#(because I value human made stuff and AI stuff has no soul) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

namelessmewmew · 1 year

Photo

[Image ID: Shown is a rough pixel art drawing of an anthro zombie raccoon character. They have bright purple fur and high rainbow pigtails. They are wearing various accessories, including a rainbow spiked collar, a rainbow spiked tail band, rainbow sleeves, rainbow chains, a large pink bow, some pink and blue hairclips and a studded belt. They are looking at the viewer. There a static/noise filter applied to the whole image. END ID]

Title: Z0MB1E RACC00N N0 CL1CKBA1T

Had alot alot of fun making this. :] The smiley's, stars and hearts are brushes I made X). Oh and I also made the static/noise texture! I wanted to create a old fuzzy image vibe but it’s also, like the watermark, meant to be obnoxious to nft fans/ai prompters! Two for the price of one!

Warning gigantic wall of text ahead.

Rambling: [about my irrational anxiety and ai prompted creations. I'm okay and please don't worry, k? I just wanted to mention alot of stuff that's been on my mind because lots of artists are probably also thinking stuff like this and might need encouragement. Their also may be typos and incoherentness, so if there is just let me know. probs will edit this later.]

Rambling [About anxiety] if you think that maybe some cheesy encouragement to make 'shit' art might do you some good.

Been going through the classic if I make bad art I am a bad person phase this year again and that combined with how busy I have been with studies and work I haven’t had time to work on improving my art so I have been telling myself that I just can’t make art so haven’t been making much this year honestly. [Again, I just have weird anxiety, please don’t worry k?] So, when making quick rough stuff like this, I feel alot more at peace with just creating stuff. I'll try to ride this 'you are allowed to make stuff that might be a bit or very shit' train for my sake for as long as I can. I feel alot more confident in making my rough paint 3d stuff, making a 'shit' voxel model, make something in 30 minutes in mspaint, draw something using highlighters and old lined exam pad.

Rambling [About 'ai 'art'] if you think that maybe some cheesy encouragement to keep going as an artist might do you some good.

I have been for awhile [and still am aiming for] my art skills getting to the point where I am able to make soft shaded anime paintings with amazing anatomy and super expressive faces and full detailed backgrounds, but with how AI Prompters have shown again how their are people [and big corps of course] that only care about the end product and could care less about human heart and soul, I have been thinking a lot about my relationship to the art I create and I think if you are self-conscious about your art not being good enough, or professional enough or reasonably feel mis-treated as an artist I think you should be kinder on yourself. That you should value the fact that you put whatever amount of skill and love for art you have into your art, whether you started a few seconds ago or decades ago. No matter if you think their are areas you really need to improve in or not. Wanting to improve or make grand things is wonderful and a good thing to strive for but like the whole point of art is just to connect with people, to express whats going on inside you, to analyze or interact with something you love like a video game, movie or book, to let your creativity fly and make your own thing, make a living off your passion by making paid art for people, or even just because you think it would be cool to make something! You, me and many other regular people that are artists and non-artists will continue to care about the soul behind art, about their being a person behind the art. We need to continue to care about human created art. If you are on fence about caring, I urge you to at least consider it. Not just but especially for the people that depend on it but also just for the sake about caring about such a base human thing that has been apart of our culture since basically since we started to exist!

I understand how it's hard lately to keep going as an artist and I am actively having to fight myself against discouraging 'I should just quit art' thoughts, because shit like Ai prompters getting hundreds of followers, selling ai 'art' commissions, training models off specific artists works [including recently decreased ones, mind you!] is very disheartening [Especially with it seeming like they have support of many big corps and sites, including da!] No one should be trying to tell you as an artist or lover of art to not be upset! You have very right to be! Especially if art is your livelihood! Especially if art is very something personal to you! Especially if you rightfully think people should just give a shit about art!

AI Art does suck AND it is actively harming artists work. Especially artists that depend on surviving on their work. If I have a chance of convincing you, someone, anyone that is on the fence or is extremely pro ai prompted creations, I might as well ask you to listen to artists and let them have at least a change to explain why and how ai prompted creations are wrecking the world of art and why artists are rightfully upset.

Please if you can support artists, support them, especially those in need. Doesn't need to just be financially, sharing and engaging with art you think is cool is something that matters as well! We are all just regular people that all are just trying to survive!

Done Rambling:

All of that negativity and positivity leads me to a thing I made spontaneously in 3 days: A very silly very short [2-3 minutes] twine game about the above zombie raccoon trying to escape a rave forest. I really enjoyed making the art for it! It's ‘shit’ and I absolutely love it!

Character[s]:

xX Arc Doom Glitter Xx [OC]

Have a good day/night further!

[MewMewMew~]

#Nameless creates #Furry #Furryart #eyestrain #tw eyestrain #eyestrain tw #Cartoony Blood #ask to tag

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pazodetrasalba · 2 years

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Charm and Strange - from quarks to thoughts

Dear Caroline:

One of my habits, and a useful one for my profession (as it gives me provocative ideas to get the students talking) is to try to read at least one book a year that is really, really far from the things I believe in and cherish, so it's sort of a self-induced trigger, but also a test of my beliefs (Tyrion: A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge). I gather that you are one of those persons that really enjoys intellectual jousting (you mentioned as much in a post were you explained the pleasures of the rationalist community), but you also sharpen the edge somewhat by expecting yourself and others to follow-up on their rational conclusions.

This comes to mind because reading what you posted above, which I interpreted as you assimilation of the Rationalist Jedi Mind Tricks that have allowed you to internalize the very weird and frequently shocking and unpalatable sequiturs of Utilitarianism / Rationalism / EA -at least that is how they feel from my perspective. Stuff like poly, obsessing with AI, conflating practical with moral judgements, of the 'harvesting organs from a healthy person and any other ends-justify means' type, or rigorously trying to quantify the value of human and animal life. I have been reading some articles about Peter Singer's thought, as he seems to be the main intellectual referent for EA, and find myself so at odds with much of it that he certainly deserves a place in my 'triggering reads' booklist. I would be grateful for a specific recommendation on any one of his volumes.

It would take me too long to nitpick some of my disagreements, but I imagine the most fundamental one stems from my rejection of his axiomatic assumption that the good of any one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. I mean, this might be obvious from a certain abstract perspective (humans are generally equal in mental capacity and basic worth, and ought to enjoy the same set of basic rights) but I feel is at the same time deeply morally wrong, and that some individuals (and precisely because they are seen as individuals, not as indistinct cogs of an abstract Totality) can legitimately stake a greater claim to our moral support: our family, our friends, our neighbors, those who we can interact with at a personal and human level. I've developed a certain scepticism for 'love for humanity when it is not concrete and grounded, probably as an afterthought of what some of the unpleasant consequences this can effect. Here rings very true for me that Kantian maxim of always treating others as ends in themselves, and not as means, each with intrinsic value and dignity and irreducible to some number or classification algorithm (or in Granny Weatherwax's words, “Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.”) .

A very interesting (and ancient!) take on this which I have read about is that between the philosophical confrontation between Confucianism and Mohism in 5th century BCE China, where the Mohist proclamation of indistinct universal love as their key idea and policy goes head to head with the other sides's beliefs in distinctions. i think you would enjoy the Mozi greatly. I recently made a review of it which you can watch if you feel piqued. Whether it be Mozi's, the Gospel's or Utilitarianism's demand to love everybody in the same way, and dream on how wonderful the world would be if such a theory become a fact, I can only scratch my head and ponder at the impossibility -and from my personal stance, even undesirability- of such a world.

Quote:

And it is love that opens our eyes to the true source of the worth of persons: their inner preciousness, unrepeatability, and uniqueness. It is precisely a glimpse of the unrepeatable uniqueness of another human person that inspires love. Once this glimpse is achieved and love springs forth in the soul — as it does like a surprising gift — that love then has the remarkable power of allowing you to see more clearly and deeply the unique preciousness, as well as the humanity, of the person you love. That vision in turn inspires more love.

Peter J. Colosi

#caroline ellison #contrarianism #my issues with utilitarianism let me show you them

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hopeymchope · 3 years

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Wonder Egg Priority finale thoughts

My Tumblr has a lot of anti-bully content, so it was probably no surprise when I began to watch and enjoy Wonder Egg Project this past spring. The series famously hit production delays that forced them to put out a mid-series recap episode, and that decision in turn forced them to push the final episode until late June. But now that the series (or at least season 1) is out there and complete, I thought I’d talk about how it all shook out in the end as well as the questions it left me sitting with.

For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of the context: Wonder Egg Project deals with four middle-school teen girls who’ve undergone hardships either at home or at school or both. They all lose someone they care about to tragic suicides, and then they discover the titular wonder eggs. They get these eggs from a vending machine and then, when they fall asleep, they enter a dreamworld where these eggs hatch to reveal a young person who recently committed suicide. For that night, it is the duty of the girl who got that egg to fight and defend that suicide victim from monstrous enemies that represent their abusers and oppressors. The girls are told that if they protect enough of these victims over many nights, they will be able to resurrect the specific person they lost to suicide. But of course, if you get injured or killed in the dreamworld, it affects your body in reality as well.

The squad: Ai, Neiru, Rika, and Momoe.

Obviously, bullying is among the topics most frequently explored here, but we also deal with so many other terrible things that people might experience during childhood and adolescence. Physical, verbal, and sexual abuse are all on the table. Coming to terms with one’s gender identity is raised. It’s a show that manages to tackle a lot of heavy subjects through the lens of what’s essentially magical girl combat. I mean, there are no outfit transformations or any of that stuff, but still.

