#like. literally every animal has some kind of purpose in the ecosystem it lives in.

[yourlocalxenomorph3]

there is no such thing as a "useless" animal and i wish more people would bother to do even the most basic research on food webs before saying stupid shit like that

[antixabound]

alright since I want everyone to know I’m working on a fantasy setting, I am working on one btw and I am very super proud of it and no I do not have anything art related to show for it yet.

ok so basically in my funny and epic setting™ there are like five species that make up the kind of the basis of people and that is a lie there is more than five but the other kinds of people are something something I dunno. there aren’t any humans because I didn’t want to. 

the big four of the five that I want to bring up are Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, and Goblins. and additionally I have arbitrarily assigned groups of languages to them. this is to say that I am a hack fraud and I take words from languages that happen to be in the same general kind of language grouping and i mix them together to make a new one. An example being Kreӧdd, which is a particular culture of Orcs and to make it I literally just looked at a fuckin english to whatever language dictionary site, and then I typed in “blood” and picked the word Krew from polish and then I typed “born” and got  född from swedish. anyway that is a nice little way to tell everyone I assigned germanic languages to the Orcs. I have also assigned Romance languages to the Elves because like that was obvious and you all know it, I put Celtic langauges with the Dwarves, and slavic languages with goblins because I needed to give them a language structure, and I couldn’t think of anything. the other species that exists on this funny continent, oh by the way the contient is called Hauldrak, are the Ogres, a collection of nomadic tribes who mostly keep to themselves in the frozen eternal winter of the north.

other funny types of people that exist are the Drakekin, a collective of people who just kinda appeared one day that all have strange and unusual bodies ranging from typically anthropomorphic to kinda all over the place. the Cog Folk, mechanical people who are often constructed originally to serve a purpose but eventually find their own individuality given time. Chimeras, some chimeras are made from the bodies of recently deceased people, and as such are capable of anything a person is, albeit asymmetrical, crudely stitched together and coursing with necrotic magic. And various kinds of demons and trolls that find some sort of appeal in living in a house and having a job and paying money for things.

most of the setting is just one one continent and its a weird and fucked up continent but it is also sometimes comfy as fuck like I don’t want it to be a grimdark setting but its not noblebright either, its cloudy, its a somber rainy day but you are comfy inside your home drinking tea sitting by the fire place, and for a moment you look outside the window and swear you saw a beast standing in the rain. the monsters in my setting are just kinda fantastical wild animals that abide to a strange concept of biology. there are cannibalistic gigantic necromancers that lead hordes of skeletons. Dragons are typically beasts so divorced from the natural order that their mere presence can cause permanent damage to the surrounding ecosystem, but there are also Dragons that fit a niche and removing them from an environment would cause catastrophe.

Also I really wanna talk about magic in my thing can I talk about magic in my setting I’ve been dying to talk about magic. there is no non-pretentious way to explain this in my eyes, Magic is like Art in my setting, every mage has to practice and do little things to hone their skills, everyone does magic a little differently, even those who try to copy someone else. A fire elemental wizard isn’t going to have the best grasp on illusion magic, and there are wizards who are jack of all trades, master of none. some do magic to make their lives easier, some to enhance performances, some to fight, and some to create nigh impossible structures. magic just kinda is, some animals and creatures can use magic alongside the people. everyone is able to do magic basically, any kind of person, they just have to at least try. the other thing is that elemental magic for classical elements like Fire, Water, Noise, Rot, etc. they are all slightly corruptive, there are ways to mitigate and or remove mutations and such but some sorcerers will often wear their strange gifts as some kind of badge of honor, or in the cases of mental changes where the caster is imbued with the hypothetical personality traits of these elements, they might not even notice.

I will elaborate further at some point and possibly make a whole ass ttrpg system or two.

[twothpaste]

about the capybaras in that fic i done wrote

'cause i dug up some notes & sketches and by god they're still rolling and rattling around in my brain

(re: au in which postgame claus creates a new kind of chimera, to try and restore environments that are still recovering from the pregame apocalypse brought on by humankind)

In Earthbound 64, there was a "Capybara" enemy, which got scrapped at some point during Mother 3's tumultuous development. I've gotten the impression it has a pretty endearing reputation amongst EB64 fans. :') In Capybara's (the fic's) post-apocalyptic take on Mother 3's world, these critters are probably extinct, or at least extremely rare in the wild. Like Claus, the capybara is a revenant. Like him, it's not supposed to be here anymore (both in-universe and on a meta level). He resurrects it, in a new form, for a new purpose. Except, y'know. With love and care and genuinely benevolent intentions. Guy's reclaiming his own trauma, and taking charge of the narrative, this time around.

