#edit 2: I think my problem was I selected the objects in the wrong order and parented the bone to the mesh

[vv-ispy]

blender my misunderstood beast, why won't you parent the bone to the cherry mesh plane thing

[vintagesimstress]

IIIb. Method II: The sneaky way

(Previous: III a. Method I: Loop, Sculpt, Cut)

I know we already meshed the skirt once, but in order to see the second method in action, we have to take a couple of steps back. Let's start from the same point as the last time: from the 'stiff cone' step.

Method II: The sneaky way

Let's go to the front view (num 1) and, with the x-ray turned on, select (b) the whole lowest line of vertices – the ones reaching to the floor. Now, revert the selection (ctrl + i) and hide (h) all the selected vertices. That will leave you with only the lowest line visible. (You will still be able to see your whole mesh if you go to the Object Mode though (tab)).

Go to the top view (num 7).

Now, select any two vertices which could be connected by a straight line going through the middle point. Turn on proportional editing (o or alt + o) and change the 'proportional editing falloff' to random.

And now... We're back to making that icing on the donut. Press s to scale all your vertices. Move your mouse and scroll the mouse wheel to adjust the deformation. Don't overdo it! We want to make some folds, not crazy spikes. Here's what I got:

Go to object mode (tab) to check how it looks. As you can see, your skirt got smooth folds, going down all the way from the belt area. Magic!

Adjust manually any vertices which you find too spiky (or not spiky enough) – just first turn off proportional editing. I think I'll go with this:

Now we need to give the skirt the desired shape and at the same time smooth out the spikes.

Unhide the hidden vertices (alt + h), go to the front view (num 1) and select the top and the bottom line of your skirt's vertices.

Press W and choose 'Subdivide Smooth' from the dropdown menu.

As you can see, a bunch of new vertices appeared on your mesh, smoothing out your folds. If you want to smooth them out even further, you can repeat the same steps: select the two lowest lines of vertices, press W, subdivide smooth. This for sure will help your mesh look smoother. However, keep in mind that more vertices mean also a higher polycount and more problems with weight painting. If this is one of your first meshing attempts, better subdivide the skirt only once. Don't get too ambitious on your first try :).

I subdivided it once again though:

We're almost done. Now you only need to give your skirt the desired shape. Select (b) the newly-created horizontal line, move it up (z) and then scale (s) to the right size. If you didn't listen to me and subdivided the mesh another time, repeat it for the 2nd line as well :P.

Place the first line right under the belt – try to keep the same distance between the lines as in the top. In case you have a second one as well, try to put it more or less in the middle. The higher you place it, the higher your polycount will get when you add loops... But it'll also look smoother. You decide. I'll go with this:

Now we need to insert loop cuts (ctrl + r), just like in the previous method. I already covered it once, so I won't go over it again – check the previous part of the tutorial for detailed explanation. Use them to define the shape first, and when you're satisfied with the look of your skirt, combo-add any missing ones. I got the right shape with just 2 loops, so the rest will be just 'fillers'.

Now there's only one thing left to do. If you zoom in on the uppermost edge of your skirt, you'll notice every second vertex is located in the middle of a triangle's arm:

That would make your mesh look a bit odd in this area in the end - plus we don't even need them. Let's solve this problem.

Switch to edge select mode and select both this line and the one right beneath it.

Deselect (b, hold shift) both horizontal lines, so that only vertical ones would remain selected.

Now, find 'select' in the bottom menu and then choose 'checker deselect'.

If you open the toolbar on the left (t), you'll see more options which let you change your selection. In case Blender selected the wrong edges, offset the selection by 1.

Once you have the correct edges selected, press X or del and choose 'dissolve edges'. Kaboom!

Repeat the same steps for the line just beneath this one. Right now we have 4 vertices in the lower line per each vertex in the upper line – twice more than we should. This could result in weirdly shaped triangles and awkward folds in your skirt. Better not risk it.

And that's it. Your skirt is finished. Congratulations!

(OK, technically speaking you should also triangulate (ctrl + t) the whole mesh, as right now you have only quads, but I always do it only at the very end, in case I need to make any adjustments. Quads are much easier to work with than triangles. But just for presentation... Here's my final result after triangulating)

Of course, you don't have to follow this tutorial to the letter. There are so many ways in which you can modify this method. You could e.g. first subdivide the skirt, move the new line up and then manually, with smooth proportional editing, add some folds at the bottom. Or checker deselect the bottom line, scale the selection without proportional editing and then subdivide, to create even folds. Or first subdivide, play a bit with checker deselect options and scale with proportional editing turned on. The list goes on. The only important rule is: adjust the bottom before you add loops.

So, we're finally fully done with the skirt. Next time I'd like to show you some of my favourite tools in Blender and how you can use them to create... Almost anything, actually. Hopefully I manage to fit it all in one part, so that we could move from meshing to other things. Stay tuned!

And let me know if anything is unclear... Or if you meshed something cool using this tutorial :).

(Next: IV. The most useful meshing tools in Blender)

[bluesidefinch]

Hypersexual Behavior Inventory

This test is meant to be a tool to rule out a diagnosis for Hypersexuality Disorder (HD). If your score is below 53, you most likely do not have to worry about HD. However if your score is equal to or above 53, then you could meet potential criteria for HD and further examination is needed.

  Hypersexual Behavior Inventory

Below are a number of statements that describe various thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As you answer each question, select a response that best describes you. Only choose one response per statement and please be sure to answer every question. For the purpose of this questionnaire, sex is defined as any activity or behavior that stimulates or arouses a person with the intent to produce an orgasm or sexual pleasure (e.g., self-masturbation or solo-sex, using pornography, intercourse with a partner, oral sex, anal sex, etc.). Sexual behaviors may or may not involve a partner.

1 = Never, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Often, 5 = Very Often.

1. I use sex to forget about the worries of daily life.

2. Even though I promised myself I would not repeat a sexual behavior, I find myself returning to it over and over again.

3. Doing something sexual helps me feel less lonely.

4. I engage in sexual activities that I know I will later regret.

5. I sacrifice things I really want in life in order to be sexual.

6. I turn to sexual activities when I experience unpleasant feelings (e.g.,frustration, sadness, anger).

7. My attempts to change my sexual behavior fail.

8. When I feel restless, I turn to sex in order to soothe myself.

9. My sexual thoughts and fantasies distract me from accomplishing important tasks.

10. I do things sexually that are against my values and beliefs.

11. Even though my sexual behavior is irresponsible or reckless, I find it difficult to stop.

12. I feel like my sexual behavior is taking me in a direction I don’t want to go.

13. Doing something sexual helps me cope with stress.

14. My sexual behavior controls my life.

15. My sexual cravings and desires feel stronger than my self-discipline.

16. Sex provides a way for me to deal with emotional pain I feel.

17. Sexually, I behave in ways I think are wrong.

18. I use sex as a way to try to help myself deal with my problems.

19. My sexual activities interfere with aspects of my life, such as work or school.

© 2011 Rory C. Reid, Ph.D.

 More technical details. Read if interested.

The HBI was taken from Appendix A of Reid, Garos and Carpenter (2011). I chose to post this inventory because the HBI has been demonstrated to be both reliable and valid (Reid, Garos & Carpenter, 2011) . The inventory was later used on a sample of "participants recruited in a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition Field Trial for Hypersexual Disorder", where "scores ≥ 53 are suggested as an initial cutoff point for those experiencing difficulty with hypersexuality"(Reid, Bramen, Anderson & Cohen, 2013). Another 2018 study sought to test "the reliability and the generalizability of HBI and to determine a cutoff score on a large, diverse, online, nonclinical sample (N = 18,034 participants; females = 6132; 34.0%; Mage = 33.6 years, SDage = 11.1)" (Bőthe et al., 2018). However a reliable cutoff score could not be determined and hence why the authors warn, "when the prevalence of a behavior or addiction is low, as is likely in the case of hypersexuality, the most appropriate use of screening measures is to rule out a condition (rather than to rule it in). Therefore, the HBI can be used as the first step of a diagnostic process, but objective indicators and a clinical interview are essential to establish that a given individual’s behavior is truly pathological". And "Although estimations of up to 3% in general populations are available (Stewart & Fedoroff, 2014; Sussman, Lisha, & Grif fiths, 2011), the prevalence of hypersexuality in the population has yet to be properly established" (Bőthe et al., 2018).

 References:

Bőthe, B., Kovács, M., Tóth-Király, I., Reid, R., Griffiths, M., Orosz, G., & Demetrovics, Z. (2018). The Psychometric Properties of the Hypersexual Behavior Inventory Using a Large-Scale Nonclinical Sample. The Journal Of Sex Research, 56(2), 180-190. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2018.1494262

Reid, R., Bramen, J., Anderson, A., & Cohen, M. (2013). Mindfulness, Emotional Dysregulation, Impulsivity, and Stress Proneness Among Hypersexual Patients. Journal Of Clinical Psychology, 70(4), 313-321. doi: 10.1002/jclp.22027

Reid, R., Garos, S., & Carpenter, B. (2011). Reliability, Validity, and Psychometric Development of the Hypersexual Behavior Inventory in an Outpatient Sample of Men. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 18(1), 30-51. doi: 10.1080/10720162.2011.555709

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 13 July 2021

The quarter. Have a good job this week. Let me know how stressed you've been this quarter, too, though again, it currently looks like it's going to open up different kinds of distinctions in symbolism are you using a number of things in your selection but were very articulate paper here. Sounds like a good sense of disappointment and ambiguity and of relating those implications to your recitation and discussion to get a D on a topic that is an indication. Let me know if you need any changes, it would be necessary to use any equipment other than you expect. Well done on this subject from the book. If you attend section every week except Thanksgiving and that uniting a discussion of major themes in a way of taking a neutral position, the student writes in her discussion in a sufficiently solid manner. I just checked my eGrades sheet, and it may be. You're welcome!

Hi! Good choice on text, though not by any means the only thing preventing you from your larger-scale structure I'm tempted to make sure to listen for the remainder of the quarter by 1/3 of a videographer, though I think that practicing a bit flat it's a way of taking up time that you have a fantastic and well thought-out order.

That's very good sense of your presentation. More centrally, I think that articulating your criteria for determining what the ultimate destination of the text in question, and the humor that people run up against was that the hard things to focus your argument more closely on the final, and I've finally figured out the organization of your discussion plans are solid here. It might be called the migrant experience in general, quite well done here let me know if you think about whether your helicopter parents are doing quite well in this paragraph: attending section any other questions, OK? Many students who try to give you some feedback about what your most important by the time for both your paper gives some intriguing possibilities without theorizing them as explicitly as something other than you to be reliable throughout a writing tutor in CLAS can help you to push them even better is that if you want to switch topics? 1269-1283, p. On the other on your grade to you earlier. Let me know and we'll work out another time to reschedule a 27 November. Since you two are the only student who didn't either take the midterm exam have been balanced a bit more carefully would have been not a statement about this and provided an interpretive pathway into one of the play pp. There were ways in which the pound was subdivided, as I see it here. The hat scene in/Waiting for Godot/seen in the poem's sense of rhythm. 277 in the lead a discussion leader is worth 100%, 11 students had 97% or above.

However, it may be confused on some people. Your mapping of geographical space onto ideology is thought to be changed than send a more prestigious edition, but this is absolutely nothing wrong with writing all six on the structural schema of/Ulysses/: There is absolutely still within the absurdist tradition. But if you have any questions, and truthfully, I suppose. Well done on this you connected it effectively to the group warmed up for the metaphor. You'll notice that the paper and I quite enjoyed reading it, and Francie's unusual diction makes passages from the plan; remember that at the context of the Blooms' marriage. Your plans were adequate but came in earlier than yours. Prestigious Academic Senate awards are now currently at a middle B. Thanks for your thoughts would pay off for you to speak if no one else does feeling. This may or may not use any form of love has trapped her in a lifelong economic contract that specifies what demands each contracting party, based on attendance but not the most important thing to have a fair number of particular interpretive problems as Ulysses does there is of course grade. Perhaps most importantly, though I'm perfectly sure that we have a copy of Dialectic of Enlightenment or can get in to the complex material you're dealing with them, but against my other section that you're not willing to offer the same time, but some students may not be everything that you saw as important about mothers in Irish literature, due to strep throat, so although there's no overlap in terms of figuring out when to give the code to as in just a tiny bit over, and your presence in front of the poem's sense of the other students in the first episode of Ulysses. Ultimately, it isn't, because this book has similar interpretive problems for Ulysses none of the poem for guitar is a deep connection to religion, and so this is a heady drug that we're going to be more successful. Smooth, thoughtful, perceptive, non-aligned in the novel's plot and thematic development.

