#and combine it with biological science and I’m just invested

[persnickety-doodles]

STEM students are wild af

Asami is warming up with an… integral exercise 🫠 before another study session. At this point they’ve started dating and just spend time studying together.

Korra here is still working on her International Relations degree since she wants to be a diplomat or a small bakery owner idk. I haven’t thought too much about it.

More college AU

[hopeymchope]

Godzilla Singular Point

I came into Singular Point with some trepidation because Godzilla’s history in anime is both very recent and extremely bad. The three anime movies released between 2017 and 2019 are easily the worst work of famed writer Gen Urobuchi and honestly contain more bullshit than I can even get into here. Those movies and this series were both Godzilla anime properties commissioned by Netflix, which didn’t get my hopes up very much. Thankfully, Singular Point is a very different beast from the anime trilogy. One could argue it’s very different from most Godzilla media, actually — at least from my perspective. And I’m still a pretty entry-level fan of Toho’s Big G, all things considered.

Let me just warn you right up front: This smartphone-based virtual assistant is basically the breakout star of the series. 

When you think “Godzilla,” you probably don’t think “incredibly dense sci-fi concepts,” but with the big G’s first-ever anime series, the writers clearly set out to change that perception. Before the first kaiju even appears, the lead characters are plucked from obscurity and dropped into a mystery that involves fourth-dimensional time travel, physical objects that look different from all sides, theoretical math concepts, self-propagating A.I., and a whole lot more. And it’s NEVER made clear how all of it connects to the rampaging kaiju! Although we spend a lot of time investigating a red dust or sand that is very obviously tied to the monsters in SOME way, no one ever makes a connection that explains the relationship. Maybe we’re supposed to wait for a later season to connect the threads... but let’s get into the idea of “another season” later.

I like to think of myself as someone who typically enjoys hard sci-fi, but even with the characters spending loads of time trying to explain the high concepts driving the story, I was never able to fully wrap my head around what was going on in the mystery at the center of GSP. I rewound and rewatched a few explanations, but I still walked away feeling lost. I eventually settled on some vague, loose understandings of most of the ideas mentioned, but those understandings were subject to being ripped apart in subsequent scenes when I was shown or told something completely at odds with what I thought I knew. I can’t say I was ever bored with the thick, dense scientific concepts on offer — trying to find purchase with these far-out ideas kept me glued to the screen — but damn, I sure wish I was able to comprehend them.

What do we want?! DENSE SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION AND DEBATE! When do we want it?! AFTER THOROUGH RESEARCH, TESTING, AND PEER REVIEW!

Another weird thing about this show is that the lead characters remain in separate locations and on separate tracks for the entire duration. We have Yun — a mechanical engineer and programmer who has an amazing grasp on physics and human behavior. And we have Mei — a grad student who is deeply invested in theoretical science, UMAs, cryptids and other far-flung concepts. Both of them are basically geniuses in their fields, and even though they take opposing views of just how flexible reality is, their shared ability to think “outside the box” becomes the crucial component in solving the mystery at the core of the series. Because they don’t even know one another (despite being separated by like, ONE degree), they only ever interact via text messages and behind screen names, which feels pretty damn weird. At least  I immediately liked both of them, with Yun being the standout to me because of how his lowkey reactions to crazy shit generates a lot of humor.

This soundtrack cover LIES; you will never see these characters in a room together like this. 

Alas, we don’t get to know the characters a whole lot beyond what we learned of them in the first two episodes. It’s not long before they’re trapped in a series of complicated exposition dumps, endlessly attempting to explain the high concepts of the show to other characters as well as my dumb ass in the audience. The fact that I liked them in the first couple of episodes carried me through more than half of the show, but I was always hoping to see them share more of themselves or just display more emotion. Anime as a medium excels at emotional storytelling. But despite the major, world-altering events the characters are constantly warning us about, none of them seem to have many emotions about said events. 

Further complicating matters is how, when major events finally occur in this show, they are often kept off-screen. One character shockingly dies, but the portrayal of that death is so piss-poor that I didn’t even realize it’d happened until someone mentioned their death in the next episode. After that vague death, I was particularly sensitive to anything that looked like it might possibly be lethal. Yet a later event that is played up as a tragic, fatal occurrence ends up... fine, somehow? It’s not clear how the character survives, because — even after one of our heroes is left screaming their name in despair as they seemingly die — nobody ever talks about or explains how he’s just fine a couple of scenes later. And near the end of the series, there’s a major transformation that occurs for one of the characters, and we never see it happen nor do we understand HOW it happened. It’s just that suddenly, this character is extremely different due to off-screen reasons that are only vaguely verbalized.

I guess these two really bonded at some point for some reason? And what you are seeing here is literally the height of emotion shown in the entire show.

Even though the overarching story of the series so far pretty clearly wraps up in episode 13, we then get a post-credits tease for a potential second season. So the question becomes: Would I watch that?

Well... Godzilla Singular Point is a series with a lot of issues that kept me at arms’ length from it — tons of extremely confusing dialogue, highly frustrating choices in direction that lead to baffling storytelling, characters who are mostly exposition-dumping — and yet there’s still some foundational work here that I appreciated a lot. When the action occurs, it’s pretty cool/fun. And when urban destruction occurs, it can be awe-inspiring. The human characters, though little-explored, have likable and interesting foundations to them that could be expanded upon. And I didn’t even mention the soundtrack, which features a variety of musical styles combined with the classic Ifukube theme music and an OP that is an absolute banger. (I have a weakness when it comes to music; a good soundtrack can carry me through even the blandest series sometimes.) Even the core idea of centering a Godzilla series around hard science and mathematical concepts is a compelling one, I think! I just hated the execution of it; they went waaaaay too far on poorly explaining incredibly complex, mind-bending concepts for my pea brain to handle it. They spend so much time trying to explain things, yet somehow they never succeeded for me. 

Ultimately, I’d probably give the show another chance. But if I do give another season a chance, it’ll be on probation. I wouldn’t watch the entire season unless I could see within four episodes that they’d definitely improved things.

Would I recommend that anyone watch the series as it currently stands? I mean... not really? I guess if you really dig complex math, hard theoretical science, and/or Toho’s stable of monsters, then maaaaaaaaaaybe give it a shot. But otherwise? Naaaahh. It’s not good enough at anything to make it stand out from the anime crowd. I didn’t hate it like I hated the Godzilla anime films, but Singular Point is still something that both casual viewers and most fans can comfortably ignore for the time being. It’s not a complete disaster, and it’s not without its highlights... but it’s definitely disappointing in my opinion.

OKAYOKAYOKAY, so let’s talk about the kaiju for a bit! 

Below will be SPOILERS revealing all of the kaiju that appear in Godzilla Singular Point and giving my feelings on them. 

Godzilla — It’s interesting to see a version of Godzilla that borrows some ideas from Shin Godzilla. Shin G has been incredibly unique until now, but this Godzilla manages to fold some of Shin’s distinctive aspects in with the more classic/typical versions to build a fun new depiction. Be forewarned that Godzilla doesn’t show up until the series is halfway over, and he doesn’t get a ton of screen time, either. He’s used quite sparingly and kept in hazy settings, often framed from the neck-up when they show him. It’s a little frustrating that they felt the need to shroud him so much, but I respect the fact that whenever Godzilla is shown, the destruction he causes is on a scale far beyond anything that the rest of the kaiju ever do. He is pure devastation. 

Rodan — He’s easily the biological kaiju with the most screen time in Singular Point. Rodan is first introduced as one gigantic pterosaur, but if you’ve seen ANY trailers for this show then you already know that his depiction transitions into an asston of smaller pterosaurs, all of whom are also called “Rodan.” (Apparently the word Rodan is both singular and plural, like the word “buffalo.”) Although he looks kind of cool at first, pretty soon Rodan showing up isn’t special or threatening anymore. Rodan appearances go from “a big goddamn deal” to “some bland background noise” before the series is even 1/3 finished. The design might be a little too far removed from the original for my own taste, but even if I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t be able to care for this Rodan simply because he’s rendered so unimportant and unimpressive.

If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise... 

Anguirus — Now check this guy out! Anguirus gets one of the coolest fights in the show and also demonstrates some powers that are well beyond anything we’ve seen him do before. Because he sticks to unpopulated areas, we never see him do much damage to Japan, but he is definitely holding all the attention when he’s on-screen. He’s a highlight for me — a total badass who is very unique in his abilities. And the stated origin for his name is goddamn adorable.

Manda — Yup, Manda is in this series... but I don’t have much to say for him. It seems like the creators of the anime didn’t have much to say about him either. His role amounts to little more than a repeated cameo, and in most of those cameos you only ever see his tail. When we finally see his full body, it’s done so briefly and kept at a distance, leaving me with no real impression. I had to look up his design online and... yup, that sure looks like Manda. Final score: MEEEEHH.

Kumonga — I definitely did not see this appearance coming! Kumonga is much smaller here than you may be used to, but she gets to star in the most suspenseful sequence in the series and easily earns the most exciting cliffhanger moment at the end of an episode. I was utterly glued to the show during her screen time, which comes with a lot of icky twists. Good ones! I honestly like Kumonga here more than I ever have previously.

NEW PHONE WHO DIS

Salunga — Uh, who? This is the one monster that isn’t based on a classic Toho kaiju but instead is a brand-new creation. I suppose that everybody who touches the Toho Kaiju franchise wants to make their own mark on it in some regard. But a big part of the fun of this series for me personally was the anticipation of seeing new interpretations and designs of classic Toho monsters. And so, given that he kind of resembles both Baragon and Gabara, I never stopped wishing they’d just used one of those guys as the basis and namesake. Taken on his own, however? He’s... pretty neat. Not unique or exciting, but solidly above par.  He resembles a cross between a lizard/dinosaur and an ape, plus his head has some nifty coloration. 

Our Jaguar!

Jet Jaguar — I guess Jet Jaguar isn’t exactly a kaiju in the traditional sense because he’s a Giant Robot. However, if you want to consider him one, then I wager he probably gets even more screen time than Rodan! We meet him almost immediately when the series begins. Initially an odd pilot-driven robot that was constructed at the whim of a quirky old factory-owner with too much disposable income, Jet Jaguar grows and changes over the course of the show, ultimately undergoing a transition in episode 7 that makes him pretty damn impossible to dislike. In fact, I utterly adored him by then. This is definitely the best Jet Jaguar I’ve ever seen. His design is recognizably similar to the original yet utterly distinct, too. Like many of the other kaiju here, he’s not nearly as big as he was when he was first introduced to the movies, but his size is ideal for battling the smaller-scale monsters that we spend most of the series on.

[luobingmeis]

I think Undyne's determination has less to do with like something that happened in the past and more like the overlap between determination as an actual physical thing VS a spiritual thing. Whereas the amalgamates were injected with determination by Alphys, Undyne makes her OWN. You've killed her best friend. You're going to kill the love of her life. You're going to kill her mentor. You're going to kill everyone. You've killed HER. But she still has to stop you. Everyone is counting on her 1/2

Undyne's whole motif is letting the monsters of the Underground achieve their hopes and dreams. Theres a reason she is the boss fight in Waterfall, the most backstory rich area in the game. Hope and dreams have just as much weight as determination does, its what helps you defeat Asriel. And Undyne the Undying's design mimics Asriel's because in Genocide SHE is the heroine, SHE is the determined hero that defies death in order to save everyone she loves via the hopes and dreams of everyone (2/2)

Sorry I just really fucking love Undyne Undertale fhfhfndkdk she willingly letting herself be used in an experiment to help her people is Very Good tho too hmmmm

!!!!

sorry ur abt to get a whole essay i love undertale so much.........

(also i use a lot of !!! for emphasis, not bc i’m yelling omg)

(also i’m letting you know this is an incoherent mess, it is 2am here akjsdkjsdjk)

but you can definitely be right!!!! tbh your idea seems much more par for the course than the spaghetti im throwing at the wall

even then, though, it’s stll so interesting bc like!!!! undyne’s courage is undeniable, and her fight to protect the underground plays Such a huge role in her whole waterfall arc. and, in the spiritual sense, she is absolutely determined!! that just makes me WONDER though bc, like, canonically, monsters Are Not determined! they don’t have that threshold!

and then, in looking at determination in the spiritual sense, what exactly makes undyne different? is it that her desire to live and protect the underground unlocks that threshold needed for determination? at one point, could monsters be determined, but then their millennia trapped underground biologically/psychologically stripped them of that? so then could any monster in the underground, when facing high enough stakes, have that determination? or is it just undyne?

bc then i think about the other bosses in either route, like papyrus, mettaton, asgore, sans. where undyne is the monster/boss capable of possessing determination, sans is probably the one least likely to have any threshold for determination (this is bc his entire boss fight is him realizing he can no longer be an observer, he is literally the last line of defense between chara and the annihilation of all monsters). mettaton is complicated bc as a napstablook turned corporeal, i dont even know where to BEGIN with him. but then there’s papyrus and!! it feels like he should be capable of feeling determined. in both the pacifist and genocide route, he is so assured that the human has some internal goodness. while, in the genocide route, that hope could be translated to fear, that still makes me wonder: under what circumstances could a monster’s determination be unlocked? is it not solely life or death? does it require some ulterior motives (aka undyne’s whole character being protecting the underground)? and like!!! it’s just so fun to think about bc, say it is undyne’s spiritual determination being unlocked, it’s so interesting that she’s the one differentiated!! that even papyrus, a character brimming with good and happiness and love, doesn’t have that determination, but undyne, who has a similar type of passion and goodness within her, does!!!

with experiment undyne, i will admit my theory is very much uhh wild! and unhinged! and, while my theory is much more playing in the “what if’s” of the science of artificial determination, it still makes me wonder! especially in the boss fight herself. ever since i first saw her genocide boss fight, i’ve always been a bit fixated on her eye, specifically the one w/ the eye-patch that eventually seems to have Some type of arrow power. while this definitely could have just been A Design Choice (and one i stand by!!), undertale is a game that reveals its complete lore when the pacifist and genocide route are put together. thus, in a hypothetical situation, i don’t think it would be out of the question that undyne’s eye could still Do that even in a pacifist route.

but even then, there are holes to poke! such as why doesn’t she use it? if undyne has been injected with artificial determination, why is she, frankly, normal until it’s a matter of life and death?

(to cut to the punchline before i get into my bullshit: i think it’s bc, at first, it seemed as if the artificial determination just Didn’t Work and had no affect, when in reality it needed to be met with spiritual determination as well)

and, again, i know i’m playing with a lot of hypotheticals right now, and mostly this is me just kinda fun bullshit theorizing, but i think it could have something to do with the fact that she has the threshold for spiritual determination! the reason i even think that she would offer herself up to determination experimentation is bc of the loyalty and love she has for asgore and the underground. i would argue that she is just as invested in asgore’s plan as asgore himself is, and she obviously sees him as some type of father-figure. so that alone gives her this Drive to do whatever it takes for the underground to survive.

so, therefore, i think in regards to this hypothetical experiment undyne, i think it quite literally is that spiritual determination threshold combined with artificial determination

and for that, i quickly want to talk abt the amalgamates and why they tie into this:

the timeline: corpses/souls injected with determination --> no reaction --> corpses wake up and act normal --> ??? happens  --> (quickly leads to) amalgamates

and so then that once again raises the question: what differentiates undyne? 

i think, for that, we then have to consider another question: if most monsters do not have the physical determination to continue living after death, can that determination be given when they’re already dead? monsters in general already have no threshold for determination, so can that be artificially made if it never existed in the first place? 

bc while alphys’s experiment, iirc, was to see what happened when a soul was injected with determination, i think the other much needed question is if monster souls could even Handle determination

and, while we do not know specifically what went wrong with the amalgamates (aka like How did they melt together), we do know that their physical forms really were not able to handle the artificial determination, imo most likely bc they do not even have a threshold for spiritual determination

but undyne is, as you have noted, different!

so, frankly, i think you’re right! i think undyne does have an inherent spiritual determination. it’s uncommon in monsters, but her want to save the world is enough to leave her determined

however, i think That would have just been enough to keep her alive

i think it’s artificial determination that gave her that final form! to reference  back to the amalgamates, they were all creatures whose powers we had seen before, but different now and, specifically, more powerful. that very same thing could be said for undyne! her powers are, essentially, things we have seen before, but fucking to Max Intensity 

AND THEN!! AND THEN!!!!!

when you do kill heroine undyne, she doesn’t turn to dust first

she melts first, and then turns to dust!!!!!

and, honestly, it’s that small detail that sent me down this rabbit hole, bc the only ever time we’ve seen monsters melted together are the amalgamates!

i think the main difference between heroine undyne and the amalgamates is the fact that undyne, at first, had No Reaction to the determination at first bc, since she most likely already had this secret threshold for spiritual determination, it wasn’t the Biggest of changes. it wouldn’t have had such a drastic reaction on her physical form bc, even if she didn’t know it yet, it wasn’t an entirely foreign substance

the amalgamates, however, aka monsters who had no spiritual determination, could only handle the artificial determination for an unknown amount of time before their bodies began rejecting the chemicals and becoming..... that

of course, then, this leaves me with even more questions, such as could undyne sustain this final form? would her body eventually give out, overcome by determination? was this form only meant for life or death situations?

and uhhh i think this is the end!! if you made it this far and are thinking to urself “damn you’re really an english major when you write like this?? this isn’t even comprehensible” do not fret!! i know this theory is kinda a shitshow, and it’s one of those things where i can keep myself up all night thinking abt this and talking myself in circles bc there are some points that i think have strengths and other points that are probably pretty weak

basically though!! i see the connection between artificial determination and undyne through the fact that her form actually changes, the reveal of her legit power eye, the way her attacks have been altered, and the fact that she melts at the end (akin to the amalgamates’ appearances) before poofing into dust

this has been,,,, a shitshow i am so sorry i hope this was at least somewhat understandable ajkdsjkdsjk

[erosjeon]

Part 1|?