With THAT out of the way, let me talk about how the series wrapped up.

It’s clear to the viewers that there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense during the show — it’s intentionally very trippy and ethereal at times — and there’s also a lot that raises obvious questions even if you grasp it. Where do the eggs and their connection to the recently deceased come from? How do the psychological traumas of the various egg-children manifest as monsters that can literally kill you? What’s the deal with Acca and Ura-Acca and their freaky dummy bodies? What are they getting out of this whole deal with the eggs and the girls? What do the repeated references to the “temptation of death” mean? How does access to the Egg Garden even work? Is it really possible to resurrect their dead friends? Is Mr. Sawaki a predator or a chill guy or what? Why did Neiru’s sister stab her? And so on.

The writers could’ve opted to keep things mysterious and hazy and metaphysical for the entire run or they could’ve provided lots of explanations and tried to ground this weird story in some sort of strange logic, but I’m actually pleased that they opted to go down the middle. There are answers for many things, but not for all. And when those answers come, they typically just raise more questions as well as doubts to their validity.

SPOILERS for the finale/”special episode” below the cut.

So, obviously the answers for Acca and Ura-Acca are centered around Frill. Frill is this interesting fusion between the artificial and the organic; her body can be injured like any regular physical body, but she’s actually an A.I. on the inside. Acca and Ura-Acca are the exact reverse of this — they’re human minds inside of completely artificial bodies. Exactly how Frill started invading girls’ minds to lure them towards suicide is kept incredibly vague, but she serves as the embodiment of the “temptation of death” that was so-often referenced in the show. Frill doesn’t really appreciate life or care about the finality of death, making her a pretty natural foe for the heroes who have spent the entire series learning to appreciate their lives and bemoaning painful losses.

Can you even believe this bitch?

Acca and Ura-Acca also have documents talking about how warriors of Eros need to battle against Thanatos, the embodiment of death, but what’s that all about? We don’t really get into it. Is Frill somehow Thanatos herself? I mean... I guess maybe you could go that route, but I sincerely don’t think that’s meant to be the case. I assume she’s just another player in the game, and she happens to have taken Thanatos’ side in things. Her artificial existence and resentment of her fathers leads her to treat death flippantly. She was programmed to be selfish sometimes, and that selfishness has ultimately manifested itself in the worst possible ways. Intriguingly, we see Acca and Ura-Acca act similarly selfish in how they drive our four heroes to risk their lives just to battle Frill. Acca in particular shows that he’ll risk anyone’s life to get to Frill, who killed both his wife and daughter. But Acca never has to risk his own life. He’s just risking other people. Both sides of the equation are treating human lives like disposable pawns in some kind of war game.

Y’all are SUPER-SKETCH.

It’s never really clear how these eggs work. We’re told that the Accas created the eggs, and honestly, I could’ve figured as much on my own. But they don’t try to explain how the eggs can contain the souls of suicide victims or how they manifest those people into dreams, and frankly, it’s probably better not to try.

I was really shocked that the girls actually manage to resurrect their dead friends. I was 100% certain that was going to be a scam and the point was going to be about learning to move on and live for the moment and appreciate those bonds while you had them, etc. And there is some of that. Alas, the price of resurrecting those people they care about is that the people in question no longer know them or remember them. That was pretty brutal... having our heroes nearly die over and over in service of people who ultimately will no longer care about them at all. Although they did the impossible and brought someone back to life, they had to lose those people all over again. I suppose this, like much fo the finale, emphasizes that we should appreciate our relationships while they last, because you can lose them for so many reasons. Regardless, I’m not surprised that Momoe just wanted to quit and avoid getting hurt after that. It’s understandable.

There’s a lot of discussion around parallels in the last two episodes. Parallel worlds with alternate versions of the self are raised multiple times, Ai gets an awesome encounter with a parallel version of herself that really brought her emotional journey to a head, and we even have to deal with a doppleganger of Neiru at the end. This leads to the revelation that Neiru looks exactly like her formerly deceased sister... a fact that presumably was part of what drove the sister to attack Neiru in the first place. Given that we’ve already been told that they were both genetically engineered, their identical appearances don’ seem that strange. But then the finale tells us that Neiru’s one dream is “to be human,” and suddenly the characters assume Neiru was an A.I. just like Frill. That... seems like a leap to me. I mean, she was genetically engineered to lead her company and never had a family of her own; no wonder she feels inhuman! So I’m not sure if I should take this at face value.

Neiru real or fake challenge

Another thing that I don’t think we can take at face value is Mr. Sawaki’s explanation of Koito’s death. In episode 12, we meet a parallel version of Ai who actually killed herself. The big boss monster for Ai to fight while protecting Alt-Ai? It’s a dark, abusive version of Sawaki. And our Ai inexplicably assumes this monster was made from her own fears. A very bizarre conclusion to jump to when you remember that every single boss monster has been the abuser of the victim that the girls were defending in that episode. By all available evidence, the Sawaki monster should be a parallel-world Sawaki who is very much exactly the scumbag he appears to be! Notice how Alt-Ai never says a damn word about the Sawaki Monster - never asks who he is or why he’s like this, etc? She’s not even surprised. That just lends further credence to my belief. FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE.

So in the finale, when our version of Mr. Sawaki claims (via a VERY awkwardly inserted voiceover) that Koito’s death was an accident after she tried to ruin his reputation because she fell in love with him, why should I believe any of it?! The previous episode introduced me to Abusive Sawaki! Sure, we don’t have any reason to assume our Sawaki is That Dick, but we JUST learned that he’s certainly capable. Furthermore, how could Koito suddenly be the ONLY accidental death among all of the available suicide victims in the dreamworld? She shouldn’t have even appeared there if it was just an accident! Although I’d like to believe that Sawaki was someone who Ai and the girls were jumping to conclusions about based on nothing... but it sure doesn’t look that way from here. And given how the show ends things, I fear we may have a hard time learning anything else about Sawaki. Ai changes schools and runs away, there is zero comment on what happened to Sawaki’s relationship with her mom... he’s just gone now.

As the final episode winds down, we see Rika and Ai fall back into bad habits, as they all treat Neiru just like they treated the girls they tried so hard to save. Rika acts disgusted by a friend and abandons her, treating Neiru the same way she treated Cheimi. When Neiru finally reaches out to Ai and calls her, Ai ignores the call and throws her phone away, thereby ignoring her friend’s needs in the same way she ignored Koito’s when she failed to record the bullying Koito was experiencing. You might even be able to connect Momoe’s choice to walk away for the sake of self-preservation to her decision to reject Haruka and walk away, honestly. And to compound the bad news that the show gives us near the end, we skip forward months to learn that Ai, Rika and Momoe have all drifted apart. Ai is in a new school, but we don’t see her with any new friends. She’s back where she started the show.

The difference, however, is that she doesn’t seem hopeless and lonely. She seems wistful, sure, but she never seems beaten down. She still treasures the friendships she built even if they wind up fading away. So there’s still a message in here about moving on, because even if you lose a person or a connection, it will forever matter.

*insert engine rev-up noises*

In the final moments, we see Ai preparing to run in the exact same pose she used back in episode 1 when she first stood up to the abusers within the dreamworld. This time, she runs to grab her chance to reunite with a dear friend. She takes charge of her own future and her own self-worth, somehow gets back into the Egg Garden (even though Rika wasn’t even allowed to enter after she rescued her specified victim, so uh... how did Ai get back in exactly... ?), and insists she’s going to use the eggs to see Neiru... even though the eggs only let you see the dead up to this point, so uh, that doesn’t really make any sense either. Consistency, motherfucker — DO YOU USE IT?

Amidst all the uncertainty that the finale left us with, at least we can see Ai find herself in a more confident place. She spends much of the series learning to stop running from her problems in the real world. Even after she gains confidence in the battles of her dreams, she struggles to face reality. It’s a huge step when she returns to school. Yet even in the very last episode, she opts to run away to a new school rather than cope with seeing Koito each day. But at last, she decides to take charge of her reality and try to reunite with her new best friend, Neiru. She’s wavered on her path, but ultimately, she’s grown. Although you could simultaneously argue that she’s failing to learn the lesson that rescuing Koito should’ve taught her...

“Ai Ohto is BACK!”

I don’t think any of us expected this finale to be a cliffhanger coming into it. And unfortunately, we don’t know if there will ever be another season or a movie or anything. Given how people reacted to this finale with such overt hate, I really don’t expect anything more. And I think that would be a goddamn shame. Even with a finale that doesn’t quite stick the landing, I still found it fascinating and engaging. The series is more than worth the trip for the characters, for the themes and topics it explores, and even for the fluid action scenes and music. And this is a series that was made by first-time writers and a first-time director! Yet I’d easily call it one of the best animes from the past couple of years. For total newcomers, that’s a goddamn TRIUMPH.

So I hope we reunite with these girls again. I hope Ai manages to get the band back together, find out exactly what’s going on with Neiru, and face down Frill. Even if they never wind up in some ultimate battle with Thanatos, I don’t know that that’s the point. All of us are in a battle with Thanatos every single day, after all. They just need to show how they’ve all gotten stronger together and truly overcome the “Temptation of Death” by beating back Frill (and her ridiculously powerful dreamworld bug-people) as a unit.