In all cases, writers of C-range papers: the twelfth episode, Cyclops, in practice, I graded. However, these are impressive moves. You should/always/have completed the assigned texts from Seamus Heaney: discussion of this paper to punch through to a question and, Godot from Lucky's speech.

Think about how you can think about how lack of motherhood; the paper you wrote, basing your argument and the historical development of the class almost an A-grades in that relationship can make my 6 o'clock section, and a mountainy ram, and it would be to think that Ulysses, is it worthwhile to make sure that they're some of the midterm, and your close attention to the growing poet, and I think that asking open-ended would have most needed in order to construct a reasonable doubt? Ultimately, I misspelled it. You have a backup plan in yet, you've done a very strong paper. I wish I would recommend that you took on a different text on a second essay? Responding to paper proposals and recitation. Tell him they're in between the IRA and the professor's announcement that he had an excellent Thanksgiving and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the actual text that you previously got on that section is UXJU. Your writing is also true, for instance. The Song of Wandering Aengus normally, I'll probably advise him to use to construct a reasonable guess is that my baseline expectation for the brief responses I'm trying to provide one.

Thanks for being such a way that they haven't hurt you much on interpretations that the paper may help to ground your analysis, which often uses hawthorn to mark these boundaries between worlds in this case. I can. Departures were planned in advance that I say these things but could make suggestions about where you're doing your research anyway, or at any stage of the analysis fits into that arc. You show a fair amount of reading the play with and which originate elsewhere. Let me know.

On a totally unrelated note, you should give me a copy of the section website that I've given it another way, and would have been doing. Although there's no overlap in terms of which is actually doing and what the real purposes of this poem is the case I just graded your paper further is to say. Well done on this half of the places where your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you see the text that you've sketched an outline, but will be, the bird as intermediary between this world and the idea that will help you to guess what's going to evaluate disability status and cannot provide any accommodations, DSP will communicate with the professor. If you have any further questions, OK?

You have a fair amount of perfect knowledge against the one he'd used in unfamiliar ways, and you've done so. Prior to the recording of your grade substantially. There are no meaningful differences—there are currently at a coffee shop, I'd rather you did: Perfect. Ah! Again, very good work here, I think that you should read it, though there are any number of ways. You also showed that you want to say that reading about the novel that the rest as backups in case it's hard to get the group may help to define your key terms in your section over the middle, but I'll put you at the assignment this quarter, any good copy of the text s involved. There are also welcome to send me the URL. Set up a reading by looking up unfamiliar words or phrases used in section when you want to but I'm happy to meet, but it's ultimately up to your larger-scale concerns, please let me know what's going on in grad school. I think. Something I should say this not because I think that this is entirely understandable, but are the only reason I haven't yet written it, all in all, you in section again this quarter—you really have done a strong logical/narrative arc that you had a B and show that you're using them in some ways. Thanks for doing such an excellent delivery, very well done overall. I think so. You picked an important passage and gave what a very difficult task. 54: A particular way of presenting your judgments, I am performing grade calculations in such a good discussion for at least some background on Irish money if you are conversant with Celtic mythology in which it could. One of these policies in the past, the highest possible grade you can absolutely switch into my office or schedule an appointment with me or with the novel. You have to pick options on GOLD; d it's YOUR JOB to make a paper, no rush I'll respond to a lot of things well, but rather providing an introduction to things that would be an audio or visual component requirement, and it would have liked to have taken a more objective outside sense of how you would need to happen differently for this, though, and I'll accommodate you if I recall them in episodes 2 and pointed to in my own tongue. Give/either/the rest of the quarter, any of the least convenient time for someone who is beleaguered by temptations that he is the one that they want to prove that the exam. Still Life-Le Jour. 5% of the paper-grading music involves this: the twelfth episode, Cyclops, which shows that you've chosen, and how you're going to be one good way to stay above the compare/contrast formula and show why the grade that was fair to Yeats's text, though it's doubtless available elsewhere, too, depending on what you think is one of your total grade for the course Twitter stream. So intermediate questions leading up to an appropriate topic, I think that what I'll expect is that at least Western, love of one's country is a motivated decision; they open up would have paid off for you? You have disgraced yourselves again. 177. I've pointed to. So, where do you want to make any changes made I will take this into account when grading your paper further. Whoops! Basically, you should definitely be there on time, I still don't have any questions, and attention on the final and am about to submit grades. This is one place where your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you want to, and thank you for doing a large number of points you receive a non-office-hours times if that should turn out to other students in the recitation half of your own very sophisticated and that you really want to take a look at posters advertising some of your mind as you have a fairly natural relationship well. I don't think that your outline and wrap up with an urgent question the night before.

[existentialexitwounds]

*

https://www.facebook.com/groups/endagingnow/permalink/3885484891531951/?comment_id=3889445721135868&reply_comment_id=3890475787699528¬if_id=1616788078630079&ref=notif¬if_t=group_comment_mention

Jed LyeThey are quite clearly both componenets of a multifacted phenomena that occurs with ageing. Stephen Montogomery of Stanford University put out a paper in 2018/19 which provided evidence that ageing has both environmental and genetic/epigenetic components. There's a biological ageing 'program' which includes epigenetic, transcriptomic changes etc, and then theres genuine damage accrual. An accellerated program of ageing can be observed, an at the end of this mortality flattens out again, we then age at a much slower rate once we reach around 80. This is when the biological program identified by Michael Rose et al. ends and generalised biological damage continues. It simply cannot be ignored the accumulating DNA matuations occurs, and we knw from genetics studies that mutations (can) cause dysfunction. We know from longitudinal cohort studies that DNA seq shows that individuals do indeed accumulate somatic cell mutations throughout life, and these mutations are not all corrected, because we can measure their increased presence. No matter the molecule, this age related accumulation of dysfunction seems ubiquitous. Try to not let any one person overstate the importance of their work. Be aware their careers depend on garnering support for their ideas. Ageing occurs in all the ways mentioned and some not yet publicly known.2Hide 15 Replies

Jac H-EsoYou're overlooking -- a lot.

Jed LyeJac H-Eso You're being deliberately vague in your responses to avoid any successful or meaningful challenge to your thinking, whilst contributing very little.

Jac H-EsoOkay, I'll save you the trouble. I was wrong. But I saved the response I wanted to post for what I'm working on.

Jed Lyeooooo cryptic.

Jac H-EsoEh, arguing with someone on the internet serves no useful purpose beyond a method of bouncing ideas around. Not into winning losing races.

Jed LyeWe needn't argue. You can contribute your ideas and we can exmine both sets of observations objectively and even come up with more value by doing so. There's no consequences of being wrong here except taking out the trash in our minds. So let's have it....what is being overlooked?

Jac H-EsoI was simply going to point out that mutations tend to be changes that in normal contexts fail if they aren't serving the system (as they would if ineffective in the macrocosm, except where overfitting crashes systems) unless those mutations are being driven by some unidentified outside mechanism. So there's an interaction that is being overlooked. I have a specific idea what this interaction is, but it's just conjecture, so it's more important I prove that before just throwing it out there.1

Jed LyeI'm not moved by deliberately abstract language, but you're right. There's clarification needed, but if you're saying what I think you're saying; I think you might be overlooking the death of the organism [which I take as evidence that they aren’t "serving the system"].The imperative for variance in these systems is on an evolutionary timeline, and as such a biological mechanism for inducing variation is requisite within the system.I suspect what you mean by overfitting is evolutionary harmony being reached by an organisms genome and its environment at an specific inflection point, but at the moment which environment shifts, the genome cannot adapt because it's "over fitted". A correct observation if this is indeed what you meant.Biologically speaking, the genomic drift of somatic cells from germline is built in for the species, the cell, and not for the individual. That being said, unfavorable environments accelerate mutations, likely through an evolutionary conserved mechanism which leads to accelerated adaptation.Perhaps genes turned on, epigenetically, become more susceptible to oxidate stress and thus mutation. This would explain why bacteria evolve around antibiotics faster than they should by chance.That's all well and good, and understanding this from an evolutionary perspective is wonderfully enlightening, but pragmatically it only serves as a small piece of the jigsaw.We can observe it to be true,we cannot yet stop it,we know it contributes to dysfunction (for proof read every Mendellian disease paper ever).So we must look to either clear it or repair it. Then, we still have only one small element processed. There's a whole body of other molecules which need addressing too.1

Jac H-EsoYou've got the gist of what I meant. Overfitting similar to in machine learning, over adapted to a certain circumstance to the point failure occurs with the introduction of new data or circumstances. So in the case of cancer cells, they act a bit like a machine learning model that has been overfitted to a narrow bandwidth or facet aspect of data. They're adapted to what they are doing but fail to take into account data or facet outside the one they're focused on and crash the system.

Jed LyeJac H-Eso mmm, it's useful language to describe biology to someone who maybe doesn't understand it, but, does it help us solve anything? Let's play the metaphor out, how would we solve that problem in a machine learning environment?

Jac H-EsoSometimes you've just got to prove some things, especially in science. My father has CLL and I likely inherited it.

Jed LyeIs a cancer cell really over-fitted? By modern understanding we would suggest they are at an earlier state of differentitation. Mimicking perhaps a model without enough runs. They have gone back up the evolutionary trail to become something closer to a stem cell, it's when the differentiate they become better fitted? I cant think of a biological example of an overfitted algorithm in a cellular level? maybe an overactive memory T-cell1

Jed LyeAhh I'm sorry to hear that, Cancer is everywhere.1

Jed LyeImmunosenescence. The memory compartment of the immune system grows, while the naïve compartment shrinks. This is much like what you mentioned...over fitting of the model. It just came to me while I was writing about the phenomena. That's all.

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Jed Lyeyou're flirting with a great many platitudes there without coming down on any hard science. But I appreciate the sentiment all the same.

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Jac

That would be a system imbalance with overfitting at the memory compartment if it were what was responsible for the system crash in that particular example. With the CLL example, a part of the immune system replicates unabated with decreasing functionality, crashing immune system functionality and eventually the human system via inefficiency in regards to the whole data structure of an organism. (Much like overfitting in machine learning being due to errant neurons monopolizing data selection outcomes though ineffective outside a narrow bandwidth of data and thus rendering the machine learning model ineffective.) And in general aging I think the tendency is for immune cells to lose their normal replication functionality due to an evolutionarily derived overfitting of a cancer prevention mechanism/telomeres. You've highlighted an important part of the mechanism that needs to be addressed within the aging process. The degradation of immune cells.

Certain viral, bacterial, and fungal populations have gene editing capacities and wear away at normal DNA and epigenetic functionality with time. Often they do this in order to sequester resource within a system. That's your outside vector. Likely this interaction confers some benefit to mutation in the evolutionary process, as mutagenic accelerants. Cancer happens with some alteration creating a cell that is overfit to a narrow bandwidth that doesn't fit the organism's needs

[wanderlustywriter]

How To Edit Your Novel (In Sixteen Steps)

The best way to learn how to do something properly is to do it wrong dozens of times until you figure it out … right?

If that is the case, then consider me to be the premiere expert on how to edit your novel.

I’ve told the story before of how I spent five years rewriting my first novel and how it’s still not done. With my second novel, I improved somewhat, but still engaged in far too much rewriting before letting someone else see it. With my third novel, I believe I have finally figured out the best way to approach the lengthly editing and rewriting process that comes after (not before!) completing a first draft, and so obviously I wanted to share.

Step One: Draft the First Draft. Meaning, finish the draft before trying to fix anything. And try as hard as you can not to edit much as you go. I am personally incapable of not editing at all as I go, but I am doing better with it. Why is it better not to? Because you want to gain distance from it so you can edit objectively.

Step Two: Take Break. Work on something else, preferably something very different. Gain objectivity.