Claus spends years trying to prove to themself and others (but mostly themself) that they have a place in the new world - their environment, their community, alongside all their fellow living things. Despite being a chimera, and despite their immense Masked Man Guilt Complex. A sense of belonging might even be what the thing they want most. So naturally, when choosing a species for their new chimera project, they pick a lovable animal that's known for vibing peacefully with all kinds of other creatures. Go figure.

The Capyburra's capabilities are designed to repair ecosystems, first and foremost. But honestly, every one of 'em parallels Claus' experiences with overcoming trauma. "Digging" deep to work through his issues, bringing the feelings he's buried back to the surface, breaking down all the hazardous metal left behind (literally and figuratively). It carries greenery on its back and scatters seeds, the way Claus tries to carry and spread hope and progress. If gardening in a wasteland isn't a metaphor for repairing damage done by trauma, I dunno what is!

They're more or less an extension of Claus. If their chimeras can coexist and make the world a better place, then they'll finally rest assured that they can do the same. ('Course, the self-imposed pressure to "earn" their keep and "prove" their merit is a whole other pile of baggage they oughtta tend to, huh?)

[skeletorific]

How do you think the Beforus Ancestors(Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Karkat, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, Equius, Gamzee, Eridan and Feferi)were like? I love your Alternian Ancestors stuff so far and was curious what you Interpretation of the Beforus ancestors were.

oh HELL yes I am about this.

Aradia Megido, the Tombkeep: I see Aradia as being born a bit later than the others, while the coddling laws are at their strongest. Rather than put up with that, as quickly as she can she removes herself from Beforan society to the very outskirts. Like their Alternian counterparts, Beforan’s are often avoidant of the notion of death. However, in their case, it is not because death is a failure of the dying, but a failure of those around them. It is not seen as a natural cycle but something to be abhorred and feared at all costs. As such, tombs are kept, but they are far away from the rest of civilization and usually talked about in hushed tones. Aradia grows up among these tombs, befriending the local ghosts and considers them her own coddling charge. She guards the tombs from any who get too curious, or more often, from well-meaning government officials looking to tear down monuments to such “nastiness”. What they find instead is an angry little girl with powerful psiionics. She becomes something of a bedtime story for young grubs, even long after her passing. They say she still haunts the halls.

Tavros Nitram, the Menager: In parallel to his obsession with Fiduspawn, I see Beforan Tavros as being some variety of animal handler, using his fully fledged wings (and his bronzeblood bankroll) to travel the world and collect rare and exotic creatures to his own plot of land, to tend to and train. Some know him as a kindly soul, treating all beasts with the utmost love and dedication. He seems like some kind of fairy tale figure, surrounded on all sides by animal companions who he communes with. To others, this is reckless ecosystem mixing, but then, what do scientists know anyways. He prefers the hero title a bit more, as it aligns more with his intentions anyways. Eventually one of his expeditions ends poorly, with him being confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Outwardly he dies content to let his coddler and his animal friends care for him for the rest of his life, but there’s a restless spirit that he passes down to his descendant.

Sollux Captor, The Dronebee: Completely and utterly unremarkable in every way. Sollux contented himself with working his function as a goldblood. His technical ability was fostered at every turn by a Beforan education system eager to see a lowblood embrace their “natural talents”, but while he made minor waves in the programming circles in which he moved with his often unique approach to coding, to most he was just one worker among thousands, very valuable of course! Every worker is valuable :) But ultimately.....not worthy of notice. Which is fine: that’s how Sollux likes it, and more than that if left him time to pursue more personal projects, such as a little game later known as sgrub. Just because he’s not vocally complaining doesn’t mean he’s not compiling a list. From his perspective, Beforan civilization is a ticking timebomb anyways. Why shouldn’t he be the one to start the countdown?

