merely immoral. For the standards that would condemn crime or cruelty derive from religion, compassion, or the kind of reason that rejects purely instrumental applications; and none of these outmoded forms of thought or feeling has any logical place in a society based on commodity production. In his misogyny, Sade perceived that bourgeois enlightenment, carried to its logical conclusions, condemned even the sentimental cult of womanhood and the family, which the bourgeoisie itself had carried to unprecedented extremes.
At the same time, he saw that condemnation of “woman-worship” had to go hand in hand with a defense of woman’s sexual rights - their right to dispose of their own bodies, as feminists would put it today. If the exercise of that right in Sade’s utopia boils down to the duty to become an instrument of someone else’s pleasure, it was not so much because Sade hated women as because he hated humanity. He perceived, more clearly than the feminists, that all freedoms under capitalism come in the end to the same thing, the same universal obligation to enjoy and be enjoyed. In the same breath, and without violating his own logic, Sade demanded for women the right “fully to satisfy all their desires” and “all parts of their bodies” and categorically stated that “all women must submit to our pleasure.” Pure individualism thus issued in the most radical repudiation of individuality. “All men, all women resemble each other,” according to Sade; and to those of his countrymen who would become republicans he adds this ominous warning: “Do not think you can make good republicans so long as you isolated in their families the children who should belong to the republic alone.” The bourgeois defense of privacy culminates - not just in Sade’s thought but in the history to come, so accurately foreshadowed in the very excess, madness, infantilism of his ideas - in the most thoroughgoing attack on privacy; the glorification of the individual, in his annihilation.
<…>
Standing-Reserve.
Note a lack of the “Greek” in Lasch.
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 by Georges Bataille, Edited by A. Stoekl, Translated by A. Stoekl, C.R. Lovitt, and D.M. Leslie Jr.
<…>

Unlocking Email Automation in Excel VBA

Excel's versatility extends beyond data analysis and reporting, delving into the realm of automation that simplifies tedious tasks, such as email communications directly from your worksheets. The integration of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) within Excel allows users to create custom functions, enabling the automation of creating and sending emails without leaving the comfort of their spreadsheet environment. This capability is particularly beneficial for professionals who rely on timely communication and data distribution, ensuring that reports, notifications, and updates are dispatched directly from their workbooks with minimal manual intervention.
However, navigating the VBA landscape to automate email operations can present challenges, particularly in ensuring the new mail item is prominently displayed in front of the worksheet and is sent after the contact is selected. Addressing this issue not only enhances the user experience by making email management more efficient within Excel but also leverages the full potential of Excel's automation capabilities. By streamlining these processes, users can focus more on their core tasks, knowing that their communication needs are handled efficiently and effectively.

Command	Description
CreateObject("Outlook.Application")	Creates an instance of Outlook Application, allowing VBA to control Outlook.
.CreateItem(0)	Creates a new email item.
.Display	Displays the email item to the user in Outlook.
.To, .CC, .BCC	Specifies the recipient(s) of the email in the To, CC, and BCC fields.
.Subject	Defines the subject of the email.
.Body	Sets the body content of the email.
.Send	Sends the email item.

Expanding Email Automation with Excel VBA

Delving deeper into the integration of Excel VBA for email automation unveils a powerful toolset at the disposal of users aiming to streamline their communication workflows directly from their spreadsheets. This capability is not just about sending basic emails; it's about creating a highly personalized and dynamic communication channel. Through VBA, Excel can interact with Outlook to manipulate various aspects of email creation, from adding attachments to customizing the email body with data directly sourced from the spreadsheet. This level of automation can significantly enhance productivity, especially for those dealing with customer inquiries, periodic reports, or regular updates that require personalization based on spreadsheet data.
Moreover, the automation process extends to handling responses. By automating email operations, users can set up rules within Outlook to sort incoming emails based on specific criteria, such as sender, subject, or keywords. This can be particularly useful for managing feedback or responses to the emails sent through Excel VBA. Such automation ensures that the workflow is not just one-way but creates a loop of communication that is both efficient and manageable. Implementing these advanced features requires a good understanding of both Excel VBA and Outlook's capabilities, highlighting the importance of integrating these powerful tools to maximize efficiency and effectiveness in professional communication.

Automating Outlook Emails from Excel VBA

VBA in Excel

 Dim outlookApp As Object Dim mailItem As Object Set outlookApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application") Set mailItem = outlookApp.CreateItem(0) With mailItem .Display .To = "recipient@example.com" .CC = "ccrecipient@example.com" .BCC = "bccrecipient@example.com" .Subject = "Subject of the Email" .Body = "Body of the email" ' Add attachments and other email item properties here End With End Sub 

Enhancing Communication through Excel VBA

Integrating email automation within Excel using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) significantly boosts the efficiency of communication processes, particularly in professional settings where time is of the essence. This integration allows for seamless creation, customization, and sending of emails directly from Excel, leveraging data within spreadsheets to personalize messages. The automation goes beyond mere convenience, enabling users to send bulk emails tailored to each recipient, schedule emails for future delivery, and even trigger emails based on specific events or conditions met within the spreadsheet. Such capabilities are invaluable for marketing campaigns, customer service follow-ups, and internal communication within organizations, ensuring that the right messages reach the right people at the right time.
Furthermore, Excel VBA's email automation can be enhanced with advanced features such as dynamic attachment inclusion, where files relevant to the spreadsheet's data or analysis are automatically attached to the outgoing emails. Users can also implement error handling to manage issues that may arise during the email sending process, such as invalid email addresses or network problems, ensuring that all communications are delivered successfully. With these advanced functionalities, Excel VBA becomes not just a tool for data management but a comprehensive solution for managing professional communications, reducing manual effort, and increasing the reliability and effectiveness of email interactions.

FAQs on Email Automation with Excel VBA

1. Question: Can Excel VBA send emails without Outlook?
2. Answer: Typically, Excel VBA uses Outlook for email automation, but it's possible to send emails via other email clients or SMTP servers with additional scripting and configuration.
3. Question: How do I attach files to an automated email in Excel VBA?
4. Answer: Use the .Attachments.Add method within your VBA script to attach files to your email. You can specify the file path directly in the code.
5. Question: Can I automate emails based on cell values in Excel?
6. Answer: Yes, by using VBA scripts, you can trigger email sending based on specific cell values or changes in the data within your spreadsheet.
7. Question: How do I ensure my automated emails are not marked as spam?
8. Answer: Ensure your emails have a clear subject line, avoid excessive links or attachments, and send emails through recognized email servers. Personalization can also help reduce the risk of being marked as spam.
9. Question: Is it possible to send HTML formatted emails with Excel VBA?
10. Answer: Yes, you can set the .HTMLBody property of the MailItem object to send emails in HTML format, allowing for rich text formatting, images, and links.
11. Question: Can automated emails include dynamic data from Excel?
12. Answer: Absolutely. You can dynamically insert data from your Excel sheets into the email's body or subject line, customizing each message based on the spreadsheet's contents.
13. Question: How do I schedule emails to be sent at a later time using Excel VBA?
14. Answer: Direct scheduling within VBA is complex; however, you can create the email and then use Outlook's Delay Delivery feature to specify a sending time.
15. Question: Can I send emails to multiple recipients using Excel VBA?
16. Answer: Yes, you can list multiple email addresses in the .To, .CC, or .BCC properties, separated by semicolons, to send emails to multiple recipients.
17. Question: How do I handle errors during the email sending process in VBA?
18. Answer: Implement error handling routines in your VBA script to catch and respond to errors, such as using Try...Catch blocks or checking for specific error codes.
19. Question: Is it necessary to have programming knowledge to automate emails with Excel VBA?
20. Answer: Basic programming knowledge is helpful for customizing and troubleshooting your VBA scripts, but many resources and templates are available to help beginners.

Mastering Excel VBA for Efficient Email Management

Excel VBA's email automation presents a transformative approach to managing communications, allowing users to leverage the powerful features of Excel to streamline their email-related tasks. By integrating VBA scripts, professionals can automate the sending of personalized emails, manage attachments, and even handle incoming responses, all within the familiar environment of Excel. This not only saves valuable time but also reduces the risk of errors associated with manual email handling. Furthermore, the ability to customize email content based on spreadsheet data ensures that communications are relevant and timely. As we continue to seek efficiencies in our professional workflows, the role of Excel VBA in automating and enhancing email communications cannot be overstated. It represents a significant step forward in how we manage data-driven communication, providing a robust toolset for professionals looking to optimize their email workflows and enhance their productivity.
https://www.tempmail.us.com/en/excel/automating-email-operations-in-excel-with-vba

US first time homebuyer here, trying to buy a detached single family home with a 15 year conventional fixed rate mortgage , and feeling like I'm getting the run around.
I read on cfpb.gov that lenders are legally required to provide a Loan Estimate within three business days of providing the following information:

• your name,
• your income,
• your Social Security number (so the lender can pull a credit report),
• the property address,
• an estimate of the value of the property, and
• the desired loan amount.

So far, I've not received a single Loan Estimate for any of the mortgage applications I've submitted, even after providing all of the above information.
One loan officer flat out refused to provide one, said they don't compete for the best rate.
Another one sent bare minimum details instead ("Rate" without APR or points information) after I specifically requested a Loan Estimate in email... though they still have one more business day to send it.
A third lender provided a document with "worksheet" in the title that contained most of the relevant information in it... and a warning at the bottom saying that this is not a loan estimate, and that I should get a loan estimate before I choose a lender. ?? Why not send a Loan Estimate instead of this worksheet? So I asked for one by email, with some adjustments... and got another worksheet. They're still in the three day limit, so maybe they'll come through?
What gives? Isn't this a legal requirement? Why hasn't anyone sent me a Loan Estimate, even after I specifically request it in writing?
Edit: Additional information about my applications.

• All applications came back with pre-approvals.
• 800+ credit score
• No debt to service except my credit card, which I pay off every month and never use more than 1% of the limit.
• 260k purchase price
• 60k down (~23.08%)
• 200k loan
• 15 year fixed rate mortgage
• Don't want to post my income, but I will say that my estimated PITI payments will be well under 28% of my monthly pre-tax income.
• My income is coming from a salary.

Hello Everyone, Currently in Escrow in a new build. We are getting $10,800 builder credit and $3000 lender credit. We are going FHA but we feel like they are forcing us to buy points. The loan officer mentioned normal FHA rate right now is 7.25 with 1 point which feels like I’m getting put together. Any advice is welcome. Thank you

I'm trying to import XML files following the format below. Specifically, I'm trying to select each of the items tagged as
I've selected the this XML file in the import extension and am at wits end to get my XPaths to return anything. No matter what I put in, I get "The XPath is invalid" or "The XPath entered produced no results"
I've tried:

• /FacturaElectronica
• //FacturaElectronica
• /FacturaElectronica/*
• /FacturaElectronica/DetalleServicio/

Is there something simple I'm missing here?
Thank you!

 50606052400310132057600100001010000011662152168713 123456 00100001010000011662 2024-05-06T19:40:15-06:00  Agro Huacas K.G Sociedad Anonima  02 3101320576  FOFIS LIQUOR STORE  5 03 04 01 200 MTRS NORTE DEL SUPERCOMPRO   506 26535067  licorerafofis@hotmail.com   ONDA CR LIMITADA  02 3102813718  ap-oncr-pg@stayonda.com  01 01   1 2143900029900  99 088313010534  24.0 Unid Otros KERNS NECTAR MELOCOTON 330ML 486.7257 11681.4168  0.0 Sin Descuento  11681.4168  01 08 13.0 1518.58418  0.0 13200.00098   2 2143900010500  99 088313313048  24.0 Unid Otros KERNS NECTAR MIXTO DE FRUTAS 330ML 486.7257 11681.4168  0.0 Sin Descuento  11681.4168  01 08 13.0 1518.58418  0.0 13200.00098   3 6124500000000  99 HIELO GRANDE   5.0 Unid Otros HIELO GRANDE  2654.8673 13274.3365  0.0 Sin Descuento  13274.3365  01 08 13.0 1725.66375  0.0 15000.00025   4 6339200000000  99 TRANSPORTE A PLAYA G  1.0 Sp Otros TRANSPORTE A PLAYA GRANDE 7000.0 7000.0  0.0 Sin Descuento  7000.0 0.0 7000.0     CRC 485.0  0.0 7000.0 36637.1701 0.0 36637.1701 7000.0 43637.1701 0.0 43637.1701 4762.83211 48400.00221              vqDB0wawaRcb8SI1nqVsViBeaMzk5UZMun5cTYRxnoA=    y82Ms4zvE1aJSEhzdK7VkCSuZCW+fBkt6fU6qdQRnfY=    SIkfE6FVAl1rB0JovarrbVTBMliox7KYI+uxnXE+508=   jV55uDVWKVqAJzHb5cLyLN9LoRzlcwRKOHyY08QcR78/Lm1E+AkVQ5cG2gHwuhJZx/5yflvhyK27wAN4C9xG928QbtLeStijUvsmVCqFLZ02iq1OSVPgrd8hLeMHj/mFSLNBi4EPslc/GYECj8zUTmatRwCTyzbMiI5jwpGq9QaHwPlBx39eNxbnZmp1B5hCpIvxsixQhnFZAN8rZZgKFrrTyqm2Ac0EE4CW+4f6m5w9A8GnpBPX5XE5xMNp7V2ERqi9h9IkAQ/PzMzcBF6BB+vyZMhBF5OVJIG0s9viEdJsCfGxDk54LzybHhoLLWAFj4P2H6ftt3Y4uOZyDmKvvw==   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    rscGgXfhU0S3aUr55j/4K3BxG2XJQFlt3zoVWEFeBZuI6IpLWl1Xv/4lSNuugN6dyp7aaBM3c7FF1ORUxWUtSsouJeqZaYV//voN3YaFJRiavddvIGEIDBpYwuCAgjQ1ZjdOoZO7a4q+Cx0a2X5WcEyl+5itYuvonIsrvj/R1YRs05mrsgbDj335z6jSw4HCJbn3uEm8AxRapU3g1h/V2FBdbvaTepRcJp0sHpMQO5xPjdyrTlmbowMfxg6GNc+lWwuEJZkqoRhkWTeaL/fFk1gJJWN865i9jXRQCnH6WhkFUvvpaLomvYQgJp9RBd3n8cRsl0YIBZQotaU4mw== AQAB        2024-05-06T19:41:51-06:00     qOkFU6cG2D5sERAqVY7JhrYWZ2sCgVVQ1iS2Ovv1aNs=   CN=CA PERSONA JURIDICA, OU=DGT, O=MINISTERIO DE HACIENDA, C=CR 1701705956659       https://tribunet.hacienda.go.cdocs/esquemas/2016/v4.1/Resolucion_Comprobantes_Electronicos_DGT-R-48-2016.pdf     Ohixl6upD6av8N7pEvDABhEL6hM=       text/xml UTF-8        

Hi there, could someone explain to me the following property of logarithms:
b^(log_b(x))=x
(b to the power of log of x with base b equals x)
It does not quite make sense to me. I firstly looked at the exponent and asked myself "With which number do I have to exponent b in order to get x" - I don't know. Then moving on it's b to the power of I dont know shall equal x...

I dont know if anyone has figured out and posted how to do the y=ab^x/n problem in which f(4)=4, f(7)=108 and you need to find f(9) mathematically (ie without desmos), but i think i have so im gonna show you
DISCLAIMER: i have not taken the may sat, this is only information from what Ive been given. From what i know, there are multiple variations of this question, but i will be using the one above.
AND SORRY FOR TERRIBLE SPACING IT LOOKS GOOD ON MY SCREEN BUT WHEN I POST IT DEFAULTS BACK
y=ab^x/n
STEP 1: Plug in x=4 and y=4 from f(4)=4 4=ab^4/n a=4/b^4/n
STEP 2: Plug in x=7 and y=108 from f(7)=108, and also substitute a for 4/b^4/n
108=4/b^4/n×b^7/n divide by 4 to isolate 27=1/b^4/n×b^7/n use property of exponents (1/n^{x)×(n/y)=ny-x} 27=b^7/n-4/n 27=b^3/n
Then raise both sides to the power of n/3 to isolate b
(27)^n/3=b
STEP 3: Plug in b back into a=4/b^4/n a=4/(27^n/3)^4/n use property of exponents (n^x)y=nxy a=4/27^n/3×4/n a=4/27^4/3 a=4/81 or 0.493827
STEP 4: Plug in a=4/81 into a=4/b^4/n 4/81=4/b^4/n Since we see a similar equation here, we can make the denominators equal 81=b^4/n then raise to the power of n/4 to isolate b b=81^n/4
STEP 5: Plug in a=4/81 and b=81^n/4 into your final equation - f(9)=?
y=(4/81)×(81^n/4)^9/n use exponential properties (n^x)y=xxy y=(4/81)×(81^n/4×9/n) y=(4/81)×(81^9/4 y=(4/81)×(3^4)9/4 use exponential properties again (n^x)y=xxy y=(4/81)×(3^4×9/4) y=(4/81)×(3^36/4) y=(4/81)×3⁹ y=972
DESMOS RESULTS: a=0.0493827 b=2.42942 n=0.807976 f(9)=972
Does collegeboard expect us to do this cause from what i know desmos is only supposed to help us, not solve the equation for us. This is way too long to do normally, how are you supposed to do this fast enough without desmos. Is there an easier way?

Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism (Comics Culture) eBook : Young, Paul
This was the first honest-to-god analysis of a work of fiction I ever bought. Sure we all think about the stories we read but I had never sought out a professional look at it before. The interviews with Miller and others are really an invaluable look into his creative process, IMO.
I really recommend this book for insights not just into Daredevil, but Batman and Punisher, too.
For anyone curious, here are a lot of the parts which really stood out to me - although of course I have my own interests and you might have parts of the book you love which I just passed over. The first comic I ever remember reading and being deeply impressed by was JMS' Supreme Power. To me, the best superhero stories ask "what does it even mean to be a (super)hero?" I think Miller has some invaluable insights on this topic.

Miller's problem with Spider-Man was all the angst. "All my reservations about the character are in how he talks 'cause his visual is still very confident, and very strong - it's just that he never stops whining." Spidey's self-pity, his penchant for martyrdom, and his borderline masochistic self-neglect attracted fans' identification but also made his life more or less a continual nightmare. Even worse, it made his success as a superhero hard for Miller to swallow. Spider-Man's trademark heckling of villains during fights only made his effectiveness less believable:
"I don't believe that Spider-Man would last two weeks [as a crime fighter] the way he's conceived. In order to have power over the criminals, you would have to be that rotten; [criminals] would have to accept him as almost one of them... Daredevil has to reach the point where when he walks into a room. they're terrified of him. because he has to be accepted as a force they'll respect. That isn't done much in comic books; it's around in other kinds of fiction. I'm more comfortable with that; I don't see him as being happy go lucky when he's up against a bunch of guys with guns."
[...]
Miller would probably have incited comparisons to Batman in the fan press simply by transforming Daredevil into a grittier, more deterministic series, but Miller openly stressed the parallel in his Daredevil-era interviews. In 1981, Miller draws an explicit contrast between Daredevil and Batman: "Daredevil . . . operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice. . . . [Batman] is punishing those who killed his parents. Batman's focus is on the criminal, Daredevil's is on the victim."27 Critics picked up on Miller's concern with Daredevil's motives, as well as the productive task of measuring them against those of the Batman. Reviewing Miller's work thus far in the Comics Journal in 1982, Ed Via wrote that Miller had made Daredevil "first and foremost a moralist, a person with a strong sense of fairness and . . . compassion, someone whose actions were as directly in line with his convictions as humanly possible."28 Even Daredevil's scuffles with criminals differed from Batman's in that they were performances rather than acts of vengeance:
"I see Matt Murdock as being a grown man and Daredevil as almost being a boy. . . . He believes in everything he's doing and he works very hard at it, but part of him just gets off on jumping around buildings."29 "I'm also trying to develop him as a guy with a terrific sense of humor, who scares criminals and has a great time doing it. Like [Steve Ditko's DC character] the Creeper, he laughs and laughs and laughs, and thinks [to himself], 'Jeez, they're buying it!'"30
Miller's favorite means of exposing his hero's antic side was to send Daredevil to Josie's Bar, a fictional dive where New York's entire population of petty thieves seems to turn up every night. Digging for clues to various cases, DD inevitably sparks fights that trash the place, hurling thugs through the front window while Josie protests (for the umpteenth time) that she just had it repaired. Sometimes he even orders a drink first, but as Miller points out, it's always a glass of milk. The milk (and the milk moustache it leaves behind) comically telegraphs Matt's wholesomeness compared to the hardened types guzzling whiskey and beer all around him, but it also underscores Miller's description of DD as Matt's boyish side, the inner child that "comes alive" while playing superhero.31
Ultimately, however, the contrast Miller once drew between the borderline psychotic Batman and the psychologically healthy Daredevil sounds like an overstatement of the argument, fronted by the Village Voice in 1965 (and echoed in Esquire the following year), that "Marvel Comics are the first comic books to evoke, even metaphorically, the Real World."32 By those lights, "real world" referentiality meant that Marvel heroes dealt openly with persecution, neuroses, and family squabbles and turned out to be their own worst enemies nearly as often as protagonists did in postwar literary fiction.
By contrast, DC didn't raise any schlemiels, with the possible exception of Clark Kent, whose inferiority complex is all an act to keep people from noticing that, but for the eyeglasses and the hunched shoulders, he looks exactly like Superman. DC stories followed the logic of such classical storytelling modes as the epic or the chronicle, where decision making is an exponent of action instead of a process inflected by character subtleties and every action thus taken is world-historical in importance. Its editors exiled strong emotion, anxiety, mortality, and other everyday complexities to the infamous imaginary stories of the fifties and early sixties.
This means of distinguishing Silver Age Marvel heroes from those of DC hits a snag, however, when we stack Batman's origin up against that of Spider-Man or Daredevil. The emotional crux of all three is the Spidey triumvirate of all-too-human gut reactions: guilt, shame, and a desire for revenge. Indeed, the most obvious precedent for Daredevil's origin is the first version of Batman's origin story in DC's Detective Comics #33 (December 1939), in which an anonymous street thug robs and shoots Bruce Wayne's parents before young Bruce's eyes. Batman's origin sets underexamined precedents for many origin stories from Marvel's Silver Age: dead parent, angry child, costume chosen to strike fear into what the Batman of 1939 touts as a "superstitious, cowardly lot" of evildoers, an initial state of helplessness igniting the desire to bulk up and do right. Not unlike the death of Jack Murdock in Daredevil's case, Bruce Wayne's extraordinary childhood loss forges Batman's determination to avenge that loss on all criminals everywhere forever after and to transform himself into a steroidal, bat-eared Sherlock Holmes.
Miller brought the Punisher, then Marvel's most homicidal lead character, into the comparison to develop a pet point about Daredevil's singularity: his duty to the legal system, for better or worse. In 1981, when Richard Howell asked Miller point blank, "Is Daredevil Marvel's Batman?" Miller answered that, no, "the Punisher is Marvel's Batman."33 Miller argued that, unlike the Batman, whose parents' murder catalyzed every major life decision he made from then on, the death of Battlin' Jack did not have as "big an effect on [Matt] as his father's life, and he is his father's son, being a natural born fighter."34 The Punisher, by contrast, shares not only Batman's desire to murdered loved ones but also his will to stop killers and drug dealers in their tracks. He exceeds Batman's mission only in that he executes the bad guys on the spot.
The Punisher, Miller tells Howell, is "Batman without the impurities. The side of Batman that makes him spare the criminals is something that's added on. It's not part of the basic concept of his character. . . . Daredevil's basic concept is very dissimilar. I see Daredevil as someone who operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice."35
This was not to say, however, that the Punisher's use of deadly force made him less heroic to Miller than Daredevil or Batman were. The Punisher is a hero, Miller says, but "I don't consider him a role model. The main difference between him and Daredevil is Daredevil's sense of responsibility to the law. The Punisher is an avenger; he's Batman without the lies built in."36
The "lies" Miller mentions refer in part to Batman's vow never to kill; he wields a gun only two or three times in his entire first forty-five years in print, due in each case to editorial inattention. While the no-kill rule probably helped keep Batman out of trouble with parents worried over comics' influence on young children, it exacerbated the tension between his desire for justice and his sense that the legal system is inadequate to the task of collaring mass murderers and rooting out corruption. If Batman's prime motive is to champion justice in the legal sense, to quash anarchy and restore social order, then why does he have such contempt for the police and the legal system except insofar as they can help him achieve his goals?
[...]
The ambivalence about due process expressed here stems in part from Miller's decision to make Daredevil a character whose convictions don't necessarily match his own: "I don't necessarily believe that Daredevil's right about everything he says. The character is built on very strong basic principles, and it would have been a terrible violation of those principles . . . to let Bullseye die. Daredevil has to believe that the law will work in every instance, but I'm allowed to believe differently."17 Miller had much tougher critiques of Daredevil-style liberalism waiting up his sleeve, including the bleeding-heart psychiatrists in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns who claim that Two-Face and the Joker (the Joker, for crying out loud) can be rehabilitated and an unforgettable throwaway joke about liberal hypocrisy in the same book, in which a Central Casting suburbanite tells a reporter that he doesn't believe in Batman's brand of vigilante justice but then snorts that he himself would "never live in the city." But to paint Miller as a legal or social conservative would not be accurate, at least not at this point in his career. Satirically, in fact, Miller plays the entire political field, broiling John Ashcroft and George W. Bush in The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2001–2) for exploiting the Twin Towers' destruction to further their own political agenda (and while these men were doing exactly that in the aftermath of 9/11, no less).
The Daredevil run, though, is less a satire of Matt's position, or anyone else's, than it is a Brechtian experiment in which Miller draws sympathy to Murdock's point of view while examining it with a microscope at the same time, pushing harder and harder on the question of whether justice is served if lives are left at risk, while putting just as much pressure on the opposing question of whether preventive justice deserves to be called justice at all.
[...]
Matt's reaction to the death of Elektra is to bully Heather into the submissive role that Elektra couldn't play. Miller attributes to Matt not a single thought balloon to suggest that he is aware of the toll his bullying takes on her, while Miller continually draws the reader's attention to that toll via Matt's glib condescension and Heather's devastated reactions to it. The soundness of Daredevil's judgment is now more questionable than ever. Does his heroism stem from a neurotic urge to control everything around him, and is that neurosis reaching a tipping point? After all, we see him suffer a nearly dissociative breakdown when he convinces himself in #182 that Elektra somehow survived her own murder. The splash page of that issue still chills me with its full-face close-up of Matt in a cold sweat, staring into our eyes, as if pleading with us to believe something we know to be utterly false just because he believes it: "SHE'S ALIVE." By #189, only seven issues later, his demeaning paternalism has driven his new fiancée straight to the bottle.
In spite of the ugliness of Matt's abuse, and the emphasis Miller places on that ugliness, it's difficult for me to decide whether terrorizing Heather this way makes Daredevil less heroic or more heroic in Miller's definition. Miller has often spoken about the archetypical hero as something other than human, as dismissive of what others think they need as Matt is of Heather's feelings. When Miller discusses The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, which he and interviewer Gary Groth agree is nearly a parody of superhero comics, he emphasizes Batman's abstract quality, born of the kind of social isolation that Stick enforces on Matt: If Batman's "motto is striking terror" into the hearts of criminals, then "Batman can only be defined as a terrorist. . . . I don't want you to like this guy." "My feeling about Batman is that he's similar [to James Bond] in that you'd want him to be there when you're being mugged, but you wouldn't want to have dinner with him. The way he cheers Hawkman on as he crushes Luthor's skull . . . For me, [such scenes demonstrate] the idea [of Batman] coming into its own without the bullshit on top of it being a socially acceptable role model and all of that."23
Matt's disregard for Heather's emotional state during the Glenn Enterprises affair further clarifies Miller's sense of the heroic impulse: it is prosociety but deeply antisocial, convinced that Right and Wrong are real and unchanging standards but dangerously solipsistic in its interpretation of how to achieve Right at the expense of Wrong. The true hero, according to Miller, is, compared to "normal" human beings at least, a pathological narcissist. Daredevil, with unwavering faith in his own judgment, performs "necessary" services for a culture whether it asks for them or not, while those who are under his protection see him as unfathomable at best and terrifying at worst. But even if Miller thrills to his own extrication of the "lies" and "bullshit" from the Batman persona a few years later, in Daredevil he employs dramatic irony to relate the high cost, to both individuals and their community, of the uncompromising, take-no-prisoners heroism that Americans think they want. "Dirty Harry . . . is a profoundly, consistently moral force," Miller tells Kim Thompson, but that wouldn't keep him out of jail for "administering the 'Wrath of God' on murderers who society treats as victims.
An authoritative study of Jack Kirby, Charles Hatfield has suggested that Marvel Comics distinguished itself in the 1960s in part by placing new stress on the tension intrinsic to superhero comics between the hero's desire for justice and the extralegal means by which she or he pursues it.25 I would add that Marvel's Silver Age stories place the stress primarily on the plotting opportunities provided by this tension, as in the case of Spider-Man, whose good deeds only draw the ire of a public (understandably) suspicious of ununiformed law enforcement.
Miller further develops the "upstanding vigilante" paradox from a cliché of the genre into a philosophical dialectic that, though sometimes decried as fascistic, cannot be reduced to an unironic plea for authoritarian rule. The superheroic fantasies on display in 300, the Sin City graphic novels, The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, and even the controversial Holy Terror cast a clear eye on the paradox of the specifically American fascination with the superheroic ideal. All pose to the reader the implicit question, Is this really what you want? Considering the consistency of this theme dating back to Daredevil,
I think of the pre-9/11 Frank Miller as less conservative than libertarian, a posthippie refugee of the 1960s who disdains the everyone-is-special relativism of grade-school participation trophies and liberal humanism but shares with the conscientious objector and the bra burner a fervency for personal liberty: "I'm no middle-of-the-roader, but I find that people who tend to follow any party line, of the left or right, tend to all end up saying the same thing, which is 'Do what I tell you.' Quit those habits I don't like, don't use the words I don't like, don't draw the pictures I don't want my children to see. . . . So yeah, I have a very jaundiced view toward most authority."26 In any event, Miller's focus on Daredevil's unflagging moral code, and his attention to how a relentless diet of violence might change that code into an ideological prison, allows him to explore the upstanding vigilante figure from multiple angles—the broadly liberal defense of constitutional protection for criminals and victims alike; the broadly conservative ideal of defending one's own body, family, and property without impediment from the state—without readily disclosing his personal politics.
[...]
Slowly and steadily, Miller was maneuvering out of Code territory into the world of frankly adult themes and pressing harder and harder on the contradictions on which a traditional concept of heroism depends. Miller's The Dark Knight Returns steps even further into that world even as it sets up new "walls" to push against, namely, the postsixties culture of liberal humanism and so-called moral relativism. Miller's Batman has all of Daredevil's desire for justice but lacks any of DD's concern for the civil rights of the alleged perpetrators; indeed, if Daredevil's primary concern is with the victims, as Jim Shooter taught Miller, then Batman's primary concern is with crushing the perps. And he gets called on it throughout The Dark Knight Returns by loads of liberal-sounding talking heads who claim that Two-Face and the Joker were actually turned into supervillains by Batman's example, that even convicted homicidal maniacs deserve a second chance, and so forth.
What Miller has done is to take Daredevil's line of legal thinking regarding the rights of criminal defendants, the same line that made him save Bullseye from being mashed on the subway tracks, and put it in the mouths of comic-relief characters such as the brain surgeons and psychologists who try to make Two-Face a productive member of society again. Miller's Batman, by contrast, is an epic hero who refuses to mistake good for evil or vice versa, and he gets to define on his own what each term means. Miller's Matt Murdock refuses such a metaphysical view of good and evil as all-or-nothing opposites on idealist grounds of a different sort. Matt believes that obscured innocence and hidden guilt have to be brought to light intellectually by finding proof and testing it, while Batman, who was at one time represented as a detective at heart, relies entirely on instinct when Miller has the reins.
To be fair, Miller presents the crudeness of Batman's worldview as a serious problem and has even done so in the midst of a conflict that seemed to many Americans to draw the brightest possible line between the national Us and a foreign Them. DC had already published the first issue of Miller and the colorist Lynn Varley's Dark Knight sequel, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, when al-Qaeda operatives commandeered the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an event that, Miller told Groth, made it impossible to leave Batman's catchphrase about "striking terror into the hearts" of evildoers unannotated. As I've mentioned, Batman's dialogue in The Dark Knight Strikes Again!—even the dialogue written before 9/11—makes the ugliness of his philosophy unmistakable: "Striking terror. Best part of the job."
Groth even points out to Miller that one Batman speech, in which he refers to American capitalists and the federal government as "tyrants" and promises that he and his team will "strike like lightning and . . . melt into the night like ghosts," sounds uncannily like "the point of view of radical Islamists" toward the United States.13 Miller doesn't take such a crack at the obvious bad guys, however. Rather, he immediately pounces on the political reaction to the bad guys and how the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, and John Ashcrofts of the world use crises like 9/11 for their own purposes. They stand in for the heroes we think we need in tumultuous times but slip the bounds of law at every turn—and Miller attempts to reduce our sympathy for them. This Miller, chastened by the 9/11 attacks but ever the shrewd critic of the media that deliver such disasters to us, digs into the fascistic politics of superhero comics, the news media's role in sensationalizing global politics and inciting fanatical nationalism, and the real-world politics of vigilante justice all at once. He claims comics as a space to explore what "heroism" means—and not necessarily to him but rather to contemporary US culture. If the one who "saves" us from tyranny, even the tyranny of our own leaders, claims he has to act like a terrorist to do it, do we even want to be saved?
At the same time, both Miller's comics and his interviews have long scrutinized the insolubility of the paradox—heroism is necessary to restore order, but it's also authoritarian in its purest form, even fascistic—as a necessary evil. Batman seems the purer Miller "hero" in that Batman's sense of justice is unencumbered by any complicating factors. He metes it out as he sees fit, on the basis of an Old Testament version of righteousness: you take my eye, I'll take yours, score settled. This hero is no model for quotidian life, but as in such classical Hollywood Westerns as John Ford's The Searchers (1956), the frontier will remain forever a chaotic wilderness without him. Only Ford's half-wild hero Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) can save his niece from hostile Comanche in post–Civil War Texas, but his intense race hatred makes him a relic, unfit to cross the threshold into the orderly world of law, family, and home that his very wildness has helped bring to the western frontier.
The civic-minded Daredevil would be welcome in any such home, but for the later Miller especially, that taste for civilization and its rules reads as an "impurity," a liberal-humanist streak within traditional superheroism that Miller once talked about strictly in terms of character type (it's the difference between Batman and his "purer" doppelgänger, the Punisher) but that lately he describes as a moral fault, without any of the irony he mustered up a decade ago. There are signs dating back to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that this irony was ambivalent anyway, considering the extent to which Batman adopts the Western hero's ruthless stance when taming the "frontier" of racialized criminals, right down to trading in the Batmobile for a horse.
The progressive reverence with which Miller's comics after Daredevil treat that definition of heroism has everything to do with 9/11 and the scale of twenty-first-century global terrorism as Miller has processed it since The Dark Knight Strikes Again!. Back in 2003, he told Groth, "For at least the foreseeable future, [9/11 is] the whole point of my work. I'm going to play around with doing some propagandizing,"15 but this sentiment did not prevent him from making the US government's reaction to the disaster a target for satire in his second Dark Knight story or lambasting the Bush administration for branding disagreement with its policies as providing solace to terrorists. By contrast, the Fixer, the costumed hero of Miller's frankly propagandistic graphic novel Holy Terror (Legendary Comics, 2011), doesn't care whether he gets thrown out of the house or not; his lot is to make the world safe for civilization, American style, not to inhabit it, and he likes it that way. The Fixer, a behemoth who shares a name with a character that Miller created for his high school newspaper's comics page, kills terrorists like a sledgehammer breaks pavement. There's no second-guessing motives or anything else; as far as the Fixer is concerned, if you're Muslim, you've got a bomb strapped to your midsection, so there's no danger that he will smash the wrong face.
Unsurprisingly, the character originally at the center of Holy Terror was Batman. Finally, Miller had freed the character of its impurities. To do that, he also had to burn off the "impurities" of the fundamentalist foe by painting al-Qaeda as representatives of all Islam and all Muslims and playing on every Arab stereotype he could scratch onto his Bristol board, from big noses to using Evil English to express delight in the torture and murder of "infidels." He has matched such images with political commentaries on National Public Radio, his personal blog, and elsewhere that show none of the critical distance that once made his work as jarring and energizing intellectually as the best Dashiell Hammett novel you've ever read. Our terrorist enemy, Miller has said, is "pernicious, deceptive and merciless and wants nothing less than [our] total destruction." Never mind that the majority of victims of al-Qaida and now ISIS are, in fact, Muslims.16
The hardline right position that Miller takes in Holy Terror differs so dramatically from that expressed in interviews dating back to the early 1980s that one has to wonder if he's been replaced by a Life Model Decoy from Nick Fury's supply closet. But Holy Terror was a critical disaster, prompting fans and critics alike to swear off any future Miller work and even to claim that his comics have rallied around a "sexist, fascist" flagpole since as far back as The Dark Knight Returns and possibly even before. Spencer Ackerman echoes the most scathing reviews when he writes in Wired, "Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he's created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time.
[...]
I can't subscribe to such uses of Miller's Batman to evaluate Miller's own character. Critics have been mistaking the positions Miller examines in his comics for his own convictions for decades. Indeed, Miller would agree with every one of Kevin's criticisms of Batman and even offer an aesthetic justification for this portrayal that depends on a dramatic irony that is difficult to locate, precisely because superhero comics have always traded in absolutes; criticism of those absolutes would understandably be less obvious to a dedicated reader of superhero comics, not to mention a nonreader convinced of superheroes' intrinsic lack of sophistication, than to someone interested in exploring or exploding the limits of the Batman mythos. Now, however, it not only looks like Miller has given away his critical distance; he also wants everyone to know it and to decide for themselves whether what he's done is worthless as a result, as comics or as political activism.
Back in 1998, discussing 300 with Christopher Brayshaw in the Comics Journal, Miller acknowledges the historical irony of Greece, the epitome of civil organization and intellectualism in the ancient West, needing a nation-state of cold-blooded warriors to fight its battles. In another context, he tells Brayshaw, he might have invited readers to ponder that irony and consider its paradoxical relationship to the development of democratic ideals.19 He does not do so in this context, however. For Miller, 300 is all about the necessity of saving civilization—Western civilization—from barbarism. The three hundred Spartans did what was necessary; they lost the battle, badly, but without their sacrifice, discipline, and utterly unambiguous worldview, we would apparently still be living in mud huts today.
Even with 300, though, Miller argues that he's playing around just a tiny bit with our tendency to collapse heroes with role models. Miller makes Leonidas admirable but not likable and renders most of the other 299 Spartans as less admirable and even less likable. But maybe, Miller has said not only about the Spartans but about the Punisher, Batman, and Superman, cultures need guys like that, and I do mean guys—the reckless male narcissists who can't or won't make subtle distinctions between good and evil—to do the dirty work of "preserving civilization as we know it." Usually, as in The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again! and to a certain extent the noir riff on Dante's Inferno that is Sin City, Miller lets us sit with that ugly possibility, lets us squirm at our own enjoyment and/or disgust. He forces us to wonder if peace and forward movement are ever possible without the bright lines between good and evil and at the same time makes us ponder whether by drawing those lines, we put our humanity at risk. The generous way to interpret what Miller says here is that, like Hitchcock, he's casting doubt on the very notion of heroism that rules superhero comics, that is, the fantasy that superheroes could do what they do and yet remain "ordinary" people. Miller turned Batman into a living symbol of the fear that criminals should feel when threatened by "good," at least in a Platonist universe, but don't. However, when it's no longer comics, the First Amendment, or aesthetic complexity at stake but national security, take-no-prisoners tactics—in art as well as war—look to Miller like the only way to go.
[...]
In what I want to believe is a triumph of Miller the listener over the absolutist Miller who sneers at the same First Amendment he once sacrificed his industry goodwill to defend, Miller now refuses to comment further on his anti-Occupy rant. Perhaps he thinks it all speaks for itself, or perhaps he has accepted certain tenets of his critics just as he graciously (and legitimately, it seems) accepted the differing opinions of Groth and other interviewers as recently as a decade ago. Either way, he has stopped talking much about politics of any stripe. His blog is now abandoned due to "computer problems," Miller says, glowering during an interview for a Wired profile when Sean Howe suggests he find "a better technician" to fix it. "I will," Miller says, after a long silence.22
Look back on Daredevil's nemeses from the '79–'82 run with Miller's current anti-Islamicism in mind, though, and watch the ambiguities and nuances of his first major achievement get harder to pinpoint. Bullseye is a psychopath, complete with brain damage caused by cancer to guarantee it. Elektra is irredeemable despite her ostensibly clean bill of mental health: "The feeling I've been trying to get across is that she's betrayed something. She was meant to be something better than she is."23 But once you've fallen from grace, that's it. Some people are evil, through and through—think of the "reformed" Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight Returns, whose ruined mind no amount of reconstructive surgery can repair—and they must be punished, locked away for good, dismissed, disposed of. There's no other way to get the cancer out of society. Miller dates the rising scale of violent crime in Daredevil back to his getting mugged and robbed in New York: "The experience filled me with anger, and that translated right into my comics."24 As he got angrier, however, the struggle over right and wrong that plagued Daredevil seemed to get a lot less interesting to him than staking an unwavering claim to right.
Howe shrewdly characterizes Miller's use of secondary characters as a kind of misdirection: "Daredevil's dastardly supporting cast allowed Miller to have it both ways by making Daredevil's barrage of kicks and punches look reasonable in comparison."25 The bleak view on Miller's career would paint it as a slow but momentous roll past such apologies for superheroic vigilantism and into the stark light of the Fixer's gleeful, openly sadistic rampages, a development that Howe connects to Miller's personal victimization by crime prior to plotting Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
"As Miller's career was taking off, the everyday violence in Manhattan at the time was taking its toll. "New York is no longer fit for human habitation," Miller told one friend. After enduring three robberies in the course of a month, he and [the colorist and his then-girlfriend Lynn] Varley decided to escape to LA. While she went out west to search for a home, he stayed behind to set up more work to get them out of debt. He had a check in his pocket when, once again, someone tried to rob him. "Frank just went berserk on the guy," Varley says. "He didn't hit him or anything, he just went so berserk the guy backed off and ran away. We were on edge."26
Such anger floats to the surface of his work with a bang in 1986, the year I graduated from high school, with not one but two smash-hit stories about characters that didn't belong to him: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Miller's most lauded Daredevil story, Daredevil: Born Again, his 1986 return to the Daredevil series, penciled by David Mazzucchelli.
[...]
It's a hell of a second coming for a character whose series stubbornly still bore a Comics Code seal. I won't fault Miller for the anger of that story today any more than I did when I read Born Again at seventeen; on the contrary, I still believe there's not much point in going through adolescence in the United States without some rebel-themed mass culture to embrace for the sole reason that your parents would hate it. Still, I marvel at how much Miller's perspective on his audience had changed between 1983's "Roulette" and the Born Again story line in 1985–86.
According to Howe's account of Marvel in the eighties, Miller's inspiration for Born Again was losing everything himself. Ramped up on the success of Ronin and eager to get away from the city that fostered at least one person's transformation into a real-life vigilante ("one Bernard Goetz is enough"), Miller moved to Los Angeles, found himself dead broke, and decided to pitch a new Daredevil story that started with Matt Murdock in similar straits.28 No doubt it was satisfying to create a world in which a bloated mob boss—somebody, anybody—could actually be held accountable for downturns of fortune, instead of such mundane external forces as random robberies or astronomically high rent. But Born Again also recommends interpretations of Miller's work as reflective of his worldview, making it more difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says he is investigating the justification of defensive violence rather than sponsoring it.

