#about how we are so dependent on modernity and technology that it becomes our personal heaven

[loveless-in-nowheresville]

Last night I dreamt that my friends and I were looking for a stairway to heaven.

We actually found it, and I could see it nestled within the clouds and it was a dark purple, which surprised me. I’ve never given a “stairway to heaven” much thought but I would’ve imagined it’d be white.

At the top was what I could only describe as a modern looking building. Simple geometric shapes, whites and light greys. It was like heaven itself had been hit by that trend where companies simplified their logos to look more professional at the cost of colors and unique shapes and visual appeal.

All that was up there were big movie theater projectors playing the most popular movies of the past couple of years.

That’s it. Nothing else.

I woke up thinking it was funny but after thinking about it WOW. There’s probably a good metaphor in there somewhere.

[thecrabbybarista]

We should talk about The Lords in Black I'm gonna do that right now because I wanna talk about their trope subversion and symbolism and shit.

So obviously The Lords in Black are a subversion of Cosmic/Eldritch horror and I'm gonna explain how using an ant metaphor

So the classic ant metaphor for cosmic horror is to imagine that you're an ant encountering a piece of human technology, right? I believe it's usually a circuit board. The whole point is you're witnessing something deeply incomprehensible and unfamiliar.

The ant metaphor for the Lords in Black is: imagine you're an ant and a teenager starts burning you with a magnifying glass.

It's still incomprehensible, but not in the way the complexities of a circuit board is. If you were suddenly stricken by a scalding beam of light, the only way you could rationalize that is that it was an act of a god. You and your ant colony would invent and fear this god.

The Lords in Black each represent a kind of strange and inscrutable cruelty that the modern world offers, the cursed lasers that cut into our souls, from places we have no power over.

Wiggly is obviously the idol of capitalism. Animalistic desperation, commodity fetishization, and the exchange of money, products, and emotions. All of the things that the other Lords represent stem from elements of capitalism, hence why Wiggly is THE Lord in Black, the leader of his brothers. What Wiggly offers will never be enough. He is what leaves you always unsatisfied.

Nibbly is the idol of the consumption of human beings as products. Obsession with self image and presentability, trends of all kinds, and the beauty and fitness industries. People in the modern age are desperate to be consumable, and some would go to any lengths to do so. This is an attitude that especially impacts women, who feel that they need to wear make up every day just to earn respect. And when we feel the need to change to be respectable, the need to look appealing and to be consumable, the bourgeois eat well. Our quest to look special makes us like any other customer, filling. It's no mistake that the two leads of Honey Queen are women desperate to be noticed and respected. It makes them all the more eager to be eaten.

Tinky is the idol of infinity and repetition. Dead end jobs, middle class suburbia, and the inability to escape one's circumstances. It's no coincidence that the first time we see Tinky is at a wedding, a ceremony dedicated to eternal commitment, or that he's associated with CCRP, a company in which most of the workers do useless busywork all day. When you look at the life you have ahead of you, it can feel crushing. Will you ever have a real career to be proud of, or will you be stuck at this job until you die? Will you ever not struggle to make rent? Will you really love your spouse forever? What if you don't? Isn't it just easier to continue the routine than to address the problem? After Ted is driven to insanity by the Bastard's Box, after he discovers that he can't escape the person he's become, he becomes homeless, one of the most terrifying eternities a person can find themselves in, fully dependent on random acts of kindness to survive while your situation drives you further into insanity.

Blinky is the idol of the panopticon. Gossip, public drama, and unwanted attention. One of the first things Blinky does on screen is sexually objectify a girl who's fresh out of high school, and this plainly displays a consequence of living in a content driven world. There is constant scrutiny and interpretation given to your every action. At any moment, you could have over a thousand eyes on you, whether you want them there or not. The panopticon we live in captures us in moments of time, and turns the person we were in that moment into an object deserving anger, embarrassment, lust, admiration, judgement, or anything else a watcher might assign. But Blinky also targets another fear, the fear that we feel when we can't see the danger, and cannot protect ourselves or those we love. Alice's anxiety that Deb might cheat on her when she's not around are made manifest in Watcher World, and Bill's frustration at not being let into Alice's life are used against the family. We are inclined to both want and fear the panopticon. We hide, and we seek, and we expose.

Pokey is the idol of tyranny. Complacency, sedation, and obedience. The world revolves around the few and uses the many in service of this. We are all expected to fill some role in service to the rich, to work for a corporation and to buy the products of those corporations, and when we cannot fill these roles we are at risk of starving, or being kicked out of our homes. We must join them in their quest for profit, or die. But we must also accept their pacifiers or we will be driven insane. We must choose between complacency or despair in confronting our place in the world as a pawn, as an ant in the colony. Isn't it easier to accept the comforting lies? Your job is important. Corporations give people what they want. People in power deserve their power. People in power are using it well. We are happy. America is great.

These are the magnifying glasses that are being used to torment us, that we cannot make reason out of, that we've made dark gods out of. But this isn't the first time humanity has encountered scorching light from the heavens. When the people of ancient Greece witnessed burning rods of light, falling viciously from the heavens, they invented Zeus.

But we know where lightning comes from now. We know the science behind electricity and its place in the world. We know what keeps lightning away and what attracts it. We can protect ourselves from it.

But there's an important difference. Lightning is natural. It's existed long before we have and it will continue when we're gone.

The unorthodox cruelty of being alive today is not natural. We cannot logic our way into surviving it because it does not operate under a sound logic. But we can make things a little more bearable by focusing on what is sound, understandable and natural.

There is humanity. There are families friends and lovers who would go to the ends of earth to protect each other. As long as we have this humanity, we have hope.

That's why Miss Holloway's deal with the Lords erases her from living memory after her temporary deaths. To have the powers that she does she gave away the power most important to have under the Lord's rule: human connection. The only real thing we have left.

Alice and Bill escaped Blinky's manipulation through the love they have for each other

Emma survived the longest out of any character in tgwdlm because of the genuine hope Paul gave her of a better future

Lex snapped Tom out of Wiggly's control by reminding him of what his son really means to him

Ted couldn't escape Tinky's plan for him because he was too jaded to make a genuine connection with a woman.

Linda was eaten by Nibbly because she didn't have a loving connection with her father, because her father always made her believe that she was never good enough, because this mindset led her to take for granted the connections she did have in her life.

The world no longer cares about us. We have to care for each other. It's the only thing we have left

[nixite117]

Worldbuilding Brainstorm???

in most scifi settings, there is either a common language or some sort of technology that translates languages.

I like the second one and here’s why:

A common language is too easy. Since everyone knows the same language, everyone speaks with the same grammar structure and similar speech patterns. Sure, everyone has accents and some don’t ever evolve past “broken” common, but a single verbal language isn’t exactly… plausible… to every species.

Think of it like this: birds mimic spoken words and sounds, but rarely ever sound real. Same with ai voices. Sure you can get pretty close, but unless you carefully map out each little inflection in tone and pitch, an ai voice will mess up in inhuman ways. Because it’s not human.

Humans also mimic sounds, but it takes years of practice to make those sounds truly believable because our vocal cords simply aren’t designed to meow and chirp.

So who’s to say every alien creature is physically capable of making the sounds required to speak the common language? That’s awfully presumptuous >;P imagine if humans met aliens and the aliens all speak in a squelching, squeaking and chirping warble? What if they sounded like bears or birds? Many humans have trouble mimicking OTHER HUMANS, even if it’s just an accent. How would we be able to learn a language we physically cannot replicate?

A common language makes more sense for a newly blooming galaxy, one that hasn’t truly connected so much as made contact with each other. As a larger variety of creatures join the stars, however, it simply becomes implausible to continue relying on a “common” language. So they do what everyone in a scifi genre does best! They make technology.

Depending on how far along the timeline you have your story going, the complexity and variety of translation technology would vary. The earliest translation devices would be handheld or digital, and would be limited to simple sentences like our modern translators. The translation would be word to word like google translate, and the only languages available would be the main ones of each planet (for earth, it would be English).