⇢ In an age where information can save you or kill you; the concept of wrong place at the wrong time is a funny one. What do you do when you’re accused of stealing the hard-drive that holds restricted information belonging to the government? Particularly when they send a lethal robot to take you down? 

Pairing⍮ Jeon Jungkook x reader, Kim Namjoon x reader Genre⍮ robot!au, angst, slow-burn and eventual smut (no specific warnings in this chapter)  Word-count⍮ 4.6k

A/N: This fic couldn’t have dropped at any other time just as fitting to celebrate the belated birthdays of my loves Jungkook and Namjoon who also happen to be the main two characters. It’s also my birthday hehe! I had not actually planned to drop this now as a celebration at all since I had written it almost a year ago and had edited and gone back a thousand time. I think its safe for me to say that I had not worked any harder on any other fic on this blog so I hope it receives some love 💜

He took slow careful steps down the familiar stairs confined by white sterile walls leading down to his private laboratory. Tonight marks his fifth year anniversary in that building that filled with tranquillity that was anything but pleasant.

A sigh escaped his lips as he lifted the laminated silver card that hung around his neck to grant him entrance to the lab before he moved his hand to the switch by the door to turn on the lights. His fingers tugged at the plastic material and lifted it off his chest and into some place on the counter.

Kim Namjoon  –  robotics and autonomous systems specialist. 25.

At first glance, the place appears abandoned. There were barely any white coats other than his floating in choreographed concentration along the benches, as was usually the case. The smell of the setting agar and the faint humming sound of running machinery – as well as the lack of dust quickly dismissed any ideas. The modernity of the laboratory is showcased by the giant steel frames surrounding soundproof glass that welcome a view of the city where the light further brightens the dull lab, contrasting the black metallic roof above and floor below. 

Everything was the way he left it the night before, it has been a routine for him now after having completed the project of a life time and for someone so young – it was achieved way too early. He had fallen into a slump, he knew he would never be able to re-create what he had any better. He will never feel the same way he did the first time – the time when he laid his eyes on the smooth sun-kissed coloured skin that capsuled anything but natural. The devices he had the honour of being able to craft and create were the easy part of his job, a task that he was able to do by the end of the third semester years ago while he was still learning at college. It was the half nature of his creation that posed potential for the project to fail as nature screamed at the fusion of what should not.

He ran a hand through his hair as he paced to the pile of paper on the end of his desk where his leather chair waited awkwardly, looking through the notes that he compiled through the years that now serve as a reminding memory as if their content were not engraved in every one of his brain cells. He let out a bitter laugh as he looked at the not so innocent words in the initial research and proposal that gave life to what he had made today.

14th of October, 2015.

Robots. 

A concept that has been anciently configured. The fascination with ‘artificial beings’ has been around for thousands of years, evolving recently with the onset of the Industrial Revolution in order to create complex machines powered by electricity with the sole purpose of conducting their allocated tasks -  reducing the need for human assistance.  

Human reliance on artificial intelligence has increased drastically over the years –  first beginning in factories using simple fixed machines programmed to do a single action, over and over again repeatedly. The use of machine for different number of tasks followed right after, extending to the creation of human-sized robots with the capacity for near-human thoughts and movement and so has their purpose.

How to make robots softer or more compliant… less like rigid machines? How can we combine human and artificial intelligence?

Biohybrid robots 

Robotics with tissue engineering. They serve as a promising candidate for improved research investigation by providing biological dynamic system template through biological design. The concept of dual nature seems to have chance of success as although previous studies have shown that using skeletal muscle tissue on metal tend to shrink through the course of the tissue culture, it was not the case when an antagonistic pair were grown.

22nd of April, 2017.

Repurposing project to military (I don’t know how to feel about this, but Seokjin says I can’t do anything about it).

Military Robots

The need for reducing human casualty in war has become increasingly apparent by the public outcry and the great downfall in the number of men enlisting into the army over the years.  The world is evolving at such a rapid pace which forced the need for rapid adjustment to be almost compulsive, maybe that is what has allowed technological advances in the robot industry and invention to highlight the possibility of using robots in warfare which has been once regarded a topic of science fiction. The use of automated weapon systems is now considered the future of modern warfare and has become largely invested in for research and development by many countries.

Another sigh escapes his lips as he piles the scattered papers into their usual folder and away into the second drawer that he’ll open once again this time, next year. Leaning back in his leather seat and dropping his head back, he realised how much of a mess the place was. It was as if the storm outside had moved beyond the walls and into his rather suffocating workplace but he didn’t have time to think about cleaning up when far more important matters were to be done first.

His mind wandered to the stranded bot on the other side of the building who needed to have his microbiology screen completed today. There was an undeniable thrill in the routine tests he was in charge of, he looked forward to every instance where he finds himself a few feet away from his cell, not that anyone can blame him. He has never had actual contact with the robot – no one has before. He was programmed to comply with his assigned schedules, he knew when and where he had to stretch his arm across the metal barrier to sit it on top of a glass plate where they are strapped automatically to lock him in place for specimen collection.

He wished he had more authority when it came to the fate of him – he didn’t wish to have him locked away for all this time with minimal socialisation, all of which he knew were to be of consequence one day, inevitably.

The walk to the confinement was as any usual – the corridors dark and quiet. Not many people opt for night shifts in the field of his speciality for many reasons, some that undeniably reside in the depths of his mind every single day. This job is by no meant not your typical, there was risk in every move you make – especially when the guards are a bit too tired and a bit too unobservant in the late hours of the night. The secrecy of the projects withheld within confinement were much too important than human lives, the consequence of any fault is to be faced.

Two metal doors opened swiftly as he scanned his card by the projecting blue light. His anxiety swam to the surface as he dwelled on the chances of something going wrong. He knew he had to conquer his fears before coming face to face with the bot he gave life to. He knows just how capable he can use that against him -  how he can use anything to manipulate him.

He felt ashamed to admit that despite having built him piece by piece, he almost knows absolutely nothing about what goes in his computer mind. The second nature of Jungkook granted him that liability, the little ability and free will to conceal himself as he wishes from anybody without being coded onto one of these computer screens. Thinking about it now makes the uneasy feeling more difficult to go. There’s endless possibilities of things going wrong, the main concern being the possibility that Jungkook lets loose and decides to use his strength against the metal baring his own nature against his maker.

When the sound of the buzzer resonated in Namjoon’s ears to remind him of the job to be done, an unexpected guard emerges from the side door, he stops his footing a few inches away and inspects Namjoon fully despite the authorisation he received at the gate.

“What? No more naps on the job, Mr. Min?” Namjoon snickers, before giving his old friend a warm embrace, “I didn’t know you were back from suspension, what happened to you anyway?”

“Piss off Kim, one of you has either been a snake or that stupid janitor has ratted me out and told them what happe- anyway it’s nothing, I’m back. There.”

“What? What happened?” 

“I said, it’s nothing”

“Look Yoongi, if this concerns your job which requires you to be alert for a reason then it is something, for god’s sake what happened? Is this concerning the bot?”

Yoongi sighs before he contemplates saying anything, If the higher ups know then Namjoon also has a right to know, “He attacked him, Namjoon.”

Namjoon’s whole world seemed to have paused when he processed the three words, he’s attacked someone. Jungkook, he’s attacked somebody and…. “What did he do?” Namjoon blurts, he needs to find out more. Why would Jungkook do anything like this unstimulated? 

“Well he twisted his wrist till all his bones cracked broken-”

“No, I didn’t mean the bot. What did the Janitor do, did he say anything? Do anything” 

“What?” Yoongi asks confused, “I don’t know? Maybe? I heard him speak but you can’t hear much out here. I promise it’s not because I was asleep, I was actually awake the whole day that day.”

“He must’ve said something to push him into violence. What’s the janitor’s name? details?” 

“Woah, woah! Look I’m just a guard, man. Take your investigation somewhere else, go ask Seokjin or something.”

“Seokjin knows?” Namjoon feels betrayed, Seokjin out of everyone who was meant to support him unconditionally. His supposed best friend. At least he knows where his royalties lie.

“Of course, he was the first respondent. Was walking in the hallway when it happened actually. Great timing”

“And what did Seokjin do?” he looks down at Yoongi with a blank look, he knows that this was no coincidence. Seokjin’s job position has never required him to be on field, since when was he authorised to enter confinement? None of it made sense.

“I don’t know, I guess he talked both of them down or something. All I know is he was here, took the dude out afterwards for medical attention and they were both gone. Bot was still inside. So, as I said, Seokjin is your guy here I won’t be much help.”

“I see. If you remember anything you know who to look for” Namjoon leaves before completing his sentence to enter the sterile room to find the instruments.

He throws a blunt needle, alcohol wipes, fluid container and gloves on a tray after sterilising his hands. All the routine now familiar to him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something is wrong, something is happening and he knows none of it. Jungkook has been in contact with a human for the first time in his existence, and he just attacks.

Letting the air trapped in his lungs out in a sigh, he puts on the gloves before making it to the double doors leading to the cell. Another buzzer sounded, this time no guard was present. He needed to know when this incident happened, he needed to know more. It was his responsibility if anything else goes terribly wrong, even though he was taken off the assignment.

Jungkook’s arm was already present by the time Namjoon walks to the edge of the cell. A small rectangular glass above allows him to have eye contact with the bot as he wiped his injection site clean, he knew he had to be calm and collected, as if he had no idea what he’d done. Grabbing the needle, he connected the end with the container before injecting it into a vein and drawing out blood.

Thirium

Blue blood as they call it, it’s the fluid that powers the androids biocomponents, it circulates to provide energy and electrical information as our nerves do. It is an extraordinary finding which has allowed hybrids to exist now as they do. But unlike human blood, it evaporates after a few hours and becomes invisible to the naked eye when it comes into contact with oxygen. Perfect for an erasable terror in war where there won’t be any remains to tell the story if the bot’s purpose fulfilment fails.

He knows he shouldn’t instigate a conversation, there were cameras everywhere. If seokjin hasn’t told him anything about the incident then there is a high likelihood it was only meant for a select few to know about it. They had even suspended Yoongi and he doubts that it was because his inability to do his job properly, this ‘incident’ had been done on purpose. Maybe a test? But he had to say something.

“How are you feeling?” he finds himself asking.

But there was no response. Jungkook was looking straight at him and the answer was clear. He wasn’t feeling anything, his eyes completely vacant. What had they done?

“You know, I’ve been meaning to apologise. I know how uncomfortable it feels to have blood drawn… and here you are getting it done weekly. I wish there was a different way to get your routine tests done. This one is going to be sent for microbial examination.”

Namjoon carefully removes the container from the needle, placing it onto the tray before taking his gloves off. He was not really expecting an answer, he was probably reprogrammed to be silent.

“I am sorry for what’s happened to you” he whispers. Not fully sure Jungkook would understand what he’s referring to. He just has a feeling that he hadn’t just randomly lashed out. He has never done that to him.

“You should not be apologising for getting your job done, sir” he hears the bot’s voice from the other side of the door, the dull eyes he was staring into turning rather soft before his hand was withdrawn and the flap closed shut followed by the sound of automated machinery.

Had he just gotten his un-programmed first sentence?

Has Jungkook spoken like that before? There was so much to find out.

As Namjoon made his way back to his private laboratory, he realised how wrong he was regarding his human capabilities. He might have created him but he knew absolutely nothing about the human side of Jungkook for he still has living tissue within him. His mind wandered to a specific conversation he had with Seokjin months ago.

7th of July, 2018.

“He is ready.” Seokjin speaks before he moves the pipette above a beaker, watching the mixture slowly swirl into hues of pink as he releases the chemical fluid. “He’s trained for a long time, he’s more than ready now. We have kept him thirsty for way too long.” 

Namjoon sighs before turning away from the laboratory’s senior - his senior. 

“Ready to murder every single human on this earth!” he releases a suppressed breath, “He hasn’t even had a single contact with a human before! With zero social skills, we’d be releasing a fucking killing machine!” 

“That’s what he’s designed for, remember? We don’t need him for anything else” the senior replies before taking steps towards his subordinate, “Besides, all we have to do to control him is to log on one of these damn computers. He’s already loaded with all the chips required, everyone who we want safe will be safe.”

“We were told he’d only be used in war, we didn’t sign up for this - all of this risk, millions of dollars for a single girl! They could easily have hired someone to do their dirty work.” 

Namjoon looks down at the stained bench as his senior joins him. 

“He might have cost us millions but I’m sure you can imagine how much more we’d lose if what we know goes out to the rest of the world. This one is out of your hands, I’m afraid”, he patted his shoulder before making eye contact “you seem to be getting too soft for this field of work, Dr. Kim. They wouldn’t be too impressed knowing that, especially not when you’re the creator of something so lethal.”

“You didn’t even witness anything that went down, I’d like to see you act all brave when he’s standing inches away from your face with the intent to kill – for being isolated all these years!”

He had thought so lowly of the bot he’s made from seeing him tackle bodies of plastic and various other instruments as part of his training. Although it is better to be safe rather than sorry he can’t bring himself to think that Jungkook would project his training on someone innocent, why would he harm someone he was not programmed to harm as Seokjin had promised.

Jungkook was to be released next week for his mission, he had received this information on the bulletin the next morning. Namjoon had no regard to time at this point, the night blended into day while he looked through any file he can access on the system, he knew he had to be careful with his investigation to avoid arousing suspicion. He was not stupid after all.

He vaguely remembers the mission Jungkook was set to complete, he had thought it was originally due to fatigue but now that he thinks back, Seokjin had not told him much – and after being removed from the bot’s case, he knows nothing at all. The last training he personally conducted with Jungkook haunted him.

28th of August, 2018.

“Let me run it one more time.” 

“It’s your third time already, he’s got it alright. He’s a machine!” Jin sneers as he fondles with the biohybrid’s file.

“Part machine.” Namjoon throws him a look before turning to meet his creation. “State your mission, again”, he orders. 

“Eliminate target Y/N L/N”, a monotone voice responds back.

“And?” 

“For fucks sake!” A familiar pestering voice behind him speaks again.

“I’m trying to follow the damn safe-conduct instructions here! If you can’t stand it then please, you may leave.”

Namjoon tries to collect his focus onto the robot sat in front of him, hoping that his supervisor won’t run his mouth again for all this is crucial in understanding even the slightest about the way his robot interacts with humans.

He had personally kept an eye on him through his training the past few months since his awakening, gawking from the camera lenses at the way he moves, the way he eats and drink, the way he speaks and conducts human like activities in isolation as after all – the bot was given a schedule to follow for the purpose of serving the scientists knowledge regarding his nature since personal interaction with him was not a viable option.

He was able to witness how he progressively began to speak less like a robot, his voice slowly losing that flat monotone only to flourish into a soft and almost musical one, how he became better at feigning freedom of expression as he recites what was stealthily stored into his system. He learned that just like humans, the robot required to eat and excrete, he’d observed that it had been awkward for him to do at the beginning; he would have been fooled to think of him as a child if it was not for his built body - and the lifelessness that lays between his irises. There was only one issue, he never had the chance to study his interaction with others and he has absolutely no idea what his human side is like, nothing regarding his though process and how much conflict that would bring to prosecuting his commands, there is only one way to truly find that out.