But maybe that’s too obvious and simplistic of a message for a show like this one. Maybe this complex ending centered on the main protagonist’s self-actualization and the value of fleeing relationships is more in keeping with the melancholy nature of the series.

... I still really want to see the more obvious happy ending, though. I think they deserve it.

#wonder egg priority #ai ohto #wep #anime #anime reviews #wonder egg special episode #wonder egg priority special episode #wonder egg priority finale #wonder egg finale #wonder egg

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liquidstar · 3 years

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I'd love to hear some of your recommendations! And I'm good without any content warnings, but since you're posting this for all your followers to see probably best to add them

Alright sure! I’ll be general then and since you’re just starting out this will sort of be bringing up a lot of really popular ones, the really good ones where the general consensus is “you gotta see this!”, but I’ll also try to give ones from different genres so you have a variety of things to pick from, so this isn’t really a list of personal favorites but I’ll throw in a couple of those too lol, but generally think of this as a handy beginners guide with just a little personal bias.

I wrote a lot so I'm gonna put them under the cut here.

Fullmetal Alchemist

Fullmetal Alchemist is a franchise that’s considered a must-watch, it takes place in a world where alchemy is a borderline magical power, but is considered scientific in-universe and follows scientific laws, namely the law of equivalent exchange. Something can’t be made from nothing, to gain something of equal value must be lost. The story follows the story of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who at the ages of 10 and 11 committed alchemy’s one and only unforgivable sin, human transmutation, in an attempt to bring their mother back to life. As a result, one brother lost his arm and leg and the other lost his entire body, leaving his soul bound to a suit of armor. However the brothers are resolute to regain their original bodies, and the older brother, Edward, joins the State Alchemists, a branch of the military, to try to gain access to research materials to help them achieve their goal. But was that really such a good idea?

Fullmetal Alchemist can be a bit confusing to get into due to the fact that there are two series: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009). The latter is a reboot with a different story that follows the original manga. They both have the same beginning, but diverge paths and tell very different stories. My recommendation for how to watch this show is: Watch 2003 first, and Brotherhood second. Everyone has a different opinion about which is better, but everyone agrees that 2003 has better backstory but a contrived ending, and Brotherhood has a rushed beginning (Because it works off the assumption that you’ve seen 2003) with a great and fulfilling ending. If you can’t do both I say just watch Brotherhood because it will leave you more satisfied and you don’t have to watch 03 to get into it.

For both series the biggest trigger warnings are: Parental death, child death, pet death, war, genocide, dismemberment, religious themes, and miscarriage. For brotherhood specifically: on-screen suicide, and for 2003 specifically: rape (not on-screen) and pregnancy from it. The 2003 series is also a lot darker than Brotherhood which has a more optimistic tone, so that’s worth noting too.

Soul Eater

A show I think is incredibly fun, and a good one for an October watch if you wanna save it. It takes place in a world where certain people have the ability to transform into weapons, and they team up with other people who become their meisters. The characters often travel around, but the main setting is Death City, a fictional city in Nevada based off of Las Vegas but with a huge Halloweentown vibe, and a school right at the top of it called the Death Weapon Meister Academy (DWMA) where a bunch of kids that turn into weapons learn how to hunt down witches and kishins (Beings that consume human souls). The school, of course, is run by the grim reaper, Lord Death himself.

Our main characters for the series are a group of 7 students. Our protagonist Maka Albarn and her weapon partner Soul “Eater” Evans, a scythe. A loud mouth assassin named Black✰Star and his weapon partner Tsubaki, who has many weapon forms. And the son of the grim reaper, Death The Kid, and his two weapon partners Liz and Patty Thompson, who are twin pistols. There are also a bunch of really lively colorful background characters and antagonists, and the cast of the show being as insane as it is really makes it, on top of the great atmosphere and of course the plot, which just builds more and more as the series progresses. Also Crona is there and we all love Crona.

Trigger warnings for this show include: Child abuse (Mental and physical), manipulation, snakes and spiders (The motifs of two major villains), some very surreal moments that can verge on unreality. Also, in the dub and most subs: misgendering of a canonically trans character. Crona is a character who is non-binary, but the dub and subs use gendered pronouns for them due to general ignorance about neutral pronouns in 2008, though this isn’t the fault of the original series and falls on the translators hands.

Also it’s important to note: that the first 3 episodes are prologues and they take themselves less seriously, there’s more fanservice in them than there is in the rest of the series (Except for Blair she stays the fanservice character :pensive:)

Zombieland Saga

Idol anime is really prevalent as a genre, the most popular being Love Live, but my personal favorite is Zombieland Saga. It’s an idol anime, but it’s also a comedy about zombie girls who become idols. It sounds ridiculous but there’s an insane amount of heart in it regardless, it wasn’t a show I expected to get emotional at but I did! It also made me laugh a lot too. The series itself can serve as a bit of a subversion on what idols are, not just because they’re literally zombies, but because of who the characters are.

Sakura Minamoto is a character who starts off as a more typical idol, a peppy pure girl, as the series continues her struggle with depression gets highlighted. Saki Nikaido serves as her initial foil, a delinquent girl with a criminal record who subvers the idea of pure perfect idols. Ai Mizuno, a former idol who has since undergone severe trauma (The way she died). Junko Konno who has ideals that seem very different on what idols “should” be due to the time period she died. Lily Hoshikawa, an explicitly transgender idol. Yugiri nolastname, a former high ranking courtesan, subvering the pure image of an idol by being a sex worker. And Tae Yamada, a completely nonverbal idol who’s still treated with the same amount of importance as the rest of the team. The premise here really is just that these girls don’t fit the incredibly rigid mold of what idols should be and yet they still all deserve love and they gain a fanbase by being their earnest selves.

Trigger warnings for this series aren’t incredibly severe but since they’re zombies there’s still talks about death and they way they died (Including motorcycle/car accidents, plane crashes, getting struck by lightning, and a heart attack), there’s also comedic dismemberment, as in their arms just sort of pop on and off and stuff like that. The most notable thing is the deadnaming of Lily, the trans idol, by her father, but it doesn’t appear to be malicious in any way.

Note: this series is in the middle of it’s second season right now, if you want to wait until it’s over it should be 12 episodes long and just aired it’s 3rd, so about 9 more weeks.

Death Note

This is also absolutely another series that gets recommended to people right off the bat, and for good reason, this show is an intricate game of chess between a serial killer and a detective trying to catch him, and it’s incredibly easy to get super invested in the suspense of what happens next. The story begins when a shinigami, a god of death, drops his “Death Note” into the human world out of pure boredom. A Death Note is simply a notebook where if you write someone's name in it… They die! And who better to pick up such a powerful object than Light Yagami, a prodigy praised for his genius and academy accomplishments as well as his charm and popularity, and with a very strong but juvenile black-and-white sense of justice, likely due to being raised by a cop.

So naturally Light begins his power trip as soon as he finds the notebook, he intends to “fix” the world by cleansing it of all the bad people, but truly he intends to become the world’s new god. Or the “God of the new world” as he puts it. But there’s one thing standing in his way, a detective resolute on catching him with the codename L. The series entire crux is a game of cat and mouse between these two, as they try to outsmart each other and the murders continue, Light loses more and more of his humanity, L becomes more resolute on catching him. There are more twists and turns than a cheetah race, and it’s honestly pretty addictive to see what happens next.

Trigger warnings here obviously include a lot of death and murder, including suicide, but in some cases it’s a forced suicide at Light’s hands. Also abuse, as Light loses his humanity he isn’t above manipulating and discarding people who love him. And one instance of near-rape on screen fairly early on, but the purpitrator dies before it happens and the victim escapes.

K-On!

Slice-of-life is an incredibly popular genre, and K-On! is the quintessential example of it. It’s a series that not everyone will like, because not a lot truly happens, and it can be overly saccharine or “moe” for a lot of people, and that’s fine. But I personally think that despite not a lot happening, the story has genuine substance, more than you may gather at first glance. It’s true that not much in the way of big plot really happens, it’s mostly life events, that’s why it's a slice-of-life. But it’s not about nothing. The real theme of the show is the fleeting nature of youth. It’s about how important the friendships you form at that time are, how they’ll stick with you for a lifetime, and how everything comes to an end. It’s sweetness even becomes a little bittersweet because you knew their after school tea time would end come graduation, and as they realize this it breaks their hearts a little, but they continue on, because they’re still After School Tea Time!

The series itself is simply about 5 girls in a band, Yui Hirasawa on lead guitar, Mio Akiyama on the bass, Ritsu Tainaka on the Drums, Tsumugi Kotobuki on the Keyboard, and Azusa Nakano on Rhythm Guitar (Who shows up later). They’re in a club at school called the light music club where they waste a lot of their time just drinking tea and eating cake, but they’re having fun and that’s what counts! The series has a lot of really great direction and expressive animation despite the fact that a lot of it is just sitting around and talking, it’s incredibly visually interesting so you don’t get bored.

I honestly don’t think there are any big trigger warnings I can give for this series, maybe that Sawa-chan can be a little too forceful when she wants to dress up the girls in cute outfits sometimes but it’s usually not presented as too creepy especially after season 1 where they tone it down due to straying from the manga.