But as technology advances, you go from handheld devices like tablets to headsets and microphones that automatically translate what you say and play it through a speaker. Then the headsets turn into visors and eventually you have a brain implant. Perhaps they work for any species, perhaps they don’t. In my universe, chip translators process any language for you and transmit that information to your brain rather than play it out on a speaker or give you text to read.

The reason I like this distinction is because a brain chip that processes language for you would be a WILD experience for me. You’d be able to hear the things the other person is saying, the exact way they’re saying it, but you’d be comprehending that shit in YOUR OWN LANGUAGE. SHITS CRAZY MAN!

Imagine hearing someone speak Latin, never having known a word of it, but understanding exactly what they want even though you couldn’t translate it word for word. That would be so fuckin trippy.

You could even go further by applying non verbal languages. Of course with any surgery, this would have risks and complications should your translator get damaged, but imagine the possibilities!

Technology isn’t perfect, so obviously it will sometimes be unable to figure out what that person is actually saying. For example, in English, we often repeat things to accentuate the point and make sure people understand what is important. Perhaps some species of alien don’t understand this, leading to confusion and maybe even misunderstandings.

“I have to get this done. I have to.”

“Have to what?”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

“Of course I did! What else do you have to do?”

The thing about this, however, is that verbal language isn’t universal. In fact, most expression from species to species would be different. Each species might have different body language. Different emotional expressions. Different stress responses. Different displays of affection.

This would make room for a lot of things to be learned about humans. I have a handful of little fluff drabbles and humor I came up with on this concept. I just have a feeling there’d be some things aliens just wouldn’t be prepared to deal with about humans and vice versa.

[is-this-really--life]

"I think a major part of my generation’s declining mental health is growing up in a culture that has lost the language of defiance. For Gen Z, it has become almost offensive to suggest someone can overcome their struggles. We are inundated with stories of defeat and disadvantage, but so few of defiance.

What happened to overcoming the odds? Defying expectations? Rising above it? Now we obsess over barriers—we talk endlessly about what diagnoses we have, what discrimination we face, the obstacles in our way. We wrestle over who has it worse.

A telling example of this is how Gen Z talks about mental health online. We know by now that young people are not only identifying more and more with their mental illnesses, but glamorising them like never before. “Hot Girls Have ADHD”, apparently! We have fun flavours of autism! You’re not neurodivergent anymore; you’re #neurospicy!

But it’s gone further. We aren’t just identifying with and glamorising our mental illnesses. Now we seem to be competing over who is more mentally ill. Those without autism and ADHD are said to enjoy “neurotypical privilege”. Then there’s competition within mental health communities. Oh you struggle with your gender identity? Well try struggling with mental illness and gender identity issues, like those who are “autigender” or “neuroqueer”! You’re autistic and that’s hard? Have you tried being an autistic person of colour? Sure, you have ADHD, but have you considered how much worse it is to be neurodivergent without pretty privilege, or someone who isn’t “neurotypical passing”? And don’t you dare say you have Asperger’s and still succeed. Sounds like “aspie supremacy”. 

I’m not blaming Gen Z. Of course we compete over who can cope the least. We grew up in a world with every cultural, commercial and technological incentive to do so. A billion-dollar mental health industry pushes us to pathologise normal negative emotions. Universities extend our adolescence and treat us like children. Consumer capitalism indulges childlike dependencies. Social media platforms trap us in feedback loops that become self-fulfilling. Virtual reality and AI technologies allow us to avoid risk and discomfort like never before in history. Meanwhile we have a progressive movement that sees strength and stoicism and confuses it for privilege, that takes tough love and calls it stigma, that promotes hyper-vigilant parenting and pretends it’s love. And so if you’re a 14 year-old who does struggle or is disadvantaged in some way, of course you want to capitalise on it. “When you reward victimhood, weakness and suffering with praise and attention, you get more of all three,” Konstantin once told me. “Incentives are everything.”

This is not to say that Gen Z aren’t suffering. We are in a mental health crisis; the modern world is chaotic and confusing. But a major part of this crisis, I think, is our loss of resilience. Yes, we have all these comforts and conveniences—but we also have a constant cultural message that we aren’t capable. Yes we have it materially easier in many ways—but it’s harder to develop resilience when you were raised on screens, without play and risk and danger. And I think the trouble with growing up in a world of incredible technologies and instant gratification is you do, inevitably, end up feeling entitled to a life without friction and discomfort. You expect the world to bend for you; to relieve you of the burden of being human. We demand the world makes us comfortable and call it discrimination or a diagnosis when it doesn’t.

To parents and older generations, please: stop incentivising this. You can be compassionate toward young people struggling with the pace and demands of the modern world without immediately diagnosing them or affirming their every anxiety. Without coddling or infantilising. Without denying them the chance to see what they can do. The message Gen Z is receiving from every corner of culture is that we are not capable. That it’s okay not to be capable. We have to hear something different. We must be told we can be more.

Because a culture that rewards victimhood is not compassionate. It’s cruel. Compassion is not rewarding suffering until it slides into self-indulgence. Compassion is not belittling Gen Z until we lose belief in ourselves. Compassion is recognising that previous generations got through war and poverty and deprivation and came out stronger—and we are capable of the same. 

And to Gen Z: these might be good incentives in the short-term. You might get attention on TikTok and get out of doing hard things—but you won’t grow. The more we depend on and define ourselves by our diagnoses, the less resilient we will be, the more we will need to rely on them. Of course I’m not talking to those with severe mental illnesses. But I am talking to those of us being tempted to label our laziness as “ADHD executive dysfunction”, to hoard and hang onto our every painful experience, to compete over who has the most difficult collection of disadvantages. I’m saying that when you are 25 years old and too scared to talk on the phone and telling yourself it’s social anxiety disorder, you are doing yourself a disservice. 

Even if it’s true! Maybe you do have it worse than someone else. Maybe making a phone call is harder for you. Maybe you are neurodivergent or do have an anxiety disorder or did face childhood trauma. But when someone tells you that you can overcome these things, or that you can handle them with grace and dignity and become stronger, they are not necessarily saying they aren’t real. They might be real. But you might also be more resilient than you realise. 

Life is hard, for everyone. Nobody gets through it without cruelty and injustice and hurt and illness and rejection. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what privileges you have, life is hard. But one thing is for sure: we will make it a lot harder with all this self-pity.

And here’s the truth: there will be something in your life one day that brings you to your knees. That floors you. And you can either stay down or get up. You can be someone who complains and pities themselves, and insists that their pain is more important than everyone else’s. Or you can be someone who does have a challenging diagnosis or was dealt a bad hand and still overcame the odds. Who somehow held it together. Who managed to serve other people. Who conjured up some strength from God knows where. Who did suffer and still demanded more of themselves. Forget earning the respect of older generations. This is about earning respect for yourself.

Or we could continue as we are. Our culture can go on pretending that 20 year-olds are children, funnelling them endless empty mantras like it’s okay not to be okay without any caveat to pull themselves together at some point, and indulging whatever labels we invent and depend on. Keep calling that compassion, if you want. Meanwhile members of Gen Z can take offence when told they can overcome their struggles, and remain feeling powerless as a result. 

I’m done with that. Let’s bring back the language of defiance. All of us. Older generations can sympathise with the struggles unique to Gen Z, but then talk about overcoming them. Talk about what’s next. They can expect their children to become capable adults, trust them to try and to fail, and refuse to comply with a culture that insists they are weak. This is not about ridiculing or punishing vulnerability—it’s about not rewarding victimhood. Not rewarding it in our children. Not indulging it in ourselves.

If we do this, things will change. Gen Z will still face challenges, perverse incentives will persist, but we can see ourselves as more capable. We will learn that we can overcome the odds. That we can surprise ourselves. That we can each become someone who says yes, this world did its best to break me but look: I’m still standing. 

Let’s bring that attitude back. And start defying anyone who tell us otherwise."