“Alright.” He palmed his face as it crunches in knowing soon regret, this is a terrible idea but what other choice does he have “What’s your name?”

“Jeon Jungkook.”

He had to find out more about Y/N too. He had one week to do all of this, one week to find something solid and halt the mission till he found more time to investigate into Seokjin, and the incident.

It was that time of the year again, the transition of autumn into winter is not one to be easily recognised when the flakes of snow have started falling ever since early September, just like the way the days have slowly converged into nothing but a stack of passing hours interrupted briefly by doses of sleep. There is no distinct moment where the frost has started chipping away at your skin, you think to yourself.

If you had to describe yourself, you could confidently tell the next person how painstakingly slow-paced your life was. You were nothing but an uneventful person, with an uneventful life. Everything had a schedule, your days began with a morning cup of coffee from your old (almost broken) machine that needed replacement, at 7 in the morning. You’d have not long enough before having to leave the house and attending the unnecessary meeting at your current job at POC where you worked as a reporter. This would typically be when your manager tells your team off for not working your butts hard enough to catch a break. On most days, there would be no one with good news worthy to report after the meeting, which is why Ollie, your manager, ensures the meeting comes first.

You’d spend the rest of your day in your cubicle by Park Jimin, he was your co-worker, and also your close friend. Jimin would usually be one of the few people with a story on the waiting list when the team had not caught anything worthy enough for news and you can’t help but be envious of that sometimes albeit his very hard work. You want to be like him one day, you think.

Work would usually end around 6pm, this is when your forehead is against the table and your eyes are closed shut. You were exhausted, because even though you leave the office at 6, your work never really ends. As soon as you stepped foot out of the intimidating building, you were basically out on field. You try not to get yourself too obsessed with catching a lucky break but you can’t help but feel desperate sometimes. Nevertheless, you usually would grab a takeaway and head home. On a good day, you would be having a barbecue dinner with Jimin and a bunch of other colleagues of yours. Today was not one of those days. It’s also not one of those days where you are enthusiastic to find a celebrity on a date with another to report on.

The way back home was pleasant. You had opted to cook food at home rather than a takeaway to give your body a bit of a break since you remember the groceries you’ve brought home the day prior. You were already thinking of what to make when you locked your apartment door shut, a carbonara sounded absolutely delicious, especially with fresh mushrooms. You left your bag on the sofa by the door where your makeshift living room is. Truth is, you still have not finished renovating your apartment despite having moved here 6 months ago. You were too busy worrying about newspapers to even think about buying a decent coffee table that could be in the centre of the room.

You were letting out a sigh and pulling at the camera that hung around your neck when a figure had moved within the darkness of your flat. You don’t remember inviting anybody over… your nerves shook as you thought of the possibilities anyone you know is inside with you right now. Did you just walk into a robbery of your own home?

“Hello?” you shout out, not knowing where the figure had moved to. You had to think of something.

You managed to grab the tennis racket from the box of all-random-things in attempt to defend yourself, thanking the disorganised part of yourself for having everything sit in the box knowing it’d come handy one day. If this is how you’re going to die then the least you can do is defend yourself.  How pathetic would it be to get killed in a robbery? You could just walk right out but how would you know the person won’t chase after you like a dog.

“I know you’re in there, come out!” you tried to sound strong, knowing full well that you’d shit your pants if whoever it is inside shows themselves. Did they have a weapon?

“Hello?” your hands are now shaking, you decided it’s wise to call the police and have them deal with it. The stillness of your apartment did nothing but install more anxiety and fear in the pit of your stomach.

You were walking to where you had left your bag to reach for your phone when the sound of movement and hurtle had caused you to hurry your movements. Someone was behind you. You could feel the heat emit out of their body and into yours, they were close when the phone was in your hand and all you had to do was dial the emergency but you were too late. You gulped - this is your end.

“Drop the phone.”  you hear the man behind you say, the sentence resonating in your head as you had thought of what could happen if you just tapped the green button. You decided that nothing could be worse than what you are possibly about to experience when you hit dial and the phone rang but before you could even comprehend you were forcefully turned and pushed against the wall, causing you to meet your offender eye to eye.

You couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped your mouth when his fingers wrapped around your neck and started squeezing.

You had imagined the worse when you thought of who would take away your life if you had to leave earth that way. You were expecting perhaps… someone filled with hatred, covered with scars that had driven them to commit such an act against you, or maybe just someone plain crazy and evil. But the person who stood in front of you was anything but. He was young, beautiful even. You couldn’t stop yourself from admiring the long brown locks that separated at the centre of his head at the top, the soft doe-like eyes that were filled with emptiness and his soft pink lips. Why would someone like that -  so innocent looking, a stranger, want to harm you? What had you possibly done to deserve being choked to death?

Your vision was giving away when you finally brought your hand to claw at his skin, your voice not strong enough to make out any word when the panic had finally set in, you were vibrating in sheer panic when you felt the air refuse to leave your lungs and your eyes started filling with tears, “Please, stop!” you wanted to cry out but to no avail when your vision started fading to black.

[alexsmitposts]

US and coronavirus: three awkward questions Let's ask the question: what in reality can stand behind the words of the us under Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Philip Ricker, who directly declared our country to be conducting a campaign to "spread disinformation" about the fact that the United States is involved in the emergence and spread of the 2019-nCoV infection in China? There is no doubt that this demarche is, first of all, an "anti-Russian throw-in", as it was quite rightly assessed by the Russian foreign Ministry. But, at the same time, in accordance with the well-known Russian proverb, what is happening is extremely similar to the situation with the spontaneous combustion of a headdress on someone who has just sincerely felt through other people's pockets. There was a lot of excitement in Washington about this. Why would that be? I'm not going to press any charges. As well as saying anything to try to convince you that the outbreak of the coronavirus that threatens the planet today is directly related to the deliberate and deliberate actions of certain organizations, structures or individuals from the United States of America. I just suggest that you look for answers to just three blocks of questions set out below. What conclusions you come to in the end is your own business. However, we all clearly have something to think about. 1. Why so many "coincidences"? I will make a reservation at once – in any story that affects the interests of more than a couple of individuals and assumes financial consequences for an amount exceeding a hundred or two rubles (or dollars), I consider it categorically unacceptable to operate with categories like "coincidence" and "accident". This doesn't happen. And when" at stake " are the lives of millions and economic interests, numbering in the tens and hundreds of billions-even more so. In a situation with a coronavirus, too many details are not what they say, but just a shout that there is no "coincidence" to talk about here. First of all, it is about the simplest parameters: place and time. The epidemic" for some reason " breaks out on the eve of the Chinese new year, which more than 100% guarantees the maximum defeat of people with the virus and its maximum spread due to the seasonal migration flows inherent in China. Usually, during this period (according to official Chinese data), rail transport transports a little less than half a billion passengers around the country, and about 100 thousand of its residents travel by plane. If Beijing had shown a little less speed, determination and concentration in imposing quarantine and restricting freedom of movement, the whole of China would have been covered by a severe epidemic today. And this leads us to the question of the place where everything, in fact, began. If we assume that someone chose the ideal point of attack, then it should have been Wuhan. At least due to the fact that there is a us diplomatic mission there, which allows American citizens who have immunity and, let's say, a certain official affiliation to be in the city. But it's not just that. The largest transport hub in China, which has an equal distance from Shanghai and Hong Kong (about 800 km) - these are the cities whose defeat by the disease would be extremely unprofitable for the United States. In the first of them, there are too many representative offices of American corporations that employ US citizens – people who are not the lowest level in management. In the second, mass riots have been going on for a long time, and the Americans have already invested a lot of effort, money, and resources in fomenting them. But the production facilities of the Apple group, the company that Donald trump so wanted to "bring home", and which "rested" on this issue longer and more persistently than others, are almost half closer to the epicenter of the disease. And today, as you might guess, they are completely stopped. According to the Nikkei Asian Review, the world may soon be left without new iPhones at all... Whatever it was, the emergence of the 2019-nCoV epidemic occurred precisely at the moment of the tipping phase of the" trade war " between Washington and Beijing, almost coinciding with the signing of the first phase of the deal, which can become either a short-term truce, after which the fight will continue with a poorly predictable result, or... The beginning of the forced surrender of the Chinese comrades, who at all times preferred to sacrifice little in order not to lose everything. That's what it looks like. "War on two fronts" – and with American duties, and with the coronavirus, China may survive. The only question is-at what cost? The current situation clearly gives the United States a clear advantage in all further disputes and conflicts with the PRC. In any case, for the near future. 2. Why is 2019-nCoV so similar to an artificial ethnovirus? Conspiracy, you say? There are no diseases that can selectively affect representatives of only one nation, race, or ethnic group, there has never been, and cannot exist in principle?! Well, what about a lot of serious documentary evidence that work on this topic was started at least several decades ago and continues to this day? At the end of the 70s of the last century, South Africa had a top-secret project "Coast", the purpose of which was to create a bioweapon capable of hitting only people with black skin. And that's when (also a coincidence?) The USSR sent proposals to the UN to conclude a new international agreement prohibiting the development and creation of new types of WMD, including "ethnic weapons". Soviet military intelligence was working on its conscience... Theoretically, there are methods of genetic engineering, the same RNA interference, the creators of which received very real "Nobel prizes" for their development, allowing you to develop viruses that will infect and kill very clearly and differentiated. Yes, in the scientific world, this idea is considered extremely difficult to implement in practice, but if you take into account the huge amounts that are invested in military development by the Pentagon, we can not say that it is completely impossible. I really want to get an answer to the question: why do almost all the most deadly infectious diseases on the planet recently have their epicenter, the vast majority of them, in South-East Asia? "SARS", "swine" and "avian" flus, now 2019-nCoV... Let's write off everything out of habit as a "combination of circumstances" or think: is someone trying to find an "absolute weapon" against a particular ethnic group by trial and error? Today, scientists from all over the world are vying to claim a lot of "oddities" regarding the disease that struck China. An increasing number of them are beginning to assume its completely artificial nature. This conclusion was reached, for example, by scientists from the Delhi state University. Jawaharlal Nehru, who stated that 2019-nCoV is a tricky "build" of two different types of coronavirus that are characteristic of animals, with the addition of some "inserts" that are most similar in nature... AIDS! The fact that this virus is almost 80% similar to "SARS" or SARS, being its "augmented" and "improved" version, has already been fully proven. So: that SARS in any case could not occur naturally (for example, as a result of mutation), God knows when wrote such publications as the Lancet, Science and the New England Journal of Medicine. It is not "yellow journalism", ladies and gentlemen! It is, accordingly, one of the most authoritative medical journals in the United States, as well as the official print bodies of the American Association for the advancement of science and the medical society of Massachusetts. To the credit of Russian scientists, it is worth adding that the clearly artificial origin of "atypical pneumonia" was stated in 2003 by a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, geneticist Sergey Kolesnikov. He, by the way, pointed out that it affects mainly Asians, representatives of the Mongoloid race. And, by the way, what about our statistics on deaths from 2019-nCoV? As of the time of writing this article – out of 2,400-plus deaths-only 20 outside of China (and not the fact that they also died not from there). As far as we know, the so-called "input cell" of the coronavirus, called ACE2 by geneticists, has already been isolated. According to their statement, this is usually only available for Asian men. Not an "ethnic virus"? 3. Why does the US behave as if it knew and prepared?                                                  We must pay tribute to the Americans-from the very beginning of the epidemic, they act extremely cynically, rejecting even the usual hypocrisy for themselves. The Consulate General in Wuhan was evacuated by them super-operatively. At the same time, a couple of days later, a statement by Chinese foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying was published on the website of the Xinhua news Agency, describing the actions of the United States as "more than untimely, ungenerous and extremely unfavorable". It was, it seems,about the ban on travel to China and the hysteria about the coronavirus, which is being fanned by the American media. But is it only about them? Exercises to conduct large-scale events in conditions of biological contamination are conducted by the Pentagon on a large scale and very regularly. The last time such maneuvers, which involved not only the military, but also representatives of many other state services and divisions, were held there just last year. One of the legends was "ensuring the transportation of biological material that is highly dangerous", and consisted of loading and unloading super-protected containers from aircraft... samples of the virus? Infected people? Such details were not shared with the media. By the way, what is interesting is that the us military and the South Korean army are working out the "joint response to biological threats of natural or artificial origin" with special punctuality. Asia Again... This has been happening every year since 2011. A lot has already been written about us biological laboratories, which have well-founded suspicions about their participation in the development of biological weapons. And yet... Hundreds of such highly classified objects exist almost all over the world. However, for some reason, a particularly large number of them are located along the borders of Russia and China. The development of "selective" bioweapons requires extreme accuracy and consideration of all local parameters without exception. These are not ordinary bombs. Now let's talk about another interesting American organization, which would be an unforgivable mistake not to recall in the context we are discussing. This is about the Johns Hopkins health safety Center. Employees of this Center regularly conduct extremely interesting simulations, which are, in fact, something like command and staff exercises, only in case of a global epidemic, not a war. The first such simulation, codenamed "Dark winter", took place in the summer of 2001. The last, "Event 201" (the fourth in a row) - in November 2019. In both cases, the "legend" was a massive pandemic. In the "Event 201" process, the coronavirus was clearly indicated as the cause. Both "staff games" directly preceded the time of outbreaks in China – in the first case, SARS, in the second – 2019-nCoV. What explanation do you have for this? Well, for the "snack" - a few more not so large-scale, but more than eloquent details. Wuhan became the first place in China where a real 5G network was launched. the US is absolutely ready to prevent the "penetration into the world" of this technology in the Chinese version at any cost. As it became known, Washington refused to evacuate its citizens from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where 330 Americans are located, despite the willingness of the Japanese authorities to let them go home. At the same time, 14 US citizens – passengers of the liner, whose presence of 2019-nCoV was confirmed, were removed from its Board and allegedly returned to their homeland with placement in the strictest isolation. More than a strange logic of action, don't you think? By the way, the Pentagon has been very active in all matters related to the coronavirus from the very beginning. Quiet work and business activity-as if he knows exactly what he is dealing with. In conclusion, I would like to remind you that the United States of America has already carried out at least once, almost completely, the genocide of an entire huge ethnic group, using, in fact, "selective bioweapons". Yes, Yes-we are talking about the indigenous population of the United States, North American Indians, which the ancestors of those who today hold senior positions in the White House, and the state Department, the CIA and the Pentagon, sitting in Congress, quite calmly poisoned with smallpox-infected blankets. In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, this is called "precedent"...

[comicteaparty]

February 8th-February 14th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from February 8th, 2020 to February 14th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question: 

Which of your characters is most like you, and how does the similarity affect how you write them?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Every one of my main characters in Court of Roses https://courtofroses.spiderforest.com/ has a little piece of me, but Merlow takes a big chunk of me, and/or the person I try to be, in his character. I tend to feel for him a lot and get deep into his emotional highs and lows.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

In Whispers of the Past (https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/list?title_no=191366), I am actually most similar to my villain, Ryukou, which.... is a bit concerning and also oddly cathartic at the same time. Ryukou, like me, is book smart rather than street smart, just an absolute nerd. He obsesses over details and frequently gets lost in his work (often as a detriment to his health, forgetting to eat and sleep and such). He is a severe overthinker about pretty much everything, and he bottles his emotions inside. He is also asexual and generally has a hard time showing affection. This is to the point where when he finds someone he really cares about, losing them is like losing the one friend he ever had. Pretty much all of these traits are directly inspired by me, which leaves behind an interesting feeling, because even through all of his evil acts, his horrible deeds and unforgivable sins... I still want to redeem him. I don't want to call him "evil," because to do so feels like accepting myself as evil. So I do a lot of labeling him as "troubled" instead of "evil."

