{
  "trx_id": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "block": 51139244,
  "trx_in_block": 4294967295,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 2,
  "timestamp": "2021-02-12T04:16:30",
  "op": [
    "fill_vesting_withdraw",
    {
      "from_account": "ray-steding",
      "to_account": "ray-steding",
      "withdrawn": "3007.821510 VESTS",
      "deposited": "1.584 STEEM"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "block": 50939987,
  "trx_in_block": 4294967295,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 2,
  "timestamp": "2021-02-05T04:16:30",
  "op": [
    "fill_vesting_withdraw",
    {
      "from_account": "ray-steding",
      "to_account": "ray-steding",
      "withdrawn": "3007.821513 VESTS",
      "deposited": "1.583 STEEM"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "block": 50740747,
  "trx_in_block": 4294967295,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 2,
  "timestamp": "2021-01-29T04:16:30",
  "op": [
    "fill_vesting_withdraw",
    {
      "from_account": "ray-steding",
      "to_account": "ray-steding",
      "withdrawn": "3007.821513 VESTS",
      "deposited": "1.582 STEEM"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "block": 50541446,
  "trx_in_block": 4294967295,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 4,
  "timestamp": "2021-01-22T04:16:30",
  "op": [
    "fill_vesting_withdraw",
    {
      "from_account": "ray-steding",
      "to_account": "ray-steding",
      "withdrawn": "3007.821513 VESTS",
      "deposited": "1.581 STEEM"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "076b25e9d59fc219698452df253010cc011055a5",
  "block": 50342281,
  "trx_in_block": 1,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2021-01-15T04:22:51",
  "op": [
    "limit_order_create",
    {
      "owner": "ray-steding",
      "orderid": 1610684563,
      "amount_to_sell": "23.992 STEEM",
      "min_to_receive": "1.332 SBD",
      "fill_or_kill": false,
      "expiration": "2021-02-11T04:22:02"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "076b25e9d59fc219698452df253010cc011055a5",
  "block": 50342281,
  "trx_in_block": 1,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 1,
  "timestamp": "2021-01-15T04:22:51",
  "op": [
    "fill_order",
    {
      "current_owner": "ray-steding",
      "current_orderid": 1610684563,
      "current_pays": "23.992 STEEM",
      "open_owner": "quicktrades",
      "open_orderid": 1270834918,
      "open_pays": "1.332 SBD"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "9e2fcf83e512c1876269f435dd9094a604633c80",
  "block": 50342156,
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2021-01-15T04:16:30",
  "op": [
    "withdraw_vesting",
    {
      "account": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "12031.286049 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0d4744d2d9174953653f55318a88802c7fa3edbf",
  "block": 43199446,
  "trx_in_block": 2,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-05-08T14:43:36",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "0.000000 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "3e65fe78176213930e39685c754d2fe93ea7a7d6",
  "block": 37845306,
  "trx_in_block": 13,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-11-03T07:31:21",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "1974.249538 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "f37894262bd9930553065177a114fb8e4de2ff0b",
  "block": 36189045,
  "trx_in_block": 4,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-09-06T16:11:06",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "18940.824806 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "004b0d7bbdbb04081155e676f61564808811545a",
  "block": 35780804,
  "trx_in_block": 7,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-22T17:19:48",
  "op": [
    "transfer",
    {
      "from": "dtube",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "0.001 STEEM",
      "memo": "Time is running out, claim your DTube account now before anyone else can! Login at https://d.tube"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "b87a8d560425a248cea59bc4119594060a7db29f",
  "block": 35608841,
  "trx_in_block": 6,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-16T17:47:03",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "author": "steemcleaners",
      "permlink": "re-ray-steding-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities-20190816t174701218z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "[Source](https://raysteding.blogspot.com/)\n[Plagiarism](http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism/) is the copying & pasting of others work without giving credit to the original author or artist. Plagiarized posts are considered spam. \r\n\r\nSpam is discouraged by the community, and may result in action from the [cheetah bot](https://steemit.com/faq.html#What_is__cheetah).\r\n\r\n[More information and tips on sharing content.](https://steemcleaners.org/copy-paste-plagiarism/)\r\n\r\nIf you believe this comment is in error, please contact us in [#disputes on Discord](https://discord.gg/YR2Wy5A)",
      "json_metadata": "{\"app\":\"steemcleaners/0.3\",\"format\":\"markdown+html\",\"community\":\"steemcleaners\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "02b38b5bb0fcd81afe07b828a63e3cc98d579875",
  "block": 35608838,
  "trx_in_block": 33,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-16T17:46:54",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "61rcoa-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "author": "steemcleaners",
      "permlink": "re-ray-steding-61rcoa-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities-20190816t174654255z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "[Source](https://raysteding.blogspot.com/)\n[Plagiarism](http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism/) is the copying & pasting of others work without giving credit to the original author or artist. Plagiarized posts are considered spam. \r\n\r\nSpam is discouraged by the community, and may result in action from the [cheetah bot](https://steemit.com/faq.html#What_is__cheetah).\r\n\r\n[More information and tips on sharing content.](https://steemcleaners.org/copy-paste-plagiarism/)\r\n\r\nIf you believe this comment is in error, please contact us in [#disputes on Discord](https://discord.gg/YR2Wy5A)",
      "json_metadata": "{\"app\":\"steemcleaners/0.3\",\"format\":\"markdown+html\",\"community\":\"steemcleaners\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "d663229aaaba61331eff1669e6d8a33e6dbdba08",
  "block": 35251581,
  "trx_in_block": 20,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:47:48",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "steeming-hot",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "61rcoa-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "weight": 1
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "ed39d730bd20df56d05a0fd7bb20b7f826cb6314",
  "block": 35251539,
  "trx_in_block": 13,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:45:42",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "61rcoa-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "author": "cheetah",
      "permlink": "cheetah-re-ray-steding61rcoa-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:\nhttps://raysteding.blogspot.com/",
      "json_metadata": ""
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "8d5cc1b89ce26dbefcb2612b0687b6c61e60ecea",
  "block": 35251538,
  "trx_in_block": 6,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:45:39",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "cheetah",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "61rcoa-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "weight": 8
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "6d7dc1e5f281298a9b01ad424cba477123ca9f8c",
  "block": 35251534,
  "trx_in_block": 15,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:45:27",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "digital-humanities",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "61rcoa-a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "title": "A Digital Humanities Study of Reddit Student Discourse about the Humanities",
      "body": "A Digital Humanities Study of Reddit Student Discourse about the Humanities\nby Raymond Steding\tPublished August 1, 2019\nPOSTED AUGUST 1, 2019 SCOTT KLEINMAN\nA STEM program is not superior to a Liberal Arts program and vice versa. There is a chance for success no matter the route any student takes — Reddit commenter VillageMed\n\nThis blog post documents how to locate Reddit social media comments that exemplify students’ and graduates’ discourse about the humanities using the tools and methods of the WhatEvery1Says project. It is based on research begun during the WhatEvery1Says 2018 Summer Research camp and work that continued into Fall 2018.\n\nReddit comments are the back and forth user posts and replies in titled subreddits–Reddit community forums. I show how Digital Humanities tools produce topics of interest or themes of student discourse such as “Jobs,” “PhD Advice,” “Stem vs. Non-Stem discourse,” “Teaching,” “Admissions,” and “Writing.” The reasons for the students’ positions are often stated clearly within the contexts of these thematic labels. Locating such “topics” of student discourse about the humanities helps to categorically understand student issues. Further, a clearer understanding of the ideas and motives expressed in the Reddit comments facilitates advocacy for the humanities. Additionally, Digital Humanities newbies will learn from this study how to process the Reddit archive to answer their own research questions.\n\nLet’s first look at the “what” of this article: at four exemplary comments expected as the outcome of the research:\n\nComment #1 PhD Advice Topic 137 subreddit: askacademia\nFor most fields in the humanities and social_sciences, you have to accept that you may end up in a job that has nothing to do with your degree. There are not enough jobs in academia for the number of students graduating with PhDs [ . . . ] for those who are in top-tier programs and willing to make that sacrifice, grad school can obviously be very personally rewarding\n\nComment #2 Stem vs. Non-Stem Topic 105 subreddit: badhistory\nPhysics student, so I can chime in here. STEM students feel that their major is harder and more rigorous than those who major in the liberal_arts, particularly since STEM fields are very math heavy . . .\n\nComment #3 Political Rhetoric Topic 121 subreddit: changemyview\n“SJW” [ . . . ] Notable demographics include liberal_arts majors in college, tumblr, BLM. As the acronym describes, they are “Social Justice Warriors” and fight for “Social Justice”\n\nComment #4 Stem vs. Non-Stem Topic 105: subreddit: college\nIt’s because of the stigma in society, because the way such subjects are advertised in society — they make it seem like math and science are difficult subjects [ . . . ] Not everyone can write a 70+ page essay with ease, some people find math and equations to be the easy thing, but many people assume that the opposite is true for everyone.\n\nThese comments touch on various issues of interest to the researcher who seeks to understand how students and graduates conceptualize the humanities. As will be seen, the process of generating the topic model itself plays a fundamental role in drawing comments like those above into the same contexts. The model demonstrates the comment’s semantic relationships from one comment to another within the same topic and the semantic relationships of topic to topic. Although this blog post doesn’t conduct a detailed review of how a close reading of exemplary comments such as those above may be used for advocacy, it does answer the question of why a researcher should use Reddit as a resource.\n\nReddit as a Data Source for Student Discourse about the Humanities\nReddit describes itself as “a website comprised of thousands of user-originated and operated communities, called ‘subreddits,’ or ‘subs,’ dedicated to a variety of interests.” Reddit’s data-rich set of global knowledge and discourse with “more than 330M monthly unique visitors and 18+billion views per month” provides the researcher through the use of Digital Humanities tools an in-depth look into comments about almost every public topic of interest (“Holiday on Reddit”).\n\nAll of this data is curated by “Moderators,” or “Mods,” who perform “a variety of functions within th[e] community, including removing spam and enforcing the rules of their subreddit” (Reddit). Since a Reddit user may create any number of pseudonyms to post comments, many times comments are expected to be deleted. The commenter might post angry comments that have nothing to do with the theme of the subreddit, or they may make irrational comments in another voice that aligns with their chosen pseudonym. Although the deletion service of the moderators doesn’t scrub the comments of all irrelevant data, it does spare the researcher some of the work. Off-topic comments and spam less often end up as tokens in the corpus submitted to computational analysis procedures. The result is that fewer spam and off-topic comments get mixed into the topic model.\n\nThe Corpus\nEach minute as many as 5000 new comments or more than ½ million new words are added. The following graphics snapped from the front page of pushshift.io depict the statistical usage of Reddit (pushift.io).\n\nStatistical usage of Reddit. Source: pushift.io.\nStatistical usage of Reddit. Source: pushift.io\nThe first job in assembling a corpus from Reddit data is to establish constraints on how much of the material to collect. For this study, a total of 3.3 terabytes of open-access Reddit comments (approximately five billion) from January 2006 through October 2018 were downloaded in JSON format from pushshift.io. The scope of this corpus is such that, if the comments were printed three per sheet of paper and each sheet stacked one on top of another, the length of the paper stack would exceed 100 miles. With such a large amount of text in the archive, the question becomes how does the researcher find what they are looking for?\n\nTo collect a corpus comprised of documents with exemplary comments such as those above, I initially filtered the downloaded Reddit data for comments containing at least one of the keywords “humanities,” “liberal arts,” or “the arts,” which resulted in a corpus of 154 files, totaling 980.5 MB of text. I next performed three further refinements. First, I filtered comments that contained the keywords “student,” “major,” or “college” (with or without affixes) into a new corpus. The python code to search the text of the 154 source files follows:\n\n#usr/bin/python\nimport os\nimport glob\npath2 = '/home/path-to-your-source-files/Student-Major/'\nfor json_filename in glob.glob(os.path.join(path2, '*.json')):\n    filename_out = (os.path.basename(json_filename))\n    filename_in = filename_out\n    grep_command = 'grep -i \\'student\\\\|major\\\\|college\\' /home/path-to-your-source-files/Reddit/Student-Major/' + filename_in + ' > /home/path-to-your-destination-files/' + filename_out  + '-student-majors-college' + '.json'\n    os.system(grep_command)\nThis second search results in 153 files totaling 335.5 MB that were run through a Python preprocessing script for proper formatting before the data were uploaded to the WE1S server. The Python script removes comments containing less than 225 words and comments with a karma score of less than or equal to 2. It also calculates the sentiment and subjectivity values of each comment through the use of the Python Textblob API; it writes out each comment as a single JSON file containing both the comment text and the metadata. The resulting corpus (“Corpus-A”) contains a total of 22,160 comments.