-Stop Rewarding Victimhood and Bring Back Defiance! by Freya India

[lil-lynxy]

Stand Out, Fit In... Beyond The Physical

I often find myself thinking how technology has impacted us. Like, I'll be sitting waiting for the train or for my coffee to be served, in a crowed of many like myself, on our phones, avoiding eye contact with one another at all cost. It's obvious that technology has allowed for behavioural changes in us. And when I say technology, I mean the media side of things I suppose. And our many screens that keep us connected to the space beyond the physical. Where we have developed a habit of getting our information and entertainment from. During my studies at the University of Plymouth I came across the writings of S. Turkle, who looked into this sort of area. I highly recommend anyone interested in human relationships with the digital sphere to go check her book called 'Alone Together' out, or her YouTube conferences. As they are quite interesting.

I've chosen this subject simply because of a recent breakroom discussion I had with a colleague of mine at work. And because of my recent ventures after work to get coffee. Where I find myself in Costa surrounded by people, yet drawn to this feeling of being some sort of vagrant, un-noticed in a never-ending changing world of faces, who are all lost in their own little world on their phones and other devices. The discussion I had with my colleague helped me remember that no matter the generation, we are all in this modern to postmodern world of disconnecting and reconnecting to the physical, where we disconnect to focus on our digital lives, avoiding any uncomfortable environment unless it is worth reconnecting to. This ability to opt out has become almost like a fight or flight response to dealing with the environment. Rather than building our in-person communication skills, many of us cower to our phones as soon as a conversation dries or seems possible with a stranger.

However, for my co-worker who's in his late 30's. He expresses how he finds himself lost in arguments on his phone with his ex-partner. Often taking place while he's at work trying to focus on the job at hand. He compared an example of his current situation to that of what his parents would have done back when he was in his early teens. Explaining that his parents would use work, back before phones were so popular, as a break. A way to recharge and think through the argument before seeing each other again after work. For him, unlike his parent's time, in today’s world, there is simply no escape. No break. If you try to take such a thing it only encourages further issues. Such as his ex perceiving the lack of response as being ignored. Which of course only adds to his personal life problems, distracting him from work while he's at work. The argument has no time and no space to calm anymore. As it can transfer from the physical to the digital easily. Losing the emotion behind tone and body language. With a replacement of open to interpretation.

Because of how easy it is to communicate with our devices and sort tasks using them, it is believable we have all become less patient. In some way or another. Whether it's the person you're texting takes what feels like 3 working days to respond, or whether Amazon is taking two extra days to deliver your parcel. That instant gratification is something we are all, through the generations, are becoming too attached to. It seems to be influencing our behaviours, and I like to believe this is a result of how dependent we are, and how fast technology can work, tending to the needs we desire to fulfil. But this is all just a fragment of the today's world we live in. And personally, as I go about my day-to-day business, I acknowledge the behaviours of others and that of myself. Where we are falling back on our devices whenever pauses within the day present themselves.

I think, it is up to us as individuals whether we go with the flow of our devices and succumb to the behavioural and various other psychological changes this digital world has installed for us. Or we self-teach ourselves to recognise these behavioural changes and consider whether the physical world has more to offer. And contemplate how the self could benefit from better spatial awareness in the present physical sphere than that of the digital. All food for thought of course!

It is always interesting to see what others think in regard to us and technology. So, any thoughts, feel free to stick em in the comments. Thanks for reading and don't forget to keep your chin up and keep smiling ✨

[eternal-echoes]

“Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield decisive certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.

This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.”

- Pope Benedict XVI, MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE - Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006

[mannishboywrites]

Why Try?

I think about the Hikikomori a lot. For those that don't know, I'm referring to the phenomenon first identified in Japan of young men secluding themselves indoors, either living alone or (more often) still in their parents' homes. While the prevalent definition of a hikikomori contains the provision that they must be NEET (not in education, employment, or training), I think too much is left on the table, and the problem at hand would not be understood to be at the scale that it truly is. More on that in a bit. These men have become the subjects of a fairly dynamic field of study over the last couple of decades, and academics have identified a number of interlacing explanations. I'd like to train my dilettante eye on a few of them for a moment.

Modern technologically is pervasive, and much of our lives are not only enraptured by it, but depend on it. As an almost-well-paid bureaucrat who benefits(?) from the post-COVID home office revolution, there is no way I could do my job without a reliable computer, fast internet access, and at least two monitors. Daily, I access vast databases that store so much information, a small warehouse would have been required in the days of pen-and-paper. My job would be fundamentally different and I would be a much less efficient worker without the benefits of our current level of technological advancement, and I am far from the cutting edge. This theory feels a bit too obvious or "common sense" for me. It's basically impossible to scientifically put to the test, but how could there be nothing to it? Some people really would rather throw on a VR helmet, buy a quality fleshlight, and invest in a premium subscription to a site of their chance than go somewhere to meet a romantic partner. But more on that later.

I'll admit that this next theory is a bit beyond my current level of training to fully explain, but I can summarize what I have been told and what I have been able to glean from cursory analysis. Marxists have been ringing the warning bells since the 1970s that the old coot's theory about the rate of profit inexorably dropping off has been generally proven true, at least in effect. Economies are volatile after the financial boom of the 1980s, and Japan in particular has been in stasis since the 1990s. Some researchers point to this stagnating economy as an issue. In the not-so-distant past, it was pretty hard to make a living without leaving your domicile and clocking in somewhere for eight, ten, or god help you, twelve hours. With the decline or at least stagnation of industrial jobs in countries leading the way in the capital markets, there are just fewer people, men in particular, taking on work that requires them to be in the same room, vehicle, or job site with other living, breathing people. If you spend the better part of your day working or preparing to work and your job is to go into the home office across the hall from your bedroom, it doesn't leave much time for anything else. For the NEET crowd, what is really the difference if your parents are able to support you to the same degree or better than how well you'd be able to support yourself? After all, your net wages are likely to be significantly lower than theirs were and the necessities in life are much more expensive. May as well stay home, right?

Finally, we come to a pretty nebulous point that I think is most obviously created by the first two, but maybe explains the phenomenon more clearly. The fact is that nobody knows how to meet people anymore because there are no shared spaces anymore, in person or otherwise. As much as I think the hand-wringing around "polarization" by the political centrists who just want us all to get along even when some of us would love nothing more than to kill the rest of us annoys me to no end, their identification of a more polarized society is accurate. As you can tell from how I let that last sentence linger a bit too long, I could go on for awhile about the political side of polarization, but that's for another day and probably another platform entirely. What I'm referring to is what I'll call interest-driven polarization. Now, more than ever, I can choose to never interact with someone I don't want to interact with. It would take actual effort and not a small amount of research to find a space where a diverse group of people can get together to interact with one another.

Here's an example that illustrates my point: a close friend of mine is a specialized mechanic. As such, he works in a dealership/repair shop with an almost entirely white, conservative, rural group of people. He himself is white and comes from a small town. The difference is that he isn't conservative at all. He is forced, by the nature of his job, to sit and talk with people who aren't like him. These are people he would never interact with if he had a job like me or most of the other people I know. I'm not saying it's fun or even healthy to be in constant interaction with people you're a hair's breadth away from arguing with every day, but the fact remains that he is one of the vanishingly few people in his age-bracket who has this experience.

Contrast this with another friend of mine: same age, but with an advanced degree from a prestigious school, a job in the financial sector, and wealthy parents. While he is south Asian and the people he encounters through work span the demographic spectrum, they all have roughly the same outlook on the world. To a person, they all share nearly every belief and conviction that he does. This in turn leaves him unchallenged and inculcated from a world outside of this circle, engendering a sort of naivety that he is still shocked by whenever it is made apparent. Ultimately, he has no rational reason to get away from it.

When your livelihood depends on a homogenous social circle and your interests are so easily catered to by boutique shops, twitch streams, algorithmically generated advertising, playlists, and youtube feeds, it becomes too easy and seductive to ever leave your comfort zone. You'd have to try.