Karkat Vantas, the Advocate: Look, I know we all love revolutionary Karkat, but I think something we forget is that Karkat was pretty pro-system even as late in the game as Act 6. So, for the Beforan model.....well, every system needs its bootlickers. Karkat Vantas becomes a mouthpiece for some lowblood lobbying groups, acting in vocal support of the Empress’s coddling plan. Its not all love of power: legitimately there is a part of Karkat that tries to see how this is good. Healthy. The needs of his friends are being met, they’re safe, and attended to. Surely all of that is worth a little......infantilization, right? He deals with a lot of criticism from other lowbloods for being a sellout, and though he does his best to cultivate a calm unflappable demeanor so craved by Beforans, I guarantee Beforus has more than a few Grubtube compiliations of Vantas meltdowns that Kankri watches when he needs a good cringe. As he got older he slowly began to question the system he’d spent his whole life building, but ultimately lowbloods don’t live long enough for those kinds of regrets.

Nepeta Leijon, the Believer: What, you think clowns have the monopoly on weird religious communes? Nah. To be fair to Nepeta, her commune’s status as a “cult” is probably more indicative of Beforan prudery than anything else. Her sect, the Righteous Assembly of Withdrawn Renegades (or RAWR for short), is dedicated to the principles of free love and a return to the natural. Within the massive tunnel and cave system in which they live, trolls are free to strip themselves of signifiers like caste and clan and live as the gods intended: covered in dirt, chasing something furry, and flirting furrociously :33. While Nepeta in life insisted there was no leader it was her effect on people that kept them coming back for more, and while the commune purrsisted after her eventual death, ultimately its membership dwindled. Meulin was brought up among some of the last vestiges of it, and some of their old hideouts have been inherited by the Lost Weeaboos.

Kanaya Maryam, The Prioress: Literally, the prior. One of the earliest trolls, widely considered the Matriarch of Trolls in some sense. In her time she revolutionized many of the practices of auxiliatrices, ensuring greater safety for the grubs and greater care for the mother grubs. Many of the norms now in place for jadebloods are in large part due to her own influence. Despite her farreaching influence (and the fact that she left behind a journal of her practices), not much is known about her personal temperament. Quick readers may catch a certain dry sarcasm behind her words, and the especially studious scholar may note slight reference to a few great lovers (and a few great disappearances, *cough* rainbowdrinker *cough*. Her greatest secret is her brief and tumultuous kismesis with Vriska Serket, notorious Mafiosa, but only a very few historians have ever uncovered it. In part, her long shadow may have contributed to her descendant’s eventual anxiety regarding her prescribed role,

Terezi Pyrope, the Gumshoe: Beforan justice is tricky. As opposed to Alternia, there are in fact actual laws in place that aren’t just “don’t fuck with highbloods”, but in many ways its almost more corrupt. More often than not the courts are more concerned with petty infractions than it is with actual injustice, and furthermore, inter-caste tension remains a huge concern that bubbles up in violence. After a few years badgering olives for traffic tickets while watching actual fully fledged crime families get off scott free, well....Terezi had had enough. She took her pursuit of justice into the real world, working as a private detective for hire. She’s notorious for her, erm....quirks, but she’s a fastidious hunter and a careful investigator when she wants to be. She brings em back alive. USU4LLY >:).

Vriska Serket, the Mafiosa/Mapm8ker: Let’s be clear, a lot of Vriska’s society was laid on top of her and it was abuse from which she struggled to free herself. However, what does one do when freed from society, but seek to shake things up a bit. She’s still a thief of Light, make mistake, and she slowly works up the ranks from card shark working the tables to in charge of a small army of foot soldiers, smuggling mindhoney to goldbloods (who have been restricted “for their own good”) and sopor slime to clowns. She’s the flamboyant head of her own criminal empire, with the code of only stealing from those she deems worthy and a reckless approach to life

However, most of that isn’t generally known. And to the outside world, she’s just a simple cartographer, travelling the world to assemble some nice, safe, boring maps. Indeed, when her journal was finally unearthed by her descendant, she couldn’t help but wonder if these exploits were true, or simply a story her ancestor liked to imagine herself into on her off days. Tough to say.