\n\nMetadata\nThe JSON file format of the content downloaded from pushshift.io compliments the researcher’s exploration by making parsing and processing easy with Python. Each line within the files contain the following metadata:\n\n{\n    \"author\": \"xPadawanRyan\",\n    \"Author_flair_css_class\": \"\",\n    \"author_flair_text\": \"SSW / BA & MA History / PhD* Human Studies\",\n    \"body\": \"It's because of the stigma in society, because the way such subjects are advertised in society -- they make it seem like math and science are difficult subjects . . . Not everyone can write a 70+ page essay with ease, some people find math and equations to be the easy thing, but many people assume that the opposite is true for everyone.\",\n    \"Can_gild\": true,\n    \"Controversiality\": 0,\n    \"Created_utc\": 1509939054,\n    \"Distinguished\": null,\n    \"Edited\": false,\n    \"Gilded\": 0,\n    \"Id\": \"dper8w9\",\n    \"Is_submitter\": false,\n    \"Link_id\": \"t3_7b2gls\",\n    \"Parent_id\": \"t3_7b2gls\",\n    \"permalink\": \"/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless/dper8w9/\",\n    \"Retrieved_on\": 1512171532,\n    \"Score\": 3,\n    \"Stickied\": false,\n    \"Subreddit\": \"college\",\n    \"Subreddit_id\": \"t5_2qh3z\",\n    \"subreddit_type\": \"public\"\n}\nParsing and extracting information that relates to the research is necessary whatever format the corpus files are in, but if the data are in JSON format, a Python script can extract any of the Reddit metadata fields and use them elsewhere. For example, the permalink value that points to the comment thread on the Reddit website can be reformatted as a link in the dfr-browser tool for visualizing topic models. A comparison of the original comment above with the view JSON link on the document title page (in WE1S’s customization of dfr-browser) shows that the JSON list file downloaded from pushshift.io above has been reformatted by the researcher’s Python script to include the permalink value as a hyperlink to the original Reddit thread. The reformatted comment page includes other essential statistics such as the karma score.\n\n{\n    \"title\": \"2017-11-humanities-student-major_569_college.txt\",\n    \"pub_date\": \"2017-11-05T00:00:00Z\",\n    \"Sentiment\": \"0.01\",\n    \"Subjectivity\": \"0.56\",\n    \"KarmaScore\": \"3\",\n    \"Upvotes\": \"0\",\n    \"Downvotes\": \"0\",\n    \"Wordcount\": \"371\",\n    \"Permalink\":         \"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless/dper8w9/\",\n    \"Threadlink\": \"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless\",\n    \"Commenter\": \"xPadawanRyan\",\n    \"content_scrubbed\": \"It's because of the stigma in society, because the way such subjects are advertised in society -- they make it seem like math and science are difficult subjects . . . Not everyone can write a 70+ page essay with ease, some people find math and equations to be the easy thing, but many people assume that the opposite is true for everyone.\"\n}\nThe karma metadata field is an important publicly assigned quality-of-commenter numerical value for the researcher to use as a proxy of authority when filtering for “higher” or “lower” quality comments. According to Reddit, “Posts and comments accrue votes, or points, called ‘karma’ . . . [it] is generally a measure of the perception of [the user’s] contribution to Reddit. Positive karma indicate[s] your fellow users regard your comments or posts as enjoyable and contributory to the subreddit.” The karma value is a seed used to winnow the search results into a corpus that includes the public’s approval of the comments being researched. Assuming users prefer a higher rating based on their overall karma points, then the bias of this metadata value is that it may be used to the exclusion of other commenters. The excluded commenters with low karma values could be authors of equally meaningful comments, but they are either new or their comments aren’t as highly rated by others.\n\nNonetheless, ghosting of the karma value onto the comments made by a commenter occurs since most commenters desire to increase their karma rating rather than lower it; they tend to produce meaningful comments to win more karma points. The implicit notion of a comment being equivalent to the karma rating of the commenter explicitly carries along with the comment within its metadata. Despite bias, as a research decision, the karma rating and the humanities search terms become adjustable variable values for creating quality corpora to answer the research question.\n\nOverview of the Methodology\nCorpus-A is the result of what Jo Guldi refers to as “an iterative research process that require[s] successively re-seeding, re-winnowing, and re-reading resulting samples of text from a corpus” (“Critical Search: A Procedure for Guided Reading in Large-Scale Textural Corpora”, 13). The entire Reddit archive of comments filtered by the six search terms “humanities,” “liberal arts,” “the arts,” “student,” “major,” and “college” has “constrain[ed] a large corpus around a particular question” (Guldi 11). Finding exemplary comments for further analysis of how and why students and graduates talk about humanities fields in the way that they do is what the research seeks. Since every comment includes at least two of the search terms, Corpus-A contains many comments worthy of closer inspection. But, with over 22,000 comments many are not meaningful for understanding student discourse concerning the humanities, and many comments will not help determine what influences commenters’ viewpoints. In general, sociological, economic, cultural, parental authority, and individual preference compel their opinions.\n\nBut anticipating these factors may lead to the exclusion of some specific and surprising possibilities. For instance, some comments may reveal stereotyping to the point of stigma as a primary element of student opinions within particular subreddits. Others may reveal an unexpected presence of references to “students” and “humanities” in some gaming subreddits Therefore, the search made with the hope of finding the unknown about student discourse must be wide enough to include the broadest context of possible influences behind student opinions, and be narrow enough to isolate the comments constrained by what is meant by the humanities.\n\nAs part of the WE1S project, I have analyzed the Reddit corpus using the WE1S workflow based around topic modeling using MALLET and visualized the resulting model with dfr-Browser (Goldstone) and pyLDAvis (Mabey). “A ‘topic’ consists of a cluster of words that frequently occur together. Using contextual clues, topic models can connect words with similar meanings and distinguish between uses of words with multiple meanings” (MALLET). To this point Guldi says that “[t]opic models identify semantic similarities in collections of words that are used together” (19). The semantically similar collections, or topics, may be thought of as themes, such as “jobs,” “admissions,” or “campus infrastructure,” where the documents (in this case, Reddit comments) contain varying proportions of terms most highly associated with those topics. And, each topic visually displayed in dfr-browser includes a list of comments as individual documents that contribute to it. Therefore, the grouping of the documents into coherent themes of discourse by the tools makes it possible to closely analyse within individual Reddit comments the thematic bases of student rhetoric.\n\nPyLDAvis, a Python port of the LDAvis package for R, is an important tool in the WE1S workflow for ascertaining the semantic coherence of topics generated in the model. According to Shirley and Sievert, authors of the original LDAVis package, it “attempts to answer a few basic questions about a fitted topic model: (1) What is the meaning of each topic?, (2) How prevalent is each topic?, and (3) How do the topics relate to each other?” (63). Knowing the meaning of a topic and how prevalent the topic is helped me to label the thematic topics of Corpus-A. The main component of pyLDAvis that helped me to determine the semantic relationships of topics to the comments most heavily represented in them is the relevance indicator. The authors explain “relevance,” as an indicator that gives the user the ability to see the term’s lift — “the ratio of a term’s probability within a topic to its marginal probability across the corpus”— compared with “the familiar ranking of terms in decreasing order of their topic-specific probability” (Sievert 65-6). Knowing the relevance of the terms of the topics, along with a close reading of a few of the comments that made up the topics gave me confidence of the coherent semantic relationship between the topic’s label and the documents that make up the topic.\n\nInterpretation and Methodology\nAlthough not experimented extensively, I generated the Corpus-A topic model of 200 topics from a corpus of 21,018 de-duplicated documents which appears to provide close to an optimal granularity to locate student discourses of interest. I used the following algorithm to prepare the corpus for modeling:\n\nRemove 1376 stop words from the stoplist file\nNormalize all versions of “United States of America” to “United States”\nRemove punctuation\nMerge some phrases from a standard list with underscore\nReplace “‘s” with “[.]”\nRemove duplicates from the corpus\nOnce prepared, the corpus completed modeling through the dfr-browser and pyLDAvis modules on the UCSB server Jupyter notebooks.\n\nA structured series of observation and judgment steps made in accordance with the WE1S interpretation protocol provided guidance for locating which topics are the most important in the model. Following WE1S guidelines, I went to dfr-browser’s List View and listed the topics with the most heavily weighted topics on top as in the screenshot below.\n\nMega topics shown in dfr-browser’s List View\nMega topics shown in dfr-browser’s List View\nList View shows the top 13 topics relative to their topic weights within the corpus along with their topic words and a graph of the topic distribution over time. In this view, the “mega topics” are those with values of greater than two percent of the corpus. The mega topics have the highest proportional weights and because they consist of general topic words, they are difficult to label meaningfully. For illustrative purposes, I’ve labeled one such mega topic as “Non-noun Stop Words” since it contains mostly adjectives and adverbs: words that researchers sometimes remove by way of adding them to the stop word list file to improve model coherency.\n\nThe protocol asks the researchers to note the topics of interest where the topic words appear to have a semantic relationship. In my experience, these topics have typically been topics with a less than two percent representation of the corpus and a higher than .5 percent representation. For instance, in the graphic above, Topic 150, with a 1.6 percent representation of the corpus, has the keywords “degree,“ “job,” “degrees,” “major,” “liberal_arts,” “college,” “people,” “jobs,” “field,” “majors,” “school,” “career,” “work,” “business,” and “market.” What is noteworthy about Topic 150 are the numbers of search terms that appear as keywords within the topic such as “liberal arts,” “major,” and “college.” The presence of key search terms in a topic’s keywords suggests that this should be considered a topic worthy of further investigation. The implied theme or label of the topic might be “degrees that lead to jobs.”\n\nSince the keywords of Topic 150 appeared coherent to me in List View, I turned to Topic View to examine the topic more closely.\n\nMost prominent topics for Humanities and STEM shown in dfr-browser’s Topic View\nMost prominent topics for Humanities and STEM shown in dfr-browser’s Topic View\nThe protocol asks the researcher to read the comments that contribute to the topic. After reading five of the comments that contribute to Topic 150, I concluded this is a topic of interest but the theme of the comments seemed to talk about the benefits of either STEM or humanities majors rather than degrees that lead to jobs. I therefore labeled the topic “Stem or Non-Stem Discourse.”\n\nAs Guldi states, “by thrashing the data with different tools, the digital scholar obtains insight into the bias of the tools themselves, and the variety of answers they can produce” (25). Indeed, my interpretation takes place in a back and forth manner between the dfr-browser and pyLDAvis visualizations as needed. I’m interested in the verification of pyLDAvis by the dfr-Browser and vice-versa. These tools have slightly different ways of representing topics, and comparing these representations aids the interpreter in developing semantically meaningful labels for significant topics.\n\nIn the screenshot below, I have added custom labels indicating my interpretations of the topic’s content or theme. For example Topic 121 “Political Rhetoric/Arguments” reflects general political discourse entering into the conversation of students over time. Further research into the individual documents containing this topic may or may not reveal that divisiveness in student political opinions creates a reactionary environment that accentuates stereotyping of humanities students.\n\nTo find out how students argue for and against becoming humanities majors the topics containing comments for investigation appear to be Topic 105 (“Stem vs. Non-Stem”), Topic 150 (“Stem or Non-Stem Discourse”), Topic 62 (“Follow Your Bliss”), and Topic 172 (“Humanities and Jobs”).\n\nTopics liklye to represent student discourse\nTopics likely to represent student discourse\nThese topics related to humanities majors together have 4.2% representation of the 200 topics which gives them a better than average overall proportion of the corpus. The documents that make up each topic of interest require sample reading of the underlying comments to verify if they help answer our goal question or not, but their labels indicate what we should expect to find.\n\nUsing pyLDAvis further helped me to locate coherent topics that consist of comments related to our inquiry and thus to eliminate much of the need for sample reading beyond the first few comments of each topic of interest (Wieringa). pyLDAvis simplifies the labeling of topics, and therefore it simplifies the process of determining where to search for the answer to our question within the corpus. Its visual interface for locating the topics of choice lets us look deep within the topics to know that the topics, and by association, the documents that represent the topic, are consistent with the theme of the label. In the model below Topic 105, located in the lower right quadrant, stands out in red. The relevance slider In the upper right is the primary tool of pyLDAvis.\n\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0.6\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0.6\nBy sliding the relevance value to 0.6 often the first five or so words inform the researcher with enough information for them to appropriately label a topic. In this case, the words are “stem,” majors,” “fields,” “humanities,” and “non-stem” which suggests that the comments that make up the topic contain opposing student rhetoric about humanities and stem majors.\n\nThe researcher may double-check this assumption by returning to dfr-browser’s word index page and clicking on the “humanities” link. Amongst the “Prominent Topics,” Topic 105 (“Stem vs. Non-Stem”) has the highest probability of containing the word “humanities”:\n\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0.6\nProminent Topics in the Humanities\nA sample reading of the Reddit comments associated with this topic, supports the interpretation based on Topic 105’s keywords (“humanities,” “stem,” “liberal arts,”, “engineering,” and “non-stem”); the discourse of the topic involves opposing points of view. Going back to pyLDAvis and sliding the relevance indicator to the far left, the two words of Topic 105 with the highest lift (term frequency) are “stem” and “non-stem.” The following diagram shows the image with the value of the relevance metric set to zero.