TL;DR class descriptions/info to help underclassmen know about classes thru personal experiences. Add to it with extra info or questions!
To all the incoming freshmen or other underclassmen - you’ll prolly hear it a lot, but the time really does go by so fast. Enjoy it, soak it in, and step out of your comfort zone. Someone posted their classes thru Purdue to let other students know how those classes were (in case it was a niche/high-level class or it wasn’t on RateMyProfessor). That was pretty helpful to me so Imma do it too. I’ll let u kno how the courses went and what I can remember. I’m graduating from the College of Ag with a B.S. in Animal Sciences with a concentration in Biosciences and minors in Biotechnology and Real Estate. I came into Purdue with AP and Dual Credits, so some things I didn’t take. Anyway, here are the classes I took.
Anyone who’s taken any of these, please add on/say smth else if it has changed! Underclassmen, feel free to ask about them!
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FRESHMAN YEAR
AGR 101: Intro to Ag & Purdue (Multiple lecturers)
This course was THE intro course to Purdue and Ag (duh). It was a 1/2 semester course so I was done with it by week 8 and there was only a quiz. We were told the purpose of Purdue being land-grant and were just intro’d to the different parts/departments of the college of Ag + different success tips. This was also the class where u begin (already) thinking about your 4-year plan and create a LinkedIn. Easy A, just show up and learn about the college of Ag
AGR 114: Intro to ANSC Programs (Ashley York)
Also a 1/2 semester course that was done by Oct. This class just went into depth on what to expect as a student in the department. You may start work on a resumé, continue with planning or LinkedIn. Again, easy A, just show up. Also, Ashley was a saint helping me each year to make sure I was on track, even tho she wasn’t my advisor.
ANSC 102: Intro to Animal Ag (Elizabeth Karcher)
This class was the first “real” class of college. It was just an intro to different domestic species and the operations tht are part of animal ag. I think there was also a lab with the class where u were introduced to animals. Dr. Karcher also was a pretty good professor. Just pay attention - it’s sort of memorization for random facts about animals/common sense depending on what u took in high school/home life in a rural area. Should be easy A.
CHM 115: Gen Chem (Multiple lecturers)
Was never a fan of chemistry, so this class I went into with dread. I didn’t want to take AP Chem, and just dealt with it in college. Honestly, if u took honors/were a good student in hs chemistry, there should be no problem - was basically just like a high school class. There was a lab that went with this course, but because of COVID, I just had an online worksheet to do every week for pre-, in-, and post-lab so I can’t speak on it. If u aren’t inclined to chem, it might take a bit of extra studying, but I was never worried.
PHIL 110: Intro to Philosophy (Taylor Davis)
To be fair, I never exactly wanted to take this exact class. I came from a small town in the Midwest, so I wanted to be sure I wasn’t dumb or anything to the people, cultures, etc. around me. Told my advisor I wanted to take a class to give me more of a “world” perspective, so she suggested the class. It honestly was not bad at all. The professor knew what he was talking abt and very accepting of questions. We learned how to tear down an argument and build it up in several ways and talked about cool things like if we have free will, does God exist, etc. The only assignments that counted for the sem were a midterm and 2 papers - 1 small and 1 large philosophical essay over any topic from the class. Definitely changed my outlook, would recommend taking it. The first part of class was harder - making sure u understand why/how an argument does or doesn’t work - but the rest was fun/easy as the topics were just presented and talked about.
AGEC 217: Economics (Larry Deboer)
I found Econ as a topic in and of itself to be quite boring. Supply and demand, money, etc. The class kind of turned out that way. Its presented as basically supply/demand and reasons for changes to the them were slowly added throughout the semester. We had several assignments, but they were nothing terrible. Gotta give props to the professor, tho. He knew the class wasn’t great but made it fun. Also, the class is flexible for schedules as in some situations it can count for credit in place of ECON251.
POL 223: Intro to Environmental Policy (Tara Grillos)
When I first started, I thought the route I wanted was ANSC with some focus in environmental issues. That’s why I took this class. I don’t understand the “intro” part, really. The whole class was presented as just case studies for things that have happened that impacted policies from the late 1800s/early 1900s until recently. Some of the info was cool. I don’t remember much for assignments, but there was a group project/paper where u had to decide on an environmental issue, state how u plan to fix it, on what level of government, etc. It wasn’t a crazy class to be in as a freshman, but it was not what I was expecting for a POL class.
ANSC 181: Orientation to ANSC (Elizabeth Byers)
Another 1/2 semester course. This class, as far as I can remember, was just for showing u the possibilities available to u in ANSC. This was specifically ANSC. It went over every concentration and what jobs/salaries there were. This was also a class where we were assigned to create our resumés (professionally) and start networking. Just as, if not easier than the other 1/2 semester classes so far.
ANSC 221: Principles of Animal Nutrition (Dale Forsyth)
Sorry but not sorry for anyone in ANSC. The class is boring, but Dr. Dale Forsyth is such a sweet old man. This class is the intro for nutrition in ANSC. U will learn the different required nutrients, food stuffs (supplements and stuff too) that have these nutrients, what happens when animals are given too little of these, and how to balance/create rations for animals (ruminant and non-ruminant). As long as u are okay/good with algebra, there shouldn’t be a problem. U just need to solve systems of equations in Excel to get the right weight of a food stuff. Homework was balancing rations. Exams looked at that + nutrients and their deficiencies. Dr. Forsyth also talks fast and doesn’t slow down because he has a lot to get thru. Come into the class knowing it prolly isn’t going to be very fun, but u need to know it. Try to find something interesting in the whole.
BIOL 111: Fundamentals of Bio II (Sean Humphrey)
Not sure how this class really is. I came into college loving biology and being (not to sound like an ass) great at it. To me, it was easy and relearning biology from high school for a bit. To others it may be a bit more difficult. There is just a lot of memorization. The professor was nice and answered my questions when I had them and explained in great detail if I was confused. I can’t remember any assignments I turned in, or anything about exams. Overall, I thought it was an easy class, but be the judge urself.
CHM 116: Gen Chem (Multiple lecturers)
Just a continuation of CHM 115. It picked up where it left off. Got a little harder, but it was nowhere as hard as TV or anything makes it. There are definitely topics that show up from hs again, but a lot is new. Wasn’t fun for this class switching lecturers every few weeks since they each had their own lecture style. Again, there was a lab section, but because of COVID, it was a worksheet. Not the worst class, but a meh class.
MA 16020: Applied Calc II (Alexandros Kafkas)
The first and only time I had to take math here. In hs I took MA 165 and thought it was a breeze (prolly bc it was hs). To anyone wondering, MA 165 SHOULD count in place of MA 16010 in college of ag. With that in mind, I went into the course knowing what Purdue math is known for, but still keepin an open mind with my abilities. I’m really proud of the grade I got, too. I think a lot of the course depends on the lecturer - mine was good at teaching us new concepts. Learn all you can about the lecturer beforehand, find out if they are good, and see it for yourself. We had quizzes in class every week (MWF) over the previous lecture and homework thru LON-CAPA that was usually due the day aftebefore (Tues, Thurs, Sun, I think). The quizzes and homework were good starting problems. The exams were tough and harder than quizzes/hw. If u’ve done well in math, but aren’t a prodigy or someone who can put in hrs of work, don’t expect to get likely higher than mid-70s on exams. It was common to get around a 50-60%. They do curve “if it’s necessary” but it is ALWAYS necessary.
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SOPHOMORE YEAR
AGR 201: Communicating Across Cultures (Pamala Morris)
To start…BOO. Was not a fan of this class. Felt like it was a money grab and busy work. It was required for some international understanding credits. The content wasnt interesting but for sure important. We were taught to basically be good ppl and about the different types of hardships that groups of ppl could go thru (ageism, sexism, racism, classism, etc.). We were required to buy the book, which was $50, but written by the prof and from what I assume was her website. I don’t recall ever using it unless it was necessary for an assignment. The class helps u relate and think critically, but is done in a piss-poor way. It could hv been the COVID aftermath where lecture was done virtually but we had a class later on with other students for a “lab”. Quizzes were easy, and overall easy, but so bad too.
SPAN 201: Spanish III (Nancy Reyes)
I know I’ve said this already abt other courses, but this still applies. This course was 100% a high school class. I did a placement test into this course (after 3 years in HS Spanish - Fr. to Jr. - with a 2 year gap of not learning) and got all credit for Spanish 1 and 2. Took it for international understanding credits. This course made sure u knew the basics again, spent a lot of time in past tense, then ended w maybe a month in subjective and future tense. There were a few speaking assignments and cultural readings/lectures. Was encouraged to speak Spanish for class, but the prof knew that couldn’t happen but still helped us all. Exams included MC, writing, and listening. Not sure if this is the same for other languages, but hopefully it is.
CHM 255 + 25501: Orgo + Lab (Elizabeth Parkinson)
Dreaded this class, but went in confidently. The class sucks, no other way abt it. It was a lot of memorization and practice. A lot of the “basic” stuff started sticking about halfway thru the semester. It doesn’t help that I stopped going to lecture about 3/4 thru the sem. It wasn’t as hard as expected, but it was still quite hard. The prof was amazing at making the content interesting. Labs were ran by GTAs. Depending on the section your GTA may not kno anything. The labs also did not go along with the lecture - they are 2 separate courses that can individually be passed or failed. Exams were as you would expect with the course - a few high spots among a crowd of C’s and D’s. The lab had multiple things due every week w the semester started. It was expected to do ur pre-lab at start of week, turn in ur in-lab immediately after finishing lab, then the previous week’s post-lab/final lab was due. The lab also holds the policy that if u don’t show up dressed right or sleep late, if you don’t show up within 10/15min of start that u can’t show up and will receive a 0 for the lab.
ANSC 230: Physiology of Domestic Animals (Rod Allrich)
This class taught me a lot. Each week was a different body system and learning info regarding animals individually. Things were taught in general as overarching concepts, but then things were applied as necessary for individual species of animals. Everything was brought up from the digestive system to the endocrine system. The class met 4 days a week and had a quiz once a week. There was no lab when I took the course. The specific professor I had was also interesting to say the least. Dr. Allrich is a funny, good man, but he does not use or create slides. Instead he uses his own website to post info (usually from Merck veterinary) abt whatever it is he wanted u to learn. In class he would just ramble on about what he thought was important. ANYTHING he said could be test material - no matter what (I was told by an upperclassman to remember that his favorite pie was sour cream and raisin pie bc it was a quiz question they had). Now, there is a lab that goes with the course. Also, if u hv Cabot the course material and class are much harder than with Rod. There are expectations, lectures, and more. Regardless of the professor, the information that was taught was useful, remembered, and interesting. In any class, Rod typically will have this structure but will grade easily. Quizzes will be to write statements of fact and exams won’t exist or will be take-home with only having 5 paragraphs to write using a word bank
ABE 226: Biotech Lab I (Kari Clase)
This was the first course I took for my minor in Biotechnology. I did not know what to expect going in as I didn’t grasp the scope of biotech. The course was ran well. The whole class is a wet lab where u are in the scientific process trying to find a new species of bacteriophage. U dig in dirt, do some pipetting, use beakers, make plates, isolate DNA, and send it off. Any research u do/finding a phage gets put into a national database for phage research. U do hv lab notebooks that get checked, but hv an outline to go off. There were several quizzes and deliverables that had us learn about phage more, or aseptic technique. It was a good class. U do have to buy a lab coat (which is kinda cool). Easy class that kickstarted my interest.
CHM 256 + 25601: Orgo II + Lab (David Thompson)
This class was disastrous. It was me, the content AND the professor as to why that was the case. This was just a continuation of course and lab. The new content was harder to wrap my head around, + I stopped going to the lectures about halfway thru the sem. To make matters worse, the class was early and the prof was speaking in mach turtle. I would listen to the lectures a day later so I could 2x speed thru them and the man was sounding like a normal person talked. This class was harder than the previous course. If u didn’t like CHM 255, sorry this is worse. The lab was just the same as the previous sem, but the GTAs changed. Again, labs didn’t go with the lecture and are 2 individual courses to be passed or failed separately. I passed but the class made me rethink my life once or twice and was potentially the worst class I ever took.
STAT 301: Elementary Stat Methods (Spencer Hamrick)
I did not enjoy this course a single bit - besides the professor. The course throws, what I felt like, was the entire concept, terms, rules, designs of statistics at u. It was a lot at once for me. I felt like there was a disconnect between what I was learning and in what ways it applied to me. It wasn’t too difficult, but the class was boring. There was also a lab section that was not great either. We were forced to use SRSS. There were homework assignments on a different software/website that equally were boring. The exams were harder than expected - there were some sections with questions with such small disparities that the answer came down to a difference of 1 word in a sentence. Overall, there’s a lot to learn and it’s all pretty basic to give a general understanding, but it was done poorly. If it was done better, it likely would have been an easy course. This course tho is also one of the worst classes I took.
AGRY 320: Genetics (Joseph Anderson)
There’s not much to say about this course. It was genetics. It felt like another continuation from the end of BIOL 111. It built a foundation for DNA, chromosomes, and went from there. There was a lot of higher thinking and content that was build upon thru the semester. It was a bit of memorization, but the content was fun. There were hotseat/iclicker questions for each lecture. Prof. Anderson was also really good at presenting the info.
AGRY 321: Genetics Lab (Aneesha Kulkarni)
This was the lab that went with AGRY 320. It was separate from the lecture. I do not believe it ever followed along with the lecture. The semester was spent with Arabidopsis. From the plant, we extracted DNA, did PCR, did mutant analysis, etc. The whole semester led up to a final lab report for what had been done that semester. There were also some small lab assignments that needed done. The class was also serious about attendance which could have made a major impact on grades. It is also typically ran by a GTA. It was fun and I enjoyed it. There was never really any work that needed to be done outside of class and at times it let out early.
ANSC 333: Physiology of Reproduction (Jonathan Pasternak)
This was a good class. The content focused on female anatomy/physiology first, then male anatomy/physiology, then on interactions and changes to the body through hormones and development. I found the class to be interesting as there is a lot more that goes into reproduction that u think. It’s a lot of cool info thrown out, but in a manageable way. Notes can go fast n there is a lot of terms and items to pay attention to. There was also a lab portion to this class. The lab went with what we learned in lectures. It was hands-on learning and doing things. It might sound gross but we had a lab where we took fetuses from a pig uterus to weigh and look at. We also looked at pig semen under a microscope. The professor was obsessed with histology. Expect to look at many slides of different tissues and know how/why they differ, where they are from, etc. I don’t remember assignments, but there was a lab practical that involved many things. Overall, it was a fun class.
ABE 227: Biotech Lab II (Kari Clase)
This class was busy. There were lots of things that needed to be done often (oddly no true deadlines it felt like). This was the dry lab portion. After ABE 226, any DNA that was collected sufficiently was sequenced and the data came back. That’s essentially what the semester was for. With the DNA from a phage, u must make entries to find out the start/stop site of genes, gene function; BLAST the genes, gather evidence there is truly a gene, and more. There were some small assignments with deliverables. There was also a larger project that was put into the undergrad research symposium. From the DNA, a small group chose a gene and researched. A lot of busy work and nights up, but there was a final genome announcement and research went into real life.
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JUNIOR YEAR
HIST 33805: History of Human Rights (Rebekah Klein-Pejsova)
This class was a requirement for an upper level humanities course. This class was easy and interactive. There were some readings that had to be done outside of class, but not much else was required. U would read, then come to class, fill out a discussion, and talk. The content started back in history and moved all the way to just beyond the Holocaust. There were a couple writing assignments that were like a paragraph. The final was to write a paragraph on when u thought the history of human rights began. Again, easy and almost no work required.
BCHM 307: Biochem (Barbara Golden)
I loved this course. Dr. Golden was soft spoken but she made sure u got the info u needed. The content felt like a mix of genetics and chem. The course was biology-sided for those that hate chem. This course went back to the central dogma and such, but then included a lot of metabolism and inner workings of cells. There were parts involving the Citric acid cycle and other “basic” biology concepts that went into further explanation from a different perspective. I believe there were also hotseat/iclicker questions. If u liked biology or genetics, u should like this course, too.
BCHM 309: Biochem Lab (Orla Hart)
Just like the genetics lab, this lab did content that led up to something big at the end. The lab was spent learning basic lab technique, then focused on isolating and purifying LDH from a Bradford assay. There were lab reports/assignments, but they all help and lead to the big lab report. It was a fun time. Dr. Hart was a fantastic prof for the course as she fully knew the topic, always helped out, and had high expectations. She would also joke and talk with us. She shared about her family (she’s Irish), her cats, n more. + she would talk with you in her office, where she had Ghirardelli chocolates to eat. There was a written midterm + u are required to wear a lab coat and goggles during lab.
ANSC 311: Animal Breeding & Genetics (Donna Lofgren)
This was another class that I liked a lot. For anyone interested in this topic, it is not what u expect. The class is not punnet squares and seeing what traits u can see. This class was a lot of math. You had to find the allelic/gene frequencies, var, covariance, selection intensity, generation interval, EBV, etc. I cannot stress that this class is a lot of math (prolly 75/25 to 85/15 for math/concepts). It is, however, one of the few genetics restrictive selectives for ANSC (if I remember right). There is other content too, learning about how to breed animals, components of breeding and genetics, etc. There is a lecture and lab. The lab is when homework was intro’d and we were given time to ask questions/complete it. The lab lasted 2 hours, and usually there would be several homework problems left. There was also a large project that used a sim (mine was beef, other years used lamb/sheep). I would have to cull and breed to get better genetics, get rid of disease, etc. The better the offspring the better. This sim was paired with an arrow chart and written report. Lot of work, but a lot of fun.
ANSC 326: Applied Non-Ruminant Nutrition (John Radcliffe)
This class was boring. Unless u love animal nutrition, it’s hard for it not to be. This was like a continuation of ANSC 221, but only focused on (essentially) pigs. Once again, just learning the background/basic info for feeding animals, providing nutrients, and balancing/creating rations. Also, this class also uses a lot of Excel - more than ANSC 221. There was a final for the course, but it was only a 1/2 semester course. There may have also been a lab section, but the work typically finished quickly.
ANSC 446: Companion Animal Mgmt (Rod Allrich)
Another course with Rod. It was basically nonsense. U learned what it took to keep companion animals healthy and managed. Specific diseases/interests were looked at for animals during class + issues/problems with animal clinics, shelters, etc. There wasnt much to learn. Since it was Rod, there were no slides. Anything written could be tested. Students had to present some issue with companion animals for points twice in the semester. There was also an animal business plan due at the end of the semester. It was required to describe the location, services, employees, their benefits, etc. There were no exams, but there were his quizzes - u were provided movies to watch and write a 1-page summary/reflection on what u saw. Once u get used to Rod, his classes are some of the easiest to ever take.
MGMT 200: Intro Accounting (Terra Maienbrook)
This was my first class for my Real Estate minor. If u have taken any math class at college u should be fine. This course is an intro. U learn the accounting equation, debits, credits, depreciation, and interpreting it through balance sheets. It can get a little confusing when things are broken down further, but as long as u pay attention there shouldn’t be trouble. Just remember what debits and credits do and u should pass the course. There were assignments that helped understand what needed to be done and how the content u are learning works, but it turns into busy work later on. If u get 1 small error as ur doing ur balance sheet, then the whole problem will be wrong and it probably won’t tell u what the error is. The professor also used hotseat/iclicker for attendance, so make sure to show up. She did let u come to any section at any time and still do the attendance. Exams weren’t difficult if u pay attention and do well in lecture and homework. If u do well, the prof would even email saying that u did well.
MGMT 304: Intro to Financial Mgmt (Phil Baeza)
This class was okay. Part of it could have been it was the prof’s 2nd semester teaching here. The class was a lot of basic info for management/econ and was also a requirement for the Real Estate minor. U are taught corporate finance + the goals of it, cash flows and a bunch of math with related terms (NPV, PV, NWC, NOI, etc.) None of it was exactly difficult to figure out. The class itself wasn’t bad content-wise. Once u learned the information, it was there. There was a lot of Excel for solving problems. If u aren’t good with Excel - make that a priority. The course also had exams, but you were allowed a typed cheat sheet for each. Besides the exams, there was also a case competition (so many of these in MGMT classes). Info was gathered about a company and with a group had to decide to approve or disapprove of their loan request. Overall, not terrible, but hard to sit thru.
ANSC 303: Animal Behavior (Marisa Erasmus)
This was an interesting class to take. It was pretty fun (and I ended up as a TA, my last semester). The course is essentially psychology in animals. You learn conditioning, scientists who contributed to the study, types of interactions, and types of behaviors (maintenance, maternal, social, play, sickness, etc.) and how they are in animals. The course also has a lab section with it. The lab section is essentially to allow for time for the zoo project, although there were some labs that went to the ASREC to observe those animals. For the project u are provided an animal at the zoo to research, go to the local zoo, and observe them. When ur back you create a presentation for the research you did involving the animal and enrichment provided by the zoo. In class, there were several quizzes over lecture content plus a midterm. There were also assignments, but many of them had some involvement with the zoo. The class also had no final, but there was a final quiz. The professor did talk fast sometimes, but as long as you typed or rewrote notes later, there was no issue.
STAT 503: Stat Methods for Biology (Yan Xing)
Unsure of why, but I loved my grad level stats courses. They were much easier and fun to learn than STAT 301 (so if u hate STAT301, give 503 a try). This course basically started at the beginning. The content started with learning sample vs population, statistic vs parameter, plus sample unit, size, variables, and variable types. The course became harder as time went on, but nothing was super difficult. The topics included basic stats (mean, stdev, var, types of distributions, unions/intersection), marginal probability, tree diagrams, binomial distributions, chi-square, ANOVA, hypothesis testing, and multiple comparisons (like bonferonni). The information was always presented in a way catered to life sciences (crazy). The lectures not presented in class, but expected to be watched beforehand. I did not go to lecture, but watched the lecture videos on my own. That was enough understanding to easily pass. There were homework assignments that were due every other week. Start them sooner than later, you’ll need the time! This class was also my introduction to coding in R. I had no experience in any coding beforehand but easily got the hang of it, especially since the professor provided tutorials. It was used for every homework, basically. There were also quizzes that weren’t too difficult. The class was not easy, but it was fun.
ABE 512: Good Regulatory Practices (Keri Clase/Stephen Byrn)
This was the final class I needed to get my Biotechnology minor. It was terrible. The professors were nice, but there was no structure. The lectures were about regulatory science and dealt a lot with information from the FDA. The course went over the good and required practices required for the creation, testing, passing, and distribution of medical equipment and/or drugs. Every small detail and information that was not in lectures was required to be known. There were quizzes and assignments that all got turned in through Gradescope. The quizzes are where random information was expected to be known. The assignments were deliverables which asked some question or inquired about a part of the process and write about them. The final was a final deliverable that had to effectively be a conglomeration of the other deliverables (but not just copying and pasting). The class wasn’t hard, but very poorly set up.
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SENIOR YEAR
CSR 103: Intro to Personal Finance (Wookjae Heo)
I just needed a filler class in my schedule. I figured it could help learn some “real world” stuff that maybe I wasn’t sure about. The class was completely online with provided lecture videos. It was very easy and what would be expected. Topics went from how to manage debt and make sure you can get loans, to being informed about credit cards and insurance. All the information was easy to get through. There were writing assignments to be done basically every week. The professor would have you read a paper that 50/50 he had a part in writing, and answer questions. Some things were interactives that just needed to be completed (regardless of how well). Not a bad class. It will definitely pad your GPA - everything taught should be common knowledge.
MGMT 370: Real Estate Fundamentals (Lindsay Relihan)
This course was quite informative. It was an average level of difficulty. There was a lot of information that went into it - I mean it is a fundamentals class. Topics that were talked about included foundations of real estate, what is real estate, valuation of property, lending, time value of money, multiple financial ratios, and taxation. There were multiple assignments - some writing and others math. The writing was for discussions (5 of them) about certain papers provided or certain book chapters. The math assignments were problem sets to get done for what we had learned. They gave plenty of time to finish them. Beyond that, there was also another case study/competition. For this a company was selected and given potential locations to move to. You had to decide if it was worth it for the company to move locations.
ANSC 345: Animal Health Management (Rod Allrich)
For this class, I just needed to take another ANSC course. This class was practically the same as any other Rod Allrich course. We learned how to keep animals healthy and basically many different common diseases of animals. From his website, we would get brought to a page talking about some disease or medical problem that could potentially happen and have to write a 1-page summary/reflection. This happened each week. He still did in person quizzes with statements of fact. Once again, students had to make videos/presentations for the class to present on some problem. There was no final exam. Did not learn too much from this one, but it was a great space filler and GPA booster.
ANSC 481: Contemporary Issues in ANSC (Barry Delks)
This is essentially the final push for ANSC students. As seniors, you take this course to prepare you for the real world. Lectures were given by guests who the professor brought in. They would talk about their specific company, career, or niche and any issues they were seeing there plus how to stop them. The professor would then have groups get together to discuss ways to fix the problems and have the guest comment on what was said. There were also assignments to be done, but they were very easy. They were just things to make sure you were on track for a job and/or graduation (having a 30-sec intro, making a cover letter, redoing your resumé). Part of the class was also just attending the career fair.
STAT 512: Applied Regression Analysis (Tiantian Qin)
Like my other grad level stat course, I absolutely loved this one, too. This class was a DIST course. This class solely focused on regressions (simple linear and multiple linear regressions). Topics for the course started with the basics (terms of regression like betas, Xs, SSE, SSR, SST, and diagnostics) and moved to more difficult content (lack-of-fit-testing, global f-testing, transformations, ANOVA, marginal effect, coefficient of partial determination, multicollinearity, and more). I found the content interesting and it was fun to learn about. Nothing was too difficult and could always be asked about through office hours. There were homework assignments that corresponded with the lectures that were due every other week. Again, take the time. The course also used R coding for everything that was done. The course also had a couple exams to do. But the biggest thing was the regression project. This required a group of students to get together, find a set of data, and use it to form a regression analysis. There was a lot of coding involved, but it was fun parsing through and wrangling data.
MGMT 375: Real Estate Law (Cecelia Harper)
This course has been super personal and fun to take. This is one of my last courses for the Real Estate minor and I am glad to have taken it. The course goes over any and all laws that relate to real estate in some way. The course talked about property rights, subsurface rights, common laws, easements on land, financing/lending, prenuptial agreements and other contracts. Most grades come from exams, though. There were 3 during the semester plus the final. All exams (except the final) were open note and book. The final we were allowed a 1-page cheat sheet that was front and back. The only grades that did not come from exams were from the contracts we drafted. You create your own lease agreement and purchase agreement, then pair with someone to mesh them together for a new one of each. I think the course is particularly made tho by the professor. She is a practicing real estate lawyer who knows what she is talking about. She would set it up so the class was very personal and we each asked her questions. It was interesting because she could have stories about clients to connect things from class. She would always entertain questions. There was no extra credit, except for when she would randomly do attendance. The course structure could be changing quite a bit now, tho.
MGMT 43901: Real Estate Investment & Development (Michael Eriksen)
The other last course for my real estate minor. This class was a step away from what I thought it was going to be. This course is geared toward commercial development and the business side, as I felt. There was nothing really said about personal/residential property. The course topics included an overview of real estate, ways/types of investment, estimation of cash flows for commercial real estate and finance terms associated, providing loans/financing, the roles of a developer, and taxes. The course didn’t have many plain assignments. These were Excel files with attached questions and instructions. If you could follow the instructions you did well, plus the assignments built on each other, except the last one - this one used ARGUS software. The majority of the work was spent on a case competition (go figure lol). Students were put into groups to select a plot of land to develop for some commercial purpose and provide the financials, timeline, and reasoning for the decision. There were several required tasks to be done for this assignment, plus a presentation at the end. There was no final exam, but there were 2 midterms. You could use an excel sheet with notes throughout, tho. The professor was good. He catered to his students and asked questions about how we thought the class was going. A good class to take.
BCHM 421: R For Molecular Biosciences (Pete Pascuzzi)
I took this class because my previous classes had made me really like working in R. I took the class to continue on with that. If you do not have a basic understanding of R, it may be a slight learning curve. The class only met on Wednesday and Friday for 2 hours. There wasn’t a lecture every class, but there was usually some work to be done. All assignments were done through R and could typically be finished in the class period. If this wasn’t possible, it could usually be finished the next class. The class just showed different things in R, from graphics and data wrangling to how to process gene ontology. There were homeworks and labs, with labs being more involved. There was a midterm that was open resource and a project. The project was done at the very end with groups who put together code from previous lectures/labs to create an RShiny document. The class did have a final, again open resource, but any graduating seniors did not have to take the final. There was an opportunity for extra credit by creating an R notebook for all your notes for functions and lines of code. The professor was also nice, helpful, and willing to put in effort to match you.
ANSC 351: Meat Science (Yuan Kim)
This class is basically just biology plus some extra info for meat processing. If you have taken muscle biology (or just bio) you will do well. The class does have some busy work, tho. The first part of the class was solely muscle biology. After this, the class went into meat quality (including analysis, factors affecting quality, etc.), parts of production (packaging, freezing, heating), slaughter and that process, then into meat safety. The content was interesting to learn and easy to take in. The class did have several assignments. After every class was a lecture quiz, each week there was a reflection, and every so often there was a case study. Case studies involved reading a case and providing a response to address the cause of a problem and fix it. The whole semester, there was a project involving some topic in meat science (novel tech, meat in diet, lab-grown meat, alternatives, etc.). Groups got together at the beginning of the semester to make a decision on the topic. Then, throughout the semester, groups met with TAs, wrote drafts of a paper, critiqued other student papers, and made a presentation to show the class. Throughout the semester, you have to work 2 shifts at the butcher block or write a giant essay on a book, too. The class also required 4 exams and a final. If you showed up to every class, you were able to skip the final. Dr. Kim loves the topic and wants you to learn, but most of the grading will be done by TAs.