Equius Zahhak, the Showpony: Alright, y’all knew I couldn’t stay away from that one. Equius was something of a puzzle to his descendent when Horuss actually went back through his (meticulously kept) caste records. By all accounts, he was an intelligent, capable, hardworking man. A tinkerer in his off hours, he was a pioneer in the field of robotics, and by all accounts not romantically unsuccessful. And yet, the man never seemed concerned with making a name for himself. Instead, over the course of his long life, you could perpetually find him at the shoulder of someone more powerful and important than he was. Was he....a bodyguard? Trophy husband? Butler? Hard to say, but there he was. Trotted out like the loyal steed he was.

Gamzee Makara, the Borrower: A peculiar legend of clownery regards a strange “hobo looking motherfucker what will wander into your hive and be all and snatching up your most secretous things for the messiah’s wider purposes”. So far as is known, he is not malignant, although its not unknown for a troll to occasionally disappear while running after him to retrieve their stolen items. Even without that possible threat, its usually not worth it to chase after him: the things he takes have a way of ending up back in your hands, one miraculous way or another. Gamzee is an itinerant monk, wandering the countrysides. Some passerby he’ll occasionally offer aid to, or proverbs. Which might be helpful if anyone could decipher what they mean. Ultimately he’s a happy man, if prone to fits of temper and bouts of melancholy. Still, as he notes, he’s got motherfucking friends all over these globes :o) what’s a motherfucker gotta be lonely for?

Eridan Ampora, the Magician: Well.....the Empress doesn’t exactly need Orphaners. As such, the violets are largely left to their own devices. Given they’re often prone to creative endeavours, Eridan found his own outlet. He became renowned as an illusionist, and at one point his shows were capable of drawing large and massive crowds, who would gasp in awe at his tricks and wonder if the violet really did have a trace of magic in his blood. He seemed to like the idea, eventually penning a popular grubling children’s series about a boy with those very abilities (which eventually found its way into the young hands of his descendent). However, celebrity wasn’t necessarily the best mix with Eridan’s temperament. He was prone to some truly disastrous quadrant outings, as well as developing several more addictive habits to drown out the oddly oppressive loneliness that permeated him. These bad habits were only worsened by the worst thing to ever happen to Eridan Ampora: the internet. With access to videos of his performance, most were pretty easily able to spot the trick of it, and hell hath no fury like a cyberbullying teen going after a b list internet celebrity. He took it as a sign to swear off the craft forever and lived the rest of his life on book residuals, alone, drunk, and miserable

Feferi Peixes, Her Highness: Not as much to say about this one, as Feferi is the one we have the most information about. Like it says on the tine, she instituted the coddling system on Beforus. This was widely considered a Bad Idea by those victimized by it, but you couldn’t pay anyone in Feferi’s court to tell her that. The Empress is sweet tempered and excitable, it’d be like telling a child 12 perigree night is cancelled. Perhaps the great irony is that as Feferi gets older, the thing that frustrates her most is that it feels like no one takes her seriously as a person. Merely as a figurehead. Still, she lives her life on Beforus ultimately convinced this is what’s best for the greater good. 

[ronnytherandom]

Accidental Animated Film Week, or Watch Me Continue To Know Nothing About Media Analysis While I Liberally Abuse The Semicolon In An Attempt To Sound Smart

18/1/2021: Hotel Transylvania Lots of fun but this is a weird one, varies drastically in some strange ways. The comedy takes hit and miss to extremes, simultaneously being laugh out loud hilarious and possessing moments of ungodly cringe. The pacing is unbalanced with the first half feeling awkward, taking a while to really get into; the latter much too fast and not taking the necessary time, some scenes seeming to serve their function as minimally as possible. This metronome of quality exists primarily in these respects and is quite noticeable, but doesn’t ruin the experience and I think that’s testament to just how good the rest of it can be, though there are still caveats. The animation is fantastic, incredibly expressive and creates truly hilarious physical comedy, and I feel this is to be expected of a Genndy Tartakovsky film, I grew up with and deeply appreciate his animated features. The emotional core of the story really begins to hit in the latter half and is very effective though the Zing concept I take issue with the name because it just sounds too silly without being humorous; its just a weird little gripe, the word zing annoys me. That said I was genuinely invested in this love story which is a feat, I’m not a romantic person at all. The acting is generally very good, I enjoy the expanded cast and Adam Sandler is excellent but Andy Samberg’s Johnny has an accent that gets on my nerves and feels like he’s being a bit too heavy handed with it. Again, just a little gripe. The message is clear and heartfelt, strange as it seems to make the message for the parents of the features target audience it still works and resembles in parts the “dadification” that’s been occurring in media (especially video games) over the past decade. Ultimately, it’s a good time so long as you can deal with a few groan inducing moments and a little strangeness.