\n\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0\nIn this manner of back and forth “thrashing” of the models, the researcher gains assurance that Dfr-browser and pyLDAvis agree: high polarization exists within the comments of Topic 105. The documents constituting “Stem vs. Non-Stem” most likely contain sought after student and graduate rhetoric.\n\nWorthy of note is that the list of subreddits within the top 500 documents constituting Topic 105 contains 171 different subreddits, many of which are non-academic in nature. A partial list of the names of the first 15 of 171 subreddit names that contribute heavily to Topic 105 is “6thForm,” “ABCDesis,” “academiceconomics,” “actuallesbians,” “AdviceAnimals,” “Anarchism,” “Capitalism,” “antisrs,” “ApplyingToCollege,” “asianamerican,” “AsianParentStories,” “AskAcademia,” “AskAnAmerican,” “AskEngineers,” and “AskFeminists.” These results imply that discourse about humanities and STEM majors arises out of a broad demographic base and within context across a spectrum of interests.\n\nOther topics of interest within the list labeled thus far include Topic 62 (“Follow Your Bliss”), wherein the comments, for the most part, subscribe to the idea that passions guide students towards a field of study; Topic 150 (“Stem or Non-Stem Discourse”), wherein the comments do not argue for or against the humanities but rather tell why the students have chosen a particular path; and Topic 172 (“Humanities and Jobs”) which speaks to the issue of job prospects for humanities majors. The comments that comprise each of the topics of interest require further examination to learn how best to address student concerns about the humanities.\n\nConclusion\nThe premise matching the goal of this research blog assumes that the researcher will, after studying the rhetoric and diction for and against the humanities in the documents of a topic such as Topic 105, develop optimal insight into how best to frame an answer presentable to the public in support of the humanities. Guldi states that at the end of the “critical search is [the] actual reading of particular texts,” which in this case are individual comments classified as exemplary (29). She refers to this stage as “Guided Reading,” where the “iterative encounters with the algorithm and reading allow[s] the researcher to find documents that fit best with [the] question” (29). And, although this research continues beyond the documentation here to re-model the exemplary comments of this and many other models combined, the results have proven the usefulness of the Digital Humanities tools used to find the comments and themes of student discourse about the humanities.\n\nThis blog post contains the technical information necessary for researchers who desire to explore Reddit for answers to particular questions about human discourse. It demonstrates that the Reddit archive is a vast aggregation of the English language worthy of investigating questions that would otherwise be impossible without Digital Humanities tools. Through software such as MALLET, dfr-browser, and pyLDAvis, the study shows that algorithmically analyzing a corpus into topics, or themed genres, consisting of file sets helps to answer the research question of how students talk about the humanities. For a detailed look at the results of this study, download the top-ranked 500 comments of Topic 105 (“Stem vs. Non-Stem”) here.\n\nWorks Cited\nGoldstone, Andrew. Dfr-browser. “Take a MALLET to Disciplinary History”_. 2013. 2018. _GitHub, https://github.com/agoldst/dfr-browser.\n\nGuldi, Jo. Critical Search: A Procedure for Guided Reading in Large-Scale Textual Corpora. Preprint, SocArXiv, 20 Dec. 2018. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.31235/osf.io/g286e.\n\n“Holiday on Reddit.” Upvoted,http://redditblog.com/2018/11/13/holiday-on-reddit/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2019.\n\nMabey, Ben. Python Library for Interactive Topic Model Visualization. Port of the R LDAvis Package.: Bmabey/PyLDAvis. 2015. 2019. GitHub, https://github.com/bmabey/pyLDAvis.\n\nPannucci, Christopher J., and Edwin G. Wilkins. “Identifying and Avoiding Bias in Research. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, vol. 126, no. 2, Aug. 2010, pp. 619–25. PubMed Central, doi:10.1097/PRS.0b013e3181de24bc. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.\n\nPushshift.io, files.pushshift.io/reddit/comments/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2019.\n\n“Reddit: The Front Page of the Internet.” Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/askReddit/wiki/index. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.https://www.reddit.com/r/askReddit/wiki/index\n\nSievert, Carson, and Kenneth Shirley. “LDAvis: A Method for Visualizing and Interpreting Topics.” Proceedings of the Workshop on Interactive Language Learning, Visualization, and Interfaces, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2014, pp. 63–70. ACLWeb, http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W14-3110.\n\n“TextBlob 0.15.2 Documentation.” https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/api_reference.html#textblob.blob.TextBlob.sentiment. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.\n\nWieringa, Jeri E. “Using PyLDAvis with Mallet· from Data to Scholarship”. http://jeriwieringa.com/2018/07/17/pyLDAviz-and-Mallet/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"digital-humanities\",\"ucsb\",\"raysteding\",\"big-data\",\"usr\"],\"links\":[\"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless/dper8w9/\",\"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless\",\"https://github.com/agoldst/dfr-browser\",\"http://redditblog.com/2018/11/13/holiday-on-reddit/\",\"https://github.com/bmabey/pyLDAvis\",\"https://www.reddit.com/r/askReddit/wiki/index\",\"http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W14-3110\",\"https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/api_reference.html#textblob.blob.TextBlob.sentiment\",\"http://jeriwieringa.com/2018/07/17/pyLDAviz-and-Mallet/\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "d67162256edf09af79b41f0fbea774ff4aa279fa",
  "block": 35251436,
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:40:33",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "steeming-hot",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "weight": 1
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "8e327db93369427832d862a4fa839f5b7d99bf9f",
  "block": 35251412,
  "trx_in_block": 21,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:39:21",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "author": "cheetah",
      "permlink": "cheetah-re-ray-stedinga-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:\nhttps://raysteding.blogspot.com/",
      "json_metadata": ""
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "460f3b41c6735a001abddad472446ee763af34a1",
  "block": 35251411,
  "trx_in_block": 21,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:39:18",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "cheetah",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "weight": 8
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "f49bd3f1a30fe51e991536e6582d57487b5467f0",
  "block": 35251408,
  "trx_in_block": 8,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:39:09",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "digital-humanities",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "a-digital-humanities-study-of-reddit-student-discourse-about-the-humanities",
      "title": "A Digital Humanities Study of Reddit Student Discourse about the Humanities",
      "body": "A Digital Humanities Study of Reddit Student Discourse about the Humanities\nby Raymond Steding\tPublished August 1, 2019\nPOSTED AUGUST 1, 2019 SCOTT KLEINMAN\nA STEM program is not superior to a Liberal Arts program and vice versa. There is a chance for success no matter the route any student takes — Reddit commenter VillageMed\n\nThis blog post documents how to locate Reddit social media comments that exemplify students’ and graduates’ discourse about the humanities using the tools and methods of the WhatEvery1Says project. It is based on research begun during the WhatEvery1Says 2018 Summer Research camp and work that continued into Fall 2018.\n\nReddit comments are the back and forth user posts and replies in titled subreddits–Reddit community forums. I show how Digital Humanities tools produce topics of interest or themes of student discourse such as “Jobs,” “PhD Advice,” “Stem vs. Non-Stem discourse,” “Teaching,” “Admissions,” and “Writing.” The reasons for the students’ positions are often stated clearly within the contexts of these thematic labels. Locating such “topics” of student discourse about the humanities helps to categorically understand student issues. Further, a clearer understanding of the ideas and motives expressed in the Reddit comments facilitates advocacy for the humanities. Additionally, Digital Humanities newbies will learn from this study how to process the Reddit archive to answer their own research questions.\n\nLet’s first look at the “what” of this article: at four exemplary comments expected as the outcome of the research:\n\nComment #1 PhD Advice Topic 137 subreddit: askacademia\nFor most fields in the humanities and social_sciences, you have to accept that you may end up in a job that has nothing to do with your degree. There are not enough jobs in academia for the number of students graduating with PhDs [ . . . ] for those who are in top-tier programs and willing to make that sacrifice, grad school can obviously be very personally rewarding\n\nComment #2 Stem vs. Non-Stem Topic 105 subreddit: badhistory\nPhysics student, so I can chime in here. STEM students feel that their major is harder and more rigorous than those who major in the liberal_arts, particularly since STEM fields are very math heavy . . .\n\nComment #3 Political Rhetoric Topic 121 subreddit: changemyview\n“SJW” [ . . . ] Notable demographics include liberal_arts majors in college, tumblr, BLM. As the acronym describes, they are “Social Justice Warriors” and fight for “Social Justice”\n\nComment #4 Stem vs. Non-Stem Topic 105: subreddit: college\nIt’s because of the stigma in society, because the way such subjects are advertised in society — they make it seem like math and science are difficult subjects [ . . . ] Not everyone can write a 70+ page essay with ease, some people find math and equations to be the easy thing, but many people assume that the opposite is true for everyone.\n\nThese comments touch on various issues of interest to the researcher who seeks to understand how students and graduates conceptualize the humanities. As will be seen, the process of generating the topic model itself plays a fundamental role in drawing comments like those above into the same contexts. The model demonstrates the comment’s semantic relationships from one comment to another within the same topic and the semantic relationships of topic to topic. Although this blog post doesn’t conduct a detailed review of how a close reading of exemplary comments such as those above may be used for advocacy, it does answer the question of why a researcher should use Reddit as a resource.\n\nReddit as a Data Source for Student Discourse about the Humanities\nReddit describes itself as “a website comprised of thousands of user-originated and operated communities, called ‘subreddits,’ or ‘subs,’ dedicated to a variety of interests.” Reddit’s data-rich set of global knowledge and discourse with “more than 330M monthly unique visitors and 18+billion views per month” provides the researcher through the use of Digital Humanities tools an in-depth look into comments about almost every public topic of interest (“Holiday on Reddit”).\n\nAll of this data is curated by “Moderators,” or “Mods,” who perform “a variety of functions within th[e] community, including removing spam and enforcing the rules of their subreddit” (Reddit). Since a Reddit user may create any number of pseudonyms to post comments, many times comments are expected to be deleted. The commenter might post angry comments that have nothing to do with the theme of the subreddit, or they may make irrational comments in another voice that aligns with their chosen pseudonym. Although the deletion service of the moderators doesn’t scrub the comments of all irrelevant data, it does spare the researcher some of the work. Off-topic comments and spam less often end up as tokens in the corpus submitted to computational analysis procedures. The result is that fewer spam and off-topic comments get mixed into the topic model.\n\nThe Corpus\nEach minute as many as 5000 new comments or more than ½ million new words are added. The following graphics snapped from the front page of pushshift.io depict the statistical usage of Reddit (pushift.io).\n\nStatistical usage of Reddit. Source: pushift.io.\nStatistical usage of Reddit. Source: pushift.io\nThe first job in assembling a corpus from Reddit data is to establish constraints on how much of the material to collect. For this study, a total of 3.3 terabytes of open-access Reddit comments (approximately five billion) from January 2006 through October 2018 were downloaded in JSON format from pushshift.io. The scope of this corpus is such that, if the comments were printed three per sheet of paper and each sheet stacked one on top of another, the length of the paper stack would exceed 100 miles. With such a large amount of text in the archive, the question becomes how does the researcher find what they are looking for?\n\nTo collect a corpus comprised of documents with exemplary comments such as those above, I initially filtered the downloaded Reddit data for comments containing at least one of the keywords “humanities,” “liberal arts,” or “the arts,” which resulted in a corpus of 154 files, totaling 980.5 MB of text. I next performed three further refinements. First, I filtered comments that contained the keywords “student,” “major,” or “college” (with or without affixes) into a new corpus. The python code to search the text of the 154 source files follows:\n\n#usr/bin/python\nimport os\nimport glob\npath2 = '/home/path-to-your-source-files/Student-Major/'\nfor json_filename in glob.glob(os.path.join(path2, '*.json')):\n    filename_out = (os.path.basename(json_filename))\n    filename_in = filename_out\n    grep_command = 'grep -i \\'student\\\\|major\\\\|college\\' /home/path-to-your-source-files/Reddit/Student-Major/' + filename_in + ' > /home/path-to-your-destination-files/' + filename_out  + '-student-majors-college' + '.json'\n    os.system(grep_command)\nThis second search results in 153 files totaling 335.5 MB that were run through a Python preprocessing script for proper formatting before the data were uploaded to the WE1S server. The Python script removes comments containing less than 225 words and comments with a karma score of less than or equal to 2. It also calculates the sentiment and subjectivity values of each comment through the use of the Python Textblob API; it writes out each comment as a single JSON file containing both the comment text and the metadata. The resulting corpus (“Corpus-A”) contains a total of 22,160 comments.