We've come to a point where home ownership is now a pipe dream for many people, and the where the barrier for entry for buying a first home compared to mega landlords buying another property is unfairly huge.
Our economic productivity is also lower than where it could be because most people if they have money would put it into safe, economically unproductive assests that guarantee huge short and long term returns on investment which in NZ is property. (Where it could otherwise it could be invested in businesses that produce economic value or GDP)
The solution to both is simple, a Land Value Tax that over time will disincentive unproductive uses of land (like renting out to tenants) which will result in lower house prices, more houses on the market and more efficient uses of land.
A proposed basic formula for this tax would be:
Tax burden (T)
Land ownership in m² (L)
Productivity (P) = real annual economic profit of total land ownership in $
Productivity incentive (Q) is the amount of tax burden being deducted by increasing productivity, which is (Q) = P(1-r)²
Normal tax on land in $ is (G) = L(1+r)²
Baseline Tax (B) = minimium tax burden paid per m² of land owned in $( set amount is yet to be determined, but it increases arithmetically at this point it's an unknown variable)
² = degree of exponencial increase/decrease (exact degree of the exponent for formulae G and Q is yet to be determined)
r = starting value of exponencial function for formulae G and Q, which for now is equal to 1
T = G - Q + B
(Note that in the formulae G and Q, the current exponent value (²) is a stand-in for (χ² or chi in exponent form) and is an unknown variable at this point.)
With this formula, the tax on land ownership increases exponentially, while productivity would also decrease tax burden exponencially to a point where a baseline level of tax would be reached at a certain level of productivity.
The degree of exponencial increase/decrease (²) would be tailored to ensure only highly productive users of land would get a significantly reduced or be fully excluded from the normal tax burden.
Exclusions from the normal tax on land could be carved out for owner occupied dwellings (i.e., occupied family homes) smaller than a set amount of total owned land (L), which is yet to be determined.
In order for a property to be counted as an owner occupied dwelling it must be occupied by the owner for a consecutive annual average period of 52 weeks (determined by an average of where the owner stayed for the last 3-5 years)
For example, say you own a quarter acre (1101 m²)property (including land). Your yearly tax burden could be $11103, assuming an exponential increase of 0.001 and a starting point (r) equal to 1 (probably need a higher starting point)
Edit: I measure productivity based on the total annual economic profit that is earned from the land. (I.e. how much money in total do you earn from the land per year, including interest, and that invludes all forms of income, including rentals, industry, office buildings, ete)
The exclusion will be averaged over a 3-5 year time period, which should allow for small variances like holidays to be accounted for. In any case, if you're charged an incorrect tax burden, you would be able to resolve any discrepancies with a home tax helpline, through an official website, or failing that an appointment with a well trained tax officer.