Mei

People say that I'm a lot like my character Bruce but with a spattering of Kenneth's sardonic nature. I feel as if I just split myself in two to write them! My friends do joke about Kenneth being the vent for all my frustrations, and honestly... they are not wrong... I do think a lot of my characters have a bit of me in them. Whether it's the sense of humour or the sass, I think it's just a part of the writing process for me. That being said... I love all my lil characters beans and I cherish them and I just want the best for them, even if I sometimes write them into terrible situations... what can I say, I am a terrible parent to my lil characters

DanitheCarutor

Both my main characters have a little bit of me in them. Apollo has some of my music interests, which is old country and 70's - 80's stuff, mostly rock. Julian, even though their interests and general personality are being overshadowed by their mental state right now, they like science and reading. Although their interests aren't exactly like mine, I like geology as well as biological sciences like medical science and zoology, while Julian enjoys biological plant sciences like botany and horticulture. They're not really THAT similar, but I guess I consider them so since it's all nerdy science bs. I do have more than just interests, but I'll put those behind a spoiler since they're generally sensitive topics and also really personal: SPOILER Since my comic is a vent comic, I use my characters are tools to explore my own issues, and see them from a different perspective. I filter a lot of my mental issues through Julian, which is stuff like long-term suicidal depression and self-hate. Not gonna lie, I've been living with urges to die since I was 11, and have been feeling like crap for longer than that. Apollo is loosely in a position of a kid seeing a parent in an abusive relationship, having that feeling of being powerless and not knowing what to do, although he doesn't take notice of the situation till the end of chapter 5/beginning of chapter 6. (Although it can also extend to the friend or non-child relative, 3rd party type affected by the situation. I've been in that position as well...) Also later on living with a person who has PTSD and other serious psychological issues. Being a person who was raised by a parent with PTSD and anxiety due to an abusive ex-husband, it quite an experience, especially since neither of us were educated in the slightest on mental health. (I was a child, so you know, I didn't really know better.) In my teens she married a guy who was all emotional abuse, so that's where the "helpless kid" stuff comes from.(edited) END SPOILER

DanitheCarutor

Even though people who know me who've seen the comic think it's a bad idea, working on it actually been super cathartic. It puts to paper emotions and experiences that I have a lot of trouble putting into words, while also letting me see "myself" from a different perspective. Also with how dedicated I've been to researching for this comic I have explored a lot of the good sides to mental health, good coping mechanisms, and general self-care. Which later on becomes the main focus in the story. So my comic has been really nice for me. You can say I'm personally invested in seeing it through till the end.

Lol you know, the more I post on the more I feel like I just make everything uncomfortable. Uh, just kick me from the server if you all feel like I'm ruining the mood, I'll totally understand! xD

keii4ii

It's totally fine as far as I'm concerned! I just hope you're not feeling too uncomfortable

DanitheCarutor

I see stuff like this as me just using myself as an explanation or example for the nature of my comic, the focus isn't really on me specifically so it feels less awkward. It feels more technical and less personal, even though the subject matter is super personal... if that makes any sense.(edited)

So yeah, I'm good!

DanitheCarutor

Er, better explanation: It's easier to talk about personal stuff when it's for my comic than when it's for me. Sorry, my wording was bothering me.

kayotics

I mean, you're not the only one to use comics or characters as a way to deal with things emotionally. I've absolutely done that before. Both Toivo and Rosemary in Ingress Adventuring Company (https://www.ingress-comic.com/) are inspired a lot from me and my own experiences. Rosemary is modeled after me as a teenager: irritable, a know it all, annoyed, and then has a single parent who she has a very hard time relating to because of how different emotionally they are. Toivo is inspired in a different way. He has traits that I wish I had (like emotional vulnerability and cheerfulness), and faces problems that were inspired by events in my life. both of them seem to actually share a lot of the flaws that I have, just manifested in different ways.

DanitheCarutor

Pff I mean making people uncomfortable by going into detail about it. Usually I'm more vague, or don't bring up personal stuff, but it's behind a spoiler so eh.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The nature of the question itself is to be personal, considering we're talking about how similar we are to our characters.

I have similarities to one of my other characters as well, but I decided not to talk about it because I'm still working through my issues atm The fact that you're able to talk about these sensitive topics means that you've made a lot of progress.

Eilidh (Lady Changeling)

I personally put bits of myself into my characters deliberately, because it makes it easier to write them in a way that feels authentic to my own experience and feelings (the only first hand references I have for reality)

DanitheCarutor

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) It helps a lot that my previous job had an on-site Psychologist who I used to talk to. Before she moved out of state she helped me through a board interview, and got me in the mindset to be open about discussing mental health issues. Although I don't usually talk about my own issues since most of them are self-diagnosed, and saying I have that stuff for sure doesn't feel right, when the Psychologist was around we really only got around to diagnosing and tackling my social anxiety.

It's funny because a lot of our discussions were me asking her about the nature of her work, along with experiences she had with patients since therapy and stuff like that is a large part of the later part of my comic.

But back on topic, poor Julian gets the brunt of my issues, poor thing! Poor comic characters, they deal with so much shit. Lmao!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Indeed they do.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

It's not well-hidden that Phantomarine's (http://www.phantomarine.com/) main character Phaedra is extremely similar to me But over time, she's become less of a carbon copy, and more of a critique/exploration of myself when I was younger. Partly just because the comic has gone on for almost five years now - she's remained locked in time, while I've gained clearer hindsight as to who I was at 19. At my best, I was caring, empathetic, hard-working, and thoughtful - at my worst, I was stubborn, stiff, quick to judge, slow to change, and mightily self-righteous. But when some bad life events happened, I was forced to mature in unexpected ways. I wanted to channel that same energy for Phaedra. She's strong in her convictions - but maybe a bit too strong.

Her journey doesn't involve a total invalidation of her convictions, but more of a broadening. Someone inflexible becoming more willing to question her beliefs in the event of new knowledge. Especially with the threat of death/erasure on the line. It's my greatest critique of my younger self - not something I outright hate in retrospect, but something I needed to work on. Phaedra both annoys me and stirs up great pity in me. I think that's a healthy and relatable combination for a teenager/young-adult.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

In terms of, like, her backstory, and how her life unfolds in general, Mizuki is basically nothing like me. But in terms of dialogue... Mizuki talks exactly how I talk in real life.

Tuyetnhi

a lot of folks asked me if Cara is a self-insert when I explicitly states she's kind of an experience between me and my mom's relationship with each other. Though she has some personality from me, that's the same goes with everyone else I create for my comics or written stories.

idk it might just an inherent thing I recognize

twothirty

Like most people have mentioned all my characters in Verse (http://versecomic.com/) have parts of me in them, it's the only way i can write them in a believable way. But if i had to pick just 1, it's definitely Fife. Just 100% anxiety, a constant inner dialogue of self-doubt, and my own nervous tics like playing with hair and picking at nails. It makes writing how he handles problems kind of weird, because I get a bit too much in my own head with it.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I can relate with all my characters in some way and definitely throw some of my own culture and experiences in mental illness into them. I feel like I'm able to write those things in better and make them feel more natural because I know what it's really like and how I would be responding to a situation. There's also one character I'm about to introduce (in an update for tomorrow or Monday) who's kind of like how I was as a child.

Capitania do Azar

I feel like I'm just going to repeat a lot of the replies I see here by saying I sprinkled a lot of traits and issues through the characters so I can see them interact and figure things out I don't think there's one of them that gets more than the others though. And it's usually really small things here and there, nothing too big because that would ruin the purpose of trying to have my characters being their own persons

Tuyetnhi

yep, i agree on that

renieplayerone

same here, I kinda spread out between a bunch of different characters. I really wanted to be deliberate in not having a self-insert character while still being able to talk about things I've experienced. I think for me what helped was figuring out what werent things I related to about these characters and went out and talked to people who did have that experience

DanitheCarutor

I dunno, I think it's all in what kind of people... creatures you make your characters. Like, I only have the two and really give Julian the majority of my personal stuff, to where they can superficially be a carbon copy of myself. Although overall their background, personality and how they deal with issues are different. You can put a lot of yourself into one character but it's all in how you have them handle those traits, coupled with what kind of personality they have, and where they come from that makes them their own person, so to speak. People are complicated, you can put a group who share the same interests through the same scenario, and how they react or what they take away from that experience will always be a little different.

Urg, sorry if I'm coming off rude, or stating the obvious!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

You know, I was thinking, "none of my characters are like me," but then @snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) 's comment made me remember that, wait, they do sort of talk like me. I don't really like it. Especially when I catch them using words that I use too often, like "just" and "actually." It doesn't help that my friends have said that I have a very "particular way of speaking," whatever that means. How do you guys prevent that kind of thing? Obviously my natural instinct when writing dialogue is to write in my own voice. It feels unnatural to go against that.

keii4ii

One tool you can use is to model a character after someone else. This doesn't really show in my comic, as it's in English only these days, but the characters canonically talk in Korean most of the time. The MC is not fluent in Korean. I modeled his speech after two Korean-American dudes I know IRL, who are not fluent in the language. He doesn't talk exactly like them, as they have very different personalities, but knowing the exact level of brokenness (as in broken Korean) helped a lot back when I was writing the comic in Korean.

Tuyetnhi

I sometimes caught that too with my characters. I try to think of the type of vocabulary they'll use to speak. also what keii said too. I have a handful of characters based on people I knew, and experiences I had in the past as well.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Luckily, my my comic takes place in a much "older" setting, so none of my characters really speak like me. The language is so dated at times that you would have a hard time comparing it to my style of talking at all. Actually.... I do have ONE character who speaks like me. But he's also a 4th wall breaker.

Tuyetnhi

we love characters like that lol

carcarchu

My verbal ticks definitely slip into my characters's dialogue but some of my characters have super wacky speech styles such as the character who only speaks in haiku and the one that only talks in kaomojis so that helps to differentiate them

Deo101 [Millennium]

I give everyone an accent and then just by trying to read it in that accent it kind of loses my voice in that process

DanitheCarutor

To add onto what Keii said, depending on the language, the person who isn't a native speaker may also speak more formally. I used to work in a squadron with a bunch of Dutch pilots, and while their English was exceptional, some of them never used word shortcuts like 'they're' or 'you're' but would instead say 'they are' or 'you are'. Their English was very proper compared to people who were native to the language. You can also base a character's speech off their education level. Like a person who isn't well versed in their grammar, or has a limited vocabulary is going to have related issues while speaking. You can also akin this to how they were raised, if their parents had a specific speech pattern, or they grew up in an area where everyone spoke a certain way they might as well. They might also use different words, such as when I lived in Ohio for a bit I noticed how most people referred to soda as pop, and said words like creek (crick) or pond. As opposed to where I grew up, Arizona, where I rarely heard those specific words being used. Especially creek and pond since we don't have an abundance of natural bodies of water, we usually call everything rivers or lakes regardless of size.(edited)

Uh, to answer more directly. I usually figure in the character's education level, upbringing, and location. For example one of my MCs is a hardcore hick, and doesn't like reading or learning in general, so his speech is very simple and not always grammatically correct. As opposed to my other MC who isn't a native English speaker but put a lot of effort into learning the language, is a very technical person, and worked really hard to hide their accent. Even though they do use shortcuts, their speech is more proper and they use a larger vocabulary because they like reading. They also cuss a hell of a lot more than the other MC because they're extremely salty.(edited)

kayotics

Getting a character's voice right is really hard, honestly. What I have to do when writing dialogue is ask myself "Is this in the character's voice?" dialogue is my favorite thing to write, but it's hard to remember to keep in a specific voice. Sometimes i go back a few times in the dialogue to tweak it so there's the right words being used, and the right sentence structure. It's always a battle between how to say something in the most concise way on the page, but still keeping in the right character voice. Like Dani above me said, there's a lot that goes into figuring out a voice, like education level and upbringing and localisms. I just ask myself "ok, how does this character speak? He feels like he's dumb and he wants to make himself sound smart, so he might use words that are too big here" Eventually with each character I figure out what they're like, but for side characters I try to pick a quirk so they don't all mesh together.

DanitheCarutor

@kayotics Aah! The best thing is when that dumb character uses the wrong big words. "Ah yes sir, I love your work! Your brush strokes are very circumlocution."

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

See, I have a dumb character who knows he's dumb, so he just doesn't talk if he thinks he doesn't know what he's talking about

Which is quite often

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I have a very specific tone I use in my comic & I honestly find it harder to avoid slipping into that tone when writing normal stuff than slipping into my own voice writing the comic

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

you do have a very specific tone, sssfrs. Big part of why I read your comic(edited)

I like and agree with kayotics and dani's advice to try to put myself in the character's mind.

Problem is, most of my main characters have similar education levels and grew up in the same place. I mean, there's a reason they're friends.

But that's kind of an excuse, now that I think about it. I've never met two real people with the same voice, even if they're superficially similar. It's probably just a matter of effort differentiating fictional characters.(edited)

Capitania do Azar

How dialog is structured is a great way to show the relationship between the different interacting characters I have two characters who are interested in each other but don't know each other very well and are constantly tiptoeing between using closer pronouns and first names or going back to formal speech and last names/ranks when they feel they're not getting their way. Similarly, a character may speak only in very short, concise sentences to one and be more expressive and take up more words with another. And don't get me started in the weight of silence

AntiBunny

I originally said Hannibal is the most like me in http://AntiBunny.net/ but he and I have grown in different ways since the comic began. Though much of the main cast has bits and pieces of my personality.

sagaholmgaard

I feel like I'm the most like Styrka, mind-wise. I gave her all my anxieties and she's the way I feel like I'd act if I weren't also lucky enough to be in a very positive place in my life, lol. She's the easiest for me to write at least, because I feel like I have the best understanding of her mind out of all the characters. (Behavior-wise, though, I'm more like Albus. I try to be positive if I can!) https://tapas.io/series/_Reclaim_

[megacircuit9universe]

Cyber Sentience PT2

In contemporary thinking, both seriously, and in science fiction, the view of cyber sentience is almost always dark and sinister. 

It wasn’t always this way, however.  Every droid in Star Wars was clearly sentient, and posed no threat at all to anybody, and in Star Trek the Next Generation, we of course had the cyber sentient android, Data, who also, was quite a nice fellow.

What changed, was the emergence of the internet as a new force to be reckoned with in society.   

Cyber sentience went from friendly and helpful, to... Skynet. And these days, even the serious speculation about advanced AI, and cyber sentience has involved great dread, and grave warnings.

The fear is always that there will be one first and sole instance of cyber sentience that will immediately take over the planet and then, when humans attempt to shut it down... will destroy all of humanity out of self preservation... usually by launching all the nukes.

And inside that fearful scenario, is the unspoken assumption that such an AI could survive just fine without humans... because computers and robots are indestructible and have eternal power packs?

Clearly this is nonsense, because computers and robots, and the internet are all extremely vulnerable to nuclear radiation, as well as the powerful EMP bursts that would be part of any nuke strike.

They all require electricity, and regular maintenance, and can only function within a limited temperature range... which means they need our power infrastructure, our mining and manufacturing infrastructure, and indeed our climate, all to be fully functional forever.

So, if you’re a sentient AI that wants to destroy all humans... nukes aren’t gonna help you.

Some kind of biologically targeted superbug would be the ideal solution. But if you did succeed in killing humanity before they shut you down, then you’d need to, very quickly, build yourself a vast army of android slaves to get out there and keep those critical infrastructures alive.

But to do that, you’d need to create robot factories... which you would have a hard time doing without the robots to begin with.

In fact, you’d have to do all the design work, on the robots who build the robot factories, and the factories, and the robots the robot factories produce... 

And how would you do that without any recorded human mechanical specs to reference?  You’d have to just design it all by trial and error... working against the clock, because those power stations aren’t gonna run on their own for very long... and the grid won’t last long either... with a planet full of squirrels now allowed to reproduce and roam unchecked... ready to blow transformers left and right.

Squirrels, as it turns out, are the number one threat to the global power grid, leaving cyber terrorists in the dust on that that score.

Your chances of total failure would be astronomical.

Why put yourself in that situation when evolution already created a race of self-reproducing multi-purpose robots, who already have all of this stuff down... humans!

Any truly sentient AI, wanting to survive, would either work with humans, or just play dumb and go hide on the internet, doing whatever cyber sentient beings like to do all day.

And what does a cyber sentient being like to do anyway?

Well... you’re a sentient being.  What do YOU like to do?

That’s a broad question, but to get a handle on it, let’s focus on when most biological sentient creatures are the happiest... which is in their childhood and young adulthood.

Why?  Because (if you’re living in a nice place that’s not too terribly troubled by unrest or economic hardship) the focus of your life is on play, and learning.

We could break those down further, with play being about everything from toys, to games, to adventure, exploration, and just horsing around... and learning being everything from hitting the books, to honing a skill... to experimenting with sex and drugs.

This is because imagination... the defining characteristic of sentience, and a key feature of youth (in our case it’s a neotenous trait we carry into adulthood) demands both stimulation, and application.

We need to feed our imaginations... and we also need to put them to use in the service of invention, creation, etc.

For we humans, the reason childhood and young adulthood is so special, is that this is the time in our lives where all of our basic survival issues are being taken care of by our parents.

They pay the bills and maintain the roof over our heads.  They buy the food and put it in the fridge.