\n\nMetadata\nThe JSON file format of the content downloaded from pushshift.io compliments the researcher’s exploration by making parsing and processing easy with Python. Each line within the files contain the following metadata:\n\n{\n    \"author\": \"xPadawanRyan\",\n    \"Author_flair_css_class\": \"\",\n    \"author_flair_text\": \"SSW / BA & MA History / PhD* Human Studies\",\n    \"body\": \"It's because of the stigma in society, because the way such subjects are advertised in society -- they make it seem like math and science are difficult subjects . . . Not everyone can write a 70+ page essay with ease, some people find math and equations to be the easy thing, but many people assume that the opposite is true for everyone.\",\n    \"Can_gild\": true,\n    \"Controversiality\": 0,\n    \"Created_utc\": 1509939054,\n    \"Distinguished\": null,\n    \"Edited\": false,\n    \"Gilded\": 0,\n    \"Id\": \"dper8w9\",\n    \"Is_submitter\": false,\n    \"Link_id\": \"t3_7b2gls\",\n    \"Parent_id\": \"t3_7b2gls\",\n    \"permalink\": \"/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless/dper8w9/\",\n    \"Retrieved_on\": 1512171532,\n    \"Score\": 3,\n    \"Stickied\": false,\n    \"Subreddit\": \"college\",\n    \"Subreddit_id\": \"t5_2qh3z\",\n    \"subreddit_type\": \"public\"\n}\nParsing and extracting information that relates to the research is necessary whatever format the corpus files are in, but if the data are in JSON format, a Python script can extract any of the Reddit metadata fields and use them elsewhere. For example, the permalink value that points to the comment thread on the Reddit website can be reformatted as a link in the dfr-browser tool for visualizing topic models. A comparison of the original comment above with the view JSON link on the document title page (in WE1S’s customization of dfr-browser) shows that the JSON list file downloaded from pushshift.io above has been reformatted by the researcher’s Python script to include the permalink value as a hyperlink to the original Reddit thread. The reformatted comment page includes other essential statistics such as the karma score.\n\n{\n    \"title\": \"2017-11-humanities-student-major_569_college.txt\",\n    \"pub_date\": \"2017-11-05T00:00:00Z\",\n    \"Sentiment\": \"0.01\",\n    \"Subjectivity\": \"0.56\",\n    \"KarmaScore\": \"3\",\n    \"Upvotes\": \"0\",\n    \"Downvotes\": \"0\",\n    \"Wordcount\": \"371\",\n    \"Permalink\":         \"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless/dper8w9/\",\n    \"Threadlink\": \"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless\",\n    \"Commenter\": \"xPadawanRyan\",\n    \"content_scrubbed\": \"It's because of the stigma in society, because the way such subjects are advertised in society -- they make it seem like math and science are difficult subjects . . . Not everyone can write a 70+ page essay with ease, some people find math and equations to be the easy thing, but many people assume that the opposite is true for everyone.\"\n}\nThe karma metadata field is an important publicly assigned quality-of-commenter numerical value for the researcher to use as a proxy of authority when filtering for “higher” or “lower” quality comments. According to Reddit, “Posts and comments accrue votes, or points, called ‘karma’ . . . [it] is generally a measure of the perception of [the user’s] contribution to Reddit. Positive karma indicate[s] your fellow users regard your comments or posts as enjoyable and contributory to the subreddit.” The karma value is a seed used to winnow the search results into a corpus that includes the public’s approval of the comments being researched. Assuming users prefer a higher rating based on their overall karma points, then the bias of this metadata value is that it may be used to the exclusion of other commenters. The excluded commenters with low karma values could be authors of equally meaningful comments, but they are either new or their comments aren’t as highly rated by others.\n\nNonetheless, ghosting of the karma value onto the comments made by a commenter occurs since most commenters desire to increase their karma rating rather than lower it; they tend to produce meaningful comments to win more karma points. The implicit notion of a comment being equivalent to the karma rating of the commenter explicitly carries along with the comment within its metadata. Despite bias, as a research decision, the karma rating and the humanities search terms become adjustable variable values for creating quality corpora to answer the research question.\n\nOverview of the Methodology\nCorpus-A is the result of what Jo Guldi refers to as “an iterative research process that require[s] successively re-seeding, re-winnowing, and re-reading resulting samples of text from a corpus” (“Critical Search: A Procedure for Guided Reading in Large-Scale Textural Corpora”, 13). The entire Reddit archive of comments filtered by the six search terms “humanities,” “liberal arts,” “the arts,” “student,” “major,” and “college” has “constrain[ed] a large corpus around a particular question” (Guldi 11). Finding exemplary comments for further analysis of how and why students and graduates talk about humanities fields in the way that they do is what the research seeks. Since every comment includes at least two of the search terms, Corpus-A contains many comments worthy of closer inspection. But, with over 22,000 comments many are not meaningful for understanding student discourse concerning the humanities, and many comments will not help determine what influences commenters’ viewpoints. In general, sociological, economic, cultural, parental authority, and individual preference compel their opinions.\n\nBut anticipating these factors may lead to the exclusion of some specific and surprising possibilities. For instance, some comments may reveal stereotyping to the point of stigma as a primary element of student opinions within particular subreddits. Others may reveal an unexpected presence of references to “students” and “humanities” in some gaming subreddits Therefore, the search made with the hope of finding the unknown about student discourse must be wide enough to include the broadest context of possible influences behind student opinions, and be narrow enough to isolate the comments constrained by what is meant by the humanities.\n\nAs part of the WE1S project, I have analyzed the Reddit corpus using the WE1S workflow based around topic modeling using MALLET and visualized the resulting model with dfr-Browser (Goldstone) and pyLDAvis (Mabey). “A ‘topic’ consists of a cluster of words that frequently occur together. Using contextual clues, topic models can connect words with similar meanings and distinguish between uses of words with multiple meanings” (MALLET). To this point Guldi says that “[t]opic models identify semantic similarities in collections of words that are used together” (19). The semantically similar collections, or topics, may be thought of as themes, such as “jobs,” “admissions,” or “campus infrastructure,” where the documents (in this case, Reddit comments) contain varying proportions of terms most highly associated with those topics. And, each topic visually displayed in dfr-browser includes a list of comments as individual documents that contribute to it. Therefore, the grouping of the documents into coherent themes of discourse by the tools makes it possible to closely analyse within individual Reddit comments the thematic bases of student rhetoric.\n\nPyLDAvis, a Python port of the LDAvis package for R, is an important tool in the WE1S workflow for ascertaining the semantic coherence of topics generated in the model. According to Shirley and Sievert, authors of the original LDAVis package, it “attempts to answer a few basic questions about a fitted topic model: (1) What is the meaning of each topic?, (2) How prevalent is each topic?, and (3) How do the topics relate to each other?” (63). Knowing the meaning of a topic and how prevalent the topic is helped me to label the thematic topics of Corpus-A. The main component of pyLDAvis that helped me to determine the semantic relationships of topics to the comments most heavily represented in them is the relevance indicator. The authors explain “relevance,” as an indicator that gives the user the ability to see the term’s lift — “the ratio of a term’s probability within a topic to its marginal probability across the corpus”— compared with “the familiar ranking of terms in decreasing order of their topic-specific probability” (Sievert 65-6). Knowing the relevance of the terms of the topics, along with a close reading of a few of the comments that made up the topics gave me confidence of the coherent semantic relationship between the topic’s label and the documents that make up the topic.\n\nInterpretation and Methodology\nAlthough not experimented extensively, I generated the Corpus-A topic model of 200 topics from a corpus of 21,018 de-duplicated documents which appears to provide close to an optimal granularity to locate student discourses of interest. I used the following algorithm to prepare the corpus for modeling:\n\nRemove 1376 stop words from the stoplist file\nNormalize all versions of “United States of America” to “United States”\nRemove punctuation\nMerge some phrases from a standard list with underscore\nReplace “‘s” with “[.]”\nRemove duplicates from the corpus\nOnce prepared, the corpus completed modeling through the dfr-browser and pyLDAvis modules on the UCSB server Jupyter notebooks.\n\nA structured series of observation and judgment steps made in accordance with the WE1S interpretation protocol provided guidance for locating which topics are the most important in the model. Following WE1S guidelines, I went to dfr-browser’s List View and listed the topics with the most heavily weighted topics on top as in the screenshot below.\n\nMega topics shown in dfr-browser’s List View\nMega topics shown in dfr-browser’s List View\nList View shows the top 13 topics relative to their topic weights within the corpus along with their topic words and a graph of the topic distribution over time. In this view, the “mega topics” are those with values of greater than two percent of the corpus. The mega topics have the highest proportional weights and because they consist of general topic words, they are difficult to label meaningfully. For illustrative purposes, I’ve labeled one such mega topic as “Non-noun Stop Words” since it contains mostly adjectives and adverbs: words that researchers sometimes remove by way of adding them to the stop word list file to improve model coherency.\n\nThe protocol asks the researchers to note the topics of interest where the topic words appear to have a semantic relationship. In my experience, these topics have typically been topics with a less than two percent representation of the corpus and a higher than .5 percent representation. For instance, in the graphic above, Topic 150, with a 1.6 percent representation of the corpus, has the keywords “degree,“ “job,” “degrees,” “major,” “liberal_arts,” “college,” “people,” “jobs,” “field,” “majors,” “school,” “career,” “work,” “business,” and “market.” What is noteworthy about Topic 150 are the numbers of search terms that appear as keywords within the topic such as “liberal arts,” “major,” and “college.” The presence of key search terms in a topic’s keywords suggests that this should be considered a topic worthy of further investigation. The implied theme or label of the topic might be “degrees that lead to jobs.”\n\nSince the keywords of Topic 150 appeared coherent to me in List View, I turned to Topic View to examine the topic more closely.\n\nMost prominent topics for Humanities and STEM shown in dfr-browser’s Topic View\nMost prominent topics for Humanities and STEM shown in dfr-browser’s Topic View\nThe protocol asks the researcher to read the comments that contribute to the topic. After reading five of the comments that contribute to Topic 150, I concluded this is a topic of interest but the theme of the comments seemed to talk about the benefits of either STEM or humanities majors rather than degrees that lead to jobs. I therefore labeled the topic “Stem or Non-Stem Discourse.”\n\nAs Guldi states, “by thrashing the data with different tools, the digital scholar obtains insight into the bias of the tools themselves, and the variety of answers they can produce” (25). Indeed, my interpretation takes place in a back and forth manner between the dfr-browser and pyLDAvis visualizations as needed. I’m interested in the verification of pyLDAvis by the dfr-Browser and vice-versa. These tools have slightly different ways of representing topics, and comparing these representations aids the interpreter in developing semantically meaningful labels for significant topics.\n\nIn the screenshot below, I have added custom labels indicating my interpretations of the topic’s content or theme. For example Topic 121 “Political Rhetoric/Arguments” reflects general political discourse entering into the conversation of students over time. Further research into the individual documents containing this topic may or may not reveal that divisiveness in student political opinions creates a reactionary environment that accentuates stereotyping of humanities students.\n\nTo find out how students argue for and against becoming humanities majors the topics containing comments for investigation appear to be Topic 105 (“Stem vs. Non-Stem”), Topic 150 (“Stem or Non-Stem Discourse”), Topic 62 (“Follow Your Bliss”), and Topic 172 (“Humanities and Jobs”).\n\nTopics liklye to represent student discourse\nTopics likely to represent student discourse\nThese topics related to humanities majors together have 4.2% representation of the 200 topics which gives them a better than average overall proportion of the corpus. The documents that make up each topic of interest require sample reading of the underlying comments to verify if they help answer our goal question or not, but their labels indicate what we should expect to find.\n\nUsing pyLDAvis further helped me to locate coherent topics that consist of comments related to our inquiry and thus to eliminate much of the need for sample reading beyond the first few comments of each topic of interest (Wieringa). pyLDAvis simplifies the labeling of topics, and therefore it simplifies the process of determining where to search for the answer to our question within the corpus. Its visual interface for locating the topics of choice lets us look deep within the topics to know that the topics, and by association, the documents that represent the topic, are consistent with the theme of the label. In the model below Topic 105, located in the lower right quadrant, stands out in red. The relevance slider In the upper right is the primary tool of pyLDAvis.\n\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0.6\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0.6\nBy sliding the relevance value to 0.6 often the first five or so words inform the researcher with enough information for them to appropriately label a topic. In this case, the words are “stem,” majors,” “fields,” “humanities,” and “non-stem” which suggests that the comments that make up the topic contain opposing student rhetoric about humanities and stem majors.\n\nThe researcher may double-check this assumption by returning to dfr-browser’s word index page and clicking on the “humanities” link. Amongst the “Prominent Topics,” Topic 105 (“Stem vs. Non-Stem”) has the highest probability of containing the word “humanities”:\n\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0.6\nProminent Topics in the Humanities\nA sample reading of the Reddit comments associated with this topic, supports the interpretation based on Topic 105’s keywords (“humanities,” “stem,” “liberal arts,”, “engineering,” and “non-stem”); the discourse of the topic involves opposing points of view. Going back to pyLDAvis and sliding the relevance indicator to the far left, the two words of Topic 105 with the highest lift (term frequency) are “stem” and “non-stem.” The following diagram shows the image with the value of the relevance metric set to zero.