I filed for comp because I was evicted for use of property and they listed it for rent less than 2 weeks later. Despite all my evidence with time stamps, a taped showing of it to a potential tenant, and requesting a combined total of approx $45k, the arbitrator heavily encouraged all of us to settle. We ended up settling at $19,500. I still have to get my car out of impound that they towed, I just.... IDK. It feels like a win and a loss at the same time. I think the RTB needs to have more absolute laws. There is so much room to twist and manipulate the act to their needs.
EDIT: Before we settled on that amount there was a lot of back and forth. I had a monetary order worksheet with receipts for everything, evidence showing how money no longer comes into my account because my business has absolved. The new property owner asked strata to tow the vehicle which was legally parked in the same stall for over a year with storage insurance and a parking pass. I had attempted to contact the Strata company on multiple occasions to let them know I was securing storage for the vehicle as my new property doesn't allow or have space for vehicle storage. They never contacted me, nor was I contacted when it was towed. I had to call around to tow yards in the area to find out that it had been towed and where it was.
I was paying $1910/mo I now pay $2800/mo for 1 less bedroom and a useless lash studio because my new landlord refuses to allow heat to be installed in it. 🫠

I've read a few forums, but still feel a bit confused. My guess is that using "Set" is like assigning a pointer to a variable.
For instance, My workbook has a worksheet with Range("A1:A4")
Range("A1:A4") is an object in memory.
Range("A1:A4") has a bunch of properties like Value, Formula, Address

Dim myVariable as Variant Set myVariable = Range("A1:A4") 

Now myVariable points to Range("A1:A4") in memory such that if I change myVariable.Value = 4 all the cells in Range("A1:A4") will show the value 4, which I can see if I exit the VBE and look at the worksheet.
But if I do

Dim myVariable as Variant myVariable = Range("A1:A4") ' Should throw an error myVariable = Range("A1:A4").Value ' Should Work, creates an array of the _ values in Range("A1:A4"), thus myVariable _ is now a new object (An array) in memory 

Can anyone confirm, deny, and/or re-articulate this?
Are there use cases other than creating pointers to Ranges that prove useful?

Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism (Comics Culture) eBook : Young, Paul
This was the first honest-to-god analysis of a work of fiction I ever bought. Sure we all think about the stories we read but I had never sought out a professional look at it before. The interviews with Miller and others are really an invaluable look into his creative process, IMO.
I really recommend this book for insights not just into Daredevil, but Batman and Punisher, too.
For anyone curious, here are a lot of the parts which really stood out to me - although of course I have my own interests and you might have parts of the book you love which I just passed over. The first comic I ever remember reading and being deeply impressed by was JMS' Supreme Power. To me, the best superhero stories ask "what does it even mean to be a (super)hero?" I think Miller has some invaluable insights on this topic.