19/1/2021: Princess Mononoke Holy shit, why haven’t I watched this sooner. Transcendentally good! My new favourite film, an absolutely incredible achievement. For fear of wading into sub v dub controversy the English dub is good though I’m definitely going to watch it subbed at some point. Its Studio Ghibli, everyone knows that Miyazaki runs a fantastic operation, thus the art and animation is faultless. There are moments where every single frame is a true work of art. Induces nostalgia though I’ve never seen it before, the art style and tone of the soundtrack are endemic to the late 90s and remind me of the animation from my childhood. The message is also wonderfully nuanced, focusing less on Humanity’s responsibility for the natural world but rather a reconciliation between the ambition of humanity and the life of our world through respect and veneration of that which we’re dependent on to survive. I love the world so much; I think one of this film’s pinnacle achievements is conveying the impression of a deep living world with relatively little worldbuilding. Just watch it aight, everyone needs to watch it. Fucking Incredible.

20/1/2021: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (rewatch)

Very Fun. Powerful nostalgia, I think I saw this literally hundreds of times as a child, may have had the whole thing memorised, and have always been a huge fan of the SpongeBob series. Even despite that I think there’s a lot of quality here. Pretty much every aspect of the film is enjoyable and well done, even if I think the moments featuring real people are kind of awkward. The gags and humour mostly hold up but I don’t think they have aged so well as the original run of the series, but there’s not much as can live up to that standard. Has a little to say about being a goofball, but ultimately its all about the gags for me with this one.

21/1/2021: Nausicaa: Valley of The Wind

Magnificent. Meaningfully very similar to Princess Mononoke, not quite as good, but still very worthwhile. I really like the mid-century sci fi vibe going on here and think the worldbuilding is excellent, though some of the expository dialogue is a little clumsy. I imagine there’s a little bit of nuance lost in the dub but cannot be certain as I don’t understand Japanese. That said, the voice acting is generally good. The art is magnificent, as it is wont to be in Studio Ghibli films; or in this case the proto-studio-Ghibli-film. That every culture has its distinct style is one of my favourite things, amongst which rank the Ohmu, Nausicaas glider and most of all Teto. Look at his little tongue! Most of all I love the ecosystem that arises from the polluted earth, how the earth cleans itself, it is a spectacular thought. I have an interesting thought about the soundtrack, specifically during actions sequences. The musical quality is good, especially the main theme, but there are issues with the editing of the action sequences’ music which intrigue me. Because the edit is always jarring and I don’t think the style of music necessarily fits the film; but I think it is a technical limitation, that contemporary audio systems were not necessarily able to apply the soundtrack in a less jarring manner. Just an interesting thought I had and I may look into the history of sound software etc. to see if that’s right. I think it is a beautiful work and well worth watching, I enjoyed it greatly.

23/1/2021: Howl’s Moving Castle

Good. Far and away less impactful than Mononoke and Nausicaa but still very good. Standard Ghibli points: Its beautiful, well animated and full of character. I find all the lead characters quite charming and well performed; it is set in a very interesting world with lots of interesting quirks and cool magic. Further it is powerfully meaningful, with a clear statement on confidence and empowerment. There’s just something about this one where the vibe is slightly off and I could not fully explain why. It feels disjointed, as though all the parts of the world are not fully connected. I feel like if you were to list the plot points in order some would be labelled “??????? Make it happen” as some events and conclusions are reached without purpose or motivation. Only some though and I’m not trying to seriously say it doesn’t make sense that’s just how I feel in post. I enjoyed it but I feel like I don’t fully understand this one.

24/1/2021: Spirited Away

Beautiful. This one I think is the best showcase of Ghibli’s style: the art is beautiful; the water is viscous and the spirits are fantastically grotesque. There’s a vibrant world shown here with a lot of charming characters and expressive animation which I think creates the most visually stunning of the Ghibli films that I’ve seen so far, though I fear I’m a bit basic and unsophisticated as I still prefer what I recognise as more traditional fantasy and sci-fi worlds like Mononoke and Nausicaa. I feel the story is also a well nuanced coming of age tale as it balances between relying on your friends and standing up for yourself. I also really like Yubaba or more generally how antagonism is handled throughout this movie; and to an extent in the broader Ghibli canon. Rather than create comically evil villains who exist purely to do bad these features all showcase antagonists with genuine sensible motivations driving their action and the only thing defining them as antagonists is the framing and perspective. On that point you could argue that Yubaba is the closest to a genuine villain but I think the materialist-critical aspects are more of an aside than a genuine statement, as appreciable as they are.