\n\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0\nTopic 105 in pyLDAvis with Relevance set to 0\nIn this manner of back and forth “thrashing” of the models, the researcher gains assurance that Dfr-browser and pyLDAvis agree: high polarization exists within the comments of Topic 105. The documents constituting “Stem vs. Non-Stem” most likely contain sought after student and graduate rhetoric.\n\nWorthy of note is that the list of subreddits within the top 500 documents constituting Topic 105 contains 171 different subreddits, many of which are non-academic in nature. A partial list of the names of the first 15 of 171 subreddit names that contribute heavily to Topic 105 is “6thForm,” “ABCDesis,” “academiceconomics,” “actuallesbians,” “AdviceAnimals,” “Anarchism,” “Capitalism,” “antisrs,” “ApplyingToCollege,” “asianamerican,” “AsianParentStories,” “AskAcademia,” “AskAnAmerican,” “AskEngineers,” and “AskFeminists.” These results imply that discourse about humanities and STEM majors arises out of a broad demographic base and within context across a spectrum of interests.\n\nOther topics of interest within the list labeled thus far include Topic 62 (“Follow Your Bliss”), wherein the comments, for the most part, subscribe to the idea that passions guide students towards a field of study; Topic 150 (“Stem or Non-Stem Discourse”), wherein the comments do not argue for or against the humanities but rather tell why the students have chosen a particular path; and Topic 172 (“Humanities and Jobs”) which speaks to the issue of job prospects for humanities majors. The comments that comprise each of the topics of interest require further examination to learn how best to address student concerns about the humanities.\n\nConclusion\nThe premise matching the goal of this research blog assumes that the researcher will, after studying the rhetoric and diction for and against the humanities in the documents of a topic such as Topic 105, develop optimal insight into how best to frame an answer presentable to the public in support of the humanities. Guldi states that at the end of the “critical search is [the] actual reading of particular texts,” which in this case are individual comments classified as exemplary (29). She refers to this stage as “Guided Reading,” where the “iterative encounters with the algorithm and reading allow[s] the researcher to find documents that fit best with [the] question” (29). And, although this research continues beyond the documentation here to re-model the exemplary comments of this and many other models combined, the results have proven the usefulness of the Digital Humanities tools used to find the comments and themes of student discourse about the humanities.\n\nThis blog post contains the technical information necessary for researchers who desire to explore Reddit for answers to particular questions about human discourse. It demonstrates that the Reddit archive is a vast aggregation of the English language worthy of investigating questions that would otherwise be impossible without Digital Humanities tools. Through software such as MALLET, dfr-browser, and pyLDAvis, the study shows that algorithmically analyzing a corpus into topics, or themed genres, consisting of file sets helps to answer the research question of how students talk about the humanities. For a detailed look at the results of this study, download the top-ranked 500 comments of Topic 105 (“Stem vs. Non-Stem”) here.\n\nWorks Cited\nGoldstone, Andrew. Dfr-browser. “Take a MALLET to Disciplinary History”_. 2013. 2018. _GitHub, https://github.com/agoldst/dfr-browser.\n\nGuldi, Jo. Critical Search: A Procedure for Guided Reading in Large-Scale Textual Corpora. Preprint, SocArXiv, 20 Dec. 2018. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.31235/osf.io/g286e.\n\n“Holiday on Reddit.” Upvoted,http://redditblog.com/2018/11/13/holiday-on-reddit/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2019.\n\nMabey, Ben. Python Library for Interactive Topic Model Visualization. Port of the R LDAvis Package.: Bmabey/PyLDAvis. 2015. 2019. GitHub, https://github.com/bmabey/pyLDAvis.\n\nPannucci, Christopher J., and Edwin G. Wilkins. “Identifying and Avoiding Bias in Research. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, vol. 126, no. 2, Aug. 2010, pp. 619–25. PubMed Central, doi:10.1097/PRS.0b013e3181de24bc. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.\n\nPushshift.io, files.pushshift.io/reddit/comments/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2019.\n\n“Reddit: The Front Page of the Internet.” Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/askReddit/wiki/index. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.https://www.reddit.com/r/askReddit/wiki/index\n\nSievert, Carson, and Kenneth Shirley. “LDAvis: A Method for Visualizing and Interpreting Topics.” Proceedings of the Workshop on Interactive Language Learning, Visualization, and Interfaces, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2014, pp. 63–70. ACLWeb, http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W14-3110.\n\n“TextBlob 0.15.2 Documentation.” https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/api_reference.html#textblob.blob.TextBlob.sentiment. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.\n\nWieringa, Jeri E. “Using PyLDAvis with Mallet· from Data to Scholarship”. http://jeriwieringa.com/2018/07/17/pyLDAviz-and-Mallet/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"digital-humanities\",\"ucsb\",\"raysteding\",\"big-data\",\"usr\"],\"links\":[\"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless/dper8w9/\",\"http://reddit.com/r/college/comments/7b2gls/why_do_people_assume_that_we_major_in_worthless\",\"https://github.com/agoldst/dfr-browser\",\"http://redditblog.com/2018/11/13/holiday-on-reddit/\",\"https://github.com/bmabey/pyLDAvis\",\"https://www.reddit.com/r/askReddit/wiki/index\",\"http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W14-3110\",\"https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/api_reference.html#textblob.blob.TextBlob.sentiment\",\"http://jeriwieringa.com/2018/07/17/pyLDAviz-and-Mallet/\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "e2f80d3542f3673769dba4ec806adcd4ae0f66ce",
  "block": 35251401,
  "trx_in_block": 26,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-08-04T06:38:48",
  "op": [
    "transfer_to_vesting",
    {
      "from": "ray-steding",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "10.000 STEEM"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "3c5fa35fb0df8636c29d362d22ed33d59171f310",
  "block": 33952791,
  "trx_in_block": 6,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-06-20T02:45:27",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "this-is-a-video-to-put-into-conversation-with-floridi-s-the-fourth-revolution",
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-ray-steding-20190620t024526000z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Congratulations @ray-steding! You received a personal award!\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@ray-steding/birthday2.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 2 years!</td></tr></table>\n\n<sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@ray-steding) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](https://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=ray-steding)_</sub>\n\n\n**Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:**\n<table><tr><td><a href=\"https://steemit.com/steemtoolbar/@steemitboard/steemtoolbar-update-display-bug-fixed\"><img src=\"https://steemitimages.com/64x128/http://i.cubeupload.com/7CiQEO.png\"></a></td><td><a href=\"https://steemit.com/steemtoolbar/@steemitboard/steemtoolbar-update-display-bug-fixed\">SteemitBoard - Witness Update</a></td></tr><tr><td><a href=\"https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitboard/do-not-miss-the-coming-rocky-mountain-steem-meetup-and-get-a-new-community-badge\"><img src=\"https://steemitimages.com/64x128/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUphCGZFWgt6bJ1XTtunV7esnwy6bxnGqcLcHAV3NEqnQ/meetup-rocky-mountain.png\"></a></td><td><a href=\"https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitboard/do-not-miss-the-coming-rocky-mountain-steem-meetup-and-get-a-new-community-badge\">Do not miss the coming Rocky Mountain Steem Meetup and get a new community badge!</a></td></tr></table>\n\n> You can upvote this notification to help all Steem users. Learn how [here](https://steemit.com/steemitboard/@steemitboard/http-i-cubeupload-com-7ciqeo-png)!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"image\":[\"https://steemitboard.com/img/notify.png\"]}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "e3231b3d88ba31f501e8bfb9e06e91cd664fd2ae",
  "block": 29861145,
  "trx_in_block": 26,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-01-28T20:58:51",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "8333.076165 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "092b332aff8695e7b0ee0734e1cd1f1030ac7f1a",
  "block": 27240353,
  "trx_in_block": 4,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-10-29T19:23:33",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "gioart",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "this-is-a-video-to-put-into-conversation-with-floridi-s-the-fourth-revolution",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "1a9f97cf6f37e20fd6f99896eae0e50c67a5590c",
  "block": 27240254,
  "trx_in_block": 31,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-10-29T19:18:36",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "technology",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "this-is-a-video-to-put-into-conversation-with-floridi-s-the-fourth-revolution",
      "title": "This is a video to put into conversation with Floridi's The Fourth Revolution",
      "body": "https://youtu.be/E9IUp39zXWA",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"technology\",\"rhetoric\",\"ray-steding\",\"information\"],\"image\":[\"https://img.youtube.com/vi/E9IUp39zXWA/0.jpg\"],\"links\":[\"https://youtu.be/E9IUp39zXWA\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "46475443a81b39e43c31339fa76a63a4c3dcf6d1",
  "block": 26931950,
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-10-19T02:12:45",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "28571.529675 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "b26a6133679160849679d9c4edbb282fb9f777e4",
  "block": 26216375,
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-09-24T05:19:09",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ray-steding",
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-ray-steding-20180808t223502000z",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "block": 24991073,
  "trx_in_block": 4294967295,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 4,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-12T02:46:39",
  "op": [
    "fill_transfer_from_savings",
    {
      "from": "ray-steding",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "0.177 SBD",
      "request_id": 1533782797,
      "memo": ""
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "block": 24991063,
  "trx_in_block": 4294967295,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 4,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-12T02:46:09",
  "op": [
    "fill_transfer_from_savings",
    {
      "from": "ray-steding",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "13.990 STEEM",
      "request_id": 1533782753,
      "memo": ""
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "6f5e81f67a704c5012cec9e0d7a5b4c032a90aad",
  "block": 24905019,
  "trx_in_block": 31,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-09T03:02:42",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ray-steding",
      "author": "kaliju",
      "permlink": "track-insane-asylum-unity4j-contribution---in-solidarity-with-julian-assange",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "8fbb6eb1ba59e3bf8d7d63098a921817b3540d64",
  "block": 24904947,
  "trx_in_block": 22,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-09T02:59:06",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "re-smalltownvick-hiking-along-the-connoquenessing-creek-20170810t220701264z",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "re-ray-steding-re-smalltownvick-hiking-along-the-connoquenessing-creek-20180809t025906986z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "I still like the photos and it is one year later and it is still hot here.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"nature\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "15386b3ba3f4fae013411fdcd761430c71d98bf7",
  "block": 24904698,
  "trx_in_block": 16,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-09T02:46:39",
  "op": [
    "transfer_from_savings",
    {
      "from": "ray-steding",
      "request_id": 1533782797,
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "0.177 SBD",
      "memo": ""
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "b70cb36130b81cbb636209f42653c8945c90a728",
  "block": 24904688,
  "trx_in_block": 33,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-09T02:46:09",
  "op": [
    "transfer_from_savings",
    {
      "from": "ray-steding",
      "request_id": 1533782753,
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "13.990 STEEM",
      "memo": ""
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "813beea9fa723749be0ed66a0598f9ef3993b1a2",
  "block": 24904618,
  "trx_in_block": 42,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-09T02:42:39",
  "op": [
    "account_witness_vote",
    {
      "account": "ray-steding",
      "witness": "steemitboard",
      "approve": true
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "97ce8f32714232765f4616883a345d88da68950a",
  "block": 24899673,
  "trx_in_block": 11,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T22:35:06",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "steemitboard",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "why-isn-t-there-a-runner-section-running-is-big-these-days-and-i-run",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "895b4d69b11ca7abdbb927a1543f3e5e390d9802",
  "block": 24899672,
  "trx_in_block": 10,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T22:35:03",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "why-isn-t-there-a-runner-section-running-is-big-these-days-and-i-run",
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-ray-steding-20180808t223502000z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Congratulations @ray-steding! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :\n\n[![](https://steemitimages.com/70x80/http://steemitboard.com/notifications/posts.png)](http://steemitboard.com/@ray-steding) Award for the number of posts published\n\n<sub>_Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor._</sub>\n<sub>_If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word_ `STOP`</sub>\n\n\nTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!\n\n\n> Do you like [SteemitBoard's project](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)? Then **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"image\":[\"https://steemitboard.com/img/notify.png\"]}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "8e81651603e882bc5b458bc34db4a817c4cbb2cb",
  "block": 24895950,
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T19:28:45",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "obaku",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "why-isn-t-there-a-runner-section-running-is-big-these-days-and-i-run",
      "weight": 60
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "6ce9e594f65403f89225fe7f21d34466de1a8556",
  "block": 24895861,