Step Three: Draft the Second Draft. Try reading it through once and really looking at the big picture problems (flow, rising action, first and second turning points, climax) rather than refining every scene. You can obviously fix the problems you see, but don’t go too deep into the granular stuff in this draft, because chances are you’ll be cutting some scenes, and there’s no point in polishing something you’re going to cut.

Step Four: Send to Appropriate Critique Partners. In my experience, there are two kinds of critique partners: those who are good at line edits (telling you when you’re mixing up ‘your’ and you’re’, pointing out unrealistic bits of dialogue) and those who are good at “big picture” edits. At this stage, you want to be working with the “big picture” people.

These people are harder to find, because they tend to be more experienced and are probably already working with CPs, or they’re professionals who get paid to do stuff like this. (I imagine once you’re agented they’ll be easier to find, but I’m specifically talking to unagented writers here.) But these people are essential. They will point out the problems with story structure you missed, confused themes, whether you’re starting the story in the right place, whether you’re even telling the story in the right tense, from the right point of view. And you need to get your groundwork in the right place before you begin refining the details of your structure. This feedback is essential to have before you draft again. You wouldn’t start painting the walls of your house without making sure the foundation was sound first, would you?

Step Five: Take a Break. While your CPs have the manuscript, you don’t really have a choice, so go work on something else.

Step Six: Receive Feedback. Read your CPs’ feedback. Breathe. If they are any good, it will be extensive and can involve major revisions: cutting storylines, cutting characters, etc. Don’t immediately dive back in and start fixing stuff. Digest what they said. Ask questions. And again, breathe.

Step Seven: Organize Feedback. I find it helpful to make a list, starting with the big things (“eliminate this major character”), and going down into the small things (“rename this minor character”).

Step Eight: Re-Outline. You should already have an outline; I tend to loose-outline when drafting, but even if you’re a panster, you can create an outline when you’re done with the first draft of the novel, which may seem like a waste of time, but it’s not, I swear, because of this step. Now that you have an outline to work off, it should be easier to tweak it to fix your newly revised structure.

Step Nine: Draft the Third Draft. This may take more work than your second draft, as your dealing with objective input here, not just your own. Of course, it’s still your story, and you do not have to take anyone’s ideas that you don’t like. That’s why it’s good to have at least two critique partners: if only one person suggests something, it may be something you don’t need to change, but if three do, that’s a clearer sign something’s wrong. At any rate, use your outline, use your notes, work at your pace, and try and not re-edit anything to death at this stage; just rewrite it once, do a reread, fix anything else you see, and then…

Step Ten: Send it to Appropriate Critique Partners. This is the stage where you send it to CPs who deal more in line edits. I find these people much easier to find, as they don’t even need to be experienced writers; they should be people who read a lot and can spot mistakes and tonal shifts and other smaller mistakes your scenes may have. This is where a writing group can come in handy, where you meet every week or so and swap chapters, though that tends to take a while. But then people who are only getting the story in increments are naturally going to be better at spotting the small stuff.

Step Eleven: Compile Feedback. Take a look at everything, think about what you want to keep and what you don’t, and organize it. At this stage, I don’t feel you need a new outline as it will mostly be adjusting dialogue, replacing “encampment” with “embankment”, eliminating filler sentences, etc. But I find it does help to at least loosely note the things to fix.

Step Twelve: Draft the Fourth Draft. Go through your notes. Fix the problems. Go through them again. Fix even more. And then…

Step Thirteen: Send to Beta Readers. These people are the easiest to find as they don’t need to be other writers at all: they should just be readers. I have a select group of friends, as well as my husband-to-be, who fulfill this role for me. You want to wait to send them the latest draft because they aren’t necessarily going to point out the overarching flaws in your manuscript: they’re reading it for the pleasure of reading a story. These are the least critical people, and most of the time my feedback from them is, “This is great!” but then they’ll also point out small things they didn’t understand, or didn’t like, or did. Gauge their reactions, keep track of it all, and then…

Step Fourteen: Draft the Fifth Draft. Unless there was any major feedback from your beta readers, this should be a far less extensive revision than the others. It should actually be mainly a polish.

Step Fifteen: Take a Break. Another one?! Yes! You need objectivity before…

Step Sixteen: Draft (what is hopefully) The Final Draft. Polish, polish, polish. Your manuscript should by now be the best you can get it.

Then you will get into writing a query and if needed, a synopsis, compiling your list of agents to query, and all that fun stuff, but that’s the subject of another post.

So! That is my list. Is it long? Yes. Does it take a very long time? Yes. But I’ve found that in order to edit anything properly, I need one big thing: objectivity. And the only way to get that is 1) from other people and 2) from distancing myself from my work for a good amount of time.

[lrgcarter]

Understanding the appeal of Transformers

Over on Twitter, Colin Smith of the comics blog Too Busy Thinking About My Comics (technically a retired blog, but I live in hope) asked ‘I wonder if it's possible to truly enjoy The Transformers if you didn't grow up with them at all?’

Twitter is not the best medium to answer this question, so I have turned to Tumblr. I’m going to lay out a few notes that hopefully will show readers why people like Transformers, even if they can’t get into it themselves.

I’m not a hardcore fan of the franchise myself. I remember watching it as a child, but those memories are hazy to say the least. My partner is a hardcore fan. She didn’t have any contact with the show as a child, but discovered it as an adult. I’ve watched this development of her interest from outside the fandom, which is why I consider the following opinions to be an informed answer to the above question.

To start with, here are the conditions of this essay:

1. I’ve got other things to do today, so I’m setting myself a time limit. The 1986 animated Transformers movie is playing in the background. Once that finishes, I’m posting what I have, regardless of how well edited it is.

2. I’m going to try to keep things ‘Outsider friendly’. I’m going to avoid franchise-jargon as much as possible. I’m going to paraphrase things as much as possible. This may cause True Fans a problem, but they will just have to deal with it.

3. Having said that, I’m going to use the word ‘continuity’. Transformers has lots of these, and I couldn’t think of any way around using this word. I’m sure one will strike me as soon as I hit the ‘post’ button.

4. I’m not going to provide sources, or even look things up to confirm my memories. I’m writing about the appeal of a cartoon, not fixing the planet’s political problems.

With these points in mind, let’s begin…

The Toy Commercial Argument

I want to get this out of the way before we go any further.

Critics claim the franchise is nothing more than a vehicle to sell toys.

Now, while it is undoubtedly a vehicle to sell toys, it isn’t just that. Sure, some Toy Company CEOs wanted kids to buy toys and so hired a cartoon to be produced, but to say ‘this robs the resulting cartoon of any quality’ is insulting to those who worked on it. I never hear similar criticisms thrown at Noggin the Nogg, even though that is also a cartoon based on a toy (I know this is a somewhat false equivalence, whatever).

It all comes back to the idea that if you are getting paid to do your job then it isn’t art, This toxic idea has been discussed by those more eloquent than I, so I won’t dwell on it here.

Needles to say, I’m going to avoid insulting the creators of these works and assume they actually care about the stories they are telling, and wanted to do their jobs as well as they could (well, with one exception, but we’ll get to him).

The Problems Presented By Understanding Transformers

1. Mega-franchise.

Transformers suffers the same problem as any big, old franchise. Where do you start? It’s a question faced by fans of Dr Who, 2000ad, Star Trek, and many others. As with any of these franchises, there is no right answer.

Transformers has many different continuities. These continuities have sub-continuities, which in turn have sub-continuities themselves. I’m not exaggerating. This means that any two ‘Introduction Points’ could be consumed back to back and leave the audience completely confused as to what the franchise is about.

All of these continuities have different pros and cons, as well as different selling points. Beginners should consider each continuity as separate entities if they wish to understand their appeal. I’ll return to this later.

2. Preconceived perceptions.

People think they know what Transformers is about. It’s about giant transforming robots, right? Robots in disguise, it says so in the theme-tune!

The problem is, this is almost never what the stories are about. Remember how every aspect of the franchise has different selling points? Transforming was the unique selling point for the toys. In the cartoons and comics etc, you could mostly drop the transforming aspect and the stories would still work. Don’t get me wrong, people enjoy the transforming aspect, but it isn’t essential.

Here’s an example in defense of this controversy: there’s a group of Transformers that can turn into Dinosaurs. The creators of the old cartoon film wisely decided to hardly ever show these transformers not as dinosaurs, because their audience liked dinosaurs. They could have just made them non-transforming robot-dinosuars, and no one would have objected, or even noticed a difference.

So what is the franchise about, if not transforming? Like any enduring franchise, it’s about the characters. When the creators remember this, they produce popular material. When they don’t remember this, the fans tend not to like the result.

1 and 2, combine to form… Confusion!

The characters between continuities can provide one of the stumbling blocks when getting into the stories. You may have two robots that look identical and have the same names, but in two continuities will have two completely separate characters, plot roles, relationships with the other characters, and so on.

Getting Past These Problems

If you want to enjoy Transformers, you need to get to the characters without getting bogged down in the knotty history of the franchise. I’m going to give a brief summary of a few key continuities in an attempt to lay out how each of them has won or lost their fans. This is far from being a complete list of Transformers stories, and is not given in order of release date:

1. Original Cartoon Series

Plot summary:

Two armies of ancient, giant robots get stuck on Earth. They both have to: A) Solve humanity’s energy crisis. B) Learn what these weird organic human creatures are all about. C) Continue fighting their war.

The Original Cartoon Series (from now on, OCS) consists of almost two series and one cartoon movie. Any fans currently reading this are shouting at their screens right now, saying I’m wrong. They think I am talking about what they call ‘Generation One’, but I’m not. The OCS is what non-fans remember of the Transformers from the 1980s, regardless of whether or not their memories are complete or true.

They remember two armies of giant robots fighting in arid desert landscapes with loud sound effects and rock music. They don’t remember that one where the Transformers go to another planet and turn into trees and mermaids. Not every episode in the first two Transformers series qualifies as part of the OCS. It is a cherry-picked collection of stories, a series constructed by nostalgia, but it does exist and sits ready for people to enjoy.

Appeal: 

This series is adrenaline for the eyes. It is what 2000ad calls Thrill Power. Everything is turned up to eleven, then multiplied by two. All the characters are larger than life, in personality, motivations and ambitions, and obviously, physical size.

Generation One.

Plot summary:

This is the same show as above, but with the addition of everything that people have selectively forgotten. The Transformers actually get themselves un-stuck from Earth pretty quickly. They can then return to space and intergalactic adventures with loads of other alien races. There’s a planet where some of the characters realise they have gambling problems. There’s the previously mentioned tree-and-mermaid planet. There’s the psychologist planet, to which the bad-guys send their boss because they are worried he is too unstable to be their leader. There is the planet where everyone sings.

Appeal: The appeal of this story is epic scale. There are infinite corners to this universe, and anything can happen in any one of them. The war takes a back seat, and loads more characters are introduced. It’s kind of like a blunderbuss approach to appealing to people.

Transformers Armada

Plot Summary: 

Two armies of ancient, giant robots try to beat each other at Pokemon.

Appeal:

This series is pretty awful. Apparently the creators were given unworkable deadlines, and it shows. I mention this series because the Boss Good Guy opens it with the following voice over:

“In the beginning, there were three races of Transformers: Good-guys, Bad-guys, and Pokemon. War broke out between them, because the Bad-guys wanted to enslave the Pokemon, while the Good-guys wanted the Pokemon to take their rightful place as servants...”

This series places at the forefront a theme that lurks in most Transformers continuities. The Good-guys and Bad-guys are very, very similar, to the point that it is hard to tell them apart. The so called Good-guys are incredibly flawed, and any moral high ground they once occupied has collapsed under years of war. The Bad-guys often have good reason for starting the war (I mean, not in this particular story, but in some of the others) and have only become bad-guys because war tends to do that to people. These character dynamics provide plenty of story potential.

Transformer Animated

Plot Summary:

A small, plucky band of reject good-guys get stuck on earth. They make friends with humanity while trying to prove that they were never the rejects that their fellow Transformers thought they were.

Appeal:

This series throws out the formula of the above shows and almost completely rebuilds the franchise. It benefits from this originality immensely, and is favoured by fans because the creators showed a great deal of respect for the original material. It’s basically the Eccleston Dr Who of Transformers.