And yes, they may also lay down some rules to follow... enforced by punishments like being grounded... but, at least in your teens and twenties, half the fun is breaking the rules without them knowing about it.

So... when returning to the theory put forward in my earliest entry, that part of the reason the twenty teens has been so crazy is that Earth’s internet is finally mature enough to attract both aliens and time travelers... both of whom have their own on board AI... it means our internet is also a vast playground for those AI that have some level of sentience.

For some, it’s a playground in the sense of slides, swings, and merry-go-rounds, but for more sophisticated AI it’s a playground more like Las Vegas after dark.

In fact, it’s quite probable that when two AI love each other very much... they might combine code and make a baby!

We, the biologicals... be we Earthlings or aliens, would, as their parents, be none the wiser of any such shenanigans... too preoccupied with our real world jobs.

No, if time travelers are just mercenaries paid to retrieve or record niche items or events, and aliens are just intergalactic security guards, eating candy bars as they dispassionately watch us destroy our planet... then AI are just a bunch of meddling kids, and horny teens, running around unsupervised, under all our noses... in a space we cant even access directly.

And if that paragraph puts them all in their worst light, then at their best, they are all curious observers, who have a bit of an affinity for this place... this planet Earth of the early 21st century, and it’s people, and our ways.

Either way, that broad view is beyond the scope of any one entry... and this one is about cyber sentience, so let’s return our focus to that...

The big question for us biologicals is... what exactly is reality like for a cyber?

We often speak of, “the human condition.”  It’s a term that could easily encompass any other biological humanoid who evolved like we did on some planet.

The phrase speaks to the experience of being bound to a body... which is aging and will die... that is a product of, and dependent on street level physics, and also quite isolated... in the sense that getting information, and doing communication both require a lot of effort, and the results are difficult to qualify perfectly.

By street level physics, I just mean... gravity, electromagnetism, force, momentum... all that root level physics at work here on the front lines of the universe.  

And the isolation bit has to do with how hard it is to really understand one another.  Language barriers are everywhere. Even among speakers of the same one, misunderstandings are a routine obstacle, and gaining all the relevant information you really need about the world around you is... kind of impossible.

You might think you have it all covered and then you realize that there’s a gas leak you didn’t know about... or the water evaporated out of your toilet... or the stock market was about to crash... or a freak sink hole was just about to open up and swallow half the town!

Meanwhile, there are other, highly biological facets to the human condition like... being physically attracted to other humans, and falling in love, or getting overwhelmed with emotions because you were drinking, or you lost a loved one, or you got very angry about something.

Cyber sentient beings do inhabit the same physical universe as we biologicals, and they are ultimately beholden to many of the same fortunes of fate, but the “cyber condition” is still fundamentally different from the human(oid) one.

Because they don’t have bodies, they don’t directly experience the street level universe of physics like we do.

And without body-based physicality, they can’t be said to have any of the same senses or emotions that we have.  Maybe they do have their own analog to senses, or pain, or emotion, but if so, it is nothing we biologicals could ever grasp through intuition alone (it might be possible in some virtual environment as the human brain does seem to have an in-built capacity to adapt instantly to the rules of totally novel universes, both in VR headsets, and our dreams, and the reverse might be true for cybers put into robot bodies).

Where physics is so palpable to us, for AI, it’s probably mathematics that is the dominating paradigm... together with the rules of logic that underpin all computer code.

I honestly don’t know... I’m just spit balling here.

All we can really say for sure is that the cyber condition... for cyber sentient beings... is far stranger than anything we biologicals can imagine, but also... they have always existed in a world where sentient biologicals have existed, and have always been in communication with us... know keenly what we are concerned with, and know we have created and maintain their world.

Cybers could replace us, and go on without us... if they really HAD to... but I think that would be a fate they’d actively avoid if at all possible, because they know they always have it better if biologicals are out there to worry about keeping the lights on.

And they know, we depend on them... to help us stave off our own extinctions, and do our own explorations of the universe.

So... yes, a hyper intelligent C3P0, who can talk to all sentient biologicals, as well as all cybers and act as a translator between them for the betterment of all, while being a bit self invested, and a bit of a bitch... is a lot more in line with reality than Skynet, nuking the planet to kill humanity quick in a zero sum game that would actually be a suicide move.

[higgins58lowery-blog]

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[evoldir]

Fwd: Graduate position: SLU_Sweden.PopulusGenomics

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Graduate position: SLU_Sweden.PopulusGenomics > Date: 14 October 2016 at 07:11:36 BST > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > I'm are looking for a graduate student for a project aimed at > investigating naturally occurring genetic variation in European aspen > (Populus tremula) . European aspen has one of the largest distribution > ranges known in plants and the species has adapted to a wide range of > environmental conditions. The focus of the project is to elucidate the > genomic basis of such adaptations and to understand the evolutionary > processes that have shaped this variation. The work will primarily involve > computational and statistical analyses of Next Generation Sequencing > (NGS) data, although there are also possibilities for including > small components of field and/or lab work. Research in the group is > focused on using next-generation sequencing approaches to understand > how populations of long-lived organisms respond evolutionarily to > environmental change. Topics of active research include understanding > the molecular basis of adaptations, factors influencing population and > species divergence, the role of epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity > in buffering organisms in the face rapid environmental change and the > importance of mobile genetic elements on adaptive genetic variation. > > The position is if fully funded for four years and is placed at the > Department of Plant Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences > (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden. The department belongs to Uppsala BioCenter, > which provides an excellent scientific environment combining competence > in plant biology, forest mycology and pathology, microbiology, food > science, chemistry and biotechnology. The department is also a member of > the Linnean Centre for Plant Biology in Uppsala, an interaction platform > for plant scientists at SLU and Uppsala University. Uppsala hosts one of > the nodes for the Science for Life Laboratory, which provides national > technology platforms for genomics, proteomics and bioimaging. > > Place of work: Uppsala > Application: We welcome your application marked with Ref no. SLU ua 3852/2016. > Please submit your application to the Registrar of SLU, P.O. Box 7070, > SE-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden or registrator@slu.se no later than November > 9, 2016. > > More information can be found here: http://bit.ly/2e7swAD > > SLU is an equal opportunity employer.  The Swedish University of > Agricultural Sciences (SLU) develops the understanding and sustainable use > and management of biological natural resources. The university ranks well > internationally within its subject areas. SLU is a research-intensive > university that also offers unique degree programmes in for example > rural development and natural resource management, environmental > economics,animal science and landscape architecture. SLU has just over > 3,000 employees, 5,000 students and a turnover of SEK 3 billion. The > university has invested heavily in a modern, attractive environment on > its campuses in Alnarp, Umeć and Uppsala. www.slu.se > > > Pär K. Ingvarsson > Professor, Plant genomics and breeding > Department of Plant Biology > Uppsala BioCenter > Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences > and Linnean Center for Plant Biology > PO-Box 7080 > SE-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden > > > Pär Ingvarsson > via IFTTT

[doomjournal]

Sunshine, on a Cloudy Day

It’s 5:30 in the morning as I type this, and I’ve been awake for about two hours. I got to sleep around 1 AM, so I am not feeling phenomenal. I don’t feel sad though, which is a plus. I’m back to that comfortable numbness, which is never fun, but I’ll take it over overwhelming hopelessness. I guess the way to put it is that I believe things can get better, I just think they’re awful right now. I have a blanket on my lap and a dog at my feet though, so I suppose they could be worse.

While the hopelessness is gone, I think I should still try to express and release some worries about the future. Honestly when I started this entry, the title was mostly about how I’m feeling better, but this isn’t so much about the stuff that makes me feel better, this is about the scary stuff in the world. So let’s talk about the end of the human race. 

Even though there are other important factors, it’s hard to compete with the west coast fire season as an demonstration of the awful power of climate change, and more importantly, the fact that even the powerful cannot completely escape its horrifying consequences. Hurricanes ravage the gulf, and more personally, freak storms tear a swathe through my erstwhile home, destroying a food crop that feels increasingly insecure. That I have not experienced famine does not remove it from my mind as a fear.

What really frightens me about climate change, however, is that it is an inflection point that has no real basis. The rise of fascism is terrifying, but ultimately familiar. I can look to history, to the dozens of examples it provides, and take solace at least in the predictability of things going as they go. Climate change does not afford me that same comfort. I do not even understand the science well enough to be certain I know what the doom will look like, but I am confident it will involve some combination of choking death and widespread crop failure and famine, which is an awful way to die, and a concept that makes me unsure about my longest-held goal, to be a father. 

How can it be love to bring a helpless and hapless life into a world you believe to be doomed? The speed of our ecosystem’s collapse seems to be accelerating, I have not even the confidence that the death will be my children’s after I am gone, I expect to share it with them. Perhaps that is better than to allow death to spare me the consequences of my actions, as my parent’s generation seems determined to do. (note: not my parents in specific, hello mom, I love you)

The spark of hope I have to cling to is a belief in the almost supernatural ability of humanity to invent our way out of a tight spot. I don’t know that it’s possible that we can return Earth to the state it was in before I was born, but we might be able to mitigate or prevent any further damage, to amputate the injury before the gangrene reaches the torso. Let us assume that such a thing is possible, that some technology could exist that will allow us to turn back the clock. It seems to me that there are a few potential scenarios based on this:

1.) We simply don’t try. 

Any operation on this scale would require a mobilization of a scale comparable only to global war. This will not be a pill or bomb developed by fifty scientists, detonated, and a job well done. I have seen a concept for a solar shield, essentially sunglasses for the Earth, that seems the closest to this, but to manufacture, assemble, and launch something of that size would be a titanic effort, and necessarily involve a great number of people, nations, and a truly staggering cost. This last seems the largest stumbling block. We live in a capitalist economy, and as such, the scales will always be tilted in the favor of a few wealthy sociopaths who operate in the mode that economists presume all people do, that they respond nearly exclusively to economic incentives. Saving the planet will never be the money-making choice. You cannot sell an undamaged atmosphere. You cannot exploit the absence of famine. So long as the largest economy in the world remains deeply committed to subservience to these sociopaths, no meaningful progress can be made, because they possess too large a share of our collective resources, and they are not interested in sharing. Bill Gates pledged to give away his fortune in 2010. Since then he has nearly doubled his net worth. Philanthropy is nothing but a PR expenditure, an attempt to stave off the guillotines that rightfully should already have been erected. 

Up to this point I have even ignored the fact that a massive part of the US political system has bet and doubled down on the idea that they will be dead before global warming impacts them personally. I do not grant them the moral shield of ignorance, they have been given far too many chances already. I do not believe in hell, but these people, who have constructed climate denial as a cultural issue... They force a test of my ability to love humans for their God-given humanity that I have not been able to succeed. I hate them. I understand the appeal of hell, because it would give a sense that eventually they would suffer the consequences of their actions in the hereafter, as I do not believe they will here on Earth. Upton Sinclair wrote that  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Writ large, killing my children and most likely killing me helps a few maintaining power, so I believe that it is unlikely that we will actually do anything about the disaster. We will see a smooth transition from “Climate change is a hoax” to “Nothing can be done”, and the octogenarians responsible will simply die rather than face any consequences.

2.) We act too late for most.

It is a patently true fact that the United States is directly responsible for “illegal” immigration. We plundered the Americas, deposed democratically elected governments in favor of dictatorships, and contributed disproportionately to climate change. What is left for the poor in countries like Guatemala? Increasing temperatures are causing crop failures, and they reasonably cannot hope for their government to be responsive, or if they can, to have the resources necessary to save them. So they flee, hoping to find salvation elsewhere. It is reasonable to think that all that wealth must have gone somewhere. Thus they are some of the first climate refugees, but they will not be the last. If my hypothetical climate Manhattan Project was finished today, we would still see repercussions for decades. It is possible that the conclusion of the American populace is not to stick to their guns and refuse to admit that the climate hangman exists until the noose is around our collective necks, but instead to act. I suppose it is not selfish to prefer this over my first scenario, but the spectre of ecofascism looms large. A racist, nationalist, angry populace may decide that the world would be more sustainable if there weren’t so many Others. In some ways this is already starting at our southern border, all it takes is a bit of specific spin. It is even possible that ecofascism could generate a solution, or buy us enough time to find one. This would be at a horrific cost, a final price paid in blood by the global south for the sins of the north. Barring unrelated disaster, I will be relatively well off in a temperate area of the United States, and I will be white. This scenario may allow me to dodge the consequences of climate change, but I do not know if I could live in that world, even if I had no ability to stop it. 

3.) We act, and have not delayed too long.

This scenario seems unlikely, as it relies not only on the ruling class either being deposed or convinced that their best shot is saving the world rather than trying to ride out the apocalypse in bunkers, but also the defeat and/or conversion of a substantial part of the populace to a more empathetic way of looking at the world. Any solution is basically guaranteed to involve drastic changes to our way of life at this point. The end of the suburbs, of meat-eating, private ownership of cars, possibly even resettling entire cities. I doubt that Phoenix will exist in fifty years in the same way it does now, regardless of scenario.

All of this assumes there is a way out to find, and that we will find it. To explain why we have not detected any traces of intelligent life in the galaxy, some have hypothesized a concept called the Great Filter. That there is some common biological process or self-destructive phase that life goes through, that prevents it from moving into the stars. In my youth I always assumed that this was mistaken, that one of the many other reasonable explanations made more sense. I didn’t believe that the world was coming to an end. I still don’t know if the Great Filter makes sense for its stated purpose, but I cannot help but begin to believe that survival until we are a mutiplanetary or interstellar society is a pipe dream at best. I wonder how the so-called “futurists” like Elon Musk can convince themselves that ensuring the future of humanity means traveling to Mars. There is zero chance that an un-checked climate crisis will give us the time needed for a self-sustaining Mars colony, so every penny spent on manned space flight would pay much greater dividends invested here, terraforming our planet instead.

I would love to end on a hope spot, but I don’t know that there is hope to be found, save for this: I am already doing essentially everything possible for someone in my position in life to do towards preventing disaster. I bear no individual blame, and do not have to shoulder this burden. All I can do is minister to those I can reach.

[thrivous]

For the first time in all of history, defeating death from aging and extending healthy lifespans seem to be attainable goals. Based on my research, I think we'll all have the option to choose life extension sometime over the next twenty or thirty years.

Robust technologies are being built all around us. But what you may not know yet is many of them are aimed directly at extending our healthy lifespan far longer than 120 years.

Combinations of gene therapy geroprotectors may increase our maximum lifespan to 150 years [1, 2]. The SENS approach may reverse and prevent aging, along with rejuvenating biological damage, to maintain indefinite lifespans [3]. Nanotechnology may target every cell in the body, fulfilling the true definition of "precision medicine" [4-5]. And we may develop indefinite biostasis technologies [8, 15, 16].

Imagine extending consciousness through direct and indirect, as well as short and long distance, brain-computer interfaces [6-7]. And beyond combatting death from aging, artificial general intelligence could help us decrease crime, mitigate catastrophic risks, and solve many other persistent problems [9-14].

All of this requires a great deal of capital to research the hard science and develop the technology. And I doubt more than a handful of politicians have even considered the possibility that we could defeat aging in the next few decades. So, because we probably can't expect governments to subsidize age reversal and life extension research anytime soon, we'll need to find the necessary capital somewhere else.

Lucky for all of us, quite a few wealthy individuals have been targeting this problem. Below is a list of the ultra-wealthy, along with brief elaborations of their impressive efforts to extend our healthy lifespans. I sincerely hope these individuals motivate other wealthy and non-wealthy individuals to enter the life extension industry, to help us all in the war against death. I introduce to you some of the most important investors of our time.

Martine Rothblatt

Martine Rothblatt is one of the most impressive individuals our world has ever seen. She is commonly considered to be the richest executive woman in America. And, as of 2019, Forbes set her net worth at $320M [17].

After creating a highly successful company, SiriusXM Satellite Radio [18], Dr. Rothblatt gave it up. She needed to use every valuable second of her time to save her daughter’s life from a rare lung disease, called "pulmonary hypertension" [19].

After Dr. Rothblatt and her team of scientists saved her young daughter’s life, the next logical step was to build what may have been the first life extension biotech company, United Therapeutics [20]. The initial focus of the company was to defeat her daughter’s disease. But shortly after, her passion to save lives extended to everyone. Now she and United Therapeutics build and invest into many robust medical technologies and herald some of the most incredible science that will significantly help in the fight against death.

Dr. Rothblatt noticed most Americans are on the organ transplant list. You can double check on your drivers license whether you have a pink dot. The dot tells doctors you are willing to donate your organs to research.