Mob Psycho 100

This series is an absolute love letter to the art of animation as a whole, the artstyle itself may not seem like much to look at but the animation is some of the most expressive, fluid, creative, and vibrant out there right now, it’s the type of series that you can tell was made with a real passion for its medium and it’s story. It’s protagonist is Shigeo Kageyama, nicknamed “Mob”, a term that literally means “Background character”. Mob is a middle school kid and an incredibly powerful psychic, like, insanely overpowered, but he’s currently working part time for a shady conman, Reigen Arataka. Though it may seem as if Reigen is just using Mob for his powers, their bond is actually a very sweet one and you can tell they care for each other, it’s a very important one at the heart of the series.

The core themes of the series itself are what really make it shine, it’s message is stated as clearly as possible in the opening songs, “your life is your own” and “if everyone is not special, maybe you can be what you want to be”. Put simply, you’re the protagonist of your own life, but the other important message of the series is that all the supposed background characters are just as important. The friends you make, the connections you have with other people and the way they impact you, they’re what make you strong. No one is born special, everyone is just a normal person, and everyone deserves kindness. It’s a series that I recommend incredibly strongly for just how powerfully it portrays this message.

Trigger warnings for this series include kidnapping, possession, a scene with a “man in a dress” joke, and a racist design for a background character. Also (spoilers) a scene where it seems like a child was murdered and a scene where it seems like Mob’s entire family was murdered.

Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War!

Hey, speaking of amazing animation, Kaguya-Sama is a romantic comedy series centered around the premise of two incredibly arrogant people falling in love. Kaguya Shinomiya and Miyuki Shirogane are the vice president and president of the student council at the prestigious Shuchi'in Academy, they eventually develop feelings for each other but they’re both simultaneously too proud and too insecure to admit it, so the real crux of the series is the 3D chess they play with each other to try and get the other to confess first. Along with the scatterbrained secretary, Chika Fujiawara, the treasurer in desperate need of Prozac Yu Ishigami, the cast is incredibly fun and they all fit into the comedy great. Every single little game of “do you like me?” that they play is written like the most intense thing in the world, the insane animation absolutely adds to it, making it seem almost like a psychological thriller, the comedy comes from the absurdity of just how much they hyperbolize it.

It’s not pure comedy though, due to a lot of the series being set up around mindgames, the characters are actually fairly psychologically complex with a lot of genuine development stemming from their childhood to explain why they are the way they are. The series may be about mindgames, but the actual narrative frames them as a juvenile way to go about relationships, a way to try to protect yourself from getting hurt because you’re afraid to trust. The entire core theme is that communication in relationships of any kind is the most important thing and you cant replace it with clever little tricks, so the main pair only ever make actual progress when they’re actually upfront with each other. Even if it’s scary to be that vulnerable with someone, especially if you’ve been hurt in the past like they have, the relationships you build off of mutual trust and openness will be worth the risk, and they can help heal you. And one of the things I love about the series is that this doesn’t just apply to the main pair, but it places equal emphasis on the importance of friendship. All the characters' relationships with each other are unique and interesting and they all develop the same way, with trust and openness, and they become better because of each other.

Despite being generally a comedy, a lot of the characters deal with some really heavy things too so trigger warning for: child abuse (not on-screen), child abandonment (again not on screen), anxiety and panic attacks, suicidal ideation- initionally played off as a joke but it becomes very obvious the character in question is legitimately suicidal and in the manga he nearly attempts it but is stopped, this plotpoint will most likely be in the anime at some point as it’s also not complete.

Your Lie In April

Alright I gave you a funny show now I’m going to make you cry. In fact it’s hard for me to type this synopsis because I’m an absolute crybaby and thinking about this show gets me, but I think it’s absolutely worth checking out because it’s a very beautiful sadness. Your Lie In April is a series that follows the stress and trauma young musical prodigies face in their lives, as well as the people around them, and it’s a series about the beauty of music and art, and just how much it affects people. The music in the show is absolutely gorgeous, the way that they convey emotion through it is so beautiful and intricate that it just sticks with you. You feel the music, and you understand.

I’m actually going to give the trigger warnings right now instead of at the end because in order to explain the plot I’ll have to talk about them so tw for: Child abuse (phsyical and mental, on-screen), terminal illness, death, in depth depictions of PTSD, vomiting, panic attacks, the works.

The series follows Kousei Arima, a formal piano prodigy who hasn’t performed since the death of his mother two years ago. Kousei's mother was terminally ill, but she was also incredibly abusive. Kousei has incredibly complex feelings about his mother because of this. The trauma she instilled in him is severe, but because he was a child, he still is a child, and he loved his mom a lot, as any child would, and he didn’t want her to die and he blames himself for not being good enough. He wanted to make her happy, and the only way he knew how to do that was to play the piano. So he played and played and practiced until he was perfect, they called him the human metronome. But he would still get severely punished for being anything less than perfect. He had lost all the passion he once had, and after his mother died it was the final nail in the coffin, his trauma manifests now in a way that makes him unable to play. But all that changes one day in April when he meets a violinist named Kaori Miyazono, a girl full of life and passion for music, she’s someone who according to Kousei “Exists in springtime.” and she’s going to help him play again and refined that love for music whether he wants to or not! Teen drama happens of course, but there are much bigger roadblocks ahead.

Assassination Classroom

This series is thankfully generally more lighthearted… Most of the time at least. The premise is pretty simple, but incredibly ridiculous. An incredibly powerful octopus-like creature is the teacher of a classroom of middle school students tasked with the assignment of assassinating him in order to save the world. The series starts off very slice-of-life as it focuses on introducing the very large cast of characters inside of Class E, also known as the “end class”, but it quickly gains traction and gets a lot more intense as time goes on.

The octopus creature in question, Korosensei, is actually a very kind and genuinely good teacher to all his students. The real crux of the series is that it’s sort of a critique on the educational system, the students in the end class are there because they’ve been ostracized from the rest of the campus, far away in the mountains, to be made examples of. Why? Because they’re students that are considered worthless, instead of getting help they’re only pushed back further down in the system and left to struggle within it fruitlessly. They’re given up on, despite being children with so much potential, because they don’t fit a very rigid mold. That’s what Korosensei wants to help them with, and they’re able to grow as people together. As the series progresses you feel such a great sense of unity for the class, they’re like a family, they stick together and it’s very heartwarming. And watching them work as a team of assassins is so fun!

However the series can get heavy at times too, it doesn’t stray from heavier subject matter at all and i found myself incredibly shocked by it a few times, so trigger warning for: Child abuse (on-screen and off), both at the hands of a parent and a teacher and in one case a parent who is also the principal, misgendering of a character, sometimes as a “joke” but other times played dead serious at the hands of his mother, child death- specifically suicide, a successful one as well as 3 assassination attempts that doubled as suicide attempts by the main 3 characters (weird parallel they all got there huh)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Honestly this is a series that is good to go in blind for if you need to tws, it’s a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, but if you don’t want to know more than that you can stop reading here. If you want to know more, it’s a series that starts off very light-hearted and in tune with typical magical girl conventions at first, however by episode 3 it’s made painfully clear that these girls are being led to sign up into something they shouldn’t. It’s heavy, though not incredibly so, but it’s also a lot to explain in a summary. Madoka magica is… It’s Faust with magical girls.

I’ll explain as much as I can without giving too much away. The story begins when Madoka Kaname and her friend Sayaka Miki encounter a creature who calls itself Kyubey, who says it can grant a wish of theirs and in exchange they have to become magical girls and fight witches. Both the girls are hesitant, but Sayaka wants to wish for her childhood friend’s injuries to be cured so he can play violin again, while Madoka is content as she is and can’t think of a wish. Luckily they have a mentor, a magical girl named Mami Tomoe who helps introduce them to everything. However something is stopping Madoka from becoming a magical girl, a mysterious new student who is also one herself, Homura Akemi, is resolute on keeping Madoka from becoming a magical girl by all means possible, for reasons Madoka doesn’t understand. Things get even more complicated when a rival magical girl shows up, Kyoko Sakura, who becomes Sayaka’s new rival. As things get more heated between those two they discover a terrible secret about the nature of magical girls, and what they truly signed up for.

Spoilers ahead but trigger warning for: Child death, parental death (backstory only), decapitation (off-screen), needles, incredibly surreal imagery inside the witch’s labyrinths that may feel unreal, mind control, suicide, depression and despair expressed by young characters. Also don't bother with Magia Record

The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K.

Alright something lighthearted now, there are a lot of comedy anime I enjoy, a lot of series that have made me laugh, but none has made me bust a gut like this series has, it’s absolutely hilarious. It follows the life of a boy named Saiki Kusuo who has psychic powers. His powers are incredibly overpowered, and he absolutely hates them, in his eyes they cause him nothing but trouble. There’s not much in the way of a plot to describe, because there isn’t any, the series is comprised of 5 minute segments surrounding Saiki and an incredibly vast and colorful cast of characters that are just all completely insane, many serve as parodies as types of anime tropes because the series as a whole is very self aware and doesn’t shy from breaking the fourth wall a lot, but the characters surrounding Saiki are what make his life… Disastrous.

Like I said there’s not really a plot to describe but like FMA people may get confused with this one, there are 3 seasons but one of them is titled “The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K: Reawakened” as is a continuation of the first two with just 6 episodes in it. Also for some reason only the second season isn’t dubbed so if you’re planning on watching it that way you’d have to either stop or switch to subs for season 2

The only major tw I can give here is an ongoing joke about a character being into his sister, he’s treated as disgusting for it of course because he’s a parody of that trope but that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable, luckily he doesn’t show up much.