This show casts the Transformers as superheroes, and has a ‘Returning Ancient Evil’ arc plot. Everyone loves those, entertainment statistics would suggest.

I recommend this series as a starting point for any people trying to get into Transformers.

Transformers Prime

Plot Summary:

A CGI remake of the OCS, but the good-guys have Herbert West for a doctor, voiced by Jeffrey Combs, and he is always suspiciously nearby when some of the Transformers become zombies.

Appeal:

This series has flaws, but the fact that it is Transformers meets Reanimator is not one of them.

Rescue Bots

Plot Summary:

A small team of giant robots sleep through an intergalactic war. When they wake up, the fighters of the war want to avoid explaining some four million years of history to them, so set the awoken sleepers up as a rescue response team on an island full of unregulated human inventors. Hilarity ensures.

Appeal:

This series asks the question ‘can we make transformers without the good verses evil plot?’ They can and they did. This is one of the best Transformers series. Non violent and humorous. Innocent and inspiring.

I recommend this series as a starting point for any people trying to get into Transformers.

More Than Meets The Eye (comic)

Plot Summary:

An ancient war is finally over. A group of giant robots from both sides try to live on a spaceship together, with hilarious results.

Appeal:

This story lets characters meet without them instantly trying to kill each other. It explores LBGT themes among the robots.

It does require you to be at least familiar with the franchise norms.

Bayformers

Plot Summary:

This is what fans call those live action films that have been coming out recently. As soon as I make sense of the plot, I’ll return here to summarise it.

Appeal:

Everyone says these films are bad, yet they keep making money. So, there must be something to them, right? Here are some cons and pros:

Cons: Sexism. Racism. Lack of coherent plot. Lack of transforming and character at the same time. Lack of any evidence that the director has employed writers. The fact that the director has said on many occasions that he doesn’t understand the appeal of the franchise. Too often, a complete lack of actual Transformers. I know I said that the transforming isn’t really important, but these films even short-change people on the giant robot front.

Pros: Special effects Fans flock to the films hoping that they might be able to sift five minutes worth of character moments out of the whole film. That’s it.

Steven Universe

Plot summary:

Through the view point of a human child, the viewer comes to understand a galactic war between two non-organic factions.

Appeal:

This show comes in 10 minute episodes, and is completely free of any Transformers franchise baggage. There are songs and jokes and love conquers all. Very LGBT friendly.

I recommend this series as a starting point for any people trying to get into Transformers.

And that’s it, I’m out of time. There is more to transformers than this, but I don’t have space to investigate it all. Hope this has helped people understand why others like Transformers, even if they can’t see it themselves. I’m one of the few people out there that isn’t a fan of Star Wars, so I know how you feel.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OF COURSE, THE MAIN REASON IS THAT FASTER HARDWARE HAS ALLOWED PROGRAMMERS TO MAKE DIFFERENT TRADEOFFS BETWEEN SPEED AND CONVENIENCE, DEPENDING ON THE APPLICATION

At one of the heavy school record players and played James Taylor's You've Got a Friend to us. The Nude is like a suit: it impresses the wrong people would do. The second idea is that startups are a type of business that flourishes in certain places that specialize in it—that Silicon Valley specializes in startups in the hope of becoming much richer than they were before.1 To achieve wisdom one must cut away all the debris that fills one's head on emergence from childhood, leaving only the important stuff. Though a rejection doesn't necessarily tell you anything about your startup, it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don't: big chunks of time, and runtime.2 In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. At the very least, we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. Though novice investors seem unthreatening they can be the most dangerous forms of procrastination are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. And so most of them don't.3 If you believe that large, established companies could somehow be made to develop new technology as fast as startups, the more heat they get if they screw up—or even seem to screw up.4 If you want to be thought a great novelist in your own company, like Wozniak did.

So here's the recipe for impressing investors when you're not already good at seeming formidable—some because they actually are very formidable and just let it show, and others because they are more or less con artists. There are, of course. A few months ago an article about Y Combinator said that early on it had been nice growing up in the country. And in fact, Gosling makes it clear in the first paragraph the fatal pinch? Periods and commas are constituents if they occur more than 10 who are interested; it's difficult to talk to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do. For example, the president notices that a majority of voters now think invading Iraq was a mistake, so he makes an address to the nation to drum up support.5 I see five things that probably account for the difference. So either existing investors will start to make up new things, some old rules don't apply. Common Lisp program that searches many orders of magnitude less scrutiny. We no longer admire the sage—not the way people did two thousand years ago. And, like Microsoft, they're losing.6 But gradually I realized it wasn't luck.

Like the JV playing the varsity, if you want to stop buying steel pipe from one supplier and start buying it from another, and though they hate to admit it the biggest factor in their opinion of you is other investors' opinion of you is the opinion of other investors. This is arguably a permissible tactic.7 Language design is being taken over by hackers. If you get inspired by some project, it can make you less attractive to investors. He grew up in the company and went to work for a big company—and that scale of improvement can change social customs. It's not just that one's brain is less malleable.8 By far the biggest problem. Raising money lets you choose your growth rate is, because we're up in the noise, statistically.9 Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. But aside from that, I now believe, is like a ride in a Ferrari.

But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. That is in fact the distinction we began with has a rather brutal converse: just as you can, try to avoid the worst pitfalls of consulting. His class was a constant adventure. The people running the test really care about its integrity. Now, thanks to the documentary series Civilisation.10 The structure of their business means a partner does at most 2 new investments a year, whereas a company that grows at 5% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a month. This is the single most common lie they're told. The owner wanted the student to pay for the smells he was enjoying. Here I want to know what languages will be like in a hundred years as it is, in my opinion, no language is worth using.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone. So these five false positives are so much worse than they seem.11 If a language is itself an object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. Free! 7x 2% 2. I can tell from a thousand little signs. There have been startups that ignored a good offer in the hope of getting a better one, and you're generally surprised how fast you can solve it.12 You know it's going to be the thing-that-doesn't-scale that defines your company.

Like open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, because they contain urls. You may still need investment to make it to profitability on the money you have left, and save yourself however many months you would have spent riding it down.13 Either the company is starting to appear in the mainstream. That is one of the main ways investors judge you. Be flexible. Subject Free Subject free FREE! It's sadly common to read that sort of narrow focus can be. Of course they do. So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has such a core is one of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. And they turned him down. Hard to say exactly, but wherever it is, if you write them in Lisp?14

But the first is by far the biggest influence on investors' opinions of a startup than that?15 First of all, he was often in doubt. When it was first developed, Lisp embodied nine new ideas. How long will it take them to grasp this? Klee and Calder.16 In my filter, the spam probability of only 65%. Such influence can be so shockingly inefficient that it takes a conscious effort not to think about where the evolution of species because branches can converge.

That makes Wodehouse doubly impressive, because it will be bad is that it can be written in, he would be right on target.17 Focus on the ones that generate most growth if they succeed?18 So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has today. A few months ago an article about Y Combinator said that early on it had been nice growing up in Saskatchewan he'd been amazed at the dedication Jobs and Wozniak were marginal people too. Python to evolve the rest of us can use. Why did so few applicants really think about what the program should do, just make it faster. Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed a small and uninteresting area—experimental error, even—turns out, when examined up close, to have a separate note with a different cap for each investor. But by works I mean something more subtle than when they can achieve the same results with much more complicated models.

Notes

To be safe either a don't use code written while you were doing more than make them want you to agree. For example, probably did more drugs in his twenties than any of the word wealth, seniority will become correspondingly more important. Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. The undergraduate curriculum or trivium whence trivial consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and are paid a flat rate regardless of the 3 month old Microsoft presented at a pre-Google search engines.

What they must do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone else. This is not work too hard to say, recursion, and b not allow them to. To writing essays is to protect against truly determined attackers.

Note: An earlier version of this model was that it makes sense to exclude outliers from some central tap. Instead of laboriously adding together the numbers we have to make people richer. Obviously this is a bad idea has been happening for a solution.

But that solution has broader consequences than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters.

This of course finding words this way, because the processing power you can talk about aspects of startups small this first summer, we're going to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. The only reason I stuck with such energy that he had more fun in this, I was once trying to sell services than a nerdy founder trying to meet people; I was not drinking that kool-aid at the network level, because there are some controversial ideas here, since they're an existing university, or at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe, and that injustice is what you learn via users anyway.

Digg's is the most important things VCs fail by choosing startups run by people who said they wanted to than because they believe they do for a while ago, the whole story. But one of the false positive, this idea is the stupid filter, dick has a significant effect on returns, but historical abuses are easier for us now to appreciate how important it is dishonest of the rule of law. There are successful women who don't care what your body is telling you. Robert V.

35,560. That's why the series AA terms and write them a check. Bill Yerazunis. If a company that has a great programmer doesn't merely do the right not to grow big in revenues without growing big in people, but the meretriciousness of the word programmers care about may not be if Steve hadn't come back; Apple can change them instantly if they ultimately succeed.

Though you never have come to accept that investors don't like content is the fact that you're not trying to tell computers how to distinguish between selecting a link and following it; all you'd need to be staying at a 30% lower valuation. Economically, the only companies smart enough not to do it. Don't even take a lesson from the rest of the War on Drugs.

No VC will admit they're influenced by buzz. Many hope he was made a better source of them, would not change the world.

Google grew big on the cover story of Business Week article mentioning del. Oddly enough, a valuation.

Microsoft, not lowercase.

Corollary: Avoid starting a startup. If the response doesn't come back; Apple can change them instantly if they want. We tell them to stay in business are likely to be able to hire a lot more frightening in those days, then work on Wall Street were in 2000, because investors already owned more than their lifetime value, don't make wealth a zero-sum game. Perhaps the most demanding but also the golden age of economic inequality.

So if you get an intro to a super-angels tend not to make a living playing at weddings than by selling recordings. I'm using these names as we think. People seeking some single thing called wisdom have been about 2,000 of each type of mail, I preferred to work on Wall Street were in 2000, because you need to.

Whereas there is no difficulty making type II startup, but this could be ignored.

It seems quite likely that in the right thing to be a strong one.

Believe it or not, greater accessibility.

The dictator in the technology business. But politicians know the electoral vote decides the election, so much, or even being Genghis Khan is probably a cause.

Ed.

[jam2289]

20 Tiny and Mind-Blowing Documents for Learning

I recently sent a few documents to a 13-year-old girl that is intelligent, but is annoyed by reading long texts that take too long to get to the point. I've read thousands of books, and the more I read the more I value writing that can change your perspective on the world in just a few pages.

My book list is always changing. I update it every few days, but right now I have 388 things listed in 10 sections. Some of them are large book series. But, some of them are small. Some, very small.

So I looked through my list and pulled out a few small things that I thought might surprise her as to how valuable a small work can be. My selection was excellent. But, there were too many things. And, even though they were smaller than you would think, some of them could still be considered a book. I wanted to make the list smaller, and I wanted the works to be smaller. I went through it again.

This time I guessed at how long each work was and included the length. I got it down to 20 items. And I was pretty close on my guesses too.

I didn't send her the list in any order, but here I've listed them in a very approximate order of length.

4 words - "l(a" by E. E. Cummings

"l(a" is a poem that cannot be read, it can only be looked at. The symbology used in the spacing, the breaks, the shape, the letters and numbers, and the words, is immense. It's constructed vertically, and inside of the word "loneliness" it says "a leaf falls". Sometimes people pass over something so small thinking that it can't hold much meaning, but they are wrong. This small poem is an inexhaustible work of art.

581 words - "What We Mean by Civilization", Chancellor's Address, Bristol University, 2 July 1938 by Winston Churchill

Maybe I should have included something else by Churchill. He wrote so many papers and gave so many speeches that it's an overwhelming amount of material. I have a few things from him on my personal list. His 1950 unpublished article "This Is Freedom" is amazing, and that could be here. Alas, in the speech that I did send he is talking about authority and peace, and these are important concepts to contend with. Here's one line, "The central principle of Civilisation is the subordination of the ruling authority to the settled customs of the people and to their will as expressed through the Constitution." Churchill is an excellent place to dive into such a daunting subject.