  "trx_in_block": 13,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T19:24:18",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ubg",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "why-isn-t-there-a-runner-section-running-is-big-these-days-and-i-run",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "2d650418f85aad0cb9a611d5a54c4e9e66e9b545",
  "block": 24895805,
  "trx_in_block": 9,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T19:21:30",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "running",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "why-isn-t-there-a-runner-section-running-is-big-these-days-and-i-run",
      "title": "Why isn't there a Runner section? Running is big these days and I run.",
      "body": "I want a runner section for marathon runners and any runner. We have great pics and are generally a well-balanced set of individuals because we run. I can tell that I need to go on the treadmill now.  Don't you feel it? Don't you feel the need for a runners section?  You got not golf section either. Instead, you have Gardening. Not many runners that I know are into gardening but they golf. Everybody, with sense in their heads golfs. But nooo, no golf section either. What's up with that? Anyhow just a few suggestions: add running and golf to your Tags.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"running\",\"golf\",\"ray-steding\",\"life\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "066dfa7b1a25c1e3c89709f05f3d2ffee4410ddf",
  "block": 24891943,
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T16:08:12",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ubg",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "the-bulldog-25k-and-50k-i-ve-signed-up-for-the-50k",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "3f58c0872510813edfcb3d42f73f410566baed1d",
  "block": 24891822,
  "trx_in_block": 30,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T16:02:09",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "obaku",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "the-bulldog-25k-and-50k-i-ve-signed-up-for-the-50k",
      "weight": 60
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "f88650d3fd392e034d3f7a613baf62fb555ad4b9",
  "block": 24891743,
  "trx_in_block": 8,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-08T15:58:12",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "running",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "the-bulldog-25k-and-50k-i-ve-signed-up-for-the-50k",
      "title": "The Bulldog 25K and 50K. I've signed up for the 50K",
      "body": "PreRun August 11th. I'll be there and at the 50K on August 25th. It is on the M.A.S.H. site and up and down the mountain behind it--twice!\n\nhttps://youtu.be/A1VCxAgOOYg",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"running\",\"ray-steding\",\"sports\",\"marathons\"],\"image\":[\"https://img.youtube.com/vi/A1VCxAgOOYg/0.jpg\"],\"links\":[\"https://youtu.be/A1VCxAgOOYg\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "488d524beee4d8e53f60645a4136257ef0320d6c",
  "block": 24844328,
  "trx_in_block": 30,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-07T00:26:09",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ray-steding",
      "author": "shepz1",
      "permlink": "re-ray-steding-re-shepz1-re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t224521823z",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "6f10feed0e2c8617e92ac50a992b9c3eab303092",
  "block": 24842317,
  "trx_in_block": 4,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T22:45:36",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "re-shepz1-re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t223049166z",
      "author": "shepz1",
      "permlink": "re-ray-steding-re-shepz1-re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t224521823z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Nice choice Ubuntu, I use it also at times. I have no idea either regards the latter.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"boycott\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "9e8bffbdd73a7925589670e1e6e403e6ed85c907",
  "block": 24842063,
  "trx_in_block": 25,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T22:32:54",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "shepz1",
      "parent_permlink": "re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t191212168z",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "re-shepz1-re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t223049166z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "@@ -174,9 +174,21 @@\n ir money\n+ and freedom\n .\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"boycott\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "45f5ec6ebdbaacae1bf3114b2a1bedf1aabe429d",
  "block": 24842021,
  "trx_in_block": 13,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T22:30:48",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "shepz1",
      "parent_permlink": "re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t191212168z",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "re-shepz1-re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t223049166z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "My computer is Ubuntu. I will be getting another and it will be a notebook that uses Ubuntu. I never figured out why people were so, how to put it, dumb when it comes to their money.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"boycott\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0d69ff299b81f0ec6cda756f2d1c0d194dd89a38",
  "block": 24841990,
  "trx_in_block": 5,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T22:29:15",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ray-steding",
      "author": "shepz1",
      "permlink": "re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t191212168z",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "acc7acbd0e83d92e272979be4da19838da1f75a3",
  "block": 24838134,
  "trx_in_block": 52,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T19:16:24",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "boycott",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "boycott-of-google-and-facebook",
      "title": "Boycott of Google and Facebook",
      "body": "@@ -1118,16 +1118,22 @@\n inosaurs\n+; like\n  most al\n@@ -1149,11 +1149,16 @@\n ies \n-become\n+of the past\n .\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"boycott\",\"google\",\"facebook\",\"posting\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "a4c2bb8a20471bf4fc4939c687e55d90901051a1",
  "block": 24838094,
  "trx_in_block": 1,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T19:14:24",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "alphabot",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "boycott-of-google-and-facebook",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "1706c4fd42defe970f28d7b43dd8d264eb7d37d9",
  "block": 24838090,
  "trx_in_block": 7,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T19:14:12",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "boycott",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "boycott-of-google-and-facebook",
      "title": "Boycott of Google and Facebook",
      "body": "@@ -608,8 +608,546 @@\n  either.\n+ Censorship by Google is inhumane and I'm a humanist so we no longer get along. I'm looking for things that humans do that brings about knowledge. The crucial decisions that individuals make to allow their greatest potentialities unfold. And, on the social level too: what societies do to enhance knowledge of the unknown; the silence that surrounds everyone. Anything that creates more of the silence (by force) that surrounds knowledge needs to be boycotted, abandoned and left in the past like the dinosaurs most all monopolies become.\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"boycott\",\"google\",\"facebook\",\"posting\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "82fc75f75c50ab29c39744832dd5dcc8d1109375",
  "block": 24838057,
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T19:12:33",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "shepz1",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "boycott-of-google-and-facebook",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "87020ce56d4368c1a462c0d95ca1ac151301fa6a",
  "block": 24838054,
  "trx_in_block": 22,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T19:12:24",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "ray-steding",
      "parent_permlink": "boycott-of-google-and-facebook",
      "author": "shepz1",
      "permlink": "re-ray-steding-boycott-of-google-and-facebook-20180806t191212168z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Both sell your information for profit, so yes a very wise move to leave them, at least you are aware enough to realise this, many of a similar age, and younger are not.\nI wish you well in your future steemit journey.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"boycott\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "b963d16477386210d189d271c3ea92ae8a2d05bb",
  "block": 24837980,
  "trx_in_block": 13,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T19:08:42",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "fastresteem",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "boycott-of-google-and-facebook",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "3c92ce1608a87f6297e83e6660e7e276e8e351f6",
  "block": 24837976,
  "trx_in_block": 33,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-08-06T19:08:30",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "boycott",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "boycott-of-google-and-facebook",
      "title": "Boycott of Google and Facebook",
      "body": "I recommend boycotting Google and Facebook. I have a lot of stuff to post here that I usually post on Facebook. I think I'm done there except for checking certain schedules and the like. I have to make it a habit because I keep falling back to all the people that I know on Facebook. I'm 62 and Facebook has a bunch of older people on it. I like to know which ones are kicking the bucket. But, they probably don't need my comments anyhow. I've had to unfollow most all of them. Something like 186 or so. I don't think much of what other people think unless it is of my interests. They probably won't miss me either.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"boycott\",\"google\",\"facebook\",\"posting\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "0d85fb6b5a081ee29c69ddf47517cd97da973501",
  "block": 23350084,
  "trx_in_block": 16,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-06-15T18:06:12",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "28773.506159 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "93bcebd4c75f0d01f996ed2be64433e77d3cb579",
  "block": 22466522,
  "trx_in_block": 33,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-05-16T00:50:45",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "education",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "the-brain-and-identity-breaking-down-barriers-of-separateness-by-teaching-children-a-new-perspective",
      "title": "The Brain and Identity: Breaking Down Barriers of Separateness by Teaching Children a New Perspective",
      "body": "@@ -1,3200 +1,47 @@\n-The Brain and Identity: Breaking Down Barriers of Separateness by Teaching Children a New Perspective%0A%0AI set out to find a method to mitigate social divisiveness and to locate research that supports a pedagogy based on a neurological perspective of who and what we are. In support of such a perspective, I found much reference material, and I found technological reasons for teaching kids neurology.%0A%0AThesis%0A%0AAccording to Jacques Lacan, people first become aware of themselves as an object during the mirror phase from the age of 6-18 months. Identity further develops with friends, associates, and affiliations. Then come the mid-life crises and a search for deeper connections with experiences that are most suited to our personalities, even if and more often than not, because the experiences represent challenges never before confronted. Along the way, we are taught to embrace our language and culture through postcolonialism studies and various literary theories. These critical and valid theories used in politics and particularly in identity politics, now being exploited by political parties through media propaganda, divide one another along partisan lines. How can we maintain a stable psychological personality in all of this and be of benefit to those around us? I believe it is time that we begin to teach grade schoolers what it means from a neurological perspective to be human. An instilled neurological attitude may be relied upon during times of psychological stress, and keep projections of our non-integrated identities from falling into perils of political propaganda and collectivism. If we learn to understand what we are, and are not, at an early age, as we grow older, we will be prepared to accept the present and embrace the future.%0A%0AThe question that I ask is not whether identity can be perceived differently to oneself because of physical and mental characteristics that change over time, but rather whether or not a person considers themselves to be the same person over time and what that self that identity has neurologically in common with everyone else. Despite our differences, can equanimity arise naturally out of the realization of our neurological similarities and possibilities? I think so.%0A%0ATo conceive of the neurological perspective that I propose integrating into the current curriculum as part of science which is already taught as early as first grade, I%E2%80%99ve arranged a video that is more telling than I could do with words.%0A%0A%0AOutline of Video%0A%0AWe come from the stars%0A%0ABut, What Are We?%0A%0AAre We Our Bodies?%0A%0AAre We Our Senses?%0A%0ACan Our Identities Be Recorded?%0A%0AWill Our Identities Traverse the Internet?%0A%0A%0AYouTube Video%0A%0Ahttps://youtu.be/E6WNWmABTfk%0A%0AOur bodies are not our identities but our identities may be and more often than not are what we identify with.%0A%0AOur senses are not our identities because we can add new senses and some are born without some of the senses.%0A%0AIf our feelings, our thoughts (even those we are not conscious of yet), and our desires can be recorded, then our identities may be recorded and simulations of our identities may be reproduced in animated forms.%0A%0AIdentity seems to be what our connectome produces.%0A%0AConclusion\n+YouTube Video%0A%0Ahttps://youtu.be/E6WNWmABTfk\n %0A%0ATh\n@@ -857,16 +857,24 @@\n 8 months\n-\n \n+ (Lacan)\n . Our se\n@@ -14307,16 +14307,207 @@\n zVvi0.%0A%0A\n+Lacan, Jacque. %22The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function as the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.%22 faculty.wiu.edu/D-Banash/eng299/LacanMirrorPhase.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2018.%0A%0A\n Marshall\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"education\",\"neuroscience\",\"ray-steding\",\"literature\"],\"image\":[\"https://img.youtube.com/vi/E6WNWmABTfk/0.jpg\"],\"links\":[\"https://youtu.be/E6WNWmABTfk\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "7b483f9a35821df0e4aa710ef8ba113b3e0c3217",
  "block": 22461845,
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-05-15T20:56:51",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "sensation",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "the-brain-and-identity-breaking-down-barriers-of-separateness-by-teaching-children-a-new-perspective",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "a09e7b389937ac4e265675a6a3eaf3004af1021a",
  "block": 22458419,
