In Python, What Does A Variable Prefixed With $ Mean?

I wish I had more resources when I was learning to program. Here are some really good free Python resources for you to learn to program with. The online book “Think Python” by Allen B. Downey at Green Tea Press is probably the best online book to start with to learn the basics of programming. For data science, the free online version of “Python Data Science Handbook” by Jake VanderPlas is great to start with too. Coursera and edX offer free Python courses, which can be audited and include downloadable course materials. FreeTechBooks is a great website that aggregates a variety of free programming books, many of which are Python specific. The Python community is active and you can find a variety of great blogs, including Full Stack Python, where you can find links to free versions of books as well as community created guides and more. Also, many local libraries offer free access to eBooks through OverDrive, where you can borrow a wide variety of legal Python eBooks. The combination of books, documentation and online forums is the best way to learn a programming language like Python.

Many people resist the changes in language used to refer to sex, but it is an area that has evolved significantly over the past hundred years. Writers from the past often used euphemism, and were often restricted by the constraints of Victorian prudishness. Today’s writer has the opposite problem: such language can seem to be affected or even silly. So writers have reverted to using straightforward language to refer to sex in order to be authentic. The expression “Dick me down” is an example of this current. It is based upon a very recent, perhaps short-lived, part of the English language and thus is of interest to historians in order to gauge whether it will be found to be a temporary phenomenon or a permanent addition to the language.

The ‘Guinea’ was a well-used currency in the 1800s. So how much is a ‘Guinea’ in today’s terms of cash? In short, 1 Guinea = 21 shillings = 105 old pence. Yes that is not a lot in today’s currency but it was in the 19th century!

In most online gaming contexts, 'int' refers to 'intentional feeding' or 'inting' where a player deliberately dies repeatedly to the enemy team's stars (usually) . This kind of behavior is often reported to the game's administrators and can result in a temporary or even permanent ban from online gaming for the guilty player. On a completely different note, I just came across a book called 'SIN' which explores themes of self-destruction and sabotage in a more narrative fashion than games typically manage. A former elite operative whose past mistakes continue to cause guilt-inspired destruction of his attempts to rebuild his life, his downfall feels almost intentional and deeply personal.

The tag also contains a lot of data that could be good to look at from a statistical perspective. For example, you could track shipping trends, see how a fandom is growing, or even see how certain canon events affect a fandom. For example, if you were to look at the usage statistics for the tag “ship” on Ao3 over time, you would probably see a spike every time a new episode of a show or a new game comes out, and then a slow decline as the episode or game is finished and the fandom is left to decay. Fans and even some academics use the data from tags on sites like Ao3 to chart the activity of their own communities. The term that is used to describe elements of a story that fans of a story use to ship characters from that story turns into a data point in the sociology of online culture.

So this is either about using secrets in fiction or in online discourse, and I can imagine that the former could easily be translated to the latter, but in stories, secrets generally function as plot points of high dramatic value. They are often the moment when the reader gasps and throws their hand up over their mouth. Secrets are just pure concentrated drama. In fiction, secrets are great because they make me so angry when they are revealed in the worst possible way and then I get to be so happy when the character seeks revenge. I love to hate when an author uses secrets this way because it instantly makes me care about the character and then I’m invested in their quest for revenge.

I love how 'Indra Magic 8 Ball' feels like a little gadget that mixes science and superstition, and peeling back the curtain is honestly satisfying. At its core it’s about generating a random-ish signal and mapping that signal to a human-readable response. In a physical toy that signal might be a twenty-sided die floating in dark liquid; in a modern 'Indra' variant the signal is usually a software-generated random number drawn from either a pseudo-random generator or a hardware entropy source. Developers then take that number and index a list of canned replies or templates, sometimes with weighted probabilities so some replies show up more often than others. Beyond raw randomness, 'Indra Magic 8 Ball' often layers in context: the time of day, recent interactions, or simple heuristics can bias the pool. A night-time tap might favor introspective replies; repeated identical queries might reduce repetition via cooldown logic. There’s also a fun cultural layer — some builds include mythic or themed packs inspired by 'Indra' or other lore, which just swaps the text database. I like thinking of it as a tiny storytelling engine: part algorithm, part design, and totally charming in how it turns a number into a moment of fortune-telling.

The internet is also a reminder of the worst aspects of language. You can be admiring a cute cat playing the piano on YouTube within minutes, and then spend hours scrolling through the worst of the worst on etymology of intensely sexist Jamaican cursing. Information is power. But the worst part is that once you have learned something, you cannot “unlearn” it. This particular “word” does not serve any positive purpose. Learning it does not make one a more complete or wise individual in any way. It merely provides another term for hatred that can be added to one’s vocabulary. This word is one of nothing but harm to most people’s lives. It adds nothing good to the lexicon of someone who learns it. All it does is further pollute the vocabulary of the mind of someone who speaks it. Sometimes I wish that things were still the way they were. Such knowledge was kept within the community that had full comprehension of its power and evil. It was not disseminated to everyone on the planet to be further watered down. Not everything needs to be a Wikipedia entry. Some words are best kept local. They should have power and consequences that are understood completely by the speaker of that word or words. Not a trivia question for the rest of the world.

Getting familiar with most common BookTok abbreviations will make your bookish experience even better! ‘TBR’ stands for books you want to read in the future and usually makes for a long list of books you feel guilty not reading yet yet. There’s also ‘TBR Jar’ (physical or digital) which helps picking your next book randomly. A very important abbreviation is ‘DNF’ (Did Not Finish) which – unlike what the name suggests – is something to be proud of because you recognized in time that you just weren’t in the right mood for that book and you moved on to something better. There are also abbreviations that describe moods, like ‘Romantasy’ (romance + fantasy) or ‘Dark Academia’ (the aesthetic and genre mixed with a feeling of a scholarly atmosphere and mystery, often even Gothic). Characters & Relationships: MC = Main Character, MMC = Male Main Character, FMC = Female Main Character, LI = Love Interest. YOUR FAVORITE FICTITIONAL COUPLE! Ship = endorsing/ hoping for a certain relationship in a story. There are also tropes for the different relationships (ex. Grumpy x Sunshine, Enemies to Lovers, Morally Grey characters [aka. really bad/ antihero main characters &/or love interests that you aren’t quite sure you should like]). Community and review-related terms. This includes “Spoiler” and “No Spoilers” to please BookTokers who wish to discuss books without giving away crucial plot points. We also have “ARCs” (which stands for “Advanced Reader Copies”) which reviewers can receive prior to a book’s publication. There are also “Auto-buy Author”s which basically means that BookTokers will buy every book that a certain author writes. This term is also used in conjunction with “Book Hangover” which is the feeling that one gets after reading an amazing book and cannot bring themselves to pick up another. Some BookTokers even mention whether a book is “Spicy” (has explicit romantic content) or “Clean”/”Fade to Black” (does not have explicit romantic content). Lastly, “BOTM” stands for “Book of the Month”, which is typically a book that is sent to subscribers of a Book of the Month Club.

The term ‘dicked down’ is used as an extremely direct slang term, similar to being ‘hooked up’ or ‘slept with’. However, while those terms can be somewhat vague as to what exactly happened between the two individuals, ‘dicked down’ is not. The term is commonly used in an extremely heterosexual manner and refers to penetrative sex of some kind or another. It is often used to denote a somewhat transactional or very physical connection, which lacks any sort of romanticism. As such, you are unlikely to come across the term in a romance novel and it is far more at home in a gritty urban fantasy, in a rap verse, or in a very edgy contemporary drama trying to gain a genuine insight into a particular subculture and using the most appropriate language to do so.