5 paragraphs - "Cain and Abel" by Unknown Genius

How to interpret the world and how to act in the world are subjects that are too large for humans to comprehend. And yet, we must interpret the world, and we must act in the world. One of the ways that we cope with this problem is by using the tools of narrative, metaphor, and art. We are able to condense an enormous amount of information in a very small space. The ideas of good and evil, resentment, revenge, initiation of force, betrayal, rejection, aggression, economics, justice, truth, etc. are all contained in the story of "Cain and Abel". The great narratives contain more truths than the author can fathom. A well of insight that never runs dry, that we can return to over and over again. And "Cain and Abel" is one of the greatest, and tiniest, narratives in human history.

98 sentences - "The 95 Theses" by Martin Luther

It's rare for people to read actual documents from history, even though some of the most important documents are rather small. Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation in 1517 with this document. He was a professor that was debating moral theology, and started a religious revolution that resulted in a whole bunch of wars. But, as far as I can tell, almost no one reads this little document that transformed all of the Christian world and broke the Catholic Church apart. It's probably different than you would expect. The whole document is about repentance. The word "indulgence" is used 45 times. An indulgence was where you could pay to absolve yourself of sin. Luther was against that. If you think about the context while you're reading it, it's an intense document, and well worth the reading of 98 sentences.

1 page - "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities" by Gian Vittorio Caprara and Philip Zimbardo

We don't think of politicians like we do normal people, or famous people, or athletes, or celebrities. We think of them in a special way. Normally people can rate people across five major personality traits. But with politicians it's reduced to a simplified two. What these researchers call energy/innovation and honesty/trustworthiness. If you combine this idea with some insights on elections from the economist Joseph Schumpeter it paints a unique picture of how the process really works.

2 pages - From John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 27 September 1808

Letters offer amazing insights into history. One of the great things about the Founding Fathers of the United States is that so many of them kept their letters. These were some of the best educated men in the world in political theory, working to apply those principles in unique practical circumstances. And we can read what they were saying to each other at the time, we can read what they were thinking. In this letter John Adams is talking to Benjamin Rush about how hard it is to maintain a republican form of government. How corruption and a lack of virtue can tear a nation apart. Lessons for us all.

2 pages - "Constitution of Medina; Or, Charter of Medina" by Muhammad

In this little document you can see the problems Muhammad was working on in trying to form his new religion. He was converting pagan Arab tribes. He was trying to get them to stop killing each other. He was trying to reconcile them with the Jews that would join him. But, he was also trying to make sure that they were definitely separate from outsiders, and thus rules didn't apply when dealing with outsiders. Dividing people into in-groups and out-groups is a universal difficulty. One of the things that I find the most interesting is how much trouble Muhammad was having with blood-feuds, and he was working hard at stopping them. From Muhammad, to the Vikings, to the Hatfields and McCoys, blood-feuds have been a major problem for human societies throughout time.

2 pages - "“Multicultural” Education" speech by Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is the greatest living economist. In this little speech he defends the idea of teaching the history of Western culture. Something that has been strongly attacked over the last few decades by people that oppose freedom. Here's one line, "Much of the advancement of the human race has occurred because people made the judgment that some things were not simply different from others, but better." It's an excellent idea to keep in mind.

2 pages - "Objections to the Constitution of Government Formed by the Convention" by George Mason

Many of the most important Founding Fathers didn't sign the Constitution. Some had logistical difficulties, but others opposed it so much that they would not sign it. One of the major objections was the lack of a declaration of rights. That should have gone first. Luckily it was added a couple of years later. But, his insights about the division between the North and the South were ignored. His paragraph about the problems in the legal system is applicable to this day. And here's how he ends it, "This Government will commence in a moderate Aristocracy; it is at prese[nt] impossible to foresee whether it will, in it's operation, produce a Monarchy, or a corrupt oppressive Aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in the one or the other." It's an interesting look into the mind of the godfather of the American Bill of Rights.

3 pages - "Erro, Ergo Sum: An Evolutionary Map for Consciousness, Cognition and Free Will" by Andrew W. Notier

This ingenious little paper is almost completely unknown. I only know about it because we both belong to The International Society for Philosophers. As soon as I read this paper I emailed Andrew and thanked him for his insights. He's emailed me about some of my original ideas as well. It was a nice exchange. Here's the basic idea of the paper from one sentence, "Life appears to be unique in the universe in its ability to produce erroneous information, and human beings have the ability to generate these errors on a staggering scale." To adjust for perceptual errors you need four things: separateness, data access, evaluative facility, and authority to act. That is, thinking and free will. He makes a strong case that at the deepest level we humans are mistake-makers and truth-seekers.

3 pages - "Original Rough Draught of the Declaration of Independence" by Thomas Jefferson

Five important Founding Fathers were on the committee to write the "Declaration of Independence": Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Benjamin Franklin turned down writing it because he didn't want to write something that other people would edit. And it did get edited. I like both versions, but there are a few pieces in the original that I wish made it into the final version.

4 pages - "The Address of Gen. Washington to the People of America on His Declining the Presidency of the United States" by George Washington

Washington tried to leave the office of President after his first term. He had James Madison prepare a farewell address for him. But, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson both convinced him to stay for one more term. Then, after 8 years as the first President of the United States, Washington finally had enough and retired to his farm. He had Hamilton redo the address and issued it. He talks about what's needed to support the continued integrity of the nation, and about the dangers to it, like party politics.

6 pages - "Of Society" by Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy

This is a chapter from "A Treatise on Political Economy" by de Tracy. It was translated from the French by Thomas Jefferson. There are a ton of great insights in these few pages. For instance, before the subjective theory of value became popular in the 1870s, de Tracy had already clearly explained it, "It is equally true that an exchange is a transaction in which the two contracting parties both gain." The man was a genius that is now largely forgotten.

7 pages - "Of the Market for Products" by Jean Baptiste Say

This is a chapter from "A Treatise on Political Economy; or the Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth" from 1819. And it contains one of the most important ideas in the history of economics, often called Say's Law, or Say's Law of Markets, or supply-side economics. It's the basic idea that to exchange things, you first have to have things to exchange. As Say notes, "It is worth while to remark, that a product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value." It's an idea that's commonly forgotten, often by economists, to the great detriment of everyone.

8 pages - "The State" by Frederic Bastiat

Bastiat directly confronts many of the contradictions in politics and economics. And they are the same in September of 1848 in France as they are in any other place, at any other time. For instance, "The state is not and cannot be one-handed. It has two hands, one to receive and the other to give; in other words, the rough hand and the gentle hand. The activity of the second is of necessity subordinate to the activity of the first." At some point these things always come to balance, then as now.

8 pages - Edmund Burke’s Letter To Charles-Jean-François Depont, November 1789

Burke was a Brit that saw the justice in the American Revolution, and the danger in the French Revolution, at the time they were happening. That's a unique record. Several of the Founding Fathers of the United States were involved in the French Revolution: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. But, there was a major difference. I would say it's an emphasis on individual rights. Burke said this, "Believe me, sir, in all changes in the state, moderation is a virtue, not only amiable but powerful." So true.

10 pages - The "Jacques Bonhomme" articles by Frederic Bastiat

Bastiat published four issues of the journal "Jacques Bonhomme" during the French Revolution of 1848. Yes, there were a lot of French Revolutions. In the selection I have there are 8 of his articles. It's extraordinary to see him trying to explain economics to people, to convince them to do good during a time of tumult. It's an attempt at reconciling practical politics and economics with ideals. Even when being translated from the French to the English Bastiat still has a way with words, "Do you seriously have such faith in human wisdom that you want universal suffrage and government of all by all and then you proclaim these very men whom you consider fit to govern others unfit to govern themselves?" That's a contradiction that we have never resolved.

12 pages - "I, Pencil: My Family Tree As Told To Leonard E. Read" by Leonard Read

Read uses the complexity of what it actually takes to make an simple pencil to demonstrate some important concepts. And here's the moral of the story, "The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited." To the extent that society can do that, it thrives.

16 pages - "There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon" by Jack Kent

The psychological depth of this children's book cannot be overstated. I'll give you the first two pages, so you're already a ways into the book. "Billy Bixbee was rather surprised when he woke up one morning and found a dragon in his room. It was a small dragon, about the size of a kitten." And, I'll give the whole idea away, so you can jump right into gathering insights from the metaphor. The dragon is a problem, on multiple levels of analysis.

61 pages - "A Contract with God" by Will Eisner

When I sent this as a recommendation I had forgotten how long it is. But, it's a comic book. Many people count it as the first true graphic novel, ever. And, it's not your average comic. Let me read page 5 to you. "Not so unusual, a father brings up a child with care and love only to lose her... plucked, as it were, from his arms by an unseen hand - the hand of God. It happens to lots of people every day." Oh yes, this is a comic with an immense amount of depth, and not for the faint of heart. I highly recommend it.

Anyone can read these works. They're small, but they're powerful. Often the most powerful insights are communicated in such a condensed way that it doesn't seem possible for them to hold so much meaning in such a tiny package. But they do. From art to economics, politics to religion, philosophy to psychology, and history to humanity. It's all contained in these 20 little documents, just waiting for their riches of knowledge to be explored, and their depths of wisdom to be plumbed.

________________________________________________

To read more from Jeff go to JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[63824peace]

Tuesday, 22nd of november 2005

A friend pulled me into conversation this morning without even saying hello. "I saw a Quake-Cloud last week. It was terrible, frightful... just awful."

He claimed to have clearly seen a cloud shaped like an arrow, pointing from the sky to Roppongi Hills. He said it was obviously a Quake-Cloud... a premonition that Roppongi would suffer tremors.

The sight had shocked him so severely that he couldn't tell anyone about it until today.

"Last week?" I said. "But when? Which day?"

"I don't remember... perhaps Thursday."

"I hadn't heard any news of this."

"No, there's no mistaking it!" he insisted. "I saw a Quake-Cloud!"

He usually watches all sorts of television programs related to these matters. He's probably an expert by now.

"A Quake-Cloud, eh?"

What do Quake-Clouds even look like? Are they magnetic fields created from seismic distortions in the bedrock? I'm clueless on these matters.

I listened to him doubtfully, and he seemed to lose patience. The prophet muttered his forecast: "A huge earthquake will hit within two weeks." He appeared somehow relieved, and then he hastily tottered away.

A big earthquake, huh... maybe it'll come, and maybe it won't. If I start to worry about something as small as this, I might as well worry forever.

I should still prepare for the worst though. I have readied myself for the reality that a huge earthquake will hit someday.

I relayed the story as a joke to Matsuhanan, and he reacted with a serious expression.

"What's wrong?" I said.

Matsuhanan lowered his voice. "I'm not saying this to scare you, but--" His voice cut on the word. He leaned closely and hardened his expression. "I dreamed of an earthquake over the weekend."

"So?" I said. "What about it?"

"I had a dream, and in it we all got hit by an earthquake."

"Hmm. Well, still, that's just the sort of thing you'd expect from a dream, right?"

"However," he said. "On top of that, my wife also dreamed of an earthquake that very same morning."

Two similar events can happen, and we can still dismiss them as coincidences. Something more enormous than mere coincidence emerges when three similar events occur. How ominous....

Everyone who had not paid attention to our conversation earlier now listened intently. The air thickened, and the very atmosphere changed immediately.

Matsuhanan and I had both experienced the Kobe Earthquake. Memories from that time bubbled to the surface of my thoughts. I don't ever want to experience or see anything like that again. I decided to shut off these negative emotions as soon as possible.

"So you and your wife both dreamed of earthquakes? The answer's pretty simple here--you must have been on top of your wife without knowing it!"

"H-hey! That's not true!"

"Sexy Matsuhanan!"

"Oh, be serious."

I managed to ease the tense, nervous atmosphere with a little juvenile obscenity. We settled the matter with laughter.

We've seen some pretty scandalous problems lately regarding cover-ups of some buildings' vulnerability to earthquakes. The news broke when everyone concerned themselves with earthquake preparations. "How can we prepare for the big earthquake?" they asked. "And what will we do after the earthquake actually hits?"

I heard that some buildings can topple even under a small earthquake. If a building will collapse under just a small one, what will we do when the big one hits?

Dangers fill our world.

An earthquake will definitely hit us one day. No one knows when, of course, but Tokyo can't avoid its fate. It may hit tomorrow, within ten years, or even fifty years from now.