  "trx_in_block": 31,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-05-15T18:05:33",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ax3",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "the-brain-and-identity-breaking-down-barriers-of-separateness-by-teaching-children-a-new-perspective",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "530f36e8b705c4ba332851a6b7a0fa4d94fd8d94",
  "block": 22458416,
  "trx_in_block": 48,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-05-15T18:05:24",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "education",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "the-brain-and-identity-breaking-down-barriers-of-separateness-by-teaching-children-a-new-perspective",
      "title": "The Brain and Identity: Breaking Down Barriers of Separateness by Teaching Children a New Perspective",
      "body": "The Brain and Identity: Breaking Down Barriers of Separateness by Teaching Children a New Perspective\n\nI set out to find a method to mitigate social divisiveness and to locate research that supports a pedagogy based on a neurological perspective of who and what we are. In support of such a perspective, I found much reference material, and I found technological reasons for teaching kids neurology.\n\nThesis\n\nAccording to Jacques Lacan, people first become aware of themselves as an object during the mirror phase from the age of 6-18 months. Identity further develops with friends, associates, and affiliations. Then come the mid-life crises and a search for deeper connections with experiences that are most suited to our personalities, even if and more often than not, because the experiences represent challenges never before confronted. Along the way, we are taught to embrace our language and culture through postcolonialism studies and various literary theories. These critical and valid theories used in politics and particularly in identity politics, now being exploited by political parties through media propaganda, divide one another along partisan lines. How can we maintain a stable psychological personality in all of this and be of benefit to those around us? I believe it is time that we begin to teach grade schoolers what it means from a neurological perspective to be human. An instilled neurological attitude may be relied upon during times of psychological stress, and keep projections of our non-integrated identities from falling into perils of political propaganda and collectivism. If we learn to understand what we are, and are not, at an early age, as we grow older, we will be prepared to accept the present and embrace the future.\n\nThe question that I ask is not whether identity can be perceived differently to oneself because of physical and mental characteristics that change over time, but rather whether or not a person considers themselves to be the same person over time and what that self that identity has neurologically in common with everyone else. Despite our differences, can equanimity arise naturally out of the realization of our neurological similarities and possibilities? I think so.\n\nTo conceive of the neurological perspective that I propose integrating into the current curriculum as part of science which is already taught as early as first grade, I’ve arranged a video that is more telling than I could do with words.\n\n\nOutline of Video\n\nWe come from the stars\n\nBut, What Are We?\n\nAre We Our Bodies?\n\nAre We Our Senses?\n\nCan Our Identities Be Recorded?\n\nWill Our Identities Traverse the Internet?\n\n\nYouTube Video\n\nhttps://youtu.be/E6WNWmABTfk\n\nOur bodies are not our identities but our identities may be and more often than not are what we identify with.\n\nOur senses are not our identities because we can add new senses and some are born without some of the senses.\n\nIf our feelings, our thoughts (even those we are not conscious of yet), and our desires can be recorded, then our identities may be recorded and simulations of our identities may be reproduced in animated forms.\n\nIdentity seems to be what our connectome produces.\n\nConclusion\n\nThe brain is a nonlinear dynamical system that changes somewhat chaotically dependent on the input. Our concept of identity to ourselves and others is malleable. Even though people look different and act differently, others may not be who or what we think of them at the time we are making our judgments. And, they may be different (due to the brain's emergent property) now and in the future both from our perspective and from theirs. It is time to teach grade schoolers our neurological similarities because all of us are the results of our brain's activity.\n\nFinal Paper 14 May 2018\n\n\nThe Brain and Identity: Breaking Down Barriers\nof Separateness by Teaching Children a New Perspective\n\nAccording to Jacques Lacan, children become aware of themselves as an object during the mirror phase from the age of 6-18 months. Our sense of identity develops further through friends, associates, and affiliations. Then come the mid-life crises followed by a search for what it is that we missed and will find in challenging experiences most suited to our personalities. Along the way, through postcolonialism and various literary theories, we are taught to embrace our language and our culture. These critical and valid theories help create \"a positive ethnic identity [that] is associated with higher self-esteem and better grades, as well as better relations with family and friends\" (The Gale Group). However, a perception of our differences as members of races and as members of cultures becomes accentuated in political discourse known as identity-politics which is meant constructively for consciousness-awareness. The further heightening of our differences along racial lines occurs through the exploitation by political parties and through corporate media that seeks to divide cultures and peoples from one another along partisan lines. How can we maintain stable psychology and be of benefit to those around us when we are isolated and alienated from our attempts at achieving social justice?\n\nMany solutions to the problem of divisiveness in the present may be applied, but as a means to resolve divisiveness over the long term, I propose that we begin teaching grade schoolers what it means from a neurological perspective to be human. An instilled neurological attitude that makes apparent that identity results as a consequence of our brain activity may be relied upon during times of psychological stress, and it may keep projections of our non-integrated identities from falling to the perils of political propaganda and collectivism. If we learn to understand what we are and are not, at an early age, as we grow older, we will be prepared to accept who we are in the present and embrace what neuroscience will bring to our future experiences. The question that I ask is not whether identity is perceived differently to oneself because of physical and mental characteristics that change over time, or whether a person's identity and sense of achievement benefits from cultural identification or not, but rather what does the identity who realizes that they are the same person over time have neurologically in common with everyone else. Despite our differences, I argue that equanimity may arise naturally out of the realization of our neurological similarities and possibilities: if our neurological identities are really who and what we are, then our biological bodies and cultural identification should not encumber our potential achievements.\n\nIn support of teaching first graders that the brain is a part of a sensory system of body organs, the article \"Young Children's Changing Conceptualizations of Brain Function: Implications for Teaching Neuroscience in Early Elementary Settings\" (2010) by Peter Marshall and Christina Comalli details two experiments which suggest that classroom intervention about the brain acts as an \"important part of early foundational learning about biology, an area that is currently neglected in early educational curricula\" (Marshall 4). The first study suggested that \"in the elementary school years children have a relatively limited view of the brain's involvement in sensory activities and feeling states\" (Marshall 5). With educational intervention \"first-grade children were better able to confirm that the brain is involved in activities such as seeing and smelling\" (Marshall 19). No assumption [could] be made about whether the children were able to conceptualize things such as the brain and nose \"work[ing] together to carry out a given activity\" without further testing. Although, it is reasonable to conclude this is the case (Marshall 19). And, contrary to the author's expectations, the children did not realize that brain function is somewhat dependent on the nature of one's body.\n\nEthical reasons given by the authors for conducting the two experiments and further \"more intensive approaches\" were stated as: \"If carried out consistently and reinforced by adult conversation and supervision, exposing young children to information about the brain and its wider involvement in sensation and bodily functioning could have a number of implications,\" such as, \"[i]f young children understand that the brain has essential links to all bodily functions, they may realize that it must be protected from harm through (for example) wearing a helmet when riding a bicycle, eating a healthy diet, or avoiding drug use\" (Marshall 20). And, \"[l]earning about the brain may also help children to understand better and accept those people in their lives who are affected by neurological disorders\" (Marshall 20). The authors conclude the claims of their study: \"early exposure to the basic concepts about the \"'insides'\" of the body may provide a useful foundation for when children encounter more in-depth material on human and animal biology in the middle school years\" (Marshall 21).\n\nSo, it is not outside of reason to conclude that children, if taught and reinforced by adult conversation and supervision, who have identities not dependent on their bodies, will begin to conceive of themselves and others as being results of their neural activity rather than results of their race or culture. The following heartfelt examples are but a few of many that may emotionally solidify the facts of neurology and identity such that grade schoolers will carry these concepts with them into adulthood. One such example is that of 29-year-old Juliano Pinto, a Brazilian man who is paralyzed from the waist down who took the first kick of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament just by thinking. Pinto afterward commented that his robotic exoskeleton also allowed him to feel the kick (Nicolelis). As many as 36 exoskeleton companies testify to the explosive growth following Pinto's symbolic kick. And, businesses such \"as Ekso Bionics and SuitX are beginning to offer lightweight passive designs using metal and carbon-fiber frames that attach to the body or exterior scaffolding for construction and logistics workers\" (Coren). Not only are paraplegics able to utilize robotic exoskeletons to replace their natural biological counterparts, but healthy workers use the exoskeletons to temporarily extend their bodies' physical limitations.\n\nAnother example is that of Amanda Kitts a daycare owner/operator who lost her left arm in a car crash while driving to one of three daycare centers that she founded. Her robotic arm and hand gave her back the ability to clap while playing with children. That simple act made possible the realization of her identity when the rationalizations for opening the daycare centers culminated in the sound of clapping hands in which she and the children participated. The meaning of the symbolic event took place within Amanda's and the children's' minds even though only one of Amanda's biological hands created the clapping sound/gesture. It was as if she realized herself as being a whole person despite having a robotic arm. (Kuiken).\n\nIn the case of Jason Barnes, a below-the-elbow amputee drummer who now uses a prosthetic robotic arm which uses machine learning to enhance human abilities, the question arises whether or not there will come a time when amputee privilege (since Jason is now a more capable drummer because of his prosthetic robotic arm which utilizes machine learning) will be shouted from the roofs as a means to garner social justice for the biologically intact (Barnes). What I mean to suggest quite boldly is that there will come a time when who and what we are biological will cease to be a viable basis for political correctness and identity politics. As our bodies become as malleable as our brains, the basis to our identities will gradually shift away from our biological constraints.\n\nThe senses work with our brains to subjectively render the world in which we live, and to some extent, our experiences brought to us by our senses alter what we identify with. But, are our identities something that arises from the way we learn to interact with our senses? In a few instances, deaf people forgo available technological operations that allow them to hear because they do not want to lose their relationship to the deaf community. They prefer to live within the constraints placed on their reality by their biological condition. But, as neuroscience makes it cost-effective to give the deaf the ability to expand their interpretation of the surrounding world through such things as electric vests that pick up sounds and then stimulate the back with patterns in real-time which can then be interpreted by the deaf as words, there will likely be fewer deaf communities. Similarly, the BrainPort for the blind \"translates video images into simulation patterns on the surface of the tongue from a wearable video camera . . . Users feel bubble-like patterns on their tongues and interpret them as the shape, size, location, and motion of objects around them\" (TRT World). The wearer of the device sees with their tongue, draws pictures, plays basketball and can rock climb. In both of the examples above neuroscience helped to break down the barriers of separateness and made possible realizations beyond biological constraints.\n\nThe freeing of identity from biological constraints opens a neurological perspective from which to see ourselves. We can replace missing limbs with robotic arms and add the senses of seeing and hearing where there were none. These attributes of identity are physical. From the biological perspective we are our bodies and identifying with them connects us to the strength of our cultural heritage. But, as the neurological point of view replaces our biological identification with a malleable variable of possibilities, the equation that equals us becomes post-structuralist. This is not to say that we are setting ourselves up for failure by encompassing it. The neurological perspective does not diminish our biological connection to our cultural identity in the way that one would assume. We can rely on our biological identification as always, but in addition to that, we can realize our biological selves as being malleable. Only our perspective changes although to some extent our biological perspective becomes relativized.\n\nJack Gallant in his YouTube presentation on the subject of decoding the brain describes how neuroscience is capable of decoding images, including the semantic content, from low and high-level areas of the primary cortex. Approximations to what the test subject is seeing are decoded and reproduced by computers; the computers read the brain's activity and reproduce the visual images that the test subjects are seeing. He says that within sixty years or so \"brain decoding devices that are cheap, portable and very powerful will be ubiquitous.