[gojirahkiin]

What the  Godzilla Anime should’ve been! Part 1

Starting with an apology to Tyrantis Terror, and a promise that unlike the last time I pinged you with fanfiction, this will be a good read.

Alright, so @tyrantisterror​‘s cry of “BE INTERESTING YOU COWARDS!” is essentially the majority opinion of the Godzilla fandom towards the anime. This is how I, personally, would fix it.

To do so, I would take three premises, because in my spite I want to prove that there is a way that good can come of them:

Godzilla has reigned undisputed for 20,000 years

Mothra is dead, but her egg and people live

Ghidorah is an eldritch god.

What the anime lacks boils down to two things: character and spectacle. Everyone was boring and nothing cool happened.

But even assuming that you want to go in a completely different direction than the rest of the Godzilla franchise, you don’t have to be garbage about it. So Mothra has no Shobijin/Cosmos/Elias equivalents. Fine, but she doesn’t need any since she has an entire race/species of people. But you know who does need some now?

I present some amazing fanart for a priestess of King Ghidorah! Ignore the Noodledorah silhouettes behind her. I am scrapping that entire design for eldritch ramen.

Even worse, the canon Exif communicated with Ghidorah through math. That is the lamest thing possible. But once again harvesting and inverting classic Mothra, what do you think I could substitute for Fairy Mothra, a fragment of spirit given form and purpose?

A Dorat. Obviously it needs tweaking. No aspect of King Ghidorah would ever deign to be so cute. But my point stands: his most devout worshipers would have these tiny avatars of their god to guide them in their malice.

Now, I said that Mothra doesn’t need the Shobijin since she has a race/species. That’s not a metaphor. The canon Houtua are covered in powdery tattoos and given antennae. It’s never made explicit (because that might be cool) but they are implied to be literal children of Mothra.

Imagine the implications of being able to genetically prove that your goddess is the mother of your species? I discard the name Houtua and rename these technical kaiju the Elias. Could’ve also called them Cosmos, but I flipped a coin.

I’ll come back to Mothra in a bit. For now, let’s talk about Godzilla. He’s the ruler of Earth in this continuity, but what does that really mean? Well...

I do want to say that I’m not making this a post-apocalyptic MonsterVerse, as cool as that would be. What I mean is that every kaiju that hasn’t submitted to Godzilla’s dominance has been killed.

Godzilla is King of the Monsters in that he has no true rivals for the throne, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t resistance.

Mothra’s egg is hidden, proving that it is possible to hide from him. It is also possible to run from him since he can’t be everywhere at once, and there are creatures capable and willing to do both.

This is where my versions of the Servum (the worm & dragon-like creatures that were never named and hardly shown in canon) come in, in both name and concept.

The Kaiju Catastrophe wiped out many species, if only because humanity got increasingly destructive in their efforts to stop it, leaving vacuums in many ecosystems. 20,000 years isn’t a long time for new species to evolve, but a core theme of the Godzilla series is that mutations happen quickly.

In the aftermath, many species mutated and evolved to be symbiotic towards Godzilla, because being simultaneously around and useful to him was a great way to survive and be protected.

These creatures are the Servum, but there aren’t that many ways to be useful to Godzilla, and so they are essentially “battle honey guides.” They hunt down and swarm creatures that show signs of hostility toward the King, or simply call to summon him if they think they’re out of their league.

Godzilla has naturally been growing and mutating for all 20,000 years, but unlike the near-comatose tree in the anime, my Godzilla is active and roaming. Most of the Earth has well-worn pathways because unless he must deviate to deal with a challenger, he has a decently efficient patrol route.

One of the other results of Godzilla's never-ending world tour is that everything is a bit more radioactive and a bit more violent. The first is natural. The second requires explanation.