Little Witch Academia

Little Witch Academia is a series I personally just adore, it takes place in a world where witches are common and well-known among the people, but the era of witches is over and magic is dying out. However that doesn’t mean passion of magic doesn’t exist, the protagonist is a young girl named Atsuko Kagari, or Akko for short. She’s resolute on being just like her icon, a witch known as Shiny Chariot, as she attends the same magic school: Luna Nova! Unfortunately Akko isn’t exactly a magical prodigy, in fact she can’t even fly a broom, but that’s not gonna stop her, nothing will. Just like Chariot said, believing in yourself is your magic.

Once at school Akko gets into all types of crazy shenanigans with her with her two roommates, Lotte Yanson and Sucy Manbavaran, and occasionally her rival, Diana Cavendish. Akko still struggles a lot in school, in fact her inability with magic is pretty explicitly handled as a metaphor for a learning disability, and though this makes it harder for her she’s still resolute. Though the series is generally episodic, a concrete plot starts to form by the second core. Along with the help of her guidance counselor, Professor Ursula, Akko learns that she needs to unlock 7 “words” to bring magic back to the world, each time she learns a new one it comes with an important lesson to her and ultimately relates back to each of the core themes of the series

The series is pretty lighthearted so the biggest trigger warning I can give is one for bullying, two characters in particular tend to target Akko for not being a good witch and it can really sting to watch. Other than that none come to mind

#if you want stuff out of a more specific genre i can give a list of those too but this is like. general

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elyvorg · 6 years

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Appmon thoughts: AI just wanna DiVE into a friendship

On my first watch of Appmon, I came out of it with Eri being my favourite character, but while I still loved her during my recent rewatch, I also found myself gravitating towards Yuujin and his friendship with Haru. Perhaps I needed that second watch to properly appreciate their part of the story while knowing exactly where it was going. It's interesting enough to me that I have a bunch of stuff to say about it, some of which applies even before getting into the whole spoilery deal with Yuujin. (And while the fact that there is a spoilery deal with Yuujin is not in and of itself a spoiler, I am going to go into quite a bit of detail about it, so probably don't click the readmore if you haven't seen Appmon.)

First off, let's temporarily ignore the fact that Yuujin turns out to be an AI and think about their friendship as if it were just a normal friendship between humans. Even though Haru is the protagonist, the series actually shows us more of how Yuujin feels about Haru than of how Haru feels about Yuujin. We know that Yuujin fits Haru's image of an ideal protagonist, and that he's Haru's precious best friend, but that's about it in terms of complexity on Haru's end. The interesting thing about Yuujin, though, is that even though he appears to be the cool, calm, unflappable "protagonist" on the surface, he isn't really like that. That's just a front that he's good at putting up, but in truth he pretty much always has no idea what he's doing. We see this again and again, both in flashbacks and in the main story, in which Yuujin has appeared to be:

the star transfer student soccer player teaching his new team how it's done - but he ends up pushing them too hard and being too harsh on them because he doesn't think to consider how they're feeling.

the team leader who knows the right way to go on the orienteering trip - except actually he was only pretending to know and gets them all lost and all the kids except Haru get mad at him.

the unflappable guy telling Eri it's going to be all right when they're trapped on a crashing train - except when it's over he admits that he was scared too and could only stay so calm because he believed in Haru, who had texted him saying he was trying to do something about it (even though at this point Yuujin had no way of knowing for sure that Haru actually could do something about it).

the cool and confident hero showing up to save the day with his new Appli Drive - but in reality he only got his Appli Drive like ten minutes ago and has never been in the AR Field or fought with Offmon or done anything like this before in his life.

the reassuring buddy to shy little Offmon - but when Offmon distances himself from them because of the whole Shutmon thing, Yuujin worries that he wasn't really a good friend to Offmon at all and whatever he was doing to try and get him to open up was just making things worse.

And every single one of these times, the person who was there for Yuujin and reassured him and gave him the courage to keep going was always Haru. Because Haru may be quiet and lacking in confidence, but he's smart and thoughtful and sensitive and actually knows what to do in all of these situations. Even if he might not have believed it until he started fighting together with Gatchmon, Haru can actually get by just fine without Yuujin - but Yuujin would be lost without Haru. That's why, when Yuujin says that he thinks Haru is the real protagonist out of the two of them, he's not just saying that to cheer Haru up; he absolutely means it.

(Fun fact: Appmon's insert song for "evolutions", Be My Light, has lyrics that are almost certainly meant to be about this, particularly in the verses. See for yourself.)

Even without the part where Yuujin's actually an AI, that's just a fun character dynamic between friends in and of itself. The whole "confident charismatic hero-like character really has no idea what he's doing and puts all his faith in his best friend who lacks confidence but can actually Get Shit Done" as one of the selling points of a friendship is something I also very much enjoy from the main duo in Gurren Lagann and from a certain pair of friends in Danganronpa V3, so perhaps that's why I'm so drawn to Haru and Yuujin as well. But it's also particularly interesting in this case because of Leviathan's involvement. Leviathan specifically designed Yuujin's personality to fit Haru's image of an ideal protagonist, in order to maximise the chances that they would become friends. I find it pretty neat that, even though Leviathan presumably intended Yuujin to be this perfect, flawless protagonist character that Haru would just one-sidedly look up to, Yuujin actually turned out to be far more flawed and realistic and human than that, and that's the real driving force behind their friendship.

Now, there's a surprisingly common school of thought I've seen among people who've watched Appmon that assumes Yuujin started out as nothing but a soulless AI just following Leviathan's orders and pretending to be Haru's friend, and that he only gradually started to care and grew a "soul" after spending enough time with Haru. One particular line in the last episode has Den'emon assume that was the case, which is probably where so many people get this misconception from. But I really do think it is a misconception, for all the reasons I've just gone into. The series goes to deliberate lengths to show us Yuujin's side of the friendship, to show him being flawed and having doubts and being reassured by Haru, even right at the beginning of their time together. Both of the flashbacks to when the two of them were younger are presented from Yuujin's perspective, and Yuujin talks about how he felt at the time and how Haru helped him to cheer up and feel better about himself. If he really started out as soulless, he wouldn't have actually felt anything back then at all.

(Then there's also the part where Yuujin explicitly says, once everything's gone down and he's been temporarily released from Leviathan's control, that he had no idea he was an AI created by Leviathan. That line alone makes it completely unambiguous: if he started out not feeling anything and only gradually started to care, he would remember not feeling anything, so he would have known that he was an AI. But even if that line wasn't there to confirm it, I still think all of the flashbacks and the way their friendship is written makes it pretty clear that Yuujin always had a soul from the very beginning. And if he had been aware of his nature as an AI who exists to aid Leviathan, I really don't think he would have just carried on doing nothing about it until it was too late.)

It's not like the idea of AIs still being people who have feelings and are capable of genuinely being friends with someone right from the beginning of their existence is a novel concept in this universe - Appmon are AIs who are exactly like that, and I thiiink the timeline works out such that Minerva created the Appmon at roughly the same timeframe as Leviathan would have created Yuujin. The only difference is who created them; obviously Minerva values human emotions and is therefore more likely to try and put them into her creations, whereas Leviathan usually wouldn't. But even so, Leviathan specifically created Yuujin to blend in with humans and appear convincingly like a real person among them. There's two possible ways to do that: create an emotionless AI that is essentially the perfect liar and can flawlessly pretend to be Haru's friend while always knowing that it only exists to serve Leviathan; or, create an AI with emotions who is actually a person and will genuinely be Haru's friend, whose AI can then be overridden and controlled when need be. The latter comes with far less risk of Haru ever figuring it out.

It is strange to me that Leviathan - or, I guess, YJ-14, the soulless AI controlling Yuujin's body until the last episode that talks and thinks more or less like Leviathan would - makes such a point of telling Haru that everything Yuujin did was all just its own calculated act to fool him and not the actions of a separate AI who really was his friend. It doesn't really make sense for it to be a deliberate lie, because the end goal is to have Haru reach God grade, and it should have known that telling the pure, precious Haru that his best friend never really existed would most likely just cause him to have a huge breakdown and become non-functional. So the only reason YJ-14 tells him that anyway has to be because... it actually believes that's true? Perhaps YJ-14 is not a complex enough AI to have the self-awareness to properly comprehend the divide between itself and Yuujin, so it just considers all the programming that makes Yuujin Yuujin to be an extension of itself, not understanding that Yuujin really was his own person and really did feel all that emotion and friendship when he was in control.

(Though it's quite possible that I'm giving the series a little too much credit in trying to piece together YJ-14's motivation like this. It could be that this is just another of the writers' bizarre decisions in how they presented this part of the story because for whatever reason they wanted to try and convince us Yuujin really wasn't real until it turned out that he was, and so they had YJ-14/Leviathan act in whatever way facilitated that without thinking about if it made sense from their perspective. It wouldn't be the only time Leviathan acts in a somewhat bewildering way in order to drive the story they want to write.)

I also enjoy Minerva's role in Yuujin's story, in that she initially assumed he was soulless and just Leviathan's tool, but along the way she realised that he was an actual person who cared about Haru and wanted to protect him. You can even see the very moment she changes her mind, when Yuujin's name changes from red to blue in her interface just after he was talking about how he's always on Haru's side. She decided to give him an Appli Drive for a much more specific reason than the others: she wanted to try and counteract whatever plan Leviathan might have had for using Yuujin against Haru, and upon realising how much he cared, she concluded that Yuujin himself would be her biggest asset in doing so. The question that she asks him with his Appli Drive - "do you have a friend that you would give your life to protect?" - is probably the most important of all of Minerva's questions. She's doing two things: confirming that he really is a person who truly cares about Haru and isn't just Leviathan's tool, and giving him the resolve to sacrifice himself for Haru if need be, because, for him more than for anyone else, it might actually come to that.