\" According to Gallant, everyone will have mind-reading devices that read \"[a]ll of [our] intentions, [our] desires, [our] attitudes, in fact, things that haven't reached conscious awareness yet\" (Gallant). Gallant's neurological perspective makes it possible to copy everything that makes up a person's identity from the biological. And, although the physical body cannot be copied, it can be modified. When we can assume the bodies of online avatars that traverse the Internet to feel the pain and joy of warriors within animated reality perhaps some of the separateness that comes with being an individual stuck inside a race and culture will dissolve.\n\nRegardless of whether or not neuroscience is introduced in the curriculum of grade schoolers, or introduced through their games, through their movies, through the people who children meet in their daily lives such as Amanda Kitts, or through the growing industries cropping up around neuroscience, the perception that our bodies and by extrapolation our races and our cultures are fixed parts of our identities is changing. What that means to an online community of super-powered heroes who sense the cyber-world as if it were real I do not know. But, along with our changing perception of who and what we are the perspectives of identity politics will likely have to change or fall by the wayside. The degree to which media and social engineering's effectiveness propagandizes race and the cultural aspects of our identities as a means to divide us along partisan lines is proportional to our ability to realize the similarities of the resultant of that which arises out of matter mapped as our connectome structures. And, what do we get when we replace our racial and ethnic characteristics that act as a basis to our cultural heritages with malleable simulations shared between all peoples but a more vibrant and creative coexistence that looks away from the past and towards what is possible.\n\nWorks Cited\n\n\nBarnes, Jason. \"Jason Barnes Cyborg Drumming Concert|Sci-Fi Meets Nature.\" YouTube, uploaded by Jason Barnes, 24 Mar. 2014, youtube.com/watch?v=hyervazVvi0.\n\nCoren, Michael J. \"Robot exoskeletons are finally here, and they’re nothing like the suits from Iron Man.\" Quartz, 02 May 2017, qz.com/971741/robot-exoskeletons-are-finally-here-and-theyre- nothing-like-the-suits-from-iron-man/. Accessed 12 May 2018.\n\nGallant, Jack. \"Human brain mapping and brain decoding. | Jack Gallant | TEDxSanFrancisco.\" YouTube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 31 Oct. 2017, youtube.com/watch?v=hyervazVvi0.\n\nMarshall, Peter J., and Christina E. Comalli. “Young Children's Changing Conceptualizations of Brain Function: Implications for Teaching Neuroscience in Early Elementary Settings.” Early Education &Amp; Development, vol. 23, no. 1, 2012, pp. 4–23.\n\nNicolelis, Miguel. \"Miguel Nicolelis: Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it.\" YouTube, uploaded by TED, 26 Jan. 2015, youtube.com/watch?v=HQzXqjT0w3k. Accessed 13 May 2018.\n\nThe Gale Group Inc. \"Identity Development.\" Encyclopedia.com, 2002, www.encyclopedia.com/children/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/identity-development. Accessed 12 May 2017.\n\nTRT World. \"Blind people can now use their tongues to see.\" YouTube, uploaded by TRT World, 28 Feb. 2018, youtu.be/1wRoRfub2HY. Accessed 13 May 2018.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"education\",\"neuroscience\",\"ray-steding\",\"literature\"],\"image\":[\"https://img.youtube.com/vi/E6WNWmABTfk/0.jpg\"],\"links\":[\"https://youtu.be/E6WNWmABTfk\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "371ee240bfa628bd7dc46f268868656087b2b05a",
  "block": 21467671,
  "trx_in_block": 7,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-04-11T07:46:27",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ray-steding",
      "author": "davidpakman",
      "permlink": "5468mo7v",
      "weight": -10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "170c054b75d207f6c92e0cf06874b925d757fd19",
  "block": 21467467,
  "trx_in_block": 17,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-04-11T07:36:15",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ray-steding",
      "author": "joshsigurdson",
      "permlink": "fymphj3f",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "884b926f9057178eb42d7859a61bad86db0e84bd",
  "block": 21467380,
  "trx_in_block": 35,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-04-11T07:31:54",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "ray-steding",
      "author": "pressfortruth",
      "permlink": "2notckr2",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "b3197e89f158a062d1d981dcb52e3ef5bf0013d6",
  "block": 21454402,
  "trx_in_block": 93,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-04-10T20:43:00",
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "ray-steding"
      ],
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"follow\",{\"follower\":\"ray-steding\",\"following\":\"dtube\",\"what\":[\"blog\"]}]"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "8b52672a0aa5c261e8f4deb8324a9968a9b5dcdf",
  "block": 21454400,
  "trx_in_block": 1,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-04-10T20:42:54",
  "op": [
    "account_update",
    {
      "account": "ray-steding",
      "posting": {
        "weight_threshold": 1,
        "account_auths": [
          [
            "dtube.app",
            1
          ]
        ],
        "key_auths": [
          [
            "STM7EajizRhP7nP68DVBos6MWJmJ8T9GmwiKRYjivqMcacnykdjHP",
            1
          ]
        ]
      },
      "memo_key": "STM7PTb2NGoviqWxpJFq3rE87FQ87pSMruwyVbrtFDA43yZKUnNcQ",
      "json_metadata": "{\"profile\":{\"profile_image\":\"https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fphoto.php%3Ffbid%3D246744422363005%26set%3Da.133873543650094.1073741826.100010823478719%26type%3D3\",\"name\":\"Ray Steding\",\"about\":\"Founder - Linux Public Broadcasting Network / Writer\",\"location\":\"Woodland Hills, California\",\"website\":\"http://raysteding.blogspot.com\"}}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "ac1e3a4daa0c2c3876e164f36545f72fac21849f",
  "block": 21213054,
  "trx_in_block": 5,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-04-02T11:34:15",
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "voter": "yogafordiabetes",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "getting-in-shape-with-type-1-diabetes",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "691ca299fb21f2fe279ced862aef228a992557bf",
  "block": 20395869,
  "trx_in_block": 10,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-03-05T01:24:45",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "literature",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "a-response-to-a-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-prompt",
      "title": "A Response to a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Prompt.",
      "body": "![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTtfeTwfPrhgm3zpzRUJB7Fww7hHfxbrxMbBPfjqwTpvS/image.png)\n\nExplore the various (at least 3) YouTube trailers for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then write at least a paragraph indicating which one corresponds best with how they are presented in Stevenson’s novella.You might consider what sort of film you would create if you were given that task. How much neuroscience information would you include?\n\nSpencer Tracy in the 1941 film seems to be the most like the Hyde character in the book, but I liked the 2003 version starring John Hannah because Hyde appears as a doppelganger evil twin like William Wilson in Poe’s story. Similar to William Wilson who seems to say \"In me didst thou exist—and in my death, see ... how utterly thou hast murdered thyself,\" Stevenson's Jekyll murders himself with the death of Hyde (Wikipedia).The Spencer Tracy Hyde displays characteristics such as physical ugliness, quickness and sometimes he seems smaller, and his sinister mannerisms are enough to capture the sense of Hyde within Stevenson’s novelette. He is a character that could be socially acceptable enough to have an apartment, be with ladies of ill-repute and communicate. In the 1932 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the transformed identity appears unapproachable and guilty of being too ugly to fulfill Stevenson's character's activities such as having an apartment and a bank account.\n\nThe 2003 Hyde is more characteristic of the psychological shadow side of a person that gets released from a compartmentalized psyche to gain control while the good Dr. Jekyll remains hidden. Although not being evil enough to transform the physicality of Dr. Jekyll, the 2003 Mr. Hyde blends into the social as a means to inflict more significant harm. The higher the repulsiveness, the less likely other people will interact with it. With the latest revelations about the Harvey Weinsteins and Dick Cheneys out there today it is easy to see how wealthy evil people are much worse than well-to-do dwarfish ugly people. Money like power, magic or scientific knowledge of drugs gives free reign to the greedy diabolical shadow side that is within each of us. That is why I think that the 2003 Hyde is more like what Stevenson intended despite what he wrote. And, this is interesting to me because it implies that a written message may carry the same message as a film and yet be very different. Nonetheless, the book and the various film adaptations show us how we still carry the animalistic need to survive within our brain circuitry.\n\nIn thinking about making a film, I would look back over my life to see where I might find circumstances that could have become hyperbolic had I not put the effort in to control my Mr. Hyde. Thinking about what type of neuro-circuitry might cause Mr. Hyde to surface, I am reminded of a celebration that I attended: “A Tribute to Joseph Campbell with Joseph Campbell” where Campbell was present at the Screen Directors Guild in 1987 several months before his death. We watched a film about George Lucas and how he developed the characters from the works of Campbell and Jung. Darth Vader and the dark side come from the shadow archetype in Jungian psychology. The Hyde side of one’s personality that usually remains hidden in public must be conquered by the hero in each of us and integrated into the psyche that we may use the power of the force but not be overcome by it; channel it to enable us to follow our bliss. If I were to make a film, I would start with research into whether or not neurological structures may exist for the myths/archetypes since they have spontaneously arisen among all peoples. If not, then I’d reframe the mythological evidence that currently suggests the validity of the archetypes because it ensures a broad audience.\n\nFor some interesting insights into Joseph Campbell’s ideas see his interview with Bill Moyers and my favorite clip of Joseph Campbell where he talks of teachers bringing students to life at http://billmoyers.com/content/ep-1-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-hero%E2%80%99s-adventure-audio/ (Links to an external site.) For a thesis on Jung, Campbell, Myths, and Archetypes see “The Myth is With Us: Star Wars, Jung’s Archetypes, and the Journey of the Mythic Hero” by Jacqueline Botha https://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.1/1816/bothaja_myth_2006.pdf?sequence=1 (Links to an external site.)",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"literature\",\"ray-steding\"],\"image\":[\"https://steemitimages.com/DQmTtfeTwfPrhgm3zpzRUJB7Fww7hHfxbrxMbBPfjqwTpvS/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"http://billmoyers.com/content/ep-1-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-hero%E2%80%99s-adventure-audio/\",\"https://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.1/1816/bothaja_myth_2006.pdf?sequence=1\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "01bf5a26fe4a3e2d27c5883fbb89fcee55dee511",
  "block": 19695823,
  "trx_in_block": 22,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-08T17:36:33",
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegator": "steem",
      "delegatee": "ray-steding",
      "vesting_shares": "28976.815675 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "3f5afb3df5880644083d3dbe52648dfbf6e8ce69",
  "block": 19362248,
  "trx_in_block": 63,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-01-28T03:08:57",
  "op": [
    "transfer",
    {
      "from": "bittrex",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "17.990 STEEM",
      "memo": "STM7PTb2NGoviqWxpJFq3rE87FQ87pSMruwyVbrtFDA43yZKUnNcQ"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "abafbfbe65f9f24258807059cd3a7e37413c5fe7",
  "block": 19362216,
  "trx_in_block": 52,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-01-28T03:07:21",
  "op": [
    "claim_reward_balance",
    {
      "account": "ray-steding",
      "reward_steem": "0.000 STEEM",
      "reward_sbd": "0.029 SBD",
      "reward_vests": "22.539193 VESTS"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "2f3293407c90f422df596f98ca18c35096fe6bcc",
  "block": 19362207,
  "trx_in_block": 29,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-01-28T03:06:54",
  "op": [
    "transfer",
    {
      "from": "bittrex",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "2.010 STEEM",
      "memo": "STM7PTb2NGoviqWxpJFq3rE87FQ87pSMruwyVbrtFDA43yZKUnNcQ"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "62fd9e3d064985e6eb98c8038faa77a7f69655e7",
  "block": 19358732,
  "trx_in_block": 49,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-01-28T00:13:06",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "music",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "damir-simic-at-the-universal-city-walk-hard-rock-cafe-battle-of-the-bands-2003",
      "title": "Damir Simic at the Universal City Walk Hard Rock Cafe Battle of the Bands 2003",
      "body": "@@ -242,8 +242,37 @@\n etwork).\n+%0Ahttps://youtu.be/c0NKZnn85qI\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"music\",\"damir-simic\",\"ray-steding\",\"lpbn\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\",\"image\":[\"https://img.youtube.com/vi/c0NKZnn85qI/0.jpg\"],\"links\":[\"https://youtu.be/c0NKZnn85qI\"]}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "693e8803725dc0b6959585a8cbb60623fb86cfce",
  "block": 19358719,
  "trx_in_block": 59,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-01-28T00:12:27",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "music",
      "author": "ray-steding",
      "permlink": "damir-simic-at-the-universal-city-walk-hard-rock-cafe-battle-of-the-bands-2003",
      "title": "Damir Simic at the Universal City Walk Hard Rock Cafe Battle of the Bands 2003",
      "body": "This recording is from my camera which was located on the bar. I considered Damir the best guitarist in all of the bands. The Battle of the Bands recordings were some of the most fun recordings that I did at LPBN (Linux Public Broadcasting Network).",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"music\",\"damir-simic\",\"ray-steding\",\"lpbn\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "5480def62515deac90cbb53b9e628a6733337856",
  "block": 19197743,
  "trx_in_block": 28,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-01-22T09:59:24",
  "op": [
    "transfer",
    {
      "from": "jrvacation",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "0.001 SBD",
      "memo": "Thanks for your upvote! Here’s your reward. FOLLOW and upvote me too. Thank you!"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "trx_id": "6623ebe2cacd57532b12b7f5d5a0f81b5e8e2334",
  "block": 19192694,
  "trx_in_block": 2,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-01-22T05:46:54",
  "op": [
    "transfer",
    {
      "from": "jrvacation",
      "to": "ray-steding",
      "amount": "0.001 SBD",
      "memo": "Thanks for your upvote! Here’s your reward. FOLLOW and upvote me too. Thank you!"
    }
  ]
}