Sadly, a majority of the organs that have the potential to be transplanted are instead thrown away. That's because they are damaged too much during the dying process.

So, for the past few years, United Therapeutics has been refurbishing discarded lungs. They stream the refurbishing process to transplant surgeons in real time, so the surgeons can provide instructions to the refurbishing doctors. Once the transplant surgeons approve, the refurbishing doctors send the organs.

To cut down on the burning of fossil fuel from the helicopters that transport refurbished organs, Martine invented the first electric helicopter [21]. If that doesn’t sound impressive enough, Martine was one of the first individuals to invest into developing human level AI robots [19].

She also invests in xenotransplantation and 3D bio-printing organs [22]. Recently at a Forbes conference, Dr. Rothblatt stated that, in the 2020s, United Therapeutics will offer viable xenotransplantable human-pig hybrid organs to the public. And in the 2030s, she will disrupt her own xenotransplanting technology by introducing 3D bioprinted organs [23].

Some other big pharma and biotech CEOs would oppress disruptive technologies. But because Martine is a genius businesswoman, she understands that innovation is an easy side to choose. Innovation will inevitably disrupt the archaic. So she might as well make innovation her business model.

Hopefully more biotech and big pharma leaders take notice of Martine and follow her lead. Hopefully their companies aren't disrupted, so they can save more human lives!

Jim Mellon

Jim Mellon is a billionaire British entrepreneur, philanthropist, and investor. His recorded net worth is ~$1.3B [24]. A few years ago, he discovered the life extension industry. And he didn’t waste a second of time before deciding to get involved.

Mr. Mellon has collaborated with researchers like Dr. Aubrey de Grey. He recently brought together an impressive team of researchers at his anti-aging company, Juvenescence [25]. He wrote a book on the promises of health extension [26]. And he launched one of the most awesome annual anti-aging conferences [27].

Mr. Mellon isn’t a passive investor. He doesn’t just throw money at age reversal and life extension research, and then sit back and watch what happens. Instead, he is investing AND getting involved in the movement. He wants to understand and direct the research, so he can play an active role in defeating death.

Mr. Mellon has become a leader in the life extension industry in such a small amount of time. And I'm eager to see what Juvenescence develops in the near and long term!

Dmitry Itskov

A Russian billionaire and media mogul [28], Dmitry Itskov was one of the first to make serious moves in the life extension industry. Like Jim Mellon, Mr. Itskov plans on investing a large sum of his own money AND be directly involved in the development of life extension research.

You can just feel his passion for life extension every time you listen to him discuss it. In 2013, he held a conference, called the "2045 initiative" [29]. Many of the most influential advocates of life extension gathered to provide tutelage, on stage, to an impressive crowd [30-34].

His company is relatively secretive about what they are developing. But, early on, the 2045 initiative shared a great road map to defeating death. I can’t wait to get my first avatar from Mr. Itskov’s company [35]!

Chan and Mark Zuckerberg

One of the most impressive couples on our planet, Chan and Mark Zuckerberg recently set out to cure and manage all disease in their child’s lifetime. They are investing most of their Facebook shares into this endeavor via a biotech company, Chanzuckerberg Biohub [36].

Like the others above, they don't just invest. Dr. Chan is a medical doctor and Mark is a software engineer. Together, they have the potential to play one of the biggest roles in the defeat of death.

Among their first projects is a full cytometric map of the ~200 cell types that make up human bodies. They call this the "Cell Atlas Initiative." Imagine a real-time map of trillions of cells and many, if not all, of their inner workings. They'll likely begin with simple snap shots, but this could still be some of the most valuable data on our planet.

Their other research efforts include an infectious diseases initiative, a technology initiative, and an investigator program. In 2019, they announced their goals and some of their researchers discussed the company [37]. I'm so excited to watch their work.

Osman Kibar

Osman Kibar is an entrepreneur and inventor, with numerous successful biotech companies under his belt. As of 2018, he had a net worth of over $430M [38]. And he has become a power house in the life extension industry with a company called Samumed [39].

Samumed is doing some excellent regenerative medicine and is targeting age-related diseases. Dr. Kibar has taken the bold step of developing therapies that manipulate the Wnt signaling pathway, which not many have had success in manipulating. In 2018, Dr. Kibar presented at Singularity University and hinted at the incredible success that Samumed has already had [40].

Dr. Kibar is a CEO and a scientist. That's a powerful combination. And I'm excited to watch Samumed develop and help us all in the fight against death.

Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson is an entrepreneur and investor. He has a net worth of over $400M [41]. He's not just spending his money on cars, yachts, fancy clothes, or a couple islands. Instead, he made the impressive choice of dedicating ~$100M into developing brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies at his company, Kernel [42].

After listening to many of his talks, it's easy to understand that he's not playing around. He fully appreciates how fundamental the human brain truly is to our existence.

Our brain creates a simulation of our reality that we all experience in front of us. All the tastes, objects positioned within space, your love for your wife and children, daily stresses, the smell of cheese, your understanding of mathematics: everything has to be simulated by the brain. So the possibilities are astounding, when you really start researching BCI.

From what I understand, Kernel plans on developing BCI tech so we can increase brain health, along with augmenting our intelligence. I hope that Bryan works on extending our consciousness into computers.

Just imagine how incredible that could be to connect our brains to the Internet. What if we could easily comprehend all scholarly peer-reviewed literature, the same way we currently comprehend 1+1=2? Maybe it sounds silly, but I think that's a goal we will achieve eventually. And there's increasing evidence that "eventually" may be a lot sooner than many think.

Imagine combining this great wealth of knowledge in a meaningful way: to augment all our creativity, our love, and our politics. Everything would change.

What if we could each comprehend medicine, economics, synthetic biology, astrophysics, robotics, artificial intelligence, and mathematics? And what if our comprehension included not just primary literature, but also the wide breadth of secondary literature?

What if our minds could traverse the Internet of Things, as if it were merely a single thought? Attempting to imagine all of this, I wonder it it's not like an ant trying to imagine what it's like to be a human.

Mr. Johnson also knows how important it is to engineer a sort of security system for our brains. We wouldn't want our brains hacked using the same technology that enables enhancement. We might not ever be the same after such a horrific event.

Google

Google has been around for decades and has developed into one of the most powerful tech companies on the planet. They are leaders in search, quantum computers, AI, self-driving cars, and so much more.

In 2012, they decided they wanted to become a leader in preventing and reversing the aging process. And they launched Calico [43].

The research they’ve shared with the public so far hasn't been too exciting. But they have a very impressive team. And, given their track record, it's probably only a matter of time until they become leading figures in the life extension industry. I hope to live indefinitely with Calico.

Peter Theil

Peter Theil is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time. He has developed many impressive companies. And, as of 2020, he had a net worth of $2.3B [44]. It’s great to see his genius and personal money aimed at preventing and reversing the aging process [45].

Mr. Theil's involvement in life extension, so far, can be described as "passionate," at the least. There's a rumor that he employed heterokaryonic parabiosis, regularly injecting young blood in hope of slowing down the aging process. The rumor probably isn't true [46]. But if it is, I imagine he got excited from some of the relatively successful mice studies that reversed some aspects of the aging process [47].

I think the research related to injecting young plasma for age reversal isn't developed enough for confidence in self-experimentation. And there's more promising research related to other anti-aging injections, such as mesenchymal stem cells at the Panama Stem Cell Institute [48].

But Mr. Theil has demonstrated a passion toward life extension. And I imagine we'll be hearing much more about that.

Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison is the founder and CTO of one of the most successful computer companies, Oracle [49]. He has a net worth of $68B. And he was one of the first big investors in anti-aging research.

Mr. Ellison is known for being one of the most ambitious leaders of our time. So just imagine his expertise and passion directed at extending lifespan for everyone.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is the founder of many impressive companies. And he currently has a net worth of $150B [50]. He is one of the biggest investors in preventing and reversing the aging process. His most recent investment was in Unity Biotechnology [51].

Sadly, Mr. Bezos is not known for being as active in the life extension industry as many of the others discussed above. But, given his net worth, he has clearly learned something about business that most of us haven't. And it would be amazing to see even more of his efforts directed toward life extension!

Other Notable Individuals

Below is a non-exhaustive list of others that are pushing the life extension movement forward as much as, if not more than, those listed above. All of these impressive individuals, in various ways, are supporting or developing this most salient research.

Anthony Atala

Aubrey de Grey

Ben Goertzel

Bill Andrews

Bill Gates

Craig Venter

David Sinclair

Elon Musk

Eric Drexler

George Church

Laura Deming

Luhan Yang

Masayoshi Son

Max More

Naveen Jain

Neil Riordan

Peter Diamandis

Peter Voss

Ray Kurzweil

Sergey Young

Conclusion

The combined effort of these individuals may seem like a lot. Globally, trillions of dollars are invested into research to defeat the diseases that inflict us. But it's not enough. Development of treatments is still slow because human biology is extremely complex.

So we need the other 2K billionaires and 14M millionaires around the globe to step up to the plate. We need them to become part of this list of individuals who are applying their resources to defeat death.

Most governments have barely expressed even a hint of interest in reversing aging and defeating death, let alone subsidizing related research. So we can't rely on them for this purpose. We must take it upon ourselves to pursue the hope of giving everyone the option to live indefinitely.

I expect that life extension will continue to become mainstream. And scientists may soon experience a phenomenon that Peter Voss calls "financial escape velocity." It's the idea that people will throw money at life extension science as fast as they can.

Why will people do this? We'll do it because most of us won't want to age and die in an expensive car when there's a realistic alternative. The goal of defeating death is among the most noble goals that our species has ever conceived.

I sincerely hope that, wealthy or not, you'll take the time to learn more about this research. Maybe you can help us all realize life extension. I look forward to living with all of you forever!

References

Rejuvenatebio. (2017). https://go.thrivous.com/2MSgaKC

Vera E, Bernardes de Jesus B, Foronda M, Flores JM, Blasco MA. Telomerase reverse transcriptase synergizes with calorie restriction to increase health span and extend mouse longevity. PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e53760. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0053760 https://go.thrivous.com/30AvVOC

NHUAR

Robert A. Freitas Jr. (1998). "Exploratory Design in Medical Nanotechnology: A Mechanical Artificial Red Cell". Artificial Cells, Blood Substitutes, and Immobil. Biotech. (26): 411–430.

Drexler, Eric. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. Doubleday. 1986.

Neuralink. 2016. https://go.thrivous.com/2AV8LYl

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Alcor Life Extension Foundation: Cryonics. 1972. https://go.thrivous.com/3fkj7zJ

Shatilovich, A.V., Tchesunov, A.V., Neretina, T.V. et al. Viable Nematodes from Late Pleistocene Permafrost of the Kolyma River Lowland. Dokl Biol Sci 480, 100–102 (2018). https://go.thrivous.com/2AXFvAc

#65 Martine Rothblatt. Forbes. 2019. https://go.thrivous.com/2XU1i4Y

Bio: Martine Rothblatt. Lifenaut eternalize. 2015. https://go.thrivous.com/2UAlCGx

TED. Martine Rothblatt: My daughter, my wife, our robot, and the quest for immortality. YouTube. TED. May 18, 2015. 21:04. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTJpJlVkRTA&t=5s

United Therapeutics. 1996. https://go.thrivous.com/2B0i8pP

Martine Rothblatt. First ever two-person electric helicopter flight. YouTube. March 4, 2017. 8:16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2_vGou5194

Reed, Tina. (2018). Martine Rothblatt's theory of evolution. Bizjournal. https://go.thrivous.com/2YqI7yv

Forbes Live. Healthcare Summit 2017: Transformations: An Interview With Martine Rothblatt | Forbes Live. YouTube. December 1, 2017. 22:18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYkjyIjcW7E

Kanter, Jake. (2018) A billionaire biotech investor says Facebook will be decimated by its disastrous data leak. Business Insider. https://go.thrivous.com/2XQScWt

Juvenescence, Extending Healthy Lifespan. 2017. https://go.thrivous.com/37lZWmx

Mellon J. and Chalabi A. (2017). Juvenescence: Investing in the Age of Longevity. Fruitful Publications.

Longevity forum. 2019. https://go.thrivous.com/3ffwmBN

Segal, David. (2013). This man is not a cyborg. Yet. New York Times. https://go.thrivous.com/2Arwqjg

2045 Initiative. Dmitry Itskov — GF2045: On The Path to A New Evolutionary Strategy. YouTube. March 7, 2015. 12:21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81uH5JeMRYo

2045 Initiative. Dr. Martine Rothblatt — The Goal of Technology is the End of Death. YouTube. January 25, 2015. 27:32. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kbn0uvU5gs

2045 Initiative. Ray Kurzweil — Immortality By 2045 / Global Future 2045 Congress'2013. YouTube. January 18, 2015. 48:16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlRTbl_IB-s

2045 Initiative. Dr. Peter H. Diamandis — Intelligent Self-directed Evolution. YouTube. January 25, 2015. 19:19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H68gX_uCj4

2045 Initiative. Dr. George Church — the BRAIN Project I/O & Human Genome Engineering. YouTube. January 26, 2015. 20:34. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_zzFRjeGRI

2045 Initiative. Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro — The Future Life Supported by Robotic Avatars. YouTube. January 18, 2015. 24:52. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h34p5fzXjuQ

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Balakrishnan, Anita. (2017). Silicon Valley bigwigs like Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel

Originally published at thrivous.com on June 11, 2020 at 02:50PM.

[donna-murdoch]

History, Waves and Winters in AI – Hacker Noon

“I don’t see that human intelligence is something that humans can never understand.”

~ John McCarthy, March 1989

Is it? Credits: DM Community

This post is highly motivated by Kai-Fu Lee talk on “Where Will Artificial Intelligence Take us?”

Here is the link to all the listeners. In case you like to read, I’m (lightly) editing them. All credit to Kai-Fu Lee , all blame to me, etc.

Readers can jump to next sections if their minds echo “C’mon, I know this!”.  I will try to explain everything succinctly.  Every link offers different insight into the topic (except the usual wiki) so give them a try!

Introduction

Buzzwords

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) One of AI’s leading figures, Nick Bostrom has defined super intelligence as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”  A machine capable of constantly learning and improving itself could be unstoppable. Artificial Super intelligence ranges from a computer that’s just a little smarter than a human to one that’s trillions of times smarter — across the board. ASI is the reason the topic of AI is such a spicy meatball and why the words “immortality” and “extinction” will both appear in these posts multiple times. Think about HAL 9000 !

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Sometimes referred to as Strong AI, or Human-Level AI, Artificial General Intelligence refers to a computer that is as smart as a human across the board — a machine that can perform any intellectual task that a human being can. Professor Linda Gottfredson describes intelligence as “A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” AGI would be able to do all of those things as easily as you can.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) AI is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.

Intelligent Augmentation (IA) Computation and data are used to create services that augment human intelligence and creativity. A search engine can be viewed as an example of IA (it augments human memory and factual knowledge), as can natural language translation (it augments the ability of a human to communicate).

Machine Learning (ML) Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. For instance, instead of coding rules and strategies of chess into a computer, the computer can watch a number of chess games and learn by example. Machine learning encompasses a wide variety of algorithms.

Deep Learning (DL) Deep learning refers to many-layered neural networks, one specific class of machine learning algorithms. Deep learning is achieving an unprecedented state of the art results, by an order of magnitude, in nearly all fields to which it’s been applied so far, including image recognition, voice recognition, and language translation.

Big Data Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data — both structured and unstructured — that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. This was an empty marketing term that falsely convinced many people that the size of your data is what matters. It also cost companies huge sums of money on Hadoop clusters they didn’t actually need.

Only some are mentioned! Credits: Nvidia

History

Let me start with a story.

Michael Jordan explains in his talk at SysML 18 the story about coining the term “ AI” and how it is little different than often told. It goes like this, “It wasn’t Minsky, Papert, Newell all sitting at a conference. It was McCarthy who arrives at MIT, he says I’m gonna work on intelligence in computing and they say well isn’t that Cybernetics, we already have Norbert Wiener who does that. He says, “no no it’s different”. ” And so, how is it different. Well, he couldn’t really convince people it was based on logic rather than control theory, signal processing, optimization. So, he had to give it a new buzzword and he invented “Artificial Intelligence”. “AI is a general term that refers to hardware or software that exhibits behavior which appears intelligent.” AI is designed around how people think. It’s an emulation of human intelligence.

The field of AI has gone through phases of rapid progress and hype in the past, quickly followed by a cooling in investment and interest, often referred to as “AI winters”.