Essentially, kaiju that covet the throne hide in nice fertile areas with lots of food of whatever kind they eat. These are typically destroyed in the battle when Godzilla finds them. As a result, aggression, growth, and general "kaiju-fication" has been encouraged in the wildlife for the last 20,000 years, because if you can protect your territory from would-be crown-hunters it won't be destroyed by Godzilla.

Biollante exists, but less as a distinct creature and more as a taxonomic classification; when Godzilla destroys a region in battle, it takes truly remarkable plants to colonize it - these aggressive and radiosynthetic plants are the Biollante.

Now let’s talk about Mechagodzilla, an technology in general. What is left of humanity after 20,000 years? Not a lot to be honest.

Bunkers aren’t much protection from burrowing kaiju, and not even the most optimistic “abandoned by people” documentary thinks any skyscraper will last for 20,000 years.

But it sounds like I’m contradicting myself - if new kaiju are always rising, and virtually all traces of humanity are gone, then where are Mechagodzilla and Mothra’s egg in this continuity? Hilariously, they’re still around because they’re in almost the same place.

In my take on this scenario, Godzilla first appeared in 1954 at a height of 50 meters. By the time humanity had to flee in 2054, he’d swelled to his 100 meter height.

As a result, Mechagodzilla’s factory was built inside a mountain, so that the facility could constantly expand so that if and when the machine got wrecked, it could be rebuilt bigger and better for the next rematch, and both mecha and factory were constantly being built and improved until almost the day humanity evacuated.

Mothra first challenged Godzilla after humanity fled, but her standard procedure is to find a nice safe place for her egg before charging into mortal combat, and she found this very conveniently mostly empty hangar inside a mountain. A bit bland and sterile for her taste, but safe.

Hearkening back to the Heisei era again, Mothra’s egg is psychic, and has a useful passive defense. It radiates an aura that renders the area uninteresting to any kaiju not specifically looking for a Mothra egg. As a result, the egg, the Elias, and Mechagodzilla have been housemates for 20,000 years give or take.

Some of you may have caught that I said Mothra first challenged Godzilla. That’s because this version of Mothra is also active in the timeline... in a sense. Each time the egg hatches, the new Mothra has been challenging Godzilla, and each time she’s taken longer to develop, but done better in the fight. And the most recent challenger was 10,000 years ago...

So, let’s talk about King Ghidorah himself. The anime’s designers claim that their Ghidorah is the final evolution of the essence of Ghidorah.

Screw that! If I want an enemy that’s unkillable because he’s technically in another dimension, other franchises have done it better and with more spectacle.

King Ghidorah isn’t just about destruction. It isn’t enough to let a ghost noodle rip apart and eat a planet (in lore and not on screen of course). King Ghidorah is about the fear, helplessness, and despair in the face of an end to everything you care about that cannot be stopped.

Some people complain that in Rebirth of Mothra III, Ghidorah only destroyed a little bit and then went back to guarding his dome. My hypothesis is that there was a very deliberate and cruel reason for that.

The children knew that they’d been captured and knew that the walls were acidic because one of them tossed a ball at it. But their parents didn’t know yet. Ghidorah destroyed a little and then went back to the dome so that the parents would know what happened and that there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Also, he loomed over the dome and watched it - he was waiting for the digestion process to begin; he was people-watching in the most sadistic manner possible, like a child setting fire to ants with a magnifying glass.

But that incarnation of Ghidorah was a bit too stoic and focused for my taste. I want him to hearken back to Shōwa Ghidorah: we don’t know why he does what he does, only that he’s having a blast doing it!

So let’s run with that. I’m discarding the Exif’s name. In another callback to the past, their name can translate as Xians or Xiliens depending on your preference. And the Xiliens don’t often name their god, but they call him one of three euphemisms: The Laughing King, The Golden Light, and The Threefold Death.

The Xiliens also follow their god’s example: they are quite cheerful and always happy to meet new people (because they’ll get to kill them later); they’re decked out in gaudy, shiny golden colors; and when they’re getting ready to kill someone, they do their damnedest to give them a threefold death.

The Death of their Hopes.

The Death of their Body.

And reserved for their god alone, the Death of their World.

When King Ghidorah is summoned by the terrible cruelty and laughter of his followers, a tear into another dimension is opened over the planet, and an asteroid drops from it, with all the destructive power you’d expect of an asteroid strike.