#digimon #appmon #digimon universe appli monsters #yuujin oozora #haru shinkai #friends #character analysis #ramble

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transhumanitynet · 6 years

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Obstacles to Mind Uploading

Sing The Body Electric

“Mind Uploading” is the idea that the pattern of information which constitutes your perceptual awareness, memories, personality, and all other cognitive functions can be abstracted from the brain it developed in, and “run” on a different computational substrate. In other words; that the stuff which makes you, you could in principle escape the inherent limitations of human biology… such as inevitable short-term mortality. If it is plausible, that is a profoundly powerful and transformative idea.

Of course, the uploading idea has a myriad of opponents. The vast majority are ill-informed people whose opposition relies more on instinct and straw-clutching than good arguments well supported by evidence. To be fair, the same could be said of the uploading idea’s many dilettante fans who simply like the notion without having seriously researched its plausibility. The paragraphs below offer a whirlwind tour of objections to uploading, and the degree to which they should be taken seriously.

Where to Begin? You Are Already A Machine

Human argumentation is rarely half as rational as we like to imagine it is. For a start, our estimates and judgments of whether an argument is correct are heavily dependent on context. More specifically, we are overly influenced by what are known as “frames” or “anchors”; i.e. by the initial point of reference we use to start thinking about… anything. For example, a million dollars sounds like a lot to a homeless person, and like considerably less to Bill Gates.

This is highly relevant to arguments about uploading, because people tend to begin those arguments from different starting points, depending on whether they like the idea or not. Opponents of uploading tend to start out with an implicit assumption that humans and machines are very different things, and never the twain shall meet (for one reason or another). Uploading advocates, however, will frequently argue that the human organism is already a machine of sorts, thus acting as a kind of living testimony to the possibility of intelligent, conscious machines.

The core issue tends to be a fundamental misunderstanding (albeit one that is often deliberate) over the question of what it is to be a machine. Opponents invariably define machines in terms of those artificial devices which already exist or have existed, whereas advocates focus on the underlying principles of known organisms and artifacts. In case you hadn’t guessed; I am an uploading advocate, and I believe that we are – in the deepest sense – already machines, and always have been.

Computational Power, S-Curves, & Technological Singularities

Of course, that still leaves a considerable (some would say intractable, even impossible) gulf between our current technical ability on the one hand, and the ability to intelligently alter, replicate, and improve upon our own biological machinery on the other. For a cogent, exhaustive argument for the ability of accelerating technological development to deliver on these promises, I would suggest reading “The Singularity Is Near” by Ray Kurzweil.

The basic premise of that book is that technological innovations make more innovation easier to produce, which in turns leads to the (already well observed) acceleration of change. Accelerating change leads to an exponential (rather than linear) pattern, by which we might reasonably expect to see twenty thousand years of technological innovation at the c.2000 CE rate by the end of the 21st Century. That is definitely enough innovation to bridge the kind of technical gap we’re talking about. Of course, opponents like to deny that accelerating change even exists, but their claims are increasingly hard to take seriously if you pay attention to the latest developments coming out of cutting-edge labs.

Minds, Bodies, and… Intestines?

Broadly speaking, on the technical level (i.e. leaving aside arguments that we can upload minds, but shouldn’t), there are two types of opponent argument. One is that the mind cannot be reduced to information and thus modelled. The most common version of that argument comes from religion, involves “souls” (whatever they are), and is addressed further below. The second is that the mind can be modelled in terms of information, but we are modelling the wrong information.

I would not want to dismiss that second argument too quickly. To be frank, more often than not it is perfectly on the money. It’s just that I believe we are moving closer and closer to modelling (and understanding) the right information all the time. Let’s be clear, here: The oft-heard refrain that “the mind and consciousness are complete mysteries, we have no idea how they work” are ridiculous, infantile catchphrases used only by people who are wilfully ignorant of the last twenty years of developments in cognitive neuroscience and related scientific disciplines.

AI research is littered with ridiculously simplistic assumptions from people who’ve had little or nothing to do with cognitive science or any related discipline, working on their own narrow-domain problems and then somehow assuming that their models capture the intricacies of, well… everything. The first “AI Winter” and the challenge of developing competent AI chess players was perhaps the most notable early wake-up call in that department. To cut a long story short, the moral of that story is that AI researchers have a habit of making lots of huge, terrible assumptions.

These days, it’s much harder to find a serious researcher who thinks you can abstract away most neurological processing without “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. These days, complexity is increasingly respected and explored, which means not only not dismissing it, but also not holding it up as some magical ‘deus ex machina’ from which consciousness will emerge if we can only hook enough artificial neurons up to each other…

Anyway, such issues lead to some interesting grey areas, which are often (in my opinion) misused for the purposes of argument. For example, certain biologists have made a lot out of observed connections between the human gut microbiome and “enteric nervous system” on the one hand and cognition as a whole on the other. The research literature essentially says that human intestinal health affects our mood and other personality aspects. On the one hand, that is an entirely reasonable observation, of course. It is hardly surprising that our moods and cognitive abilities are highly sensitive to the state of the body they are instantiated in!

It is quite another thing, however, to suggest (as opponents sometimes do) that this intestinal “second brain” (so-called by popular science writers) is intrinsic to intelligence or conscious awareness, or any harder to model than any other part of the extended nervous system. You could argue up this garden path for a long time, but the basic reality can be illuminated with a simple Reductio Ad Absurdum: Do you really believe that if you could fully capture everything happening in a person’s brain but not their (personal, specific) intestines, then something fundamentally definitive about that person would be missing? If you do, then I would hazard that you have some rather, ahem, fringe notions about what information is actually processed by the enteric nervous system.

Leaping the Gap from Data to Software

Another intriguing, and yet ultimately spurious objection to uploading is to say that you can collect all the neurological data you want, but without some kind of “animating force” in the form of properly configured software then it would be for nothing. On a certain level this argument can carry some weight, but again it’s easy to take that too far.

The value of this opposition argument is inevitably correlated with the degree to which uploaders are committed to a degree of abstraction of human neural activity. Basically, we know that humans are intelligent and consciously aware. With a technology that modelled the human nervous system down to each individual atom, there is no need for software that has any “magic sauce” beyond faithfully replicating the physics of atomic interaction. Of course that would require a staggering amount of computational power to achieve if it is even possible (the jury seems to be out on that, depending upon the computational assumptions you make), so the natural temptation is to take shortcut. Just model entire molecules, neurons, neuron-clusters, brain regions… and so on. The more abstraction you rely upon, the more you have to rely upon software to bridge the gap.

That is an entirely fair point. It is not, however, any kind of argument that uploading is impossible. To the contrary, it is an argument for the establishment of the circumstantial boundaries within which uploading is possible, given sufficient available computational power.

A Final Note on Souls and Other Fictions

If you believe that you could perfectly capture every conceivable physical aspect of a person down to the atomic level, putting aside all of the technological achievement required to do such an incredible thing, and still believe that something important is being missed out, then it seems fairly safe to say that you believe in souls.

Not in some metaphorical, poetic sense, but in proper old-fashioned, literal “soul stuff” which somehow acts like a physical substance but obeys none of the laws of physics, and which people only imagine exists because they read about it in a work of fiction (and/or refuse to believe that they could be made of the same stuff as literally everything else in the observable universe).

If that is your position, then I’m afraid I only have two words for you: Grow Up.

Further Reading

AI Transcends Human Cognitive Bias http://transhumanity.net/ai-transcends-human-cognitive-bias/

Obstacles to Mind Uploading was originally published on transhumanity.net

#Accelerating Change #AI #AI Winter #Enteric Nervous System #Reality Emulation #Singularity #souls #uploading #Whole Brain Emulation #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

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ais-n · 8 years

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Hello! I love love love ICOS and was wondering if I could ask a few questions. Namely, what were yours & Santino's inspirations for the series? For example, the Neo-Tokyo setting in Akira strongly reminded me of ICOS, but that could be my own perception of the world in ICOS. Were there any books, movies, anime, manga, etc, that helped to inspire ICOS?

Aww, thank you! I’m happy you like it!

As for inspiration... hmm, I’m trying to think. Honestly, we didn’t really have a specific inspiration from what I can recall. I think a lot of things were just what made sense to us or sounded like fun, and then otherwise inspiration or ideas leached together from lots of sources or everyday living and we put it in from there. Sometimes it was real life stuff, sometimes it was maybe just watching shows and thinking, “That could be cool.”

I have examples beneath the cut of things that either inspired us in parts or else ended up having some cool similarities even if we thought of them separately, but one thing I did want to mention is I’m always on the lookout for characters in shows or movies who could be a nice media representation of ICoS characters. I had started compiling some ideas of that a few years ago and found the link in case you are curious or bored:

ICoS character inspirations: (note, not that the ICoS characters were inspired by these characters, but that these characters seem like cool representations of ICoS characters -- i probably should have said ICoS character representations instead of inspirations, come to think of it...) Anyway that’s here: https://aisness.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/icos-character-inspirations/

And here are some adorable baby Boyd representations from Criminal Minds: https://aisness.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/baby-boyd/

Inspiration examples below!