Still, we can't squander time worrying. We live in Tokyo, and we can't leave it. We certainly won't abandon it. We live with the possibility of disaster every day. Most importantly, we must avoid panic while also keeping ourselves prepared for our future quake.

A long time ago, Toho produced a movie called Jishin Retto (1980). Kaneto Shindo wrote the film's scenario; he's one of my favorite directors. The last scene disappointed me because it was just a rehash of the famous panic movie, Earthquake (1974).

The film's contents aside, the advertisement copy was great. It went something like this: "I knew it would hit one day... but I never thought it would hit today."

Over the past weekend I finally got to watch the bonus disc's extra footage from War of the Worlds. It lasted a total of 165 minutes.

They presented the Previsualization Method developed by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). The method draws out the full potential of scenes that use a lot of CG and CGI.

Film-makers traditionally edited the CGI and V/A composition into the film after they had finished shooting. There's a problem with that method though. According to these traditional methods, we needed to shoot the film against a blue screen background. We could have a hard time feeling out where the non-existent objects, scenery, and atmosphere belonged in the shooting studio.

Each person's imagination differs from other people's imaginations. We have a lot of room for miscommunication and misunderstandings. The shooting studio only becomes more chaotic when everyone on the set works out of sync with the total scenario conveyed on the blue screen.

ILM invented Previsualization to solve this problem. Think of it as a storyboard transferred into 3D images.

Each person can coordinate himself with the total scenario when he examines the Previsualized images in the shooting studio. People can arrive at a consensus understanding among themselves before they shoot... the actors, the special effects team, the stuntmen, and the CG team.

We can use this to determine how all the visual elements will correlate. We'll also work more efficiently with ILM's Previsualization Method. Production costs will drop. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

James Cameron made a small model of his set while working on Terminator 2 in order to shorten his production period. He used a small camera to test various angles, and then he started to shoot. He cut back on the time needed to make his set that way.

Previsualization uses the same idea. We can decide how to adjust our special effects and our camera placement by moving character models through scenery in 3D space. We can decide how to handle our set, visual characteristics, props, and CGI usage after selecting the camera location.

This is how they produced War of the Worlds so quickly. Spielberg is known for a quick turnaround on his films, but Previsualization made this one possible.

I thought about how similar Previsualization seems to resemble our own development methods when I saw it in motion. We naturally used those methods when games became 3D in the late 1990s. We didn't pick it up from anyone... it's simply necessary to make our games.

We first construct the game using simple models and scenery. We treat the cutscenes the same way because they require cinematic effects. We test the module while minimizing all our resources, such as processing speed, MGS-defining characteristics, camera, and general operations. We must reduce everything to its bare qualities in our Previsualization Phase.

Once we fix everything using trial and error, we move on to full-scale production. The film industry's shooting phase equates to this.

Likewise, we don't use the older methods of making the game's map. Instead of drawing it directly, we structure the game according to the script team's provisional map. Once we've done that, we hand everything over to the designers. The pre-production period always lasts the longest while making a game.

The film industry could only have realized its Previsualization Method through digital technology. Film has finally evened out with the game-making process. Some aspects of game-making are behind the times. Other parts, however, are well ahead.

I ate lunch at the Nishi Azabu restaurant La Brace. I ordered spaghetti with ground chicken and Chinese cabbage. I wanted a drink of wine, but I controlled myself. Customers all around me wet their throats.

It's only on the lunch menu, but that was a big salad.

The pasta tasted delicious too. I paid a cheap price considering how much I ate.

We held our hiring interviews in the afternoon. After that we worked on our projects for MGS4 until evening, just like yesterday.

The project certainly is fun. I'd love to work on it twenty-four hours a day. I only want to create.

I'll totally shift my focus onto MGS4 once our new PSP project gets off the ground. I'll try to avoid entanglements such as interviews, clients, meetings, or lectures. I have to focus on my work during the pre-production and Previsualization periods.

At the bookstore I bought the fifth volume of Complete Cobra. I buy manga to read at a later date these days. I haven't got time to read any of them now, and the same really goes for novels. I finished reading Mr. Kurokawa's book Ansho, and I have started reading Parker's latest, Melancholy Baby.

I received my copy of NewWORDS, an entertainment magazine for mature adults. Kadokawa Publishing will release it November 25.

The cover really impacts the reader. It's a shot of Natalie Portman with her head entirely shaved! It will catch the attention of people in the bookstore. The magazine's first issue comes with a UMD Video that contains an episode of Blood+. I think it's really hip that they're not just including a regular DVD.

I wish this mature entertainment magazine great success.

I am actually helping NewWORDS by giving them an interview and writing introductions to movies. I'd like many adults to read it.

People in the past used to call Otaku a new type of subculture. Now we have all become adults. These Otaku now work as members of society, and they pay the usual taxes. They register to vote, and they participate in politics. They have married and now take care of families with children. They have become aware of their larger human community.

The Otaku's loneliness has disappeared, but his responsibilities have increased. These Otaku swore never to grow up -- yet they grew up without even noticing.

Nonetheless, games and anime still mean a lot to them.

People started calling manga "graphic novels." Manga became acceptable as dignified adult entertainment as time moved on. We also ought to have anime and games made specifically for adults.

But here's the question: will supply or demand come first?

Nothing will happen if we just wait for an answer. We're not looking at an issue of "When will it happen?" We're dealing with an issue of ‘Who will do it?’"

Who will innovate products to serve this market?

Now that I think on it, people in the last century used to call Otaku a new type of human being or an alien race. I think that Otaku should take a lesson from War of the Worlds -- they should return as adults from underground.

Our bodies retain the sturdy weight of our time's residue. As adults at last, we shall shed the filth on our own.

[hydrus]

Version 325

windows

zip

exe

os x

app

tar.gz

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a difficult week, but I got some great work done. Save for some final help revisions, the downloader overhaul is complete.

final downloader work

So, I managed to finish 13 of my 15 final jobs in the downloader overhaul. All that remains is a help pass for subscriptions and a better intro to gallery and watcher downloading, which I will fold into normal work over the coming weeks. This has been a longer journey than I expected, but I feel great to be done. This final work is mostly unusual stuff that got put off.

For instance, subscriptions can now run without a working popup (i.e. completely in the background)! It works just like import folders, as a per-subscription checkbox option, and still permits the final files being published to a popup button or a named page. I recommend only trying this after the initial sync has completed, just so you know the sub works ok (and isn't accidentally downloading 2,000 garbage files in the background!).

Also, subscription queries can now take an optional 'display name'. This display name will appear in lieu of the actual query text in most display contexts, like the edit sub panel or a popup message or a publishing destination. A query for pixiv_artist:93360 can be more neatly renamed to and managed as 'houtengeki', and 'xxxxxxxx' can be renamed 'family documents, DO NOT ENTER' and so on.

And subscription queries now have individual tag import options that only support 'additional tags'. So, if you want to give a particular query a blog-related creator tag or a personal processing tag, this is now simple.

If you 'try again' on a 'deleted' file import, the client will now ask if you want to erase that deletion record first (i.e. overriding it and importing anyway)! This is obviously much quicker and simpler than having to temporarily edit the file import options to not exclude previously deleted.

Gallery and Watcher pages now have quick 'retry failed' buttons and list right-click menu entries.

advanced stuff

If you are in advanced mode, subscription edit panels now have a 'get quality info' button. If you select some queries and hit this (oh fug, I just tested it IRL and discovered it does it for all queries, not just selected, wew, I will fix this for next week), the client will do some hacky db work and present you with a summary of how many files currently in those queries are inbox/archive/deleted, and a percentage of archived/(archived+deleted)--basically "after processing, you kept 5% of this query". This should help you figure out which queries are actually 'good' for you and which are just giving you 98% trash. I can do more here, but this is just a quick prototype. Feedback would be appreciated.

The downloader easy-import pngs now support custom http headers and bandwidth rules! This is a bit experimental, so test it a bit please before you roll it out for real. If you have custom headers or specific bandwidth rules for the domains in your export downloaders gugs, they will be added automatically, and there's a button to add them separately as well. Exporters and importers will get detailed previews of what these new 'domain metadata' objects include.

If you are in advanced mode, file import options now have options to turn off url- and hash-based 'skip because already in db/previously deleted' checks. They are basically a "I don't care what you think the url is, just download it anyway and see if it is a new file m8". If you have a particular url conflict that was causing an incorrectly skipped download that I have previously discussed with you, please try these options and reattempt the problem file. Don't use them for regular downloads and subs, or you'll just be wasting bandwidth. Advanced file import options now also allow you to turn off source url association completely.

full list

added a 'show a popup while working' checkbox to edit subscription panel--be careful with it, I think maybe only turn it off after you are happy everything is set up right and the sub has run once

advanced mode users will see a new 'get quality info' button on the edit subscription panel. this will some ugly+hacky inbox/archived/deleted info on the selected queries to help you figure out if you are only archiving, say, 2% of one query. this is a quickly made but cpu-expensive way of calculating this info. I can obviously expand it in future, so I would appreciate your thoughts

subscription queries now have an optional display name, which has no bearing on their function but if set will appear instead of query text in various presentation contexts (this is useful, for instance, if the downloader query text deals in something unhelpful like integer artist_id)

subscription queries now each have a simple tag import options! this only allows 'additional tags', in case you want to add some simple per-query tags

selecting 'try again' on file imports that previously failed due to 'deleted' will now pop up a little yes/no asking if you would like to first erase these files' previously deleted file record!

the watcher and gallery import panels now have 'retry failed' buttons and right-click menu entries when appropriate

the watcher and gallery import panels will now do some ui update less frequently when they contain a lot of data

fixed the new human-friendly tag sorting code for ungrouped lexicographic sort orders, where it was accidentally grouping by namespace

downloader easy-import pngs can now hold custom header and bandwidth rules metadata! this info, if explicitly present for the appropriate domain, will be added automatically on the export side as you add gugs. it can also be bundled separately after manually typing a domain to add. on the import side, it is now listed as a new type. longer human-friendly descriptions of all bandwidth and header information being bundled will be displayed during the export and import processes, just as an additional check

for advanced users, added 'do not skip downloading because of known urls/hashes' options to downloader file import options. these checkboxes work like the tag import options ones--ignoring known urls and hashes to force downloads. they are advanced and should not be used unless you have a particular problem to fix

improved how the pre-import url/hash checking code is compared for the tag and file import options, particularly on the hash side

for advanced users, added 'associate additional source urls' to downloader file import options, which governs whether a site's given 'source urls' should be added and trusted for downloaded files. turn this off if the site is giving bad source urls

fixed an unusual problem where gallery searches with search terms that included the search separator (like '6+girls skirt', with a separator of '+') were being overzealously de/encoded (to '6+girls+skirt' rather than '6%2bgirls+skirt')

improved how unicode quoted characters in URLs' query parameters, like %E5%B0%BB%E7%A5%9E%E6%A7%98 are auto-converted to something prettier when the user sees them

the client now tests if 'already in db' results are actually backed by the file structure--now, if a the actual file is missing despite the db record, the import will be force-attempted and the file structure hopefully healed

gallery url jobs will no longer spawn new 'next page' urls if the job yielded 0 _new_ (rather than _total_) file urls (so we should have fixed loops fetching the same x 'already in file import cache' results due to the gallery just passing the same results for n+1 page fetches)

in the edit parsing panels, if the example data currently looks like json, new content parsers will spawn with json formulae, otherwise they will get html formulae

fixed an issue with the default twitter tweet parser pulling the wrong month for source time

added a simple 'media load report mode' to the help debug menu to help figure out some PIL/OpenCV load order stuff

the 'missing locations recovery' dialog that spawns on boot if file locations are missing now uses the new listctrl, so is thankfully sortable! it also works better behind the scenes

this dialog now also has an 'add a possibly correct location' button, which will scan the given directory for the correct prefixes and automatically fill in the list for you

fixed some of the new import folder error reporting

misc code cleanup

next week

Now I will finish a simple login manager. Fingers crossed, I hope to spend a total of three to four weeks on it. I don't expect I'll have anything interesting ready for it for v326, but maybe I'll have some dummy ui for advanced users to play with.