To die in the blast is an honor and a mercy, because the true horror manifests from the molten ruins and lets out a cackling roar that can be heard across the entire planet. If there are any orbiting ships or space stations, the roar defies all laws of reality to be heard there too.

And in every listener, the sound inspires the primal terror of imminent death.

A cornered rat will bite the cat, but the Laughing King does not begrudge his prey. It’s no fun if they don’t fight back! They need to believe that they stand a chance, so that as they lie bleeding and broken by the Golden Light of gravity beams their hopes can die with their flesh!

This is the true purpose of the Threefold Death that is King Ghidorah. You don’t kill for sustenance or defense; such material needs are mark of a mortal. You kill for fun! For the joy of watching life and hope leave a victim’s eyes!

That is the true essence of King Ghidorah!

[violetsystems]

#personal

It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks in terms of work.  It is a little surreal to identify as working for yourself.  I ran into one of the people who hangs out on this block.  I’ve known them for years in passing.  There’s a gang of people who hang out in the alley underneath the subway tracks.  They asked what I had been doing.  I replied I work for myself now.  My office is officially my kitchen.  It look out at those very tracks. They film Chicago Fire and PD on my block often.  I don’t watch either of those shows but it can have a Hollywood backlot kind of feel.  Most of the street level communication I have resembles grittier parts of New York.  There’s no one dominant kind of person on the block.  People tend to keep to themselves but know vaguely what the other’s deal is.  There’s a sort of hidden network of communication maybe.  A block culture.  That can get a little hard to read the further you get away from your safe zone.  I’ve travelled all over the world at this point by myself.  I started travelling to Asia back in 2011 with the intention of networking.  Later in 2014, I revisited making music particularly with a Chicago form of street dance called footwork.  Footwork at the time was on the tip of everyone’s tongue.  But the root of it was buried under layers of white dominated dance music.  In 2015, I decided to say fuck it and try to organize a music tour for myself.  I tried with people in my own city but their personal agendas always eclipsed my basic plans.  There was a bass driven night in Chicago at the time called Coldtech.  It had a sister night in Melbourne.  I tried to organize a tour that passed through on my way from New Zealand.  I went to New Zealand to visit a friend.  I ended up going out on a few dates then ghosted the final night.  Somewhere in there I got detained in customs and accused of being a gang member.  I eventually ended up in Japan where I met Jake Innes.  Jake was an anime nerd and video game freak.  He knew the Coldtech people but was more like me.   Out on his own trying to use his passion to promote something he loved.  Culture.  Just like punk back in the day, you could count on that culture in a pinch to survive.  We travelled all over Japan for a few days.  Jake was my translator.  I was guided to amazing food.  Amazing spots to shop.  We talked about what moved us.  I had come up with this dumb ass phrase at the time.  Yolonet.  A sort of blockchain word of mouth.  Jake had a lot of trust with people.  He was friends with Lil B after all.  It didn’t really matter who he was friends with to me.  I am a very genuine and transparent person.  You have to be when you’ve wasted so much time on liabilities.  You never expect those to turn out to be past friends.  After reading all this depressing news about the entropy in the job search, I felt down.  You don’t expect your professional contacts to just disappear without a trace.  I barely have the connections on professional social networking to prove it.  Those people never reach out.  Never ask how my employment is going.  Don’t even realize I work for myself.  And yet the block knows.  Jake knows too.  In fact, the last two releases I put out just for fun were purchased by him.  The only way I am connecting to people I can depend on is through culture.  Something I can trust beyond politics, sooth saying, and employment fraud.  

There’s people outside of that Yolonet who have gone dark.  Entire segments of ex-friends who memorialize people who have long died while pretending I just vanished from the face of the earth.  It’s been surreal to watch.  Much more disorienting to live.  And yet, I am still here and surviving.  The people in my dash are much realer and emotionally satisfying to me than the people who forgot about me.  And the mystery of why is a little harder to detangle.  I was reading a book about Chinese director Jia Zhangke.  He was talking about how as a kid the only way to escape the place you grew up was to join the army or go overseas to school.  It’s the same if not worse here.  America talks a great game about freedom but it’s at the expense of the coffers of the military industrial complex of world war two.  Thank the baby boomers for that.  It benefits mostly the rich and generationally wealthy first.  Wealth connects and is rewarded by those connections in America with more wealth.  People who have Military family ties