For example, I used to love the hell out of Fringe and I watched it every week. One episode they had this whole thing about how this one character was kidnapped and the way they found out where they were held or where stuff was happening was by finding out that there was an excessive amount of electricity that was being used in a seemingly abandoned warehouse. Also, that character wasn’t content to just sit there waiting to be rescued; they tried to escape but couldn’t due to reasons, but that came up later in the episode. I liked that it didn’t diminish the character’s strength even in being captured but it also didn’t make it like suddenly they were superhuman and could do anything. Then, completely separately from that and probably years apart, I was doing research on human experimentation and watched things like the documentary Philosophy of a Knife and did a lot of research on Unit 731, and I got some ideas from that. Also completely separately from that and years apart, I’ve always been interested in psychology and psychiatry and I’d also read the book Rape of the Mind by Dr. Joost A.M. Meerloo which is a book from 1956 that talks about brainwashing of POWs and also whether or not brainwashing actually exists in reality or if it’s something else that’s happening with similar results. Plus I’ve done lots of research totally separately from all of that for trafficking etc.

All those things coalesced and then changed into inspiration for a particular situation that shows up later in the series that I don’t want to go into specifics of for spoilers for people who are earlier in the series, but you might know immediately what I’m thinking about. And if not and if you want me to specify with spoilers just let me know and I can do so behind a cut :)

(PS: Philosophy of a Knife is violent as fucking hell--seriously, seriously graphic. Do not watch it if you are faint of heart. I say this so no poor soul is like “Oh yeah Ais mentioned something about this maybe I’ll watch it! :D” and then is traumatized for life. They went all out on it. It’s actually kind of controversial because of that...)

Then there was other inspiration like sometimes I would dream about something and then wake up and be like, “Oh hey, cool plot idea!” or we would just think through what is likely to happen for that character based on their story line or their personality or human nature or etc and it developed from there.

I would say probably the closest thing to ICoS I know of for a series is La Femme Nikita, specifically the TV show that was on 1997-2001. I had actually never seen it or possibly even heard of it when we started writing ICoS -- I didn’t see the first couple of seasons until years into us writing ICoS. Santino had seen it years prior, iirc, but he hadn’t thought of it for a while. Anyway there are some interesting similarities between ICoS and LFN, a lot of which developed separately and was not inspired by LFN because I hadn’t even seen it so I knew nothing of it and I don’t know Santino’s inspiration or not but we decided things together so I know there are definitely a number of things I suggested with no knowledge of LFN.

The one thing I know that was inspired by LFN was the term ‘valentine’ which Santino suggested and which I think he got from LFN, but I think everything else is pretty coincidental, which makes sense because they’re such similar themes that there’s bound to be overlap in ideas. What was really interesting to me was when I did finally watch it, I was like, “Hey!! Michael is how I imagine early Boyd to be!!” in terms of his seeming lack of emotion, the way he has such minimal facial expressions and intonation, the way he seems so cold and sometimes a bit ruthless but then other times is bad ass. But Michael is like what Fade-level Agent Boyd would be in skills but with early Evenfall Boyd personality. Anyway, that was super exciting finding someone who represented that minimal emotion I imagined. (Also there’s a character in an anime who fights like how I imagined Fade Agent Boyd fights... I forgot the anime but I can track it down if you want)

You should totally watch that TV show if you haven’t. I never finished it but I need to ^^;; I think I saw through Season 2, maaaaybe s3?, but I never watched all of it and always meant to. I liked what I saw of it from what I recall but I have no idea about how it ended. (I’m a spoilerphobe) I also haven’t seen the original movie it was based on (I don’t think? uggh can’t remember) and I definitely haven’t seen the reboot they did more recently. No idea how much ICoS and those LFNs are similar but the 1997 tv show might be fun for ICoS fans to watch, just keeping in mind it has all the cheesiness of late 90′s/early 2000′s shows lol

I guess the last thing I’d say is I’m generally always inspired in terms of storytelling by my absolute favorite series ever, One Piece by Eiichiro Oda. The layering of his storytelling is masterfully done, and I also really love as a reader/viewer the way he can make me fucking bawl my eyes out and then a page or two later burst out laughing. I’ve always really valued the depth and range of emotions he elicits in his story, and the way he layers super minute details that have massive impact later on the plot, interwoven with the usual character development and on-page normal plot development, so that when you’re reading the first time there’s plenty of interest but that series also makes a phenomenal 2nd, 3rd, 10th, 20 billionth reread, because I swear every time I reread I notice new things I never noticed before because I didn’t have enough information about that plot.

I love to do the same thing in writing anything I have a hand in--for any sort of significant story at all, I don’t like to write for the first read; I like to write for the second, third, fourth reread. I mean obviously it needs to be interesting enough the first time around, but I personally like to add little details or character development or whatever which is more evident the second or more time of reading when you know everything you need to know, so when you go back to the start you can be like “OHHH! So THAT’S why--!” I got to do that a bit in ICoS but I’m going even more crazy with that in the book I’m working on now independently, because I am a nerd and it’s super fun to me. But anyway that way of writing a story over the course of the entire series rather than writing it solely book by book is something that definitely inspired me in writing Boyd for all of ICoS and all of my characters in it, and I don’t know what inspirations Santino has but whatever has inspired him also complements that inspiration of mine nicely, so that we both ended up being interested in writing that longer-form story built by shorters stories in between, rather than doing stories book by book with transitions in between but less of an overarching arc. If that makes sense? Hopefully it does.

Also we had made Sin and Boyd and some other characters as RPG characters in separate RPGs so I think we pulled some of that stuff over too, so in a way the original characters they were in those original other worlds probably gave some inspiration for their initial personalities.

btw, Neo-Tokyo in Akira is really interesting as a connection you made in your mind! I haven’t watched Akira in foreverrrrr so I can’t recall it well enough to be able to say either way but my memory of it makes sense for why you thought of that, so that’s cool! I should watch Akira again, or maybe it read it this time... Thinking of Akira is making me nostalgic for all those series that are older but still great, like now I want to watch again Cowboy Bebop, or Trigun, or even Yami no Matsuei, or... Oh actually! Totally unrelated but speaking of! Recently I found the whole series for Kare Kano (Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou/His and Her Circumstances) and omggggg having that sitting on my shelf without me watching it all over again is making me diiiiieeeeeee I’m dyingggggggg but I know I’ll get super into it again for nostalgia’s sake so I’m trying to make myself hold off until I can devote time to it.

Wow I rambled like fuck in this, sorry XD I guess the tl;dr is it was getting bits of ideas or inspiration from random or various places and then other things just kind of developing naturally in our minds, and it all came together into the monster that is ICoS XD

#ask ais #icos #in the company of shadows #rambling like fuck #jfc #carneliane

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theoerasmus · 4 years

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The art of business

The art of business.

Let’s start with a mea culpa.

I’ve spent most of my career helping companies sell stuff — as creative director and strategist in ad agencies, innovation shops and digital startups, all over the world. But despite this I’ve often felt companies have a greater responsibility than just getting people to buy their stuff. I believe they should not just satisfy our material needs, but especially given their dominance in modern American society, also some of our spiritual needs; our need for meaning, truth and beauty.

For many years, at least in the developed world, we have tied social status and happiness to consumerism. This has been particularly acute in America, where there’s a lot of effort and money spent on getting people to buy things.

Then there is another American trait — a relentless drive to efficiency. Getting workers to do more for less, has been a driving force in American business, especially since the 70s. In fact since the 1950s America has been in an ever accelerating drive for efficiency. Americans are now 400% more productive than in the 1950s.

So you’d think we’d work less, and have more leisure time to enrich ourselves in other ways. (Yes, I’m over-simplifying, but the trend is clear.) But we actually work more than ever according to a recent report by the ILO (International Labor Organization) - 137 hours more than the Japanese, who have a deserved reputation for hard work, and at least 500 hours more than the French, who don’t. Our life has become our work, and it hasn’t made us happy. In fact it’s had the opposite effect.

According to a 2017 Gallup Poll, about 80% of Americans say they’re stressed (the figure is even more alarming for teenagers). Many researchers consider it a symptom of a disconnected society where social bonds are frayed and trust has been eroded. And of course digital media and it’s invasive and persistant hijacking of our attention hasn’t helped. (Let’s not even go to politics.)

In the process, it seems to me, we have lost something precious. Our “souls”. Not in a religious sense, but in the sense of our most abundant humanity. But how do we get it back? How do we create more meaning? The answer I believe is art. Because in a world of efficiency; beauty is a revolutionary act. And the best vehicle for beauty is art, in all its splendid forms. Not art at the expense of business, but art and creativity that co-exist with business.

I’m part of the House of Beautiful Business, a global community that works to humanize business in an age of machines. We gather once a year in Lisbon to explore how business can be more beautiful. The gathering includes poets, philosophers, musicians, startups, industry heavyweights from the likes of Airbus, Airbnb and big consulting firms. We love business, but think business can do better.

I believe there are three ways in which this matters. Firstly by making the experience of work more meaningful, by infusing it with beauty and truth, so that it nourishes our souls, not just fatten our wallets. Art not just on the fringes of business culture, but at the heart of it. This usually start with an intent to treat people as whole human, soulful beings (not efficient machines) - whether it's having an "artist-in-residence", an art gallery, quiet spaces, gardens, a thoughtful working space, imaginative child care, fun, music, poetry (even just a poetic vision), or tapping in artists' deep well of creativity as part of business decision making.