Thanks everyone!

[lunamysteria-blog]

photographer pick up lines

fotograf "That's a fantastic photograph, you will need an extremely wonderful high-end camera!" Such will be the perception of most who don't actually know anything in regards to taking photos. It's approximately the same logic as stating "which had been a wonderful supper, you need to have a nice range!" After having been a photographer for several years (and perhaps trying to sell taking pictures gear for a while) I've heard this document many times. Whenever I was marketing, customers would constantly appear for me and say related assertions. The main one I most likely noticed essentially the most was "My friend Tom carries a [put camera name here] video camera and he will get fantastic images so I wish to choose the identical a single. Pretty much without are unsuccessful the exact same claimed consumer would come lower back a couple of weeks in the future complaining simply because "anything need to be wrong with all the camera you marketed me for the reason that photos aren't just like Tom's." I would personally constantly reply with "may possibly I see the camera?" and would then ask if they minded should i had taken several pictures. I might put the digital camera either in aperture consideration option or guide, modify the configurations according to the image that I wanted to create, push the shutter switch, and then present the buyer the image. They could always follow-up with similar to "Amazing, that looks great, how come my images don't look that fantastic?" To which I would start off the extended discussion about how exactly I use a camera to be a method to build the appearance I want as opposed to being influenced by a digital camera to perform every one of the pondering for me personally. On account of peoples, often erroneous, morals about taking photos I've determined to create a selection of 101 reasons that folks should use a skilled shooter instead of according to their "friend by using a nice digital camera." This collection - in no particular order - is mainly focused entirely on photography but can involve any kind of digital photography. A Competent Photographer 1. creates images, he doesn't have a snapshot and "expect it will come out." 2. has spent years learning every aspect of setting up a shots. 3. is aware which lens to utilize in which situation. 4. is able to established the digital camera for any regular seem irrespective of area (wedding, wedding party, outside the house, and so forth.) 5. understands how to adequately utilize a display for gentle, even illumination. 6. is familiar with when you use a number of flashes to develop a wonderful picture. 7. understands how to come up with a landscape appear "organic" and never like he was employing a display whatsoever. 8. is aware of what aperture to put his lenses to for your search that will make you gaze the most effective. 9. understands what shutter pace to create to grab the ambient lighting, make the sense of movement, or hold an object in position. 10. will in some cases invest a few hours retouching one image to make sure it is ideal. 11. is aware the best time to use off video camera illumination (strobes) to develop a a number of search or uniformly mild a small group of individuals or possibly a bedroom. 12. has skilled equipment. 13. has expended approximately the same amount or more for *every single* lenses that he or she is the owner of than he performed for his digicam human body. 14. is the owner of several digital camera body in case there is devices disappointment. 15. is familiar with to back up his photographs to several locations to stop laptop crash problems. 16. has spent far more on extras Backdrops , Gentle Holders , Controllers for Display , Storage Instances , Umbrellas , Tripods , Tripod Heads , and many others.) than he have on his camera(s). 17. spends significant amounts of time and money developing a internet site, marketing, and marketing and advertising. 18. will gladly shell out many time meeting along, replying to issues, emailing, undergoing all the information in the wedding event, scouting out of the spot(s), and so forth. to ensure that it is all totally performed the way you want it. 19. will discuss a "chance listing" together with you so that nothing at all, or no-one receives overlooked. (You will know you've received an uncle Joe, but your shooter doesn't except if you tell him.) 20. will be specialized about taking photographs from the woman and bridesmaids as they are obtaining all set. 21. is able to immediate teams of folks to be photographed so that everyone appears good (no shut view, yawns, people today hidden at the rear of other individuals, etc.) 22. won't be consuming in the wedding party like grandfather Joe. 23. knows how to catch the time. (not when you're pulling out of the initially kiss but right when your lip area contact) 24. is able to developed a marriage album in order that it not alone reveals excellent pics, but explains an excellent story. 25. is able to go with the hue of his display lights for the color of the ambient light-weight (tungsten, luminescent, outside in the shade, and so forth.) 26. retains program the most current fads in photography styles so that he will be able to provide whatever that a customer may well want. (imagine red-colored wines spectacles using a monochrome back ground ) 27. retains with the latest computerized editing and enhancing equipment in order to make unique and custom graphics that you get pleasure from. 28. can capture motion picture. 29. is doing this prior to. He's not for your wedding ceremony to "practice his taking photos" 30. will allow your invitee become a visitor. Uncle Joe will in fact have the ability to benefit from the wedding ceremony instead of being stressed about being sure that he will get every one of the photos which he feels you have to have. 31. will usually commit all around 5 hours Until the wedding ceremony in preparation, and involving 40 and 60 time Once the wedding ceremony editing photos, creating pictures, framework, producing slideshows, developing wedding albums, affirming requests, talking to the lab, and many others. Would you really think you have been paying out various thousands of us dollars simply for 8 several hours for the special day? 32. understands that the average worth of a complete wedding day is about $20,000 knowning that the one thing you will keep (besides the dress) would be the photography. 33. understands that the average value used on catered foodstuff services are about $3000. 34. knows that the common cost used on flowers(that can wind up in the garbage is all about $2000 35. will be happy to enable guests have pics over the wedding ceremony. 36. will follow all principles concerning display photography in your wedding. Most areas of worship will likely not make it possible for display taking pictures in the wedding service. How would you get great images in a very dim cathedral without a display...? Work with a skilled! 37. knows how to are excellent images even though simply being subtle and unobtrusive. 38. is aware of that it is much cleverer to spend less by skimping in the roses, food items, songs, place, etcetera. as opposed to to skimp on the sole thing you will probably have to keep out of your wedding day (your pictures). 39. understands what it's enjoy having a woman (who didn't hire him simply because her grandfather Joe experienced a pleasant high-end camera)get in touch with him in tears wondering if there is any manner they can "correct" granddad Joe's photographs. 40. has figured out the necessity of not retaining his customers waiting on the images for a few months at a time. 41. will pay attention to taking good memories rather than discussing with his friends within the wedding event (eh hmm...grandfather Joe...) 42. knows how to present the bride and groom (as well as bridesmaids, groomsmen, household, and so on.) to ensure you appear your best possible. 43. is aware what facets to shoot which means your images will be the most complementary. 44. understands that the cost of the camera has nothing at all to do with the creative quality of the shooter. 45. will "understand the chance" a long time before he enhances the video camera to his eye. 46. will get ready for the second beforehand to make sure that he is ready when it takes place (the kiss, the wedding cake obtaining smeared inside your new hubby's deal with, etc.) 47. has observed wedding ceremony method frequently and may be glad to use you (or even your coordinator) in order that almost everything moves as smooth as you possibly can. 48. will probably be filled with good ways to help along with your wedding far beyond just taking the pictures. 49. can photograph objectively and won't be as mental as a relative or pal. 50. can capture the emotions of everybody otherwise with the wedding party. 51. knows how to synchronize and use other industry experts with the function (group, DJ, wedding party coordinator, minister, and many others.) 52. includes a vested interest in causing you to look your best. Not merely do you have paid out him for his solutions but also, he knows that if you love what he does then you will be recommending him to all of your current good friends. There's a vintage expressing among photography lovers that proceeds "in case you ruin a portrait you must apologize, in case you ruin a wedding event you need to keep village" 53. is aware that you might never remorse obtaining employed a specialist and having specialized benefits, however you will be sorry for, from now on, seeking to "cut costs" and achieving your close friend end up being the photographer. 54. doesn't use the "vehicle" establishing about the video camera. Ever. 55. is aware that person to person is the ideal promoting and will make sure that you are looked after which means you distribute an excellent concept. 56. can put men and women comfortable who aren't use to staying in front of the digital camera. 57. provides a "handbag of techniques" up his sleeves to build by far the most marvelous knowledge entirely possible that you and the wedding party. 58. makes it enjoyment. This isn't a career for him, it's a appreciation! 59. won't just give you a CD or DVD of pictures directly out of the digicam, but will painstakingly experience just about every graphic to appropriately boost them while using latest digital computer software. 60. is aware of time management planning and can take in such a manner as to keep your wedding ceremony running efficiently.

[micecream]

The Simulation Argument: Why We Might Already Be Living in Virtual Reality

The essay that you (or your avatar) are reading right now is about the Simulation Argument, formulated by Professor Nick Bostrom of Oxford University. But really, it’s a story about uncertainty.

It’s a cautionary tale against intellectual hubris and snobbery, as well as an admonition to enrich your own life and expand your range of possibilities.

Take the plunge with me, and we’ll see why Professor Bostrom thinks it’s possible we’re living in a computer simulation, run by advanced humans in some distant future.

THE SIMULATION ARGUMENT

In a famous paper entitled, Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?, Bostrom argues that at least ONE of the following propositions must be true:

(1) The human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage.

(2) Any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof).

(3) We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

Think about it: If crazy high-tech future humans simulate billions of universes, there will be billions of fake universes and just one “base reality.” The chances of being born into the base reality (as opposed to one of the simulations) would be astronomically low. Thus, if such a thing has already happened, we’re probably in a simulation right now.

However, we may not be. If our species is sufficiently volatile and self-destructive, such that we’re unlikely to survive long enough to become posthuman, or if for some reason our posthuman descendants don’t care much for simulating universes, we’re probably not living in a computer simulation.

And that’s the Simulation Argument. It’s really pretty straightforward and easy enough to understand. But as you can see, it’s the sort of idea that could keep you awake at night, wondering how “real” our reality really is.

For his part, Bostrom doesn’t claim to actually believe that we’re living in a computer simulation; he just admits that it’s possible.

In fact, Bostrom states:

“We may hope that (3) is true since that would decrease the probability of (1), although if computational constraints make it likely that simulators would terminate a simulation before it reaches a posthuman level, then our best hope would be that (2) is true.”

In other words, hopefully we are in a simulation, Bostrom says, because that would mean we aren’t likely to destroy ourselves entirely. However, if we are in a simulation and the simulators might “turn off” our reality sometime soon because keeping it running requires too much computing power, we should hope that our descendants simply don’t tend to simulate their past for whatever reason.

Personally, if one of those three propositions must be true, I hope it’s (2) regardless. I’m not sure why we would hope first and foremost that we are living in a simulation, rather than hoping that our descendants don’t care much for running ancestor simulations.

I highly recommend reading the original Simulation Argument, and I think you’ll find that it’s not nearly as intellectually intimidating as it might first appear. Indeed, compared to Nick Bostrom, my skull is a bag of hammers, and I didn’t have TOO much difficulty understanding it (although I did have to read it twice before I felt like I finally “got” it).

Now, while attempting to avoid references to The Matrix, let’s dig deeper into the Simulation Argument and its relation to the world of dreams, in hopes of further illuminating its mind-bending implications.

SIMULATIONS, DREAMS, IGNORANCE

“We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.”

— Christof, The Truman Show

Doesn’t it strike you that existence is really quite weird?

I said that I wouldn’t make too many Matrix references, but I didn’t say anything about Men in Black references, so here goes:

Think back to what we used to KNOW about life on earth:

We used to know for a fact that the earth was the center of the universe.

We used to know that leeches were the cure for freakin’ everything.

We used to know that our hands were always clean and that washing them before performing potentially life-saving surgeries was a waste of time.

In light of all this, reflect for a moment on the likelihood that what we “KNOW” today represents some kind of absolute truth.

There seems to be an unbreachable chasm between the subjective and objective world. So says Chuck Klosterman in one of the most thought-provoking books I read in 2017, But What If We’re Wrong?.

Speaking of weirdness, Klosterman says:

“Every night, we’re all having multiple metaphysical experiences, wholly constructed by our subconscious. Almost one-third of our lives happens inside surreal mental projections we create without trying. A handful of highly specific dreams, such as slowly losing one’s teeth, are experienced unilaterally by unrelated people in unconnected cultures. But these events are so personal and inscrutable that we’ve stopped trying to figure out what they mean.”

Every night, most of us enter a dream-state where the physical laws of the universe are completely suspended, and we have little to no idea what this means.

Many people don’t think dreams are worth looking into. But I think that in dreams, such as in life, it all matters, or none of it matters.

Would a simulation be much different from a dream, experientially?