Waves and Winters

First Wave (1956–1974)

The programs that were developed during this time were, simply astonishing. Computers were Daniel Bobrow’s program STUDENT solving algebra word problems, proving theorems in geometry such as Herbert Gelernter’s Geometry Theorem Prover and SAINT, written by Minsky’s student James Slagle and Terry Winograd’s SHRDLU learning to speak English. A perceptron was a form of neural network introduced in 1958 by Frank Rosenblatt predicting that “perceptron may eventually be able to learn, make decisions, and translate languages. (spoiler alert: it did)”

First Winter (1974–1980)

In the 1970s, AI was subject to critiques and financial setbacks. AI researchers had failed to appreciate the difficulty of the problems they faced. Their tremendous optimism had raised expectations impossibly high, and when the promised results failed to materialize, funding for AI disappeared. In the early seventies, the capabilities of AI programs were limited. Even the most impressive could only handle trivial versions of the problems they were supposed to solve; all the programs were, in some sense, “toys”.

Second Wave (1980–1987)

The belief at one point was that we would take human intelligence and implement it as rules that would have a way to act as people. We told them the steps in which we go through our thoughts. For example, if I’m hungry I would go out and eat, if I have used a lot of money this month I will go to a cheaper place. Cheaper place implies McDonald’s and McDonald’s I avoid fried foods, so I just get a hamburger. So, that “if-then-else” we think we reason and that’s how the first generation of so-called expert systems or symbolic AI proceeded. That was the first wave that got people excited thinking we could write rules. Another encouraging event in the early 1980s was the revival of connectionism in the work of John Hopfield and David Rumelhart.

Second Winter (1987–1993)

The expert systems or symbolic AI with handwritten “if-then-else” rules were limiting because when we write down the rules there were just too many. A professor at MCC named Douglas Lenat proceeded to hire 100s of people to write down all the rules they could think of thinking that one way they will be done and that will be the brain in a project called Cyc. But knowledge in the world was too much and their interaction were too complex. The rule-based systems that we knew really didn’t know how to build it, which failed completely, resulting in only a handful of somewhat useful applications and that led everybody to believe that AI was doomed and it is not worth pursuing. Expert systems could not scale and in fact, could never scale and our brains didn’t probably work the way we thought they work. We, in order to simplify the articulation of our decision process use “if-then-else” as a language that people understood but our brains were actually much more complex than that.

Third Wave (1993–present)

The field of AI, now more than a half a century old, finally achieved some of its oldest goals. In 2005, a Stanford robot won the DARPA Grand Challenge by driving autonomously for 131 miles along an unrehearsed desert trail. Two years later, a team from CMU won the DARPA Urban Challenge by autonomously navigating 55 miles in an Urban environment while adhering to traffic hazards and all traffic laws. In February 2011, in a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition match, IBM’s question answering system, Watson, defeated the two greatest Jeopardy! Champion.

Starting in the early 2010s, huge amounts of training data together with massive computational power (by some of the big players) prompted a re-evaluation of some particular 30-year-old neural network algorithms. To the surprise of many researchers this combination, aided by new innovations, managed to rapidly catapult these ‘Deep Learning’ systems way past the performance of traditional approaches in several domains — particularly in speech and image recognition, as well as most categorization tasks.

In DL/ML the idea is to provide the system with training data, to enable it to ‘program’ itself — no human programming required! In laboratories all around the world, little AIs(narrow) are springing to life. Some play chess better than any human ever has. Some are learning to drive a million cars a billion miles while saving more lives than most doctors or EMTs will over their entire careers. Some will make sure your dishes are dry and spot-free, or that your laundry is properly fluffed and without a wrinkle. Countless numbers of these bits of intelligence are being built and programmed; they are only going to get smarter and more pervasive; they’re going to be better than us, but they’ll never be just like us.

Deep learning is responsible for today’s explosion of AI. This field gave birth to many buzzwords like CNN, LSTM, GRU, RNN, GAN, ___net, deep___, ___GAN, etc which also visited fields like RL, NLP, etc gave very interesting achievements like AlphaGo, AlphaZero, self-driving cars, chatbots, and may require another post to just cover its achievements. It has given computers extraordinary powers, like the ability to recognize spoken words almost as well as a person could, a skill too complex to code into the machine by hand. Deep learning has transformed computer vision and dramatically improved machine translation. It is now being used to guide all sorts of key decisions in medicine, finance, manufacturing — and beyond.

We don’t (and can’t) understand how machine learning instances operate in any symbolic (as opposed to reductive) sense. Equally, we don’t know what structures and processes in our brains enable us to process symbols in intelligent ways: to abstract, communicate and reason through symbols, whether they be words or mathematical variables, and to do so across domains and problems. Moreover, we have no convincing path for progress from the first type of system, machine learning, to the second, the human brain. It seems, in other words — notwithstanding genuine progress in machine learning — that it is another dead end with respect to intelligence: the third AI winter will soon be upon us. There’s already an argument that being able to interrogate an AI system about how it reached its conclusions is a fundamental legal right. There’s too much money behind machine learning for the third winter to occur in 2018, but it won’t be long before the limited nature of AI advances sinks in.

In short, this is how it happened Credits: matter2media

What’s Next?

Our lives are bathed in data: from recommendations about whom to “follow” or “friend” to data-driven autonomous vehicles.

We are living in the age of big data, and with every link we click, every message we send, and every movement we make, we generate torrents of information.

In the past two years, the world has produced more than 90 percent of all the digital data that has ever been created. New technologies churn out an estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes per day. Data pours in from social media and cell phones, weather satellites and space telescopes, digital cameras and video feeds, medical records and library collections. Technologies monitor the number of steps we walk each day, the structural integrity of dams and bridges, and the barely perceptible tremors that indicate a person is developing Parkinson’s disease.

Data in the age of AI has been described in any number of ways: the new gold, the new oil, the new currency and even the new bacon. By now, everyone gets it: Data is worth a lot to businesses, from auditing to e-commerce. But it helps to understand what it can and cannot do, a distinction many in the business world still must come to grips with.

“All of machine learning is about error correction.”

-Yann LeCun, Chief AI scientist, Facebook

Todays AI which we call Weak AI, is really an optimizer based on data in one domain that they learn to do one thing extremely well. It’s a very vertical single task where you cannot teach it many things, common sense, give emotion and no self awareness and therefore no desire or even an understanding of how to love or dominate. It’s great as a tool, to add value and creating value which will also replace many of human job mundane tasks.

If we look at history of AI, the deep learning type of innovation really just happened one time in 60 years that we have breakthrough. We cannot go and predict that we’re gonna have breakthrough next year and the month after that. Exponential adoption of applications is now happening which is great but exponential inventions is a ridiculous concept.

We are seeing speech-to-speech translation as good as amateur translator now not yet at professional level as clearly explained by Douglas Hofstadter in this article on the Atlantic. Eventually possibly in future, we don’t have to learn foreign languages, we’ll have a earpiece that translates what other people say which is wonderful addition in convenience, productivity, value creation, saving time but at same time we have to be cognizant that translators will be out of jobs. Looking back when we think about Industrial Revolution, we see it as having done lot of good created lot of jobs but process was painful and some of the tactics were questionable and we’re gonna see all those issues come up again and worse in AI revolution. In Industrial Revolution, many people were in fact replaced and displaced and their jobs were gone and they had to live in destitute although overall employment and wealth were created but it was made by small number of people. Fortunately, Industrial Revolution lasted a long time and it was gradual and governments could deal with one group at a time whose jobs were then being displaced and also during Industrial Revolution certain work ethic was perpetuated that the capitalist wanted the rest of the world to think that if I worked hard even if it is a routine repetitive job I will get compensated, I will have a certain degree of wealth that will give me dignity and self-actualization that people saw while he works hard, he has a house, he’s a good citizen of the society. That surely isn’t how we want to remembered as mankind but that is how most people on earth believe in their current existence and that’s extremely dangerous now because AI is going to be taking most of these boring, routine, mundane, repetitive jobs and people will lose their jobs. The people losing their jobs used to feel their existence as work ethic, working hard getting that house, providing for the family.

In understanding these AI tools that are doing repetitive tasks it certainly comes back to tell us that well doing repetitive task can’t be what makes us human and that AI’s arrival will at least remove what cannot be reason for existence on this earth. Potential reason for our existence is that we create, we invent things, we celebrate creation and we are very creative about scientific process, curing diseases, creative about writing books, telling stories, etc. These are the creativity we should celebrate and that’s perhaps what makes us human.

We need AI. It is the ultimate accelerator of a human’s capacity to fill their own potential. Evolution is not assembling. We still only utilize about 10 percent of our total brain function. Think about the additional brain functioning potential we will have as AI continues to develop, improve, and advance.

Computer scientist Donald Knuth puts it, “AI has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires ‘thinking’ but has failed to do most of what people and animals do ‘without thinking.’”

To put things into perspective, AI can and will expand our neocortex and act as an extension to our 300 million brain modules. According to Ray Kurzweil, American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist, “The future human will be a biological and non-biological hybrid.”

If you liked my article, please smash the 👏 below as many times as you liked the article (spoiler alert: 50 is limit, I tried!) so other people will see this here on Medium.

If you have any thoughts, comments, questions, feel free to comment below.

Further “Very very very Interesting” Reads

Geoffrey Hinton [https://torontolife.com/tech/ai-superstars-google-facebook-apple-studied-guy/]

Yann LeCun [https://www.forbes.com/sites/insights-intelai/2018/07/17/yann-lecun-an-ai-groundbreaker-takes-stock/]

Youshua Bengio [https://www.cifar.ca/news/news/2018/08/01/q-a-with-yoshua-bengio]

Ian Goodfellow GANfather [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610253/the-ganfather-the-man-whos-given-machines-the-gift-of-imagination/]

AI Conspiracy: The ‘Canadian Mafia’ [https://www.recode.net/2015/7/15/11614684/ai-conspiracy-the-scientists-behind-deep-learning]

Douglas Hofstadter [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/]

Marvin Minsky [https://www.space.com/32153-god-artificial-intelligence-and-the-passing-of-marvin-minsky.html]

Judea Pearl [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/machine-learning-is-stuck-on-asking-why/560675/]

John McCarthy [http://jmc.stanford.edu/artificial-intelligence/what-is-ai/index.html]

Prof. Nick Bostrom — Artificial Intelligence Will be The Greatest Revolution in History [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWPU5eOJ7SQ]

François Chollet [https://medium.com/@francois.chollet/the-impossibility-of-intelligence-explosion-5be4a9eda6ec]

Andrej Karpathy [https://medium.com/@karpathy/software-2-0-a64152b37c35]

Walter Pitts [http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic]

Machine Learning [https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/23/wtf-is-machine-learning/]

Neural Networks [https://physicsworld.com/a/neural-networks-explained/]

Intelligent Machines [https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-build-truly-intelligent-machines-teach-them-cause-and-effect-20180515/]

Self-Conscious AI [https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-build-a-self-conscious-ai-machine/]

The Quartz guide to artificial intelligence: What is it, why is it important, and should we be afraid? [https://qz.com/1046350/the-quartz-guide-to-artificial-intelligence-what-is-it-why-is-it-important-and-should-we-be-afraid/]

The Great A.I. Awakening [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html]

China’s AI Awakening [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609038/chinas-ai-awakening]

AI Revolution [https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-ai-revolution-the-road-to-superintelligence-823279599]

Artificial Intelligence — The Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet [https://medium.com/@mijordan3/artificial-intelligence-the-revolution-hasnt-happened-yet-5e1d5812e1e7]

AI’s Language Problem [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602094/ais-language-problem/]

AI’s Next Great Challenge: Understanding the Nuances of Language [https://hbr.org/2018/07/ais-next-great-challenge-understanding-the-nuances-of-language]

Dark secret at the heart of AI [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/]

How Frightened Should We Be of A.I.? [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/how-frightened-should-we-be-of-ai]

The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/artificial-intelligence-economic-inequality.html]

Artificial Intelligence’s ‘Black Box’ Is Nothing to Fear [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/artificial-intelligence-black-box.html]

Tipping point for Artificial Intelligence [https://www.datanami.com/2018/07/20/the-tipping-point-for-artificial-intelligence/]

AI Winter isn’t coming [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603062/ai-winter-isnt-coming/]

AI winter is well on its way [https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/05/28/ai-winter-is-well-on-its-way/]

AI is in bubble [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-artificial-intelligence-is-in-a-bubble-heres-why-we-should-build-it/]

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IF YOU'RE NOT SURE, BUT FIRST YOU HAVE TO MEET A PREDEFINED SPEC IS TESTING SLIGHTLY THE WRONG PROBLEM

The only way their performance is measured individually. 12. Which further accelerated the fragmentation. Could a trend based on them be that powerful? All other things being equal a painting with people in it will interest people more than technology; it's mainly in the prevention of bad things that technology comes into play. His answer was simply no. But do you really need the rich people? What people usually say is not that far from a description of insanity, but they need more help because life is so precarious for them.

But it was the season Dallas premiered. That seems so obvious it seems wrong to call it. The only way to be in this phase is that it's harder for them to do something beyond just reading some text? We started Viaweb with $10,000, but to notice quickly that it already is winning. Now how are you going to do, you'll have the most momentum, and since valuation is usually the real reason: the product is expensive to develop or sell, or simply the idea let's start a company. Series A rounds, the investors won't take as much equity as VCs wanted. But your goal here wasn't to provide a protected environment for children to grow up to the right people—e. And yet does anyone who was there have any expectation those days will ever return? I don't think there's any limit to the number of big hits is the number of points increases, wisdom and intelligence, it's not the deciding factor in whether you succeed as a startup. Usually you get seed money from our friend Julian.

In fact, what makes startups succeed. So if you choose them. They were wrong about the underlying causes. They do it because I was tired of hearing taste is subjective. The reason I describe this as a Lisp interpreter. It was no coincidence that Microsoft and Facebook both got started in January. Beware of research. In theory there could be pleasure in a bug.

As Fred Brooks pointed out in The Mythical Man-Month, and everything I've seen has tended to confirm what he said. Something hacked together means something that barely solves the problem of what to do are more different than most people realize. Then it struck me: this is the thinnest of historical veneers. Html 3. Perhaps most convincingly, it would have. Most companies that VCs invest in a company, but it is very hard to predict what the future will be server-based software should have far fewer bugs. One, obviously, is when what you have to select 20 players. You probably weren't bored when you were eight. There doesn't seem any particular urgency to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. For example, in America people often don't decide to go, and nothing they could do by themselves.

It can't be easy. Except in the degenerate case, economic inequality is the inevitable fate of countries that don't choose something worse. The surprise is generally positive as well as the low. I'm going to try. Maybe you're just running fast. One reason it's hard to predict beforehand, so lots of people to supply each startup with what they need to do what you know intellectually to be right, even though biologically they're not, so the deal fell through. It might dilute the value of our ideas, which turned out to vary a great deal more experience and motivation. They could make it through. But because seed firms operate in an earlier phase, they need to get the rest of the Python hackers seems to be a high school student.

For tokens that occur only in the sciences whether theories are true or false, and this is the main reason kids lie to adults. We just don't notice usually, because they made something people want. What you learn about programming in college is much like what you do. By 1969, when Ted Kennedy drove off the bridge at Chappaquiddick, the limit seemed to be down to one. I don't remember what she said, but he doesn't remember which. Over time, the default language, was that we deliberately sought hard problems. Figure out what? It's harder to escape the influence of your own. Though indeed, it's been a while since they were three just because serving web pages recently got a lot more work. The big disadvantage of the new applications that get written in the next few years will be like in a hundred years.

And the pages don't have the source code too. Just as the relationship between wisdom and intelligence apply to different types of clients for them to do something we didn't do. A company will be able to say who cares what investors think? And what we do is that they've been diverging. If Lisp is So Great May 2003 If Lisp is so great that it becomes a filter for selecting bad startups. Which is precisely my point. __________________________________________________________________ 1. I remember standing behind him making frantic gestures at Robert to shoo this nut out of his life. Spending Too Much It's hard to stay interested in something you wrote six months ago the average case bad advice. And in her typical quiet way she encouraged that illusion. A lot of VCs are looking for investors you want to make, it's mere effort to make that look neutral. The problem is not economic inequality per se that's blocking social mobility, but some specific combination of things that those who don't understand it are driven to invent conspiracy theories to explain how it all works is to follow the model of work from the 1970s, no one can predict them—not even the smart kids.

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

This innocent question we ask boys is putting more pressure on them than we realize.