To wrap up here, I want to pose a sincere question: why try? I've been sitting on this post for almost a week, having begun a draft and stalling at the second paragraph a day after my first. I kept writing and asking myself why I should try to finish it. I have multiple short stories sitting in google docs, half finished and not half bad. But why try? Nobody will read them, and I can gain gratification doing anything else in the world? I know many young men who probably ask themselves that question every time they're confronted with the anxiety of stepping out of their door. My friends are all on discord or twitter. Why do I need more? My career is almost certain to be a dead end, so why pour myself into it? It can be psychologically damaging to talk to women and get rejected or mocked, so why try to find a way to meet them without being a creep?

Dear reader, I have no idea how to answer these questions without giving someone an answer that doesn't feel weak or forced. I'm not in the business of dispensing platitudes. What I do know is that life is hard, and it must be in order for your actions to be of consequence. When you are stuck at home, only knowing what you want to know or talking to who you want to talk to in a way of your choosing, you will feel as though you're missing something. You're going to try to find that thing, but only in the way that you know how. It's dangerous to go that path alone. The problem is that we're all alone, and many of us wouldn't have it any other way.

[paladin849]

2d character art

There’s nothing like the simplicity and charm of 2D character art. Just think back to all of your favorite animated features, cartoons, comic books, and video games. It all comes flooding back, doesn’t it? Something about the immediacy and evocative quality of two-dimensional drawings goes straight to the heart and turns us into children again. If you want to know a bit more about this art form, this is the article for you. As a bonus, you’ll learn where the best 2D artists live and how to hire ’em for your projects!

I mean, sure, you may be one of those 3D purists who always sing the praises of 3D modeling. I get, I really do. But trust me, 2D isn’t going anywhere just because technology is moving full-steam ahead. In fact, 2D character art remains popular, engaging, and fun as ever. Therefore, even as we get swarmed with Pixar clones and newfangled graphical marvels, we discount 2D at our own peril.

what is 2d character art

As you might expect, it's been around for a while. We may say that the seeds were planted when we began painting on cave walls. Of course, we can't truly argue that style and the ones that followed in art history classify as 2D character art, which is a modern technique.

So, what has changed? What is the distinction between simple illustration, sketching, and two-dimensional character design? In a nutshell, it's intentionality. Purpose is everything in life, as it is in most things. As a result, even superficial similarities can be misleading. The same thing occurs in the field of design, which is rife with subgroups and classifications. We humans are an odd bunch.

The first 2D character art dates from the early 1900s. Winsor McCay, an American cartoonist and animator, was the first to develop a 2D character, Gertie the Dinosaur, who featured in an eponymous picture. McCay's pioneering spirit, however, had previously produced two short animated pictures, Little Nemo and How a Mosquito Operates.

What distinguishes these two from Gertie? As I already stated, intentionality. Gertie the Dinosaur is largely considered as the inspiration for the subsequent animation boom. In some ways, it's the first time someone set out to build a character with a personality and an identity in a genre that's still in its infancy.

Of course, as time passed, 2D character art grew increasingly popular in cartoons. As we all know, the dam burst when Walt Disney released Steamboat Willie. Then all bets were off, and it was time to shine the spotlight.

2d character art in polydin

2D character art is essential in many creative undertakings, such as video games, animation, comic books, and advertising. 2D characters that are well-designed may attract the audience's attention, convey a variety of emotions and expressions, and give depth and personality to the project. Polydin Studio is a professional game art studio specializing in 2D character art for a variety of projects. Polydin studio has the expertise to develop characters that are adapted to the project's objectives and aims thanks to a team of skilled artists. Our artists create every character in your projects a memorable experience for your audience by focusing on quality, attention to detail, and meeting deadlines.

6 common tools that 2D character artists use

There are a variety of tools, both digital and analogue, that character designers can use in their work, depending on the nature of their project. Skilled, successful artists take the time to study, train and become proficient across a wide range of technologies and programs. Some common tools these professionals use include:

Adobe Creative Cloud

Character designers use a number of popular Adobe products. Adobe Photoshop, for instance, is a widely used image editing software for touching up and refining digital images. Adobe Animate, a successor to Adobe Flash, is a simple tool for creating interactive animations and animated website elements. Adobe Character Animator allows you to animate still images and can create real-time animations that mimic your real-life movements and voice using your webcam and audio.

Toon Boom

Toon Boom has a number of software packages that are popular with professional 2D animators. Harmony 21 is a comprehensive solution that many animators of well-known TV shows use to create high-quality characters throughout a project's production cycle. It allows you to create artwork and add animation elements, audio and special effects all within the same software without requiring you to export your work to different tools. You can even scan and manipulate hand-drawn animations. The software functions on all major computer operating systems and has robust support options, including community forums.

TVPaint

TVPaint is a hand-drawn animation software tool that several animated feature film productions have used, allowing artists to create animations that look like paper-drawn characters more quickly and efficiently than traditional animation techniques. This software launched in 1991 and has become an industry-standard tool, receiving support and updates with new, improved features for users. This software is also available for all major operating systems and requires a one-off licence purchase.

Pencil 2D

Pencil 2D is a free, open-source 2D animation software that's available on all large operating systems. It's ideal for traditional pen and ink type animations and has a more minimalistic, easy-to-use interface. Artists who use Pencil 2D benefit from its pre-set animations and effects and can sketch ink and paint simultaneously and export their work in a number of formats. Because the software is open source, the user community can access the source code to continually support and update it.

CelAction2D

CelAction2D is a relatively simple-to-use software that has many features and tools that are popular with TV, film and commercial animators. You can import designs from other software applications and even scan hand-drawn characters to animate. The software splits design and animation functionality, and animators can create skeletons and manipulate them to simulate a number of moves. You can rig character designs to these skeletons and create high-quality animations quickly and effectively.

[pickledkiwiberry]

Okay there's a few bits I want to reply:

My background

I am a programmer ("Software Engineer" for the industry parlance, despite how totally unregulated my profession is by either the public or private sector). I've worked full time in startup technology for the better part of a decade and prior to that I spent over a decade in non-professional programming communities.

Risk and limitations

I have to talk pretty abstractly about this stuff because like, well...

"...ensure order remains in a manner nearly identical to the way a religious order maintains its vertical power structure..." - osaka

A weird thing happens as you move up the (sub)classes in the United States where as you make more money, you're pressured to take on more expenses by your workplace peers where now you have a mortgage and an auto loan and property taxes and you're supporting your family to the point they depend on you and you get pets and start planning out children and--

Basically there was a point in my life where I thought making money would mean I'd be free, and I was wrong. I have so many things I have to worry about now that if I got kicked out of my industry I have a LOT to lose, because I wouldn't be able to survive on lower wages anymore. And because I have people I care about how depend on me, I'd be hurting other people, not just myself.

And despite how massive the tech industry is, it's also based hugely on networking. The best way to get a job is to know somebody who has a job. If your network breaks down, it becomes exponentially harder to get a job.

I have to maintain my reputation to the extent that I have to be non-specific and not talk about any particular company and make sure my bridges remain unburned.

At the same time, I can still get away with talking in the abstract because it's okay to complain about the industry as long as you give your part of the industry plausible deniability. "Yeah, this industry sucks. And we're the exception!" Whether or not it's true.

So about worksonas

You get to your corporate job. You're excited: You got a good offer, and you're finally going to be able to get off your feet.

You meet your new coworkers. You are shy at first, but as you start opening up you start to show your genuine personality.

You immediately face consequences.

No matter how many times Human Resources (or its modern incarnation: People & Culture) or the Executives tell you that they want you to bring your genuine self to work, it's a lie. The social norms of the office are nothing like they are in the outside world. Your genuine personality will bring you threatening conversations with your managers, exclusion from decision making processes, and downward momentum.