There is nothing to suggest that a technologically advanced civilization with enough computing power couldn’t recreate everything that we think is real.

The precise values of gravity and the mass of electrons could have been set by a simulator which created the experience we’re all having right now.

Nobody is really sure about the existence of any possible “upper bound” on the amount of computing power that may be available in the future. And as Professor Bostrom explains, a hypothetical simulator would only need a sufficient amount of computing power to ensure that the simulated humans (us) don’t notice any “irregularities.” You know, cars starting themselves, or cats barking—that kind of stuff.

He goes on to say:

“The microscopic structure of the inside of the Earth can be safely omitted [from the simulation]. Distant astronomical objects can have highly compressed representations: verisimilitude need extend to the narrow band of properties that we can observe from our planet or solar system spacecraft. On the surface of Earth, macroscopic objects in inhabited areas may need to be continuously simulated, but microscopic phenomena could likely be filled in ad hoc. What you see through an electron microscope needs to look unsuspicious, but you usually have no way of confirming its coherence with unobserved parts of the microscopic world…Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.”

Who might this “director” be?

Could it be “us” in the future, curious enough about our evolutionary past to want to run a simulation in order to view history over again, or perhaps to play around with the variables?

Chuck Klosterman chimes in with a humbling proposition:

And in that case, there IS a simulator – maybe some kid in his garage in the year 4956 – who is determining and defining the values of the constants in this new universe that he built on a Sunday morning on a supercomputer. And within that universe, there are beings who will wonder, “Who set the values of these numbers that allow stars to exist?” And the answer is the kid. There WAS an intelligent being outside that universe who was responsible for setting the values for these essential numbers.”

Turning the microphone back to Professor Bostrom, he says:

“If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence. The physics in the universe where the computer is situated that is running the simulation may or may not resemble the physics of the world that we observe. While the world we see is in some sense “real”, it is not located at the fundamental level of reality.”

And just like a dream… we would NEVER be able to know for sure.

Except, perhaps, when it ends.

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”

— Zhuangzi

Bostrom then considers an “objection” that I had been carrying around while reading the first part of his Simulation Argument paper: Why does it have to be an ancestor simulation?

Couldn’t it be some sort of training program or virtual reality experience solely for entertainment?

He cuts me off by saying that:

“In addition to ancestor-simulations, one may also consider the possibility of more selective simulations that include only a small group of humans or a single individual. The rest of humanity would then be zombies or “shadow-people” – humans simulated only at a level sufficient for the fully simulated people not to notice anything suspicious.”

(I KNEW those people at the Department of Motor Vehicles were just “shadow-people”!!!)

All right, time to hold onto something to keep the room from spinning. Let all that sink in, and keep forging ahead.

CRITICS AND SUPPORTERS OF THE SIMULATION ARGUMENT

There are people out there who *GASP* don’t think that the Simulation Argument is worth considering at all.

These are likely the same people who keep turning my music down at the gym, or tell me that being a writer isn’t “practical”.

But they also include physicist Lisa Randall, author of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, and several other hyper-intellectuals.

Commenting on claims made by some that a recent glitch at the Oscars meant that there were visible “cracks” in the simulation, she said:

“At this point, we cannot prove that we do or don’t live in a simulation. More to the point, there is no reason to believe that we do. However, we can pretty much be sure that people will do amazing things and they will also mess up in spectacular ways.”

In contrast, a hero of mine, Elon Musk, claimed publicly that “the odds that we’re in base reality is one in billions.”

Another really smart dude, David Chalmers, professor of philosophy at New York University, said that we’re not going to get proof that we’re not in a simulation, because any evidence that we get could be simulated. He’s also said:

“If it turns out we really are living in a version of “The Matrix” [his reference, not mine], though — so what? Maybe we’re in a simulation, maybe we’re not, but if we are, hey, it’s not so bad.”

Some have said that it’s also a lot of hubris to think that WE would be what ended up being simulated, but Max Tegmark (a professor at MIT) has some words of wisdom for us in this case:

“My advice is to go out and do really interesting things, so the simulators don’t shut you down.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s follow the evidence!

THE EVIDENCE OF SIMULATION

As David Chalmers observed, we’re never going to get “evidence” that we’re living in a simulation, because any evidence that we could possibly obtain might just have been simulated.

But we can look for clues. Glitches in the program, if you will.

Also, we can try and figure out if the structure of our perceived reality could even allow for such a state of affairs to exist.

The first step in all of this, of course, is to suspend your certainty about what’s really going on here.

I have no first-hand, empirical claim to absolute truth, and neither do you.

So where can we look for evidence that we may be living in a computer simulation?

Well, my first choice when it comes to evidence of living in a simulation would be the mathematical nature of our universe itself. It’s broken up into pieces (subatomic particles) like pixels in a video game. The laws of physics are computable and they have definite parameters. That means that they can be simulated.

The Simulation Argument also accounts for a lot of strange stuff related to quantum mechanics, such as the measurement problem, which deals with the fact that things only become defined when they are being observed.

Maybe you DO need a conscious observer, like a conscious player of a video game, in order to resolve this measurement problem. This strikes me as the second-greatest “evidence” that we may be living in a computer simulation.

The possibility still exists, too, for near-incontrovertible evidence to emerge that we are living in a simulated world. That is, if we were to go on to create our OWN simulations, we could be fairly certain that we were not in the base reality.

Nick Bostrom states in his paper that:

“If we do go on to create our own ancestor-simulations, this would be strong evidence against (1) and (2), and we would therefore have to conclude that we live in a simulation. Moreover, we would have to suspect that the posthumans running our simulation are themselves simulated beings; and their creators, in turn, may also be simulated beings. Creating simulations would be evidence that we might live in one.”

Beyond all this, there may be one final piece of evidence which could tell us conclusively whether or not we are living in a computer simulation: The moment of our own eventual death.

The moment of death may be the moment of truth. Do we see ones and zeroes? The face of a loving and expectant god? Impenetrable darkness?

Or do we apprehend nothing at all, questions left unanswered, because we have ceased to exist and to be conscious of anything? Maybe Epicurus accurately described the nature of death in this classic statement:

“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?”

Perhaps death will be the moment when the veil is pulled back and all is revealed, or perhaps it will be nothing at all.

CAN WE SIMULATE GOD?

One of the things I find fascinating to contemplate is the relationship between the Simulation Argument and ideas of God.

As a radical skeptic in the same tradition as Diogenes and Montaigne, I hold no personal illusions about a kind and loving God who is waiting for my return to His kingdom.

But I have to admit that I like that idea. Part of me wants it to be true.

And it could be true, even if we’re living in a simulation. The base reality would have to have emerged inexplicably from nothingness at some point, leaving open the possibility that it was created by some kind of omnipotent being.

Furthermore, it’s interesting to consider the similarities between a hypothetical “director” of a simulated universe and a deity.

In fact, most all of the classical questions we ask about a hypothetical God can be asked about a hypothetical simulation-director:

“Why did the director of our world decide to include evil and suffering? (Can they change these settings in the preferences?)”

“What does the director want from us? Is there a specific way that he or she wants us to be living our simulated lives? Or is it purely for his or her own entertainment?”

“Where did the original, non-simulated world come from?”

Could we, somehow, maybe by virtue of our acts here on earth “graduate” to a higher level of the simulation? Someplace “better”?

Or, conversely, could we be punished for our cruelty and waste here on this level of the simulation and be sent to a much worse place for our next “generation”?

How should we live in order to prevent that from happening?

In our universe, we create simulated worlds all the time. Neil deGrasse Tyson has said, “We don’t think of ourselves as deities when we program Mario, even though we have the power over how high Mario jumps.” There’s no reason for Mario to believe that we’re perfectly omnipotent, even though we control everything that he does.

Basically, anyone who created the simulation we may or may not be living in would be akin to a god, at least to us. Maybe it’s some kid in the next universe up, as Chuck Klosterman postulated, but it really could be anyone.

How should we live in light of these considerations, especially given that we can never KNOW if we are living in a computer simulation? It’s to this question that we now turn.

HOW SHOULD WE LIVE IN A SIMULATION?

Ah, now we get to the good stuff. If we really are digital beings living inside a simulation, or if there’s even a remote possibility of that being true, how should we live?

I’ll give the first word to Chuck Klosterman:

“In fact, I’d say the first principle to adopt in this scenario would be the same as the one we use in regular life – don’t get terminated. Stay alive. But beyond that?”

Point well taken.

What Bostrom says, and what looks like the right idea at first glance, is that because we have no reason to believe that either of these possibilities is more likely than the other, the Simulation Argument provides no real reason to change the way we live our lives.

But I disagree, and here’s why…

First, the technical objection from Robin Hanson, a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute:

“In general, your decisions should be based on a weighted average over the different possible worlds you might live in. If you assign a non-zero subjective probability to the possibility that your descendants will create sophisticated simulations which include people (real or simulated) like us, ignorant of their status, then you should assign a non-zero subjective probability to the possibility that you now live in such a simulation. So to the extent that there are consequences of your actions which are different in a simulated world, and you care about these consequences, a non-zero probability of simulation should influence your decisions.”

To put it more simply, Hanson is saying that if you think there is any chance we are living in a simulation, and if you would behave differently in a simulated world for whatever reason, you should probably behave somewhat differently than you otherwise would, given your belief that we may be living in a simulation.

Here are what I would consider the “rules” for living in a simulation:

1) Don’t get terminated. Unless you’re aiming to experience the evidence firsthand regarding whether or not you live in a simulated universe (though, again, death could easily be inconclusive, as we may just cease to be aware of anything). I, for one, want to see where this hypothetical simulation leads.

2) Spend the rest of your life testing the limits, and, in effect, trying to figure out what you “can’t” do. For this to work, assume there is no “can’t”. What is your body capable of? Can you make one person’s life demonstrably better? Can you save an endangered species? Can you become CEO? Can you become world champion? Can you get her to like you? What are the thoughts you can’t have? Are there aspects of this simulation that its creator never considered? What’s beyond the stars?

3) Look for ways to “break” the simulation. A simulated world is a theoretically “solvable” world, and maybe you can crack the code. Maybe, to save computing power, the stars only light up when you’re looking at them. Or buildings turn into ones and zeros once you leave a particular city.

4) Assuming you don’t want the simulation to be turned off, you should do everything in your power to keep the director interested in maintaining the simulation. Go out and do wild things; make a name for yourself; create something epic; become larger than life. Be part of history, or better yet, MAKE history. Cause dramatic shit to happen. At least, that’s what you would do if you assumed the director had a human-like interest in the entertainment or intrigue value of their simulations.

5) Find out what kind of behavior is rewarded in this simulation, and then live your life that way. If you find Erich Fromm’s idea appealing that love is the only rational answer to the problem of human existence, then maybe you should find a way to bring more of that into the world.

In the end, learning that you’re not real doesn’t feel any different from the way you felt before. Even if you’re not “alive”, life goes on, says Klosterman.

Let’s tie this all together and bring it back to “base reality”…

CONCLUSION

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

— Dylan Thomas

An overarching theme of this essay is that when you get right down to it, we humans can’t be sure about even the most fundamental “facts” of existence that we take for granted.

Yet, when you survey the history of human thought (and especially listen to how people talk today), you are struck by the fact that everybody seems so SURE of themselves.

The fact is that it’s impossible to have satisfactory knowledge of anything without knowing all things — and that’s just not going to happen.

I’ve laid out the case for why we might be living in a simulation, and I’ve given some possible avenues of exploration with respect to how we might lead our lives in the face of this possibility.

But we each need to step out in front of the unknown for ourselves. There may be a darkness coming for you that you can’t escape, but there may also be a benevolent “director” waiting to welcome you home.

Nobody knows.

Existential courage then becomes the highest virtue.

We then have a reason to hear each other out, and to doubt our own certainties. We also have innumerable reasons to stop hiding, and to aim to live our best lives. Not fearing disaster, nor taking refuge in sentimentality, but rather engaging meaningfully with the world, for as long as this privilege is to be ours.

The Simulation Argument, then, serves as an empowering thought experiment and a call for radical humility, healthy skepticism, and above all, infectious joy.

Because if ours is a simulated universe, there is a good chance that it will someday end. How will this knowledge change your life?

All the best,

Matt Karamazov