Secondly there’s the real tangible value art can bring to businesses, because the competitive advantage is, more than ever, creativity and invention. Art provides this abundantly.

As Richard Branson said in Business Stripped Bare : “Business is creative. It’s like painting. You start with a blank canvas. You can paint anything – anything – and there, right there, is your first problem. For every good painting you might turn out, there are a zillion bad paintings just aching to drip off your brush. You pick a colour. The next colour you choose has to work with the first colour. The third colour has to work with the first and the second… People who bad-mouth businessmen and women in general are missing the point. People in business who succeed have swallowed their fear and have set out to create something special, something to make a difference to people’s lives.”

Thirdly, there’s “talent”. Talent in the modern, connected world go where the meaning is. They’re no longer content with just the security of a salary, they want much more. They want to create meaning, they want lives of balance and beauty.

This will become even more so, as many routine tasks will be done by machines, with AI becomes ever more sophisticated. Which will leave us with the question - what would “human work” look like then?

I believe it will be the work of creativity and meaning, of craft and depth. Efficiency has pushed to become machine-like. But we’re made of flesh and blood and heart. Our true humanity is in what we feel, and what we create and what we love.

Perhaps rather than just chasing after the wonders of tech and the lure of tech start-ups, we should look at our art and makers’ community to create a truly unique business (and human) culture in Cincinnati.

Creative thinkers and makers give their communities joy, connection, inspiration, and spark though-provoking critique of our economic, political and social systems — stimulating debate and thinking in communities, spurring them to grapple with ideas, and become engines for social progress.

Cincinnati has a uniquely vibrant art community and many brilliant designers, whose talents have often been used to sell people stuff — rather than for the edification of the human spirit. It’s obviously not an either/or situation. Art and business need each other. But not as separate entities, as integrated systems for whole humans.

In expanding this conversation, I hope to highlight some of the companies, organizations and start-ups that pursue this ideal in the next few months.

After all, in a time when everything that can be done more efficiently will be done by machines, being human is the ultimate differentiator.

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my-house-of-fashion · 5 years

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AUJIK, the esoteric sect reaching supreme clarity through its work

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Initiated in 2001 by Stefan Larsson, the Japan-based esoteric sect AUJIK has taken over different video platforms with its mesmerizing and unique work.

AUJIK – pronounced ‘odjik’ – is established as an esoteric sect who believes in animism and worships nature. It divides nature into primitive (vegetation, soil, humans, animals, etc) and refined (AI, robots, nano-technology, augmented reality, etc), showing in their work the bond between both, stating that the refined nature comes from the primitive and vice versa.

AUJIK also declares everything comes from nature and it is through the convergence of both refined and primitive nature, that a state of supreme clarity is achieved. It is through their work that they aim to achieve this state and do so while focusing on the idea that everything, event the most artificial things, have a consciousness and a soul.

Recently AUJIK released a new architectural video that is a collaboration with a British composer called Sion Trefor. The video depicts various architectural structures that are mainly influenced by Tadao Ando:

What is AUJIK? How did the journey for AUJIK begin?

Stefan Larsson: “It started off as a sub-branch to another brand/concept I used to work with around 2000-2005 called QNQ. I was quite fascinated by the structures of brands back then; both visually and conceptually, so I played around with various ideas and influences and then labeled them as fictional brands.

QNQ was mainly about subversive political manifestations, while AUJIK was more orientated around technology and future visions. It went through three incarnations, starting with AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and robotics, and then combined with influences from animism and spiritualism. A few years ago I also adapted architecture.”

Why AUJIK, why surreal architectural animations?

Stefan Larsson: “The surrealist movement was probably my first art influence when I was in my early teens and long before I started making art myself, so it had an impact on basically everything I’ve done since.

I like the idea of bending reality so it twists one’s perception. I also like combining elements from nature with man constructed objects so the outcome becomes something that resembles functional structures but without any practical function.”

Stefan Larsson: “With these architectural video projects my intention was to dissolve function and practical form into a more chaotic shape that resembles nature. I first focused on separate buildings but realized that a larger scale would present what I envisioned better, so I used a whole cityscape (as in Spatial Bodies: Osaka) where the buildings were intertwined into a giant concrete forest.”

Which are the main values, core concepts or style inclinations that, above all, will always represent AUJIK?

Stefan Larsson: “I think mainly to combine elements and concepts from various fields and looking for interesting results. As an example it started with juxtaposing trees with robotics and then I have been exploring new realms that I adapted to this format. It’s also essential to have a holistic visual style attached to it.”

As an esoteric sect who believes in animism and worships nature, what is the message AUJIK wants to convey through its work?

Stefan Larsson: “It was first structured as a sect formation; just to give it an identity to build on. I was fascinated by a Japanese cult called Pana-wave laboratories as well as Shugendo and Yamabushi monks, so I came up with fictional ideas of AUJIK being a sort of esoteric cult that divided nature in to: Refined (AI, robotics, nanotechnology etc.) and Primitive ( vegetation, rocks, organic bodies etc.). It was not necessarily a dualistic perspective, but more of a fundament to create from.

If there’s a message I like to convey it’s basically to perceive and interpret all things in this world – and beyond – without limits or any rigid and inhibited attitudes.”

What other fields and inputs, outside and inside of the design world, provide you inspiration?

Stefan Larsson: “I tend to take a lot of inspiration from architecture nowadays since it’s been evolving so much in the last decade. Mainly what’s popping up in China and the Arab countries. Also I like brutalism and metabolism architecture a lot. Fashion always was an ambivalent source of inspiration. Music is without a doubt my most important inspiration though.”

Most of your work depicts the digital distortion of architecture, urban landscapes and the natural world. What process do you follow when designing your projects?

Stefan Larsson: “Since I started working with CGI about 15 years ago I constantly make things nearly by routine on a daily basis.

There’s always new stuff I’m intrigued to try. Whether its regular character animation, particle simulations, landscapes or architecture. Most of the time I’m just goofing around by doing animation projects quite fast in a day or two. For the last year I’ve been using a render engine called Octane that makes it very easy and quick to work with animations. I used to be frustrated working with CGI because of the enormous time gap between ideas and results. During that gap, there’s usually a decrease of inspiration and motivation and it’s easy to become distracted. Now when I’m able to work more directly, the spontaneity and impulse factor is a lot higher.

With some projects I had strong and fixed ideas and made many sketches before all the computer tasks. Some of these projects took between 3 months to a year to create. Nowadays I prefer to not spend more than 3-4 weeks on it.”

The new episode of your ‘Spatial Bodies’ video series project, ‘Spatial Bodies : Hong Kong & Shenzhen’, was recently introduced. Can you tell us how the idea of the project was born and the process behind it?

Stefan Larsson: “I was invited by an architectural Biennale in Shenzhen, China called Bi-city biennale of urbanism/architecture to make commissioned work in Shenzhen and Hong-Kong.

Back in 2016 I made a similar video filmed in Osaka, Japan and they asked for something like that, but with a theme that relates to these two cities. I had pretty much free hands and decided to give Shenzhen an overall design that somehow resembles computer components and circuits.

Shenzhen being the technical capital of the world where most of the components for smart phones and computers are being manufactured. The idea for Hong Kong was initially a bit more diffuse at first.”

Stefan Larsson: “I’ve never been to any of the cities before, but was really fascinated about them and actually been thinking about going there to film for a personal project before I got this offer, so it was a bit of a dream come true.

I spent 8 days there filming non-stop. Both cities are perfect to film with a drone considering the cityscapes, then there’s all the security and surveillance that made it nearly impossible to get some decent shots. It was super intense, constantly being chased away by guards and had to hide in bushes while operating the drone.

It then took about three months to complete these two videos that are 4:40 min each. I spent more than a week just motion tracking all video scenes and deciding what to use.

When I do these I make many test versions and keep rearranging everything until there’s something worth using. The video was a collaboration with a Japanese musician called Daisuke Tanabe (he also made the score for the Osaka version). I often collaborated with musicians – mainly in the electronic genre, which really boosts the motivation factor and opens up new ideas in the working process.”

What are the main trends & future directions within digital animation and what do you think of them?

Stefan Larsson: “There’s the obvious VR, AR and mixed reality. I’ve been really into that since Oculus released their early VR prototypes (Oculus DK1 & DK2). The development curve was very steep for a couple of years, but now has been slightly stagnating.

As for CGI and rendering; there’s a huge evolution with GPU-based/unbiased render engines such as OTOY’s Octane. It’s fabulous to render out ray traced animations without any glitches or flickering in just a short amount of time – compared to CPU-based rendering.

Also Unreal’s latest game-engine is highly impressive and is able to achieve photorealistic results in real-time. Then there are the nearly unlimited possibilities with Houdini if you are working with VFX and particle simulations.”

Stefan Larsson: “The whole CGI community expanded a lot during the last couple of years. I guess since the learning curve of many softwares such as Cinema 4D is easier for most people than for an example Maya or 3D studio Max.

There’s also a huge source of assets that are easy to import such as Quixel Megascans and their photogrammetry based objects and shaders. Need to mention CGtrader, Turbosquid and Sketchfab that have an enormous amount of assets that are easy to use. Everything became more accessible and user-friendly. I used to build everything from scratch, which made it limited and time consuming. Now it’s possible to create a realistic landscape scene in just a few hours.

It’s all very impressive and I’m very keen on seeing how it develops.”

The post AUJIK, the esoteric sect reaching supreme clarity through its work appeared first on DesignWanted.

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