Miller's problem with Spider-Man was all the angst. "All my reservations about the character are in how he talks 'cause his visual is still very confident, and very strong - it's just that he never stops whining." Spidey's self-pity, his penchant for martyrdom, and his borderline masochistic self-neglect attracted fans' identification but also made his life more or less a continual nightmare. Even worse, it made his success as a superhero hard for Miller to swallow. Spider-Man's trademark heckling of villains during fights only made his effectiveness less believable:
"I don't believe that Spider-Man would last two weeks [as a crime fighter] the way he's conceived. In order to have power over the criminals, you would have to be that rotten; [criminals] would have to accept him as almost one of them... Daredevil has to reach the point where when he walks into a room. they're terrified of him. because he has to be accepted as a force they'll respect. That isn't done much in comic books; it's around in other kinds of fiction. I'm more comfortable with that; I don't see him as being happy go lucky when he's up against a bunch of guys with guns."
[...]
Miller would probably have incited comparisons to Batman in the fan press simply by transforming Daredevil into a grittier, more deterministic series, but Miller openly stressed the parallel in his Daredevil-era interviews. In 1981, Miller draws an explicit contrast between Daredevil and Batman: "Daredevil . . . operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice. . . . [Batman] is punishing those who killed his parents. Batman's focus is on the criminal, Daredevil's is on the victim."27 Critics picked up on Miller's concern with Daredevil's motives, as well as the productive task of measuring them against those of the Batman. Reviewing Miller's work thus far in the Comics Journal in 1982, Ed Via wrote that Miller had made Daredevil "first and foremost a moralist, a person with a strong sense of fairness and . . . compassion, someone whose actions were as directly in line with his convictions as humanly possible."28 Even Daredevil's scuffles with criminals differed from Batman's in that they were performances rather than acts of vengeance:
"I see Matt Murdock as being a grown man and Daredevil as almost being a boy. . . . He believes in everything he's doing and he works very hard at it, but part of him just gets off on jumping around buildings."29 "I'm also trying to develop him as a guy with a terrific sense of humor, who scares criminals and has a great time doing it. Like [Steve Ditko's DC character] the Creeper, he laughs and laughs and laughs, and thinks [to himself], 'Jeez, they're buying it!'"30
Miller's favorite means of exposing his hero's antic side was to send Daredevil to Josie's Bar, a fictional dive where New York's entire population of petty thieves seems to turn up every night. Digging for clues to various cases, DD inevitably sparks fights that trash the place, hurling thugs through the front window while Josie protests (for the umpteenth time) that she just had it repaired. Sometimes he even orders a drink first, but as Miller points out, it's always a glass of milk. The milk (and the milk moustache it leaves behind) comically telegraphs Matt's wholesomeness compared to the hardened types guzzling whiskey and beer all around him, but it also underscores Miller's description of DD as Matt's boyish side, the inner child that "comes alive" while playing superhero.31
Ultimately, however, the contrast Miller once drew between the borderline psychotic Batman and the psychologically healthy Daredevil sounds like an overstatement of the argument, fronted by the Village Voice in 1965 (and echoed in Esquire the following year), that "Marvel Comics are the first comic books to evoke, even metaphorically, the Real World."32 By those lights, "real world" referentiality meant that Marvel heroes dealt openly with persecution, neuroses, and family squabbles and turned out to be their own worst enemies nearly as often as protagonists did in postwar literary fiction.
By contrast, DC didn't raise any schlemiels, with the possible exception of Clark Kent, whose inferiority complex is all an act to keep people from noticing that, but for the eyeglasses and the hunched shoulders, he looks exactly like Superman. DC stories followed the logic of such classical storytelling modes as the epic or the chronicle, where decision making is an exponent of action instead of a process inflected by character subtleties and every action thus taken is world-historical in importance. Its editors exiled strong emotion, anxiety, mortality, and other everyday complexities to the infamous imaginary stories of the fifties and early sixties.
This means of distinguishing Silver Age Marvel heroes from those of DC hits a snag, however, when we stack Batman's origin up against that of Spider-Man or Daredevil. The emotional crux of all three is the Spidey triumvirate of all-too-human gut reactions: guilt, shame, and a desire for revenge. Indeed, the most obvious precedent for Daredevil's origin is the first version of Batman's origin story in DC's Detective Comics #33 (December 1939), in which an anonymous street thug robs and shoots Bruce Wayne's parents before young Bruce's eyes. Batman's origin sets underexamined precedents for many origin stories from Marvel's Silver Age: dead parent, angry child, costume chosen to strike fear into what the Batman of 1939 touts as a "superstitious, cowardly lot" of evildoers, an initial state of helplessness igniting the desire to bulk up and do right. Not unlike the death of Jack Murdock in Daredevil's case, Bruce Wayne's extraordinary childhood loss forges Batman's determination to avenge that loss on all criminals everywhere forever after and to transform himself into a steroidal, bat-eared Sherlock Holmes.
Miller brought the Punisher, then Marvel's most homicidal lead character, into the comparison to develop a pet point about Daredevil's singularity: his duty to the legal system, for better or worse. In 1981, when Richard Howell asked Miller point blank, "Is Daredevil Marvel's Batman?" Miller answered that, no, "the Punisher is Marvel's Batman."33 Miller argued that, unlike the Batman, whose parents' murder catalyzed every major life decision he made from then on, the death of Battlin' Jack did not have as "big an effect on [Matt] as his father's life, and he is his father's son, being a natural born fighter."34 The Punisher, by contrast, shares not only Batman's desire to murdered loved ones but also his will to stop killers and drug dealers in their tracks. He exceeds Batman's mission only in that he executes the bad guys on the spot.
The Punisher, Miller tells Howell, is "Batman without the impurities. The side of Batman that makes him spare the criminals is something that's added on. It's not part of the basic concept of his character. . . . Daredevil's basic concept is very dissimilar. I see Daredevil as someone who operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice."35
This was not to say, however, that the Punisher's use of deadly force made him less heroic to Miller than Daredevil or Batman were. The Punisher is a hero, Miller says, but "I don't consider him a role model. The main difference between him and Daredevil is Daredevil's sense of responsibility to the law. The Punisher is an avenger; he's Batman without the lies built in."36
The "lies" Miller mentions refer in part to Batman's vow never to kill; he wields a gun only two or three times in his entire first forty-five years in print, due in each case to editorial inattention. While the no-kill rule probably helped keep Batman out of trouble with parents worried over comics' influence on young children, it exacerbated the tension between his desire for justice and his sense that the legal system is inadequate to the task of collaring mass murderers and rooting out corruption. If Batman's prime motive is to champion justice in the legal sense, to quash anarchy and restore social order, then why does he have such contempt for the police and the legal system except insofar as they can help him achieve his goals?
[...]
The ambivalence about due process expressed here stems in part from Miller's decision to make Daredevil a character whose convictions don't necessarily match his own: "I don't necessarily believe that Daredevil's right about everything he says. The character is built on very strong basic principles, and it would have been a terrible violation of those principles . . . to let Bullseye die. Daredevil has to believe that the law will work in every instance, but I'm allowed to believe differently."17 Miller had much tougher critiques of Daredevil-style liberalism waiting up his sleeve, including the bleeding-heart psychiatrists in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns who claim that Two-Face and the Joker (the Joker, for crying out loud) can be rehabilitated and an unforgettable throwaway joke about liberal hypocrisy in the same book, in which a Central Casting suburbanite tells a reporter that he doesn't believe in Batman's brand of vigilante justice but then snorts that he himself would "never live in the city." But to paint Miller as a legal or social conservative would not be accurate, at least not at this point in his career. Satirically, in fact, Miller plays the entire political field, broiling John Ashcroft and George W. Bush in The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2001–2) for exploiting the Twin Towers' destruction to further their own political agenda (and while these men were doing exactly that in the aftermath of 9/11, no less).
The Daredevil run, though, is less a satire of Matt's position, or anyone else's, than it is a Brechtian experiment in which Miller draws sympathy to Murdock's point of view while examining it with a microscope at the same time, pushing harder and harder on the question of whether justice is served if lives are left at risk, while putting just as much pressure on the opposing question of whether preventive justice deserves to be called justice at all.
[...]
Matt's reaction to the death of Elektra is to bully Heather into the submissive role that Elektra couldn't play. Miller attributes to Matt not a single thought balloon to suggest that he is aware of the toll his bullying takes on her, while Miller continually draws the reader's attention to that toll via Matt's glib condescension and Heather's devastated reactions to it. The soundness of Daredevil's judgment is now more questionable than ever. Does his heroism stem from a neurotic urge to control everything around him, and is that neurosis reaching a tipping point? After all, we see him suffer a nearly dissociative breakdown when he convinces himself in #182 that Elektra somehow survived her own murder. The splash page of that issue still chills me with its full-face close-up of Matt in a cold sweat, staring into our eyes, as if pleading with us to believe something we know to be utterly false just because he believes it: "SHE'S ALIVE." By #189, only seven issues later, his demeaning paternalism has driven his new fiancée straight to the bottle.
In spite of the ugliness of Matt's abuse, and the emphasis Miller places on that ugliness, it's difficult for me to decide whether terrorizing Heather this way makes Daredevil less heroic or more heroic in Miller's definition. Miller has often spoken about the archetypical hero as something other than human, as dismissive of what others think they need as Matt is of Heather's feelings. When Miller discusses The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, which he and interviewer Gary Groth agree is nearly a parody of superhero comics, he emphasizes Batman's abstract quality, born of the kind of social isolation that Stick enforces on Matt: If Batman's "motto is striking terror" into the hearts of criminals, then "Batman can only be defined as a terrorist. . . . I don't want you to like this guy." "My feeling about Batman is that he's similar [to James Bond] in that you'd want him to be there when you're being mugged, but you wouldn't want to have dinner with him. The way he cheers Hawkman on as he crushes Luthor's skull . . . For me, [such scenes demonstrate] the idea [of Batman] coming into its own without the bullshit on top of it being a socially acceptable role model and all of that."23
Matt's disregard for Heather's emotional state during the Glenn Enterprises affair further clarifies Miller's sense of the heroic impulse: it is prosociety but deeply antisocial, convinced that Right and Wrong are real and unchanging standards but dangerously solipsistic in its interpretation of how to achieve Right at the expense of Wrong. The true hero, according to Miller, is, compared to "normal" human beings at least, a pathological narcissist. Daredevil, with unwavering faith in his own judgment, performs "necessary" services for a culture whether it asks for them or not, while those who are under his protection see him as unfathomable at best and terrifying at worst. But even if Miller thrills to his own extrication of the "lies" and "bullshit" from the Batman persona a few years later, in Daredevil he employs dramatic irony to relate the high cost, to both individuals and their community, of the uncompromising, take-no-prisoners heroism that Americans think they want. "Dirty Harry . . . is a profoundly, consistently moral force," Miller tells Kim Thompson, but that wouldn't keep him out of jail for "administering the 'Wrath of God' on murderers who society treats as victims.
An authoritative study of Jack Kirby, Charles Hatfield has suggested that Marvel Comics distinguished itself in the 1960s in part by placing new stress on the tension intrinsic to superhero comics between the hero's desire for justice and the extralegal means by which she or he pursues it.25 I would add that Marvel's Silver Age stories place the stress primarily on the plotting opportunities provided by this tension, as in the case of Spider-Man, whose good deeds only draw the ire of a public (understandably) suspicious of ununiformed law enforcement.
Miller further develops the "upstanding vigilante" paradox from a cliché of the genre into a philosophical dialectic that, though sometimes decried as fascistic, cannot be reduced to an unironic plea for authoritarian rule. The superheroic fantasies on display in 300, the Sin City graphic novels, The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, and even the controversial Holy Terror cast a clear eye on the paradox of the specifically American fascination with the superheroic ideal. All pose to the reader the implicit question, Is this really what you want? Considering the consistency of this theme dating back to Daredevil,
I think of the pre-9/11 Frank Miller as less conservative than libertarian, a posthippie refugee of the 1960s who disdains the everyone-is-special relativism of grade-school participation trophies and liberal humanism but shares with the conscientious objector and the bra burner a fervency for personal liberty: "I'm no middle-of-the-roader, but I find that people who tend to follow any party line, of the left or right, tend to all end up saying the same thing, which is 'Do what I tell you.' Quit those habits I don't like, don't use the words I don't like, don't draw the pictures I don't want my children to see. . . . So yeah, I have a very jaundiced view toward most authority."26 In any event, Miller's focus on Daredevil's unflagging moral code, and his attention to how a relentless diet of violence might change that code into an ideological prison, allows him to explore the upstanding vigilante figure from multiple angles—the broadly liberal defense of constitutional protection for criminals and victims alike; the broadly conservative ideal of defending one's own body, family, and property without impediment from the state—without readily disclosing his personal politics.
[...]
Slowly and steadily, Miller was maneuvering out of Code territory into the world of frankly adult themes and pressing harder and harder on the contradictions on which a traditional concept of heroism depends. Miller's The Dark Knight Returns steps even further into that world even as it sets up new "walls" to push against, namely, the postsixties culture of liberal humanism and so-called moral relativism. Miller's Batman has all of Daredevil's desire for justice but lacks any of DD's concern for the civil rights of the alleged perpetrators; indeed, if Daredevil's primary concern is with the victims, as Jim Shooter taught Miller, then Batman's primary concern is with crushing the perps. And he gets called on it throughout The Dark Knight Returns by loads of liberal-sounding talking heads who claim that Two-Face and the Joker were actually turned into supervillains by Batman's example, that even convicted homicidal maniacs deserve a second chance, and so forth.
What Miller has done is to take Daredevil's line of legal thinking regarding the rights of criminal defendants, the same line that made him save Bullseye from being mashed on the subway tracks, and put it in the mouths of comic-relief characters such as the brain surgeons and psychologists who try to make Two-Face a productive member of society again. Miller's Batman, by contrast, is an epic hero who refuses to mistake good for evil or vice versa, and he gets to define on his own what each term means. Miller's Matt Murdock refuses such a metaphysical view of good and evil as all-or-nothing opposites on idealist grounds of a different sort. Matt believes that obscured innocence and hidden guilt have to be brought to light intellectually by finding proof and testing it, while Batman, who was at one time represented as a detective at heart, relies entirely on instinct when Miller has the reins.
To be fair, Miller presents the crudeness of Batman's worldview as a serious problem and has even done so in the midst of a conflict that seemed to many Americans to draw the brightest possible line between the national Us and a foreign Them. DC had already published the first issue of Miller and the colorist Lynn Varley's Dark Knight sequel, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, when al-Qaeda operatives commandeered the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an event that, Miller told Groth, made it impossible to leave Batman's catchphrase about "striking terror into the hearts" of evildoers unannotated. As I've mentioned, Batman's dialogue in The Dark Knight Strikes Again!—even the dialogue written before 9/11—makes the ugliness of his philosophy unmistakable: "Striking terror. Best part of the job."
Groth even points out to Miller that one Batman speech, in which he refers to American capitalists and the federal government as "tyrants" and promises that he and his team will "strike like lightning and . . . melt into the night like ghosts," sounds uncannily like "the point of view of radical Islamists" toward the United States.13 Miller doesn't take such a crack at the obvious bad guys, however. Rather, he immediately pounces on the political reaction to the bad guys and how the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, and John Ashcrofts of the world use crises like 9/11 for their own purposes. They stand in for the heroes we think we need in tumultuous times but slip the bounds of law at every turn—and Miller attempts to reduce our sympathy for them. This Miller, chastened by the 9/11 attacks but ever the shrewd critic of the media that deliver such disasters to us, digs into the fascistic politics of superhero comics, the news media's role in sensationalizing global politics and inciting fanatical nationalism, and the real-world politics of vigilante justice all at once. He claims comics as a space to explore what "heroism" means—and not necessarily to him but rather to contemporary US culture. If the one who "saves" us from tyranny, even the tyranny of our own leaders, claims he has to act like a terrorist to do it, do we even want to be saved?
At the same time, both Miller's comics and his interviews have long scrutinized the insolubility of the paradox—heroism is necessary to restore order, but it's also authoritarian in its purest form, even fascistic—as a necessary evil. Batman seems the purer Miller "hero" in that Batman's sense of justice is unencumbered by any complicating factors. He metes it out as he sees fit, on the basis of an Old Testament version of righteousness: you take my eye, I'll take yours, score settled. This hero is no model for quotidian life, but as in such classical Hollywood Westerns as John Ford's The Searchers (1956), the frontier will remain forever a chaotic wilderness without him. Only Ford's half-wild hero Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) can save his niece from hostile Comanche in post–Civil War Texas, but his intense race hatred makes him a relic, unfit to cross the threshold into the orderly world of law, family, and home that his very wildness has helped bring to the western frontier.
The civic-minded Daredevil would be welcome in any such home, but for the later Miller especially, that taste for civilization and its rules reads as an "impurity," a liberal-humanist streak within traditional superheroism that Miller once talked about strictly in terms of character type (it's the difference between Batman and his "purer" doppelgänger, the Punisher) but that lately he describes as a moral fault, without any of the irony he mustered up a decade ago. There are signs dating back to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that this irony was ambivalent anyway, considering the extent to which Batman adopts the Western hero's ruthless stance when taming the "frontier" of racialized criminals, right down to trading in the Batmobile for a horse.
The progressive reverence with which Miller's comics after Daredevil treat that definition of heroism has everything to do with 9/11 and the scale of twenty-first-century global terrorism as Miller has processed it since The Dark Knight Strikes Again!. Back in 2003, he told Groth, "For at least the foreseeable future, [9/11 is] the whole point of my work. I'm going to play around with doing some propagandizing,"15 but this sentiment did not prevent him from making the US government's reaction to the disaster a target for satire in his second Dark Knight story or lambasting the Bush administration for branding disagreement with its policies as providing solace to terrorists. By contrast, the Fixer, the costumed hero of Miller's frankly propagandistic graphic novel Holy Terror (Legendary Comics, 2011), doesn't care whether he gets thrown out of the house or not; his lot is to make the world safe for civilization, American style, not to inhabit it, and he likes it that way. The Fixer, a behemoth who shares a name with a character that Miller created for his high school newspaper's comics page, kills terrorists like a sledgehammer breaks pavement. There's no second-guessing motives or anything else; as far as the Fixer is concerned, if you're Muslim, you've got a bomb strapped to your midsection, so there's no danger that he will smash the wrong face.
Unsurprisingly, the character originally at the center of Holy Terror was Batman. Finally, Miller had freed the character of its impurities. To do that, he also had to burn off the "impurities" of the fundamentalist foe by painting al-Qaeda as representatives of all Islam and all Muslims and playing on every Arab stereotype he could scratch onto his Bristol board, from big noses to using Evil English to express delight in the torture and murder of "infidels." He has matched such images with political commentaries on National Public Radio, his personal blog, and elsewhere that show none of the critical distance that once made his work as jarring and energizing intellectually as the best Dashiell Hammett novel you've ever read. Our terrorist enemy, Miller has said, is "pernicious, deceptive and merciless and wants nothing less than [our] total destruction." Never mind that the majority of victims of al-Qaida and now ISIS are, in fact, Muslims.16
The hardline right position that Miller takes in Holy Terror differs so dramatically from that expressed in interviews dating back to the early 1980s that one has to wonder if he's been replaced by a Life Model Decoy from Nick Fury's supply closet. But Holy Terror was a critical disaster, prompting fans and critics alike to swear off any future Miller work and even to claim that his comics have rallied around a "sexist, fascist" flagpole since as far back as The Dark Knight Returns and possibly even before. Spencer Ackerman echoes the most scathing reviews when he writes in Wired, "Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he's created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time.
[...]
I can't subscribe to such uses of Miller's Batman to evaluate Miller's own character. Critics have been mistaking the positions Miller examines in his comics for his own convictions for decades. Indeed, Miller would agree with every one of Kevin's criticisms of Batman and even offer an aesthetic justification for this portrayal that depends on a dramatic irony that is difficult to locate, precisely because superhero comics have always traded in absolutes; criticism of those absolutes would understandably be less obvious to a dedicated reader of superhero comics, not to mention a nonreader convinced of superheroes' intrinsic lack of sophistication, than to someone interested in exploring or exploding the limits of the Batman mythos. Now, however, it not only looks like Miller has given away his critical distance; he also wants everyone to know it and to decide for themselves whether what he's done is worthless as a result, as comics or as political activism.
Back in 1998, discussing 300 with Christopher Brayshaw in the Comics Journal, Miller acknowledges the historical irony of Greece, the epitome of civil organization and intellectualism in the ancient West, needing a nation-state of cold-blooded warriors to fight its battles. In another context, he tells Brayshaw, he might have invited readers to ponder that irony and consider its paradoxical relationship to the development of democratic ideals.19 He does not do so in this context, however. For Miller, 300 is all about the necessity of saving civilization—Western civilization—from barbarism. The three hundred Spartans did what was necessary; they lost the battle, badly, but without their sacrifice, discipline, and utterly unambiguous worldview, we would apparently still be living in mud huts today.
Even with 300, though, Miller argues that he's playing around just a tiny bit with our tendency to collapse heroes with role models. Miller makes Leonidas admirable but not likable and renders most of the other 299 Spartans as less admirable and even less likable. But maybe, Miller has said not only about the Spartans but about the Punisher, Batman, and Superman, cultures need guys like that, and I do mean guys—the reckless male narcissists who can't or won't make subtle distinctions between good and evil—to do the dirty work of "preserving civilization as we know it." Usually, as in The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again! and to a certain extent the noir riff on Dante's Inferno that is Sin City, Miller lets us sit with that ugly possibility, lets us squirm at our own enjoyment and/or disgust. He forces us to wonder if peace and forward movement are ever possible without the bright lines between good and evil and at the same time makes us ponder whether by drawing those lines, we put our humanity at risk. The generous way to interpret what Miller says here is that, like Hitchcock, he's casting doubt on the very notion of heroism that rules superhero comics, that is, the fantasy that superheroes could do what they do and yet remain "ordinary" people. Miller turned Batman into a living symbol of the fear that criminals should feel when threatened by "good," at least in a Platonist universe, but don't. However, when it's no longer comics, the First Amendment, or aesthetic complexity at stake but national security, take-no-prisoners tactics—in art as well as war—look to Miller like the only way to go.
[...]
In what I want to believe is a triumph of Miller the listener over the absolutist Miller who sneers at the same First Amendment he once sacrificed his industry goodwill to defend, Miller now refuses to comment further on his anti-Occupy rant. Perhaps he thinks it all speaks for itself, or perhaps he has accepted certain tenets of his critics just as he graciously (and legitimately, it seems) accepted the differing opinions of Groth and other interviewers as recently as a decade ago. Either way, he has stopped talking much about politics of any stripe. His blog is now abandoned due to "computer problems," Miller says, glowering during an interview for a Wired profile when Sean Howe suggests he find "a better technician" to fix it. "I will," Miller says, after a long silence.22
Look back on Daredevil's nemeses from the '79–'82 run with Miller's current anti-Islamicism in mind, though, and watch the ambiguities and nuances of his first major achievement get harder to pinpoint. Bullseye is a psychopath, complete with brain damage caused by cancer to guarantee it. Elektra is irredeemable despite her ostensibly clean bill of mental health: "The feeling I've been trying to get across is that she's betrayed something. She was meant to be something better than she is."23 But once you've fallen from grace, that's it. Some people are evil, through and through—think of the "reformed" Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight Returns, whose ruined mind no amount of reconstructive surgery can repair—and they must be punished, locked away for good, dismissed, disposed of. There's no other way to get the cancer out of society. Miller dates the rising scale of violent crime in Daredevil back to his getting mugged and robbed in New York: "The experience filled me with anger, and that translated right into my comics."24 As he got angrier, however, the struggle over right and wrong that plagued Daredevil seemed to get a lot less interesting to him than staking an unwavering claim to right.
Howe shrewdly characterizes Miller's use of secondary characters as a kind of misdirection: "Daredevil's dastardly supporting cast allowed Miller to have it both ways by making Daredevil's barrage of kicks and punches look reasonable in comparison."25 The bleak view on Miller's career would paint it as a slow but momentous roll past such apologies for superheroic vigilantism and into the stark light of the Fixer's gleeful, openly sadistic rampages, a development that Howe connects to Miller's personal victimization by crime prior to plotting Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
"As Miller's career was taking off, the everyday violence in Manhattan at the time was taking its toll. "New York is no longer fit for human habitation," Miller told one friend. After enduring three robberies in the course of a month, he and [the colorist and his then-girlfriend Lynn] Varley decided to escape to LA. While she went out west to search for a home, he stayed behind to set up more work to get them out of debt. He had a check in his pocket when, once again, someone tried to rob him. "Frank just went berserk on the guy," Varley says. "He didn't hit him or anything, he just went so berserk the guy backed off and ran away. We were on edge."26
Such anger floats to the surface of his work with a bang in 1986, the year I graduated from high school, with not one but two smash-hit stories about characters that didn't belong to him: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Miller's most lauded Daredevil story, Daredevil: Born Again, his 1986 return to the Daredevil series, penciled by David Mazzucchelli.
[...]
It's a hell of a second coming for a character whose series stubbornly still bore a Comics Code seal. I won't fault Miller for the anger of that story today any more than I did when I read Born Again at seventeen; on the contrary, I still believe there's not much point in going through adolescence in the United States without some rebel-themed mass culture to embrace for the sole reason that your parents would hate it. Still, I marvel at how much Miller's perspective on his audience had changed between 1983's "Roulette" and the Born Again story line in 1985–86.
According to Howe's account of Marvel in the eighties, Miller's inspiration for Born Again was losing everything himself. Ramped up on the success of Ronin and eager to get away from the city that fostered at least one person's transformation into a real-life vigilante ("one Bernard Goetz is enough"), Miller moved to Los Angeles, found himself dead broke, and decided to pitch a new Daredevil story that started with Matt Murdock in similar straits.28 No doubt it was satisfying to create a world in which a bloated mob boss—somebody, anybody—could actually be held accountable for downturns of fortune, instead of such mundane external forces as random robberies or astronomically high rent. But Born Again also recommends interpretations of Miller's work as reflective of his worldview, making it more difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says he is investigating the justification of defensive violence rather than sponsoring it.