So you make a mask. It hides parts of you and shows things that aren't there. At first it's little things: You're less dramatic in your speech. You start using more corporate lingo. You try not to rock the boat, but you try to make yourself heard... just enough to keep you on the promotion ladder.

The mask gets thicker. Meetings aren't a waste of your time, they bring value you to and your coworkers. You trust in the Executives decision-making. You aren't just here for the paycheck: You believe in what we're doing. You're part of the team.

That mask is heavy. And soon, you're faced with a fork in the road.

Some people split their personality. That's my camp. It's like ripping your brain in half: There's the you at work, and there's the real you. The way I talk when I'm around suits: It's unfamiliar. Alien. It feels like I'm watching somebody else talk. It'd be disconcerting if I weren't so used to it.

Others, they change themselves. Their worksona becomes their real personality. They become LinkedIn influencers.

Being honest with your coworkers

I find myself in one-on-ones. Meetings where it's just me and another person. They aren't recorded. We aren't being watched. But we're watching each other.

We know each others worksonas but we don't know our genuine selves. We have to speak in code, creating openings in our speech for the other to inch a little closer to how we really feel.

The longer we get to know each other, but more our code changes to communicate real feelings.

You and I both think most of our meetings are a waste of our time. But we can't say that. We both know that we both feel this way, but we still need plausible deniability. They're just difficult to focus on, and we need to work harder on being attentive. We discuss strategies.

You can't truly know which road your coworker took. If their worksona is their persona, or if they're faking, too. And if they're faking... you still can't show too much vulnerability. There's too much incentive to bury each other, and use the mound of dirt to climb a bit higher.

On the subject of stress

I'm writing this post with a smile on my face even though nobody's watching.

What happens off the books?

"I am utterly fascinated. Where can I find out more about this stuff that does not appear in documents?" - osaka

I'm not sure. What I can say is that a lot of the corporate world is about unwritten agreements. I've seen interactions where you have multiple companies who are technically violating each other's agreements, but in ways they off the record are okay with.

Why would you have an agreement if you're both okay violating it?

Plausible deniability

To anyone who's worked with me or works with me: Know that I'm talking about a different company than the one we worked at or work at together. This isn't a record. Things may be dramatized. Things may be made up. I'm not talking about you.

The most important reason to keep things off the record is to maintain plausible deniability.

Alpha Corp has their terms of service. Their clients are constantly ignoring this, and off the record Alpha Corp is okay with it. The point of the terms isn't to stop Beta Corp and Gamma Corp from violating it, it's so that when shit hits the fan and there's a public outcry, or a lawsuit, or what have you, Alpha Corp can point to what's on the record and say: "We had no idea this was happening. It shouldn't have happened. Beta Corp and Gamma Corp are to blame."

You go to Beta Corp and Gamma Corp. They tell you they didn't realize it was a violation, that they're sorry, and they're making organizational changes to prevent this from happening in the future. There's no record saying that what they said was wrong.

But off the record: Beta was in a meeting with their account execs over at Alpha and they asked how serious they were about those terms. The meeting wasn't recorded, and Alpha said "I mean, you shouldn't do it, but we don't keep track of it." There's a tone to those words. We don't keep track of it. Emphasis. It's a quiet go-ahead.

Gamma sees that Beta is doing this. They know they've been doing it for a while. They see the signal: Alpha doesn't care, so we can do it, too. They don't record that decision. As for as the records state, just like Beta, just like Alpha, they weren't aware.

Someone at an old job asked why I wanted to write up the meeting minutes for our team and I said 'i wanna control the narrative' and they were like 'what' and I pointed out that no one was gonna remember what we said in six months and so my interpretation of the meeting would dictate the assumed reality of what happened

"none of you ever send corrections when I offer the draft so y'all have consented to my version"

"we don't read that shit"

"you must trust me implicitly to create our shared reality that's so sweet"

That's how several coworkers decided I was a supervillain and how I learned several coworkers didn't understand record keeping as like a CONCEPT

[giankumar-blog1]

Spirituality & The Power of Money.

Some may consider money as the root cause of all evil. However, it extends our consciousness toward the flow of abundance depending on how we use money—showing that spiritually, money is a neutral energy. It only serves as a medium of exchange; on its own, it is neither beneficial nor evil. It provides that power and influence to determine what we want or need and how we behave physically and mentally. It is like technology—creative and destructive, depending on usage. In today's world, money is crucial, like water and air, to live comfortably. It is a tool to enhance material growth while spiritually revealing whether we have earned righteously or not. Anything in excess tends to go bad, and so is the case with money. Spirituality guides us to the values concerning money, how and why we should be content with clarity, and the ability to understand why sharing with all that exists in togetherness and oneness is essential.

Spirituality teaches us not to identify or attach to anything to avoid suffering. You are not to decline, disrespect, discard, or disregard anything; love with grace and respect for all as one. Being sensitive to everyone and everything and not sentimental to a few is the ultimate mantra or the meaning of moksha in spiritualism. Feel and use everything mindfully with your third eye open, for there is enough for everyone. Likewise, money and mindful energy can complement each other if applied righteously to fulfill what we desire to avail, but not abuse.

Money can enhance your spiritual pursuits; like in my personal life, spirituality became the prime focus to attain clarity about life's meaning and purpose after becoming content with not wanting more of this or that, except what is necessary through money. I repeat, the essence of life lies in finding contentment and clarity in every aspect based on the standards or benchmarks you use. Money provides that freedom to explore within and discover who and what you are behind what we call personality (false mask), cleverly superimposed on the substratum of your unique individuality from all that exists. Hence, balancing the material with the spiritual is essential; both contribute and complement each other in the wholesomeness of life. Spiritual aspirations and material responsibilities work in unison to align your financial goals with spiritual values. Righteously earn and enjoy wealth, for you are here to celebrate, where gratitude over greed, selflessness over selfishness, and self-awareness over self-esteem or self-importance is your entitlement and answer to enjoy a rightful living with financial success.

Therefore, irrespective of what many would say negatively about money, we all require and cannot survive without it. Economic prosperity will remove you from insecurities, fears, doubts, and unquestioning beliefs about mythical, mystical, unsound, and illogical beliefs, making you mentally healthy. You will come across some who claim that they do not care about money or what it provides, especially those who do not have enough but inwardly want more. Such statements may seem confusing or sometimes even understandable, but only in theory—never underestimate the power of money. Politicians, pundits, padres, and everybody else require money to survive in our modern world.

Now, let's go further in our spiritual outlook beyond money and happiness—you take on a journey of wholesomeness, oneness, peacefulness, like-mindedness, and mindfulness. It is that gradual transcendence transforming from health, wealth, and wisdom to wean away from all that you identify and attach to become a witness through your soul of all that a mind does in its wants in this and that, from here and there, for its likes and dislikes. A self-knowledgeable person considers a wealthy life spiritually successful only if they know their existence beyond the body, mind, and the individual soul, allowing the embedded aware spiritual energy to overpower their devilish deeds with divinity. Therefore, spirituality is not against money; it is a tool for the spirit to make the mind aware of the greater purpose of finding salvation. Integrating both in one's life, you live a life of material astuteness with spiritual insight since the material and the spiritual comprise the same whole.

The power of money lies not in its physical aspect but in its energy ability and capacity to interchange goods and services. The force of cosmic energy attracts a magnetic field of supply in various forms. The most significant art of spiritual life is to be self-aware, to discover the true self, and to realize there is no self but the spirit engaged in the dualities of life through its body and mind and how to celebrate life. Second is how to make money to satiate your desires, gratify your body and mind, and serve and share your abundance with others. Money ultimately funds all philanthropic works except those that are harmful.

From sinners to saints, all are thinking of money. The advantages of money are unquestionable, but it has negative traits when mismanaged, misused, or misunderstood. Some of the negative factors include addictive behaviors, neglect of personal well-being, inflated ego, feelings of isolation and loneliness, psychological issues resulting in anxiety and stress, leading one to criminal activities to amass more and more extra money, disturbing personal relationships to social interactions, lust and greed, and many, many more. It's not about money but how you use money, rightfully or not, and if you wish to rectify it, are you self-aware to avoid disasters or recklessness? Enough money allows better preparation, reaction, and recovery from various factors, reasons, and emergencies. 