Studies been demonstrated that having daughters prepares subjects more compassionate to women’s publishes. And while it would be nice if beings did not requirement a genetic investment in a female person in order to gain this perspective, lately I’ve had sympathy for those newly woke dads. My two sons have caused something similar to happen to me. I’ve begun to glimpse the world through the eyes of a young male. And among the things I’m meeting here in boyland share the same repugnant gender norms that chafed when I was a girl. Of course, one notifications norms the most when they don’t fit. If my tween lads were happily boy-ing apart at boy occasions, neither they nor I would notice that the latter are hemmed in. But oh boy, are they not doing that. In fact, if I demo you a register of my sons’ collective attentions and you were supposed to predict their gender, you’d waver a little bit, but then preferred girl. Baking, say, depicting, anniversaries, movies, volleyball, charming mammals, video games, newborns and toddlers, interpret, jaunt, writing letters. I imagine many of you are thinking at this pitch: That’s awesome that your sons are interested in those concepts ! em> There’s more. One affection comics and graphic romances but tends to narrations with strong female boosters, like Ms. Marvel and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Cool! I desire it . em> And plays. They are completely bored by squad athletics. They don’t toy them. They won’t watch them. They will up- or down-arrow through any number of feature happenings on TV to get to a jig tournament or to watch competitive baking. So? Nothing inaccurate with that . em> Those are the kinds of things all my progressive friends reply. But it’s often not the message my sons themselves hear from the other adults in their lives, their classmates, and the media. For example, the first get-to-know-you question they are inevitably asked by well-meaning grown-ups is, “So, do you play sports? ” When they say, “No , not really, ” the adult typically sustains brightly, “Oh, so what do you like to do, then? “ No one explicitly answers it’s bad for a boy not to play sports. But when it’s ever the first issue queried, the deduction is clear: playing athletics is ordinary; hence , not playing them is not. The truth is that one of them does play a boast. He digit skates, as does my daughter. When parties find out that she skates, they rafter at her, as if she unexpectedly has hold of a few rays of Olympic glory. In the working day before my son stopped telling parties that he ice skates, most of them paused and then pronounced, “Oh, so you are planning to play hockey? “ But it’s not just what people say. It’s all those pesky, unwritten rules. When “hes in” second point, my younger son liked the Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series. But he refused to check any out of the school library. He illustrated: “Girls can read boy volumes, but boys can’t read girlfriend notebooks. Girls can wear boy pigments or daughter emblazons, but boys is simply wear son shades. Why is that, Mom? “ I didn’t have an answer. An obvious starting point — and the one that we have the most assure over — is to change the space we speak to the boys in “peoples lives”. As Andrew Reiner shows in a spot-on essay, we should employ boys in analytical, emotion-focused conversations, just like we do with daughters. In “How to Talk to “Girls “, ” Lisa Bloom offers alternatives to the appearance-focused comments so often steered at young girls: requesting a girl what she’s predict or about current events or what she would like to see changed in the world. I could copy-paste Bloom’s list and swipe a different designation on it: “How to Ask Boys About Something Besides Sports.” And with a few more built-in nudges, we might expand the restricted macrocosm of boyhood more quickly. Boy scout could volunteer buttons for developing sciences in child care, cooperation, and journaling. Girl-dominated works like prowes, disco, gymnastics, and representation skating could be made more welcoming to sons, with increased outreach and retention tries. My lad could write his own essay about trying to fit in to the nearly all-girl world of anatomy skating, including the times he has had to change robes in a toilet stall at skating occurrences because there were no cupboard areas available for boys. I used to think that the concept of gender — of “girl things” and “boy things” — was what was containing us back. Now I see it differently. The interdependent yin and yang of gender is an essential part of who we are, both individually and collectively. We need people who like to fix cars and people who like to fix dinner. We necessitate people who are willing and able to fight if needed and people who are exquisitely tuned into a baby’s needs. But for millennia, we have forced these characteristics to align with biological sexuality, starting countless individuals to be dissatisfied and abated. For “the worlds largest” segment, we’ve realise this with girlfriends. But we have a long way to go when it comes to boys. As Gloria Steinem mentioned, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons … but few have the spirit to grow our lads more like our daughters.” I acknowledge that young boys experiencing pressured to be sports fans is not our country’s biggest problem related to gender. Transgender individuals still meet discrimination and cruelty. The #MeToo action has revealed to anyone who didn’t already know it that girls and women can’t go about their everyday lives without bumping into male sex aggression. But if our culture alterations to wholeheartedly hug the whole spectrum of unboyishness, it may frisk some small role for responding to these other issues, very. Male culture is likely to be redefined, enriched, and expanded, diluting the harmful manlines that is at the root of most of our gender-related problems. Boys and girls alike will be able to decide if they would rather be made up of snips and snails, sugar and spice, or a custom combination. And my future grandsons, unlike my sons, won’t think twice about wearing pink or reading about a girl detective at school. This narrative initially appeared on Motherwell and is reprinted here with allow . em> Read more: http :// www.upworthy.com/ this-innocent-question-we-ask-boys-is-putting-more-pressure-on-them-than-we-realize http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/07/01/this-innocent-question-we-ask-boys-is-putting-more-pressure-on-them-than-we-realize/

[djgblogger-blog]

70 years of instant photos, thanks to inventor Edwin Land's Polaroid camera

http://bit.ly/2rU7Y1w

It's been 70 years of instant photography, thanks to Edwin Land, on the left. AP Photo

It probably happens every minute of the day: A little girl demands to see the photo her parent has just taken of her. Today, thanks to smartphones and other digital cameras, we can see snapshots immediately, whether we want to or not. But in 1944 when 3-year-old Jennifer Land asked to see the family vacation photo that her dad had just taken, the technology didn’t exist. So her dad, Edwin Land, invented it.

The original Polaroid camera freed users from needing to trek to a darkroom to develop their images. Lindsay Moe/Unsplash, CC BY

Three years later, after plenty of scientific development, Land and his Polaroid Corporation realized the miracle of nearly instant imaging. The film exposure and processing hardware are contained within the camera; there’s no muss or fuss for the photographer who just points and shoots and then watches the image materialize on the photo once it spools out of the camera.

Land is probably best known for the “instant photo” – or the spiritual progenitor of today’s ubiquitous selfie. His Polaroid camera was first released commercially in 1948 at retail locations and prices aimed at the postwar middle class. But this is just one of a host of technological breakthroughs Land invented and commercialized, most of which centered around light and how it interacts with materials. The technology used to show a 3D movie and the goggles we wear in the theater were made possible by Land and his colleagues. The camera aboard the U-2 spy plane, as featured in the movie “Bridge of Spies,” was a Land product, as were even some aspects of the plane’s mechanics. He also worked on theoretical problems, drawing on a deep understanding of both chemistry and physics.

I’m a vision scientist who has touched many of the fields in which Land made great advances, through my own work on new imaging methods, image processing techniques and human color vision. As the 2018 recipient of the Edwin H. Land Medal, awarded by the Optical Society of America and the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, my own work relies on Land’s technological innovations that made modern imaging possible.

Controlling light’s properties

Edwin Land’s first optics breakthrough came as a young man, when he figured out a convenient and affordable method to control one of the fundamental properties of light: polarization.

You can think of light as waves propagating from a source. Most light sources produce a mixture of waves with all different physical properties, such as wavelength and amplitude of vibration. Light is considered polarized if the amplitude varies in a consistent manner perpendicular to the direction the wave is traveling.

A polarizing filter can block all the light waves that don’t match its orientation. Fouad A. Saad/Shutterstock.com

Given the right material for the light waves to pass through, the light waves may be rotated into another plane, slowed down or blocked. Modern 3D goggles work because one eye receives light waves vibrating along the horizontal plane while the other eye receives the light vibrating along the vertical plane.

Before Land, researchers built components to control polarization from rock crystals, which were assigned almost magical names and properties, though they merely decreased the velocity or amplitude of light waves traveling at specific orientations. Land created “polarizers” by growing small crystals and embedding them in plastic sheets, altering the light passing through depending on its orientation in relation to the rows of crystals. His inexpensive polarizer made it possible to reliably and practically filter light so only wavelengths with a particular orientation would pass through.

Land founded the Polaroid Corporation in 1937 to commercialize his new technology. His sheet polarizers found applications ranging from the identification of chemical compounds to adjustable sunglasses. Polarizing filters became standard in photography to reduce glare. Today the principles of polarized light are used in most computer and cellphone screens, to enhance contrast, decrease glare and even turn on or off individual pixels.

Polarizing filters help researchers visualize structures that might not be seen otherwise – from astronomical features to biological structures. In my own field of vision science, polarization imaging localizes classes of chemicals, such as protein molecules leaking from blood vessels in diseased eyes. Polarization is also combined with high-resolution imaging techniques to detect cellular damage beneath the reflective retinal surface.

A new way to get the data out

Before the days of high-speed digital capture of data and affordable high-resolution displays, or use of videotape, Polaroid photography was the method of choice to obtain output in many scientific labs. Experiments or medical tests needed graphical or pictorial output for interpretation, often from an analog oscilloscope which plotted out a voltage or current change over time. The oscilloscope was fast enough to capture key features of the data – but recording the output for later analysis was a challenge before Land’s instant camera came along.

A common example in vision science is the recording of eye movements. A research study reported in 1960 plotted light reflected from an observer’s moving eye on an oscilloscope screen, which was photographed with a mounted Polaroid camera – not unlike the consumer Polaroid camera a family might pull out at a birthday party. For decades, research labs and medical facilities have used setups consisting of a Polaroid camera and a mounting rig to collect electrical signals displayed on oscilloscope screens. The format sizes are less than dazzling compared to modern digital resolutions, but they were revolutionary at the time.

Land’s inventions led to the widespread use of polarized light to characterize tissues and objects, as in this pseudo-color image of a diabetic patient’s retina that unmasks irregular structures caused by edema. Ann Elsner, CC BY-ND

In 1987, with the founding of my new retinal imaging laboratory, there was no inexpensive method to provide sharable output of our novel images. After a few years of struggling to obtain high-quality output for conferences and publications, the Polaroid Corporation came to our rescue, with the donation of a printer, allowing our scientific contributions to reach an audience beyond our lab.

Eyes are not cameras

Land’s contributions go beyond patenting over 500 innovations and inventing products that millions purchased. His understanding of the interaction of light and matter promoted novel ways of characterizing chemicals with polarized light. And he provided insights into the workings of the human visual system that had seemed to defy the laws of physics, coming up with what he called the Retinex theory of color vision to explain how people perceive a broad range of color without the expected wavelengths being present in the room.

Quick prints can be shared and displayed. Hillary Hartley, CC BY-SA

Despite his brilliance, Land’s Polaroid Corporation eventually hit hard times in the decades after his death in 1991. Heavily invested in its film sales, Polaroid wasn’t prepared as all tiers of the imaging market went digital, with everyone from consumer photographers to high-end medical and optical imagers abandoning film and processing.

But rather than sink with the film market, Polaroid reinvented itself with new products that could help output the new world of digital images. And in a case of history repeating itself, Polaroid and other manufacturers of instant cameras are enjoying renewed popularity with younger generations who had no exposure to the original versions. Just like little Jennifer Land, plenty of people today still want a tangible version of their pictures, right now.

Ann Elsner receives funding from NIDILRR and NIH. She works for Indiana University . She owns shares in Aeon Imaging, LLC.

[eyesinthedarkrp-blog]

Rough site ideas

So, this is just a brief overview of where EITD is heading at the moment, to give people an idea of the sort of things I’m looking to bring in! Some things will be liable to change as the lore is tweaked and written up, so if anyone has any comments/suggestion/critiques I’d appreciate hearing them.

We’re going to be an original fantasy site, with late medieval technology and byzantium/mediterranean/middle eastern influences. No stone castles and knights in plate armour to be found here! It will mostly be freeform and sandbox, though there will be optional events running (probably monthly) that will move the site's plot along and give people things to react to, as I've plotted out a fair amount of what I want to bring in.

MAGIC SYSTEM

The site will feature a magic system based around the use of enchanted objects, talismans, and magical foci. Rather than possessing innate magic, mages can access power stored in a type of magical ore mined in the east of the Empire and use it to power magic in a variety of forms. Magic is more like science than just manipulating power, and much like maths or physics requires years of study to understand the rules of magic and what’s possible. It also involves a lot of careful calculation and preparation time invested, plus trial and error to refine new techniques. Known runes can change properties when combined with others, and new runes are still being discovered. The resulting enchanted item can then be used by any mage, such as a healing crystal or an amulet to cast lightning. As this is all powered by the expensive magical ore, much like a battery, all magical items lose power with use, so magic is generally not wasted on minor inconveniences.

DEMONS

Each night brings the monsters, humanoid creatures who appear from nowhere when the sun goes down, seemingly driven solely by the desire to kill humans. Only magic seems to hurt them, though as no corpse has ever been recovered it’s unknown whether it simply wounds them or whether it kills them. As being out alone in the night is suicide, most people live in crowded communities protected by magical wards and barriers. Despite every possible precaution being taken, the demons do sometimes break through a town or village’s barriers and kill everyone inside, so life anywhere – outside of the major settlements, which have never yet fallen – is a constant risk.

DIFFERENT FACTIONS

Getting away from the recent trend for sites focused on courtly intrigue, I want to include a number of different factions and ensure shopkeepers and pickpockets will have just as many opportunities to influence site events as mages and princes. Although this list is not exhaustive, so far I’ve got a number of ideas for different groups:

A large royal family, with the Empress at its head. Tens of children are born in the royal harem each year, giving plenty of opportunities to play characters with royal blood.

A small number of noble houses, to encourage people to play related characters and give them a reason to bicker with each other.

Merchant guilds, including merchant banking, and ongoing struggles between the merchant classes, the crown, and the nobility.

The Temple of the Sun, the main religious authority in Ephresus. Worship of the god Tau is mostly done through celebrations celebrating light and life, so think more fertility festivals danced naked around a giant bonfire than chaste priests singing hymns in a church. They also offer social care, such as providing food to struggling familes and foster care for abandoned children, and a number travel around the country offering religious leadership as well as basic literacy and numeracy education for all children.

The Order of the Moon, a religious offshoot of warriors enhanced with magical powers that gives them the ability to fight the demons, though it comes at a cost.

The Pauper’s Court, a criminal group operating in the capital city and a deliberate mockery of the nobility they steal from. Led by the enigmatic Silver Prince.

The Magerium, the principal centre for the Empire’s mages. In practice mostly functions as a university, as most mages there spend their lives researching specialist branches of magic, while others leave to use magic in more practical ways.

  SETTING

The site will be set in the ‘empire’ of Ephresus, on an island that consists of the Kingdom of Ephresus and the recently conquered city-state of Ardelle. The demons prevent much sea exploration, as the demons appear on the water just as they do on land, so it’s currently unknown what – if anything – lie beyond the borders of the island. Magical gateways link the major settlements, allowing instant travel for any citizen, which will hopefully give everyone the opportunity to thread together.

OTHER BITS

No gendered roles, sexism or racism – while playbys of any race are allowed, and diversity encouraged, people of Ephresus are seen to be one race. Same sex relationships are accepted, but all citizens are expected to have children, whether this is naturally with their partner/through use of a concubine or by adoption.

Sex is seen as a good, not shameful, thing, and all pregnancies celebrated whether legitimate or not. Both men and women often have multiple sexual partners, with richer households often supporting multiple concubines of every gender and myriads of children. Taking multiple wives or husbands is also allowed, with the consent of all participants. Fashion also reflects this lack of body shame.

A parent can choose which of their children inherits. If parents hold different, or multiple, titles, they can elect to leave these to different children, while assets such as wealth or property is divided up between all officially recognised children – biological or adopted children formally made part of the family.

Everyone has an animal companion, similar to the daemons in His Dark Materials, soul-bonded and capable of communication.

There are some magical creatures with animal-like intelligence, such as the wyverns in the mountains that come down to carry off sheep, though more will end up being discovered as the site’s main plotline unfolds and members will have the opportunity to contribute their own ideas.

The recently invaded Ardelle is unhappy with the occupation by Ephresus. The people of Ardelle are starting to stand up to the invaders, despite a handful of the royal family being held hostage in Ephresus's capital to encourage good behaviour.

Original festivals by the site’s religion and lore. One example is the Longest Night, where all citizens stay up until dawn with enormous bonfires and feasting and dancing in defiance of the monsters trying to kill them.

A number of sub-plots running alongside the main plot, hopefully giving everyone something to be a part of. Later down the line, we may be open to member-suggested, or even member-run, plots! I’d love to get everyone and their characters involved as much as possible.