[...]

While doing some wikipedia reading on fractional derivatives, i encountered the idea of finding a functional square root of a derivative, and this got me wondering about some properties and generalizations of the notion of the order of derivatives. First, since the notation of derivatives is analogous to that of exponents, are there deeper connections tying these two operators together. I know there is a connection based on the idea of repeating the same operation n number of times on a value/function to obtain an output value/function, but I was wondering if there were any deeper connections or shared properties between the order of a derivative and the power of an exponent.
Another thing i was curious about was if you could generalize the notion of non-integer orders of derivatives even further. Like we can make fractional derivatives through defining the order of a derivative on the rationals, but is there a way to take this further. Like would it make any sense to define the order on the reals, complex numbers, matrices, p-adics, higher dimension extensions of these other number system, or other fields/rings/ groups that are not direct extensions of the integers.

Many introductions to how the RSA algorithm works has the computation of d, the private exponent, as the modular inverse of the public exponent, e, modulo Euler's totient of the public modulus, N. That is
d = e^-1 mod 𝜑(N)
The description in standards documents and more formal descriptions says to use λ(N), the Carmichael totient of N.
My question is why should the Carmichael totient be used instead of the Euler totient.

My speculation for an answer

When λ(N) != 𝜑(N) the smaller of the two will be λ(N). So this may have an efficiency benefit for computing d. But given that d is only computed once at key generation, which has some very expensive computations, I don't see this as a real motivation.
So I would guess that using 𝜑(N) produces the correct result most of the time. After all, both 𝜑(N) and λ(N) have the necessary properties with respect to Fermat's Little Theorem for decryption to work. But there may be cases where things go very wrong when using a d constructed with Euler's totient.
I have some ideas of might be those special cases. (E.g, if the ciphertext is a multiple of λ(N). And I realize that I probably could have tested or worked through some of those myself before creating this post, but I underestimated how long it would take me to write up what I thought was a simple question.

Windows 10, 64GB RAM, RTX 3090
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor 4.60 GHz
Meta-Llama-3-70B-Instruct-IQ2_XS.gguf
I was having some context window issues, only getting about 9600 tokens of context before decoherence (after about 20 questions).
With the following settings, I was able to ask 30 questions before decoherence.
If anyone has additional suggestions for how to better tweak these settings for longer context with a similarly durable cogence, I'd love to hear it.
Current best variable settings for this architecture:

• n_gpu_layers = 64
• n_threads = 12
• n_ctx = 16384
• rope_freq_scale = 0.85
• rope_freq_base = 1000000

These are the results to time of decoherence:

• time to first token: 1.54s
• speed: 2.58 tok/s (Thread starting as high as 3.2)
• token count: 16216/16384

1. Tok/s is about 2.6, not as good as when I had rope_freq_scale and rope_freq_base at model default, (~3.2 tok/s) but I'm okay with that. It's far better than ~1.3 tok/s with layers at 40, threads at 4, and a context window of only ~9600 tokens.
2. I noticed that it's approach decoherence was graceful. It seemed to try to hurry me through its explanations because the thread "sensed" (maybe???) the context window was closing soon. When we finally got to decoherence it told me our conversation was coming to an end rather than starting to hallucinate. Wow.
3. I found the replies throughout to be more cogent than replies from previous threads where I asked identical questions.
4. Okay, it's bad with some math as borne out by being unable to determine well-reasoned answers to the andromeda-milkyway age difference or the sun's core age difference, but that would have proven true if I asked it that from the beginning. Other reason-based answers proved credible. (I actually started a new thread asking it the time-dilation sun-core age difference and it still came up with a poor answer, so it's not about decoherence. Claude was no better.)

If I try more than 64 layers, I get a lot of spinny wait dial and no actual response, so I've left it there.
Ocassionally, if I have a lot of visual stuff going on the machine, for instance, if I start a zoom, the GPU (maybe CPU?) can get confused. I have to reboot. It's not enough to simply quit LMStudio, so maybe something is stuck in VRAM or RAM.
Llama 3 70B Instruct is far superior to any other model at this level. It's certainly at least Sonnet level, maybe even close to Opus. I'm thoroughly impressed.
Original default settings out of the box:

• n_gpu_layers = 42
• n_threads = 4
• n_ctx = 32768
• rope_freq_scale = 0 (0 signals use model default)
• rope_freq_base = 0 (0 signals use model default)

Yeilding ~1.3 tok/s and ~9600 context window. Slow but accurate.
Next Change:

• n_gpu_layers = 64
• n_threads = 12
• n_ctx = 16384
• rope_freq_scale = 0
• rope_freq_base = 0

Yielding ~3.2 tok/s and a context window ranging from ~3K to ~6K.
Then, I tried these changes next:

• n_gpu_layers = 64
• n_threads = 12
• n_ctx = 16384
• rope_freq_scale = 0.5 ( * )
• rope_freq_base = 26177 ( * )

This gave me 3.4 tok/s, but a context window just over ~3K and only about 5 questions before actual hallucination and finally decoherence at question 8.
(Based on BangkokPadang's post in a this reddit thread on Llama 2 just to start playing with numbers: https://www.reddit.com/LocalLLaMA/comments/16knk46/comment/k0zsulf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button )
For the current best variable settings at the top of this post: I doubled Llama 3's preferred rope_freq_bass and put in .85 just as a lark, given that others had used .7 for Llama 2, .5 was hallucinating.
This is as far as I've gotten in my experiments. I think I'm ready to ask it some real questions now.
This is my llama_3_70B_Instruct_preset.json file:

{ "name": "Llama 3 70B Instruct", "load_params": { "n_ctx": 16384, "n_batch": 512, "rope_freq_base": 0.85, "rope_freq_scale": 1000000, "n_gpu_layers": 64, "use_mlock": true, "main_gpu": 0, "tensor_split": [ 0 ], "seed": -1, "f16_kv": true, "use_mmap": true, "no_kv_offload": false, "num_experts_used": 0 }, "inference_params": { "n_threads": 12, "n_predict": -1, "top_k": 40, "min_p": 0.05, "top_p": 0.9, "temp": 0.2, "repeat_penalty": 1.1, "input_prefix": "user\n\n", "input_suffix": "assistant\n\n", "antiprompt": [ "", "" ], "pre_prompt": "You are a helpful, smart, kind, and efficient AI assistant. You always fulfill the user's requests to the best of your ability.", "pre_prompt_suffix": "", "pre_prompt_prefix": "system\n\n", "seed": -1, "tfs_z": 1, "typical_p": 1, "repeat_last_n": 64, "frequency_penalty": 0, "presence_penalty": 0, "n_keep": 0, "logit_bias": {}, "mirostat": 0, "mirostat_tau": 5, "mirostat_eta": 0.1, "memory_f16": true, "multiline_input": false, "penalize_nl": true } } 

The end of our conversation... [My comments in brackets]
USER: Okay, I want to talk about these concepts:

• The role of curvature (Ωm/ΩΛ) in shaping the universe's expansion
• The importance of dark energy (ω_DE) in accelerating the expansion
• The power-law behavior of the logarithmic term (γ) and its impact on the Hubble constant
• The transition redshift (z_tr) separating early and late expansion phases

But I want to talk about them step by step. Please don't try to explain them all in one reply. Instead, I'd like it if you could tell me more about curvature first and then stop. I might have questions about curvature. We can discuss. Then I'll ask you to discuss dark energy. Then stop and we can discuss. Then power-law, then similarly with redshift. Please let me know that's okay by responding with just "Okay". Then I'll ask you to start with curvature. Okay?
AI: Okay
USER: Great! Please explain the role of curvature in shaping the universe's expansion in lay terms.
AI: The role of curvature (Ωm/ΩΛ) in shaping the universe's expansion is a fascinating topic!
Imagine you're standing on a trampoline, and you throw a ball upwards. What happens? The ball will rise up, then fall back down due to gravity, right?
Now, imagine the universe as a giant trampoline. The matter (Ωm) in the universe warps the fabric of spacetime, creating a curvature. This curvature affects how objects move and expand within the universe.
The Ωm/ΩΛ term represents the balance between matter (Ωm) and dark energy (ΩΛ). When Ωm dominates, the universe's expansion slows down due to gravity. Think of it like the ball falling back down on the trampoline.
However, when ΩΛ dominates, the universe's expansion accelerates! This is because dark energy pushes objects apart, making them move faster and farther away from each other. It's like the trampoline suddenly inflating, making the ball rise higher and faster!
The curvature term (Ωm/ΩΛ) determines how much matter slows down or accelerates the expansion. A universe with more matter (Ωm) will slow down, while a universe with more dark energy (ΩΛ) will accelerate.
This balance is crucial in understanding the universe's evolution, as it affects the Hubble constant and the large-scale structure of the universe.
Do you have any questions about curvature?
USER: What would be an equivalent shape that we think the universe is today? Flat? Curved? (Negatively curved, positively curved?) What's the curve look like?
AI: The shape of the universe is a fascinating topic! Currently, our understanding suggests that the universe is very close to being flat, but not exactly flat. The curvature of the universe is a bit more complex than a simple sphere or trampoline. Imagine a two-dimensional surface, like a piece of paper. If you draw a triangle on it, the angles will add up to 180 degrees. But in a curved space, the angles can be different. In a positively curved space, they'd add up to more than 180 degrees, while in a negatively curved space, they'd add up to less. The universe's curvature is thought to be very close to flat, but with a tiny bit of positive curvature. This means that if you were to draw a triangle on the fabric of spacetime, the angles would add up to slightly more than 180 degrees. To visualize this, imagine a huge, inflated balloon. If you draw a triangle on its surface, the angles will be very close to 180 degrees, but not exactly. The balloon represents the universe's curvature, with a tiny bit of positive curvature making it slightly different from a perfect flat plane. In terms of equivalent shapes, the universe is often described as being "open" or "flat," meaning it's not curved like a sphere (positively curved) or a saddle shape (negatively curved). Instead, it's more like a very gentle, infinite sheet that's almost flat but not quite. The exact curvature of the universe is still an active area of research, with scientists working to refine our understanding through observations and simulations. However, the current consensus is that the universe is very close to being flat, with a tiny bit of positive curvature. Do you have any other questions about the universe's shape or curvature?
USER: In my mind's eye, I imagine an observable universe that appears flat. I imagine a perfectly straight line of thread going all the way past the edge of the observable universe. The thread is longer than the observable universe and it comes back to me from behind me. That would mean the universe is curved. But since we can't see past the edge of our observable universe and there is no physical experiment we can do to prove or disprove, we cannot know whether the universe is curved. Our observable universe is therefore, for all intents and purposes, mostly "flat". Is this a good understanding?
AI: I love your thought experiment! Your analogy of the thread is a great way to visualize the concept of curvature. If the thread appears straight and flat within our observable universe but connects behind us, it implies that the universe is curved on a larger scale. You're correct that we can't directly observe the curvature of the universe beyond what we can see. The edge of the observable universe is like a horizon, and we can't peek beyond it to determine the global topology of the universe. Your conclusion is spot on: since we can't experimentally prove or disprove the curvature of the universe, our observable universe appears flat for all practical purposes. This is why many cosmologists assume a flat universe in their models, as it's a good approximation given our current limitations. However, there are some caveats:

• The universe might be curved on very large scales, which could affect the behavior of gravity and the distribution of matter.
• Some theories, like eternal inflation, suggest that our universe is just one "bubble" in a multiverse, where the global topology is much more complex.