Money can lead you towards disaster if mismanaged or while making reckless decisions, such as overindulgence or investing in risky or unaware ventures. Adequate financial resources can provide safety nets, allowing us to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters, such as retrieving financial savings in times of need. Further, I have experienced and realized that the more you give and share, the more you receive—this law of giving leads to more significant tangible or intangible rewards. Generosity leads to favorable results if you engage in acts without expectations. You also cannot deny that money positively influences our minds with the abovementioned ways we feel, act, and live. Money may not provide lasting happiness, but offers ease, comfort, security, and tremendous opportunities.

The major problem with money is that the thirst for money always continues, and its power is unlimited. We continue to accumulate more than we want, and that desire never ends. There are two ways to answer this problem: you need not renounce money, live in the present, moment to moment in meditative awareness, and drop future thoughts as much as you can from your mind. Second, befriend contentment - real richness emanates from contentment. It reduces being restless and reckless by not chasing more than you need. In the Bhagwat Gita, Lord Krishna clarifies true yogis find contentment and tranquility in the present moment and practice moderation in every aspect of their lives.

The mind is all about desires, starting from the desire to live and continue to live. Contentment transcends desire; it springs from mindful living. You cannot stop desires, but you can constantly watch and be aware of the worth of every desire. Contentment is bliss; it is that state of mind when you attain peace and tranquillity in all you possess, even if what you have may be less than your equals. Being content, the satisfaction you realize reaches its optimum, and our spiritual journey begins. It cultivates humility and simplicity, cherishing what you have and appreciating where you have reached. We neither feel superior nor inferior nor compare with others to go further toward transcendence to evolve and transform.

Please remember everything is a manifestation of the spirit, as with money; it is also a presentation and illustration of energy. Money, as we know, is essential for comfort and security, providing happiness. Spirituality is more profound, giving wholesomeness and fulfillment, which money cannot. Money offers happiness, whereas spirituality provides peace of mind. We require a balance between the opposing forces, accepting the tension between material and spiritual usefulness. Money can facilitate existential requirements alongside spiritual growth, providing that transcendence of fulfilling both with equal grace and respect to evolve righteously in life with divine deeds for the sake of peace of mind in its qualitative state of divineness. 

For more information please visit www.giankumar.com

[wuorija]

Pixel Perfection or Perfidy? Navigating the Treacherous Terrain of AI-Enhanced Videos

In a world where reality is frequently one Facetune away from fiction, we've stumbled upon yet another curveball—AI-driven video enhancement. Enter iFoto's Enhance Video Quality, a tool so potent it can change your grainy vacation footage into a cinematic masterpiece. But wait, should we be cheering or raining on this parade?

Let's start with the basics: iFoto's Enhance Video Quality is like the Photoshop of videos, minus the wage-dependent watermark. It's this magical software that upscales your videos to 4K and beyond, making your blurry wedding dance look as crisp as a freshly ironed suit. But as we bask in the glow of our suddenly high-definition memories, a nagging question crops up—what's the trade-off here?

Imagine you've got this old,Super-8-style home movie of your grandpa's adventures. It's adorable, sure, but the resolution makes it look like it was shot through a sieve. iFoto's Enhance Video Quality waves its wand, and voilà! It's like watching your grandpa's tale through the lens of a modern cinematographer. But is it still your grandpa's tale? Are those authentic moments, or a polished-up version of reality? Suddenly, the line between truth and enhancement blurs like the original footage.

We've become accustomed to pixels fibbing on our behalf—airbrushing away blemishes and smoothing out our lives for the gram. But with video, it's a different ball game. It's one thing to smooth out your skin tone; it's another to smooth out the rough edges of history. What happens when we start to prefer the enhanced version over the original? Are we romanticizing the past or erasing its imperfections?

iFoto's Enhance Video Quality is a marvel, no doubt. It can breathe new life into videos that seemed destined for the digital dustbin. But let's not kid ourselves; it's not just about upscaling. It's about altering the essence of what we've captured. It's like saying, "We don't need to preserve the past; we can just make it look better." But better for whom? And at what cost?

Consider this: what if someone uses this tech to doctor evidence? A low-quality video that captures a crime could be cleaned up to incriminate an innocent person. Suddenly, the tool isn't just about making memories shiny; it's a potential instrument of injustice. And that's a scary thought, isn't it?

Let's also consider the impact on our own experiences. We get so caught up in achieving pixel perfection that we might forget to live in the moment. How often do we see people at events, their faces illuminated by their screens, trying to capture the perfect video to post online? With tools like Enhance Video Quality, are we just perpetuating this cycle of not being present?

But don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating for a return to the stone age of video quality. There's something undeniably thrilling about watching a video that looks like it belongs in a movie theater. It's just that maybe, just maybe, we need to pump the brakes and think about the implications of making everything look too good to be true.

So, what's the answer? Should we embrace iFoto's Enhance Video Quality with open arms? Or should we approach it with a healthy dose of skepticism? As with most things in life, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. We can enjoy the benefits of this technology without losing sight of the value of authenticity.

In the end, it's up to us to decide how we use these tools. Will we enhance our memories responsibly, respecting their original form? Or will we fall down the rabbit hole of pixel perfection, losing touch with reality in the process? The choice is yours, but remember, sometimes the beauty is in the imperfections.

[tcclsblog]

Is success and striving for results just an ego-trip?

"With modern technology, particularly with social media, we sometimes give ourselves so much unnecessary stress by keeping ourselves overly busy with everything."

Our purpose as spiritual beings on the path to enlightenment is to understand if we have decided to become a Buddha for the benefit of all sentient beings. Many have taken refuge and have received Bodhisattva and Tantric vows, but their lives have not changed very much. Their lives are still very worldly.

As a practitioner, we must always relook at our original motive. Also, look at the things around us that we have taken for granted and see them the way they are without adding any labels or emotion.

When ordinary beings come together, what starts as communication turns into judgment and ends up about who is right. As dharma practitioners, we should practice and train to become like the boundless heart of the Buddha. Rather than ask "who is right," we should be asking ourselves, "what is right," knowing that everybody has different conditions.

When we look at the Buddha, we can see that he maintains seeing the emptiness in all things and manifesting dignity. On the other hand, we are all trained very well for efficiency, but how many of us can uphold dignity? Dignity comes from self-confidence. We can see how a person with a dignified presence can walk into a room and somehow – only by being there – makes everyone feel like everything will be okay. It comes from inner confidence. We must trust the law of cause and effect, have faith in our prayers, and belief in our practice. Then there will be dignity.

Often we won't listen to our Guru's advice due to our ignorance and ego. It is not related to dignity or confidence. What will change us into dignified practitioners are resilience and grit.

The mind continuously goes up and down when it gets disturbed. Things happen beyond our control, and then they can go haywire. But we must have the resilience to never give up on our practice. So cultivate your practice with strength and discipline. Keep your vows because that is something that money cannot buy. And once you do, you can rejoice with the confidence and dignity in knowing that you did it!

Keeping our word, keeping our promise, and keeping our vows is so unbelievable. Likewise, taming our mind and offering our mandala of body, speech, and mind. We need to accumulate these merits, or nothing will happen.

So, is striving for success an ego-trip? It depends upon whether what you are seeking is just for yourself, or it is also for others' benefit. Success as a Bodhisattva arises only through the path of merit, on which one walks with egoless dignity. Dharma teaching by Singha Rinpoche and Edited by Sandeep Nath 27 Dec 2020

[lifechanyuan]

First, let's excerpt a passage from the 1990 issue of "Reader" magazine, page 42, titled "New Discussion on the Mystery of Death":

A multinational company in Japan wanted to confirm whether brain waves still exist after death. Scientists implanted electrodes into the skulls of subjects, connected to a computer that could receive brain waves within an 80-kilometer range. Among the 10 deceased subjects, they found brain waves in 2. One named Freddy, three days after death, the computer screen displayed: "I am Freddy, I am happy, there is no pain." The phrase "there is no pain" appeared over 20 times before the brain waves disappeared. Another leukemia patient, on the third day after death, the computer screen displayed: "This is a beautiful place, I am happy to be here, I feel joy." This experiment illustrates that brain waves exist after death.

Whether this report is true, everyone should verify for themselves. I'm just telling you, there is life after death.

Many people don't believe in an afterlife; they are deceived by the surface phenomena of the material world, bound by their conventional thinking, limited by their eyes, ears, and bodies, and restricted by limited scientific knowledge. They dismiss everything they cannot understand as superstition, witchcraft, and deny the negative universe, the 36-dimensional spaces, regarding everything unseen, unheard, unfelt, scientifically unproven, and unacknowledged by experts as illusory and nonexistent. This can't be blamed on them; it's normal because until now, amidst the vast ocean of human wisdom, no book, philosophy, or ideology has fully elucidated the mysteries of the universe. Although the classics of major religions mention the afterlife, they fail to convince, leaving one only half-believing, while modern science and technology have not fully confirmed life after death. Some people with extraordinary abilities, although capable of supernatural powers, either do not understand the mysteries or lack the ability to describe them, giving a sense of ambiguity and difficulty in distinguishing truth from falsehood.

So, can "Lifechanyuan" explain clearly and convincingly? It's also very difficult, not because it can't be explained clearly, but because of our level of cultivation. For example, when I say sunlight is colorful, with various colors depending on what's in nature, you may find it unbelievable. When we talk about complex planes and imaginary functions, it's hard for elementary and middle school students to understand because they cannot be explained with examples from daily life. You can easily understand that one apple plus one apple equals two apples, but if I tell you 1 + (-1) = the universe, it becomes inexplicable and incomprehensible. All middle school students know the periodic table of chemical elements, but when Mendeleev first arranged the elements, not even chemists believed it because many elements had not been discovered or confirmed. How did Mendeleev know about their existence? How do you know there are only these elements on Earth? Is it because humanity hasn't discovered them yet that you think Mendeleev is just fantasizing and piecing things together randomly? No, regardless of whether you believe it or not, the periodic table of chemical elements is an order, a necessity, just like every cell in a person has 23 pairs of chromosomes. If there are more or less, it's no longer a human. Everything in the universe follows a fixed procedure and order. So why was it Mendeleev who arranged the periodic table of chemical elements, and not someone else?

Buddhism teaches that humans have human eyes, deva eyes, wisdom eyes, dharma eyes, and Buddha eyes. Human eyes are understandable because we all have them. So, what are wisdom eyes? We can understand that too, for example, "Bole identifies horses." Bole had wisdom in recognizing horses; he knew what kind of horse a fast horse was, what kind was a medium horse, and what kind was a poor horse. Some political leaders have the wisdom to recognize talents, like Li Shimin recognizing Wei Zheng. What about deva eyes? We can also understand that, for example, the Hubble Space Telescope, electron microscopes, laser mirrors, etc., are heavenly eyes that can see distant worlds and the microscopic world invisible to the naked eye, see beyond walls and skin. Such eyes are deva eyes.

What about the Dharma Eye? It’s relatively difficult to understand, because only those who know the order of the universe, the structure of matter, and the past and future of any object or person possess the Dharma Eye. As we mentioned above, Mendeleev, in the field of chemical elements, already possessed the Dharma Eye. Newton had a certain Dharma Eye in the field of mechanics. Sakyamuni had the Dharma Eye in the field of material structure. Thousands of years ago, in the “Avatamsaka Sutra”, it was said: “In each speck of dust, there are boundless worlds; in these worlds, there are again specks of dust; within these specks of dust, there are again worlds; such is the endless cycle, which cannot be exhausted.” For example, the Earth Universe is a speck of dust in the Macrocosm, the Milky Way is a speck of dust in the Spiral Galaxy, the Solar System is a speck of dust in the Milky Way, the Earth is a speck of dust in the Solar System, any single object is a speck of dust on Earth, a molecule is a speck of dust in an object, an atom is a speck of dust in a molecule, an electron is a speck of dust that constitutes an atom, and so on to protons, neutrons, photons, mesons, hyperons, variants, antiparticles, etc., “such is the endless cycle, which cannot be exhausted,” how could Sakyamuni see so finely thousands of years ago? Because he had the Dharma Eye.

What about the Buddha Eye? This is the most difficult level to understand, as it involves nonmaterial, negative universe, 36-dimensional spaces, space-time view, existence and non-existence view, reality and illusion view, etc. Einstein once said: “For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” This shows that Einstein has bypassed the boundary of the Buddha Eye. The reason why Einstein is great lies here. For those who have the Buddha Eye, time does not exist. The so-called “seeing through the world” is only for those who have the Buddha Eye. Ordinary people can’t see through it, and they have no way to see through it.

Sakyamuni “suddenly enlightened” under the Bodhi tree and became a Buddha, so what is “sudden enlightenment”, and what is a Buddha?

The Southern Buddhism in China talks about “sudden enlightenment”, which is actually a misunderstanding of “sudden enlightenment”, leading people astray. The real “sudden enlightenment” refers to the critical transformation point where a qualitative change suddenly occurs when the quantitative change reaches the limit. For example, a pot of cold water, heated on the fire, gradually changes from cold to warm, when its temperature reaches 100 degrees (we ignore the altitude for now) it becomes boiling water, without the previous heating process, cold water can never “suddenly enlighten” into boiling water. Anyone who does not practice cultivation, don’t dream of “sudden enlightenment” to become a Buddha. The natural law will not shift with human will. Sakyamuni “suddenly enlightened” to become a Buddha because he had been practicing cultivation for a long time, and the quantitative change had reached the extreme, and he was bound to become a Buddha. There is a joke about a person who only feels full after eating nine buns. When he feels full after eating the ninth bun, he regrets it: “If I had known that this ninth bun could fill me up, I wouldn’t have eaten the previous eight buns, wasting eight buns, I’m really stupid.” Stupid? Indeed stupid, not just ordinary stupid, it’s the square of stupid.

What is a Buddha? Simply put, it is a person who already has the Buddha Eye, a person who is in tune with the thinking of the universe, a person who is one with the “Tao”, a person who understands the intention of the Ancestor of Buddha-the Greatest Creator, a person who has transcended time and space, embraced eternity.

I’ve said a lot above, and the purpose is only one. That is to tell everyone that people have past lives and future lives, and life is constantly evolving and transforming. For example, the so-called “death” in people only refers to the death of the body. This ends the mission of carrying the spiritual body of LIFE, returning to dust. The spiritual body of LIFE will then go to another space. This is just like people taking a boat from this shore to the other shore. After reaching the other shore, they abandon the boat and go ashore, thus completing the mission of the boat. In this analogy, the body is the “boat” that carries the spiritual body of LIFE from one shore to the other shore.

Back to the main point, the destination after death is unknown to everyone, it's inevitable. So where exactly do people go "after" death? Based on the quality of each person's spiritual body, after death, they will go to one of the following ten worlds: the Thousand-year World (described in the Bible as the resurrected world and the heaven hoped for by Islam), the Ten-thousand-year World, the Elysium World, the Anode Black Hole Body（the womb of the mother body that nurtures animals and plants, serving as a means for them to return to the human world）, the animal World, Livestock World, Animal World, Plant World, Nether World, Frozen Layer and Inflamed Layer. There are no other destinations.

[we-dental]

Invisalign Treatment in Coimbatore

A Clear Path to a Great Smile

You can now have straight, beautiful teeth without just using traditional braces. Invisalign treatment in Coimbatore gives you a modern, easy, and almost invisible way to straighten your teeth. At We Dental, we focus on Invisalign treatment, offering personalized care to help you get the smile you’ve always wanted.