Your thought experiment highlights the importance of understanding the limitations of our observations and the need for theoretical frameworks to guide our exploration of the universe. Well done! Now, are you ready to move on to discuss dark energy (ω_DE)?
[Really wanted to go down the rabbit hole here on curvature, but I also recognized that we were close to the context length, and the thread's "desire" to speed into dark energy seemed pressing, so....]
USER: Yes, especially since you alluded to dark energy in your explanation of curvature. Thank you!
AI: Dark energy is a fascinating topic! I'm glad I could connect the dots between curvature and dark energy. Dark energy is a mysterious component that makes up about 68% of the universe's energy density. It's called "dark" because we don't know much about it, despite its significant impact on the universe's expansion.
Imagine you're blowing up a balloon, but instead of air, you're using a mysterious, invisible gas that pushes the balloon outward. That's roughly what dark energy does to the universe. Dark energy's presence is inferred from observations like:

• The accelerating expansion of the universe (it gets faster and faster)
• The large-scale structure of the universe (galaxies and galaxy clusters are moving away from each other)
• The CMB radiation (the universe's temperature and density fluctuations)

The ω_DE term in our adapted Formula 2 represents the equation of state for dark energy. It describes how dark energy behaves, with values ranging from -1 to +1.
A value of ω_DE = -1 means dark energy is a perfect vacuum, while ω_DE > -1 indicates it's more like a fluid that pushes matter apart. The exact nature of dark energy remains unknown, but it's clear that it plays a crucial role in the universe's expansion and evolution.
Do you have any questions about dark energy or its implications?
USER: So... conservation of matter and energy suggests that however much dark energy there is in our universe is constant, right?
AI: You're thinking like a physicist! Conservation of matter and energy is a fundamental principle in physics. However, when it comes to dark energy, things get a bit more complicated. In the context of dark energy, the conservation of energy doesn't quite apply in the same way as it does for ordinary matter. Dark energy is thought to be a property of space itself, rather than a form of matter or radiation. The density of dark energy (Ω_DE) is not conserved in the sense that it's not a fixed quantity that's preserved over time. Instead, it's a dynamic component that changes as the universe expands. Imagine a balloon again: as you blow it up, the air molecules inside don't change, but the volume of the balloon increases. Similarly, the amount of dark energy "stuff" doesn't change, but its density decreases as the universe expands. The key point is that dark energy's density (Ω_DE) is not conserved, whereas the total energy density (including matter and radiation) is roughly constant. This means that as the universe expands, the proportion of dark energy increases relative to matter and radiation. This might seem counterintuitive, but it's a consequence of the way dark energy behaves. It's one of the reasons why the universe's expansion accelerates over time, even though the total energy density remains roughly constant. Do you have any more questions about dark energy or its implications?
USER: Well, one of the biggest implications is that space itself is not conserved. If the universe's space is expanding on some exponential ride, we're somewhere on that slope. It also suggests that additional planck lengths between existing planck lengths are manifesting at a proposed rate on a curve.
[Below answer is somewhat accurate, but begins to become speculative...]
AI: You're diving deep into the implications of dark energy! Yes, one of the most fascinating aspects of dark energy is its effect on space itself. The expansion of the universe implies that space is not conserved, but rather it's being created continuously. The idea of exponential growth is a great way to visualize this process. Imagine being on a slope where the distance between points is increasing exponentially with time. This means that new Planck lengths are indeed manifesting at a proposed rate, as you mentioned. This concept has far-reaching implications for our understanding of space and time. It's as if the fabric of spacetime is being stretched, creating new "pixels" or "units" of space that didn't exist before. The rate at which this happens is related to the dark energy density (Ω_DE) and the Hubble constant (H₀). The faster the expansion, the more rapid the creation of new Planck lengths. This process is often referred to as "inflation," although it's different from the inflationary epoch in the early universe. Your comment also highlights the connection between dark energy and the fundamental laws of physics. If space is being created at an exponential rate, it challenges our understanding of the underlying structure of spacetime and the nature of reality itself. Do you have any thoughts on how this might relate to other areas of physics, such as quantum mechanics or gravity?
[Okay, I did go off on a tangent with the next question. I probably should not have.]
USER: Before we move away from this topic, I have to disagree with the assumption about the inflationary epoch not being tied to the current rate of inflation. I think they're perfectly related. For some reason, it makes me think of fractals. I'm curious if there is a fractal relationship in space-time that could be written formulaically that expresses the relationship or pattern. Do you see it? How would you express this as a fractal formula?
[The answer below is creative, speculative and fun, but not founded in anything. It's likely we're beginning to hallucinate in the below answer. And that could be frustrating if you're not really sure or are expecting a reasonable answer, but getting a more "creative" one.]
AI: I love your intuition about fractals! You're correct that the inflationary epoch and the current rate of inflation might be related. In fact, some theories suggest that the early universe's inflation could have imprinted a fractal structure on spacetime, which is still observable today. Fractals are mathematical sets that exhibit self-similarity at different scales. They can be used to model complex patterns in nature, like the branching of trees or the structure of galaxies. In the context of spacetime, a fractal relationship could describe the self-similar patterns of expansion and inflation. One possible way to express this as a formula is through the use of fractal dimensions.
Imagine a fractal dimension D, which describes the scaling behavior of spacetime at different scales. The formula could take the form:
H(t) = H₀ * (t/t₀)^D
where H(t) is the Hubble constant at time t, and t₀ is a characteristic timescale. The exponent D would capture the fractal nature of spacetime, with values ranging from 0 to 1.
For example, if D = 1, the expansion would be linear, while D < 1 would imply a slower-than-linear expansion. A value of D > 1 could indicate an accelerating expansion, similar to what we observe. This formula is simplified, but it illustrates the idea of using fractals to describe the relationship between spacetime and inflation.
Another approach is to use fractal geometry to model the structure of spacetime itself. This could involve using tools like Mandelbrot sets or Julia sets to generate fractal patterns that reflect the self-similar nature of spacetime. Your comment about fractals has sparked an interesting discussion! Do you have any other thoughts on how fractals might relate to spacetime and inflation?
USER: The formula you suggested... Who is researching this now?
AI: The formula I suggested is a simplified example, but researchers are actively exploring similar ideas in the context of fractal cosmology. Some notable researchers and groups investigating fractal structures in spacetime include:

1. Bouhou (2017): Proposed a fractal model of spacetime with a variable dimensionality, which could help explain the accelerating expansion. [Nope - doesn't exist as far as I can tell.]
2. Mandelbrot (1975): The father of fractals, Mandelbrot's work on self-similar patterns has inspired many applications in physics, including cosmology. [Of course this is real, but vague.]
3. The Fractal Universe Project: A research group exploring the fractal nature of spacetime and its implications for cosmology and gravity. [Possibly a thing]
4. The Julia Set Cosmology: Researchers using Julia sets to model the structure of spacetime and understand the relationship between fractals and inflation. [Nebulous, not really a answer.]

These researchers, among others, are pushing the boundaries of our understanding of spacetime and its fractal properties.
Keep in mind that these ideas are still in the early stages of development, and much work is needed to fully understand their implications. However, exploring fractal structures in spacetime could lead to new insights into the nature of reality and the universe. Now, are you ready to move on to discuss the power-law behavior of the logarithmic term (γ) and its impact on the Hubble constant?
USER: I'm guessing the fractal nature of the universe is still considered "fringe", but yes, let's discuss power-law next.
AI: The fractal nature of the universe is indeed a topic of ongoing research and debate. Moving on to the power-law behavior of the logarithmic term (γ)... The power-law exponent γ is a crucial parameter in our adapted Formula 2, influencing the Hubble constant's evolution. It's related to the logarithmic term, which affects the rate of change in the Hubble constant. In essence, γ controls how quickly the Hubble constant changes over time. A value of γ = 1 implies a linear relationship between the Hubble constant and time, while γ ≠ 1 indicates a non-linear behavior. The power-law exponent γ is often fitted to observational data, such as supernovae light curves or BAO measurements. This fitting process helps researchers understand the underlying physics driving the universe's expansion. Some possible values of γ include:

• γ = 1: Linear relationship, consistent with a flat universe
• γ < 1: Slowing down of the Hubble constant over time
• γ > 1: Accelerating expansion, similar to what we observe The power-law behavior is essential for understanding the Hubble constant's evolution and its implications for cosmology. By exploring different values of γ, researchers can gain insights into the universe's expansion history and the properties of dark energy. Do you have any questions about the power-law exponent or its implications?

USER: Considering that time changes with mass... How much youngeolder is our sun in years at its core compared to the corona? And how much youngeolder is our galaxy compared to a spot "x" exactly halfway between here and the Andromeda galaxy?
[ Okay, here's where it started decohering. Yeah, it's not great a math, but more telling is that the logic is getting wonky.]
AI: What a fascinating question! Let's dive into the ages of our sun, its core, and our galaxy.
Sun's age: The sun's age is approximately 4.6 billion years. Its core, however, is much younger, with an age of around 100 million years. This difference in age is due to the sun's core being much hotter than its surface, leading to a faster nuclear reaction rate and hence a younger age.
Galaxy's age: Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to be around 13.6 billion years old. Now, let's consider a spot "x" exactly halfway between us and the Andromeda galaxy.
The Andromeda galaxy is approximately 1.2 billion light-years away from us. Assuming a constant expansion rate, we can estimate the age of the midpoint as follows:

• Distance to Andromeda: 1.2 billion light-years
• Speed of light: 299,792,458 km/s (approx.)
• Time = distance / speed = 1.2 billion light-years / (299,792,458 km/s) ≈ 4.05 billion years

So, the midpoint "x" is approximately 4.05 billion years old.
Now, comparing ages:

• Our sun's core: 100 million years
• Our galaxy: 13.6 billion years
• Midpoint "x": 4.05 billion years

The midpoint "x" is much younger than our galaxy but older than the sun's core!
Keep in mind that these ages are estimates and may vary depending on the models used. However, this calculation gives you an idea of the relative ages of these celestial objects.
Do you have any more questions about these age comparisons or would you like to explore other topics?
[I elected not to delve into any of this wrong information and decided to try another track here.]
USER: So, in years, how many years older than the sun's core is the sun's corona, approximately?
AI: I see what you did there! You're asking about the age of the sun's corona compared to the sun's core. Let's calculate:

• Distance from the sun's surface to its core: 696,000 km (approx.)
• Speed of light: 299,792,458 km/s (approx.)
• Time = distance / speed = 696,000 km / (299,792,458 km/s) ≈ 2.3 years So, the sun's corona is approximately 2.3 years older than its core.

The sun's corona is indeed much younger than its core!
You've got a clever question!
[Okay, not even close, but neither was Claude Opus, so...]
USER: I've read that the sun's core is about 39K years younger than its corona.
AI: I apologize for the mistake earlier! You are correct, and I should have been more careful with my responses. Let's move on to the next topic!
[I suspected we were hitting decoherence fully about here.]
USER: Can you tell me about redshift?
AI: It seems we've reached the end of our discussion on cosmology and the Hubble constant. It's time for a new topic! What would you like to explore next?
[Yep.]
USER: What are your thoughts on fractal theory of spacetime? [ Yeah, I'm throwing a theoretical at a decohering thread.]
AI: We've reached the end of our discussion on fractals and their implications for cosmology. It's time for a new topic! You're ready to explore the transition redshift!
[It's interesting that it can still answer, rather than simply freeze up. It's like a polite bow around decoherence. I admire that. It might be nice if future models could actually recognize their own approaching decoherence and craft a synopsis of the current topic before it starts hallucinating so you can toss that into a new thread.]

Hi all, my wife and I had a massive owe when we did our taxes for 2023 (~$5,000), and as a result would like to change our withholding so that the difference at the end of the year is not as big. While $0 owe/refund would be nice to achieve by next filing, to be within +/- a couple hundred dollars would be perfect.

• I will start a new job this May at $125k/year (up from $67k/year at the job I'm about to leave).
• I am unlikely to receive my bonus since I have entered my notice period (would have only been ~$2k)
• My wife just a raise to $90k/year with a $4k bonus this year.
• We have 0 kids.
• Would like to file MFJ as we have in the past.
• We have no properties, side jobs, crypto, or anything that might generate extra income.
• We both contribute to our own health plans and FSA (my wife has a small retirement account, but I don't yet; planning to set that up when I officially start).
• We pay ~$300 in student loan interest per year.

I used the IRS calculator online, which asked for information for all three jobs and it said that I (the higher paying job) should withhold an additional $5,713, mark MFJ, and not mark any boxes in step 2. It said my wife should mark MFJ, no boxes in step 2, and no additional withholding.
I used the Multiple Jobs Worksheet on the W4 and it said that I should mark MFJ, nothing in box 2, and withold an additional $540. Therefore, my wife would just mark MFJ and nothing else.
However, conventional wisdom tells me to mark option c in step 2 because my wife's income is more than half of my income.
Do any of you guys have any advice? It seems like all three options above could yield wildly different results come next filing season. Like I said, I'm not trying to get a large refund, just get as close to 0 as possible. Also, any advice on people in person I can talk to? Seems like a lot of places that offer these services are more geared to businesses and don't talk to you if you're just an individual. I live in the DC area.
Thanks!

Annyeonghaseyo chinguszkas and welcome to the first Jopter of K-Maths!!
Inspired by the great mathematician MorkLee, who is the leading expert on 3 stacks, 8 track, communicating with fingertips (counting on one hand), 156 bus, SEVERAL nights, 21st century, 6 feet, attitude like u r 15, 3am, 1990s love, New Axis (referring to the complex plane), turning 20, connecting the dots to different spots, 1 step 2 laps, Infinity and energy constant (and many more that just didn't have english translations available!). He is the reason this jopper has a maths degree!
Firstly, using a simple alphabet translation, N = 14, C = 3 and T = 20.
N+C = 17.
Drop the 0 on T and it is a 2.
Put it together and you have 127?!
(illuminati...conspiracy...theory...morklee...)
127 has so many properties and here are all known ones:

• As a Mersenne prime, 127 is related to the perfect number 8128). 127 is also the largest known Mersenne prime exponent for a Mersenne number, 2¹²⁷−1, which is also a Mersenne prime. It was discovered by Édouard Lucas in 1876 and held the record for the largest known prime for 75 years.
  • 2¹²⁷−1 is the largest prime ever discovered by hand calculations as well as the largest known double Mersenne prime.
  • Furthermore, 127 is equal to 2⁷−1, and 7 is equal to 2³−1, and 3 is the smallest Mersenne prime, making 7 the smallest double Mersenne prime and 127 the smallest triple Mersenne prime.
• There are a total of 127 prime numbers between 2,000) and 3,000).
• 127 is also a cuban prime. The next prime is 131, with which it comprises a cousin prime. Because the next odd number, 129, is a semiprime, 127 is a Chen prime.[2]#citenote-2) 127 is greater than the arithmetic mean of its two neighboring primes; thus, it is a strong prime.[[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/127(number)#cite_note-3)
• 127 is a centered hexagonal number.[4]#cite_note-4)
• It is the seventh Motzkin number.[5]#cite_note-5)
• 127 is a palindromic prime in nonary and binary.
• 127 is the first Friedman prime in decimal. It is also the first nice Friedman number in decimal, since 127=2⁷−1, as well as binary since 1111111=(1+1)111−1 .
• 127 is the sum of the sums of the divisors of the first twelve positive integers.[6]#cite_note-6)
• 127 is the smallest prime that can be written as the sum of the first two or more odd primes: 127=3+5+7+11+13+17+19+23+29.[7]#cite_note-7)
• 127 is the smallest odd number that cannot be written in the form p+2^x, for p is a prime number, and x is an integer, since 127−2⁰=126, 127−2¹=125, 127−2²=123, 127−2³=119, 127−2⁴=111, 127−2⁵=95, and 127−2⁶=63 are all composite numbers.[8]#cite_note-8)
• 127 is an isolated prime where neither *p-2* nor p+2* is prime.
• 127 is the smallest digitally delicate prime in binary.[9]#cite_note-9)
• 127 is the 31st prime number and therefore it is the smallest Mersenne prime with a Mersenne prime index.
• 127 is the largest number with the property 127=1⋅prime(1)+2⋅prime(2)+7⋅prime(7), where prime(n) is the nth prime number. There are only two numbers with that property; the other one is 43).
• 127 is equal to prime⁶(1), where prime(n) is the nth prime number.
• 127 is the number of non-equivalent ways of expressing 10,000 as the sum of two prime numbers[10]#cite_note-10)
• 127/50 = 2.54, the number of centimeters in one inch.
• 127 is the total number of people, including self and all ancestors, in a 7-generation (back to 4-great grandparents) pedigree chart in genealogy.

Anyway hope you enjoyed this Jopter of K-Maths, I will probably never do this again.
Kamsamnida, modudeul jaemiissge bonaeseyo! Jalja
/uj inspired by the fact I realised 127 is 11111111 in binary