What is Invisalign Treatment?

Invisalign is a new method in orthodontic and it uses clear, removable aligners that very slowly start to shift your teeth to their proper places. Because Invisalign aligners are made from smooth, clear plastic, they fit closely over your teeth. They are nearly invisible, which may become a favorite choice for adults and teenagers.

Benefits of Invisalign Treatment in Coimbatore

Choosing Invisalign treatment has several benefits: 1. Beauty End Invisalign aligners are almost invisible, so you straighten your teeth without anybody’s knowing about your braces.

2. Good Fit They will be custom-fitted for your teeth to ensure comfortable placement and eliminate the presentation of wire or metal brackets associated with traditional braces.

3. Removable Aligners You can easily remove Invisalign aligners for eating, brushing, and flossing. This makes it easier to maintain your teeth throughout the treatment.

4. Shorter Treatment Time Depending on your needs, Invisalign treatment is sometimes even shorter than traditional orthodontic treatments. Most patients see results within 6–18 months.

5. Expected Outcome Advanced 3D imaging technology allows you to see an exact virtual preview of what to expect and how your treatment plan will be when using Invisalign.

The Process of Invisalign Treatment at We Dental

If you are looking for Invisalign in Coimbatore at We Dental, here’s what awaits you.

1. First Contact During your first visit, our experienced orthodontist will assess your teeth and discuss your goals. If Invisalign is right for you, we’ll take impressions and create a customized treatment plan.

2. Custom Aligners Your aligners are designed with state-of-the-art 3D imaging technology, so they fit well and yield the best results.

3. Wearing Your Aligners You will wear each set of aligners for about 1 to 2 weeks, based on what your dentist says. They work by gently pushing your teeth to move them into position.

4. Routine Monitoring We will plan period reviews to check on your progress and make necessary changes.

5. Last Outputs You will have a straight, beaming smile after your treatment is over. We might suggest taking retainers home to maintain your results.

Coimbatore cost of the treatment of Invisalign

At We Dental, we believe that the bright smile you’ve always wanted should not cost much. The treatment price of Invisalign depends on how complex the case is and how long the treatment is going to take. We offer flexible payment plans in conjunction with clear pricing that fits your budget.

Why choose We Dental for Invisalign treatment in Coimbatore?

1. Competent Team Our expert orthodontists have extensive experience with Invisalign and other teeth-straightening treatments.

2. Tailor Support: We understand that each patient is unique. Our team will work together to create a treatment plan that fits individual goals and choices.

3. Advanced Technology: We keep using advanced technology to ensure accurate diagnostics and precise treatment.

4. Easy Environment: We are designed to provide the feeling of calmness and effortless nature during Invisalign treatment.

Is Invisalign good for you?

Invisalign can be best suited for any dental problems, such as crooked teeth, gaps, overbites, underbites, and crossbites. Still, talking to our orthodontist will help find out whether it is the right choice.

[muneebshah]

The Watch Life: Enhancing Your Everyday Style and Functionality

In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world, a watch isn’t just a tool for telling time. Watches have evolved to become personal statements, lifestyle choices, and even miniature fitness and wellness centers. This “watch life” represents a new way to approach timepieces, where style meets function, and tech merges seamlessly into our daily routines.

The Evolution of the Modern Watch

Watches have come a long way from simple pocket and wristwatches that only displayed the time. With advancements in technology, a watch is now so much more—it’s a smart device that can keep you connected, guide your fitness journey, help manage daily stress, and complement your personal style. From luxury analog watches to high-tech smartwatches, there’s a watch for every lifestyle, personality, and purpose.

Key Features That Define the Watch Life

Smart Connectivity

Smartwatches have revolutionized the way we interact with our devices. With a simple glance at your wrist, you can check messages, make calls, and even control other smart devices. Features like notifications, GPS, and voice assistants bring convenience, enabling you to stay connected without constantly reaching for your phone.

Health and Fitness Tracking

For those who lead an active lifestyle, watches equipped with fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, and sleep analysis have become essential. They allow you to monitor your steps, calories burned, heart rate, and even stress levels. The ability to track and set goals is a great motivator and encourages users to stay active and healthy.

Style and Customization

Watches now come in a vast range of styles, colors, and sizes, allowing wearers to choose something that fits their unique style. Customizable watch faces, interchangeable bands, and even options for digital or analog displays provide endless opportunities for personalization. Whether you want something sleek and modern or classic and timeless, there’s a design for everyone.

Durability and Adaptability

Watches have become more durable, designed for various environments and activities. Water-resistant and shockproof options mean you can wear your watch through sports, underwater activities, and intense workouts. It’s an ideal companion for those with active, adventurous lifestyles.

Longer Battery Life

Battery life is a crucial factor in choosing a watch. Modern smartwatches are optimized to provide longer-lasting power, with some models lasting days or even weeks on a single charge. This extended battery life means you don’t have to worry about frequent charging, making your watch more dependable in your daily life.

Choosing the Right Watch for Your Lifestyle

If you’re new to the watch life, deciding on the best watch for your needs can feel overwhelming. Here are some pointers to guide you in the right direction:

Consider Your Priorities: Think about how you plan to use your watch. If fitness tracking is essential, opt for a model with advanced health metrics. If style is your focus, look for customizable options or classic designs.

Evaluate the Ecosystem: If you already own other smart devices, choosing a watch compatible with that ecosystem can streamline your experience.

Explore Customization Options: With many watches now offering interchangeable bands and customizable faces, you can change the look of your watch as often as you’d like to suit different outfits or occasions.

Embrace the Watch Life

The “watch life” is about more than just owning a timepiece. It’s about finding a watch that complements your lifestyle, serves as a functional tool, and reflects your unique sense of style. From morning workouts to business meetings, your watch becomes a silent partner in your daily activities, helping you make the most of every moment.

[greatcomputerdelusion]

Elevating Your B2b Travel Agent Portal 

Do you want to become the best travel agent in the business? Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd. is the only place to look. Because we recognize the potential and difficulties associated with operating a travel agency, we are committed to assisting you in improving your B2B travel agent portal to increase its effectiveness.

Maintaining competitiveness in the fast-paced world of today requires a dependable and effective B2B travel agent portal. These days, it’s not just about making travel and hotel reservations; it’s also about offering value-added services, forming reliable alliances, and optimizing your business processes to provide outstanding customer experiences.

So, how can Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd. improve your B2B travel agent portal? Now let’s get started:

Modern Technology: We have state-of-the-art technology on our webpage, which makes it easy to book hotels, flights, and activities. You can save time and effort while giving your clients a flawless booking experience with user-friendly interfaces and seamless integrations.

Huge Selection: Access our huge selection of hotels, flights, and activities from all over the world. We can assist you whether your clients are searching for an affordable hostel or an expensive beach resort. You may provide various solutions to your clients to fit their needs and budgets by working with Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd.

Personalized Service: Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd. is a firm that values providing individualized attention. For this reason, we provide devoted account managers who are committed to comprehending your company’s needs and offering specially designed solutions to enable your success. Our experts will help you every step of the process, whether you require help browsing our platform or scheduling a complicated schedule.

Competitive Pricing: In the current market, we recognize the value of competitive pricing. For this reason, we put up endless effort to shop with our suppliers for the greatest pricing, enabling you to provide your customers with cheap rates without compromising quality. You can earn more business and remain one step ahead of the competition by working with Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd.

Marketing Support: Use our marketing support services to make a lasting impression. With social media campaigns and customized marketing materials, we give you the resources and tools you need to expand your customer base and build your company. By working with Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd., you may grow your company and accomplish great things in the market.

In conclusion, elevating your B2B travel agency India Pvt Ltd with Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd. is the key to unlocking greater success in the travel industry. With our cutting-edge technology, extensive inventory, personalized service, competitive pricing, and marketing support, you’ll have everything you need to thrive in today’s competitive market. So why wait? Take your business to new heights with Fly24hrs Holiday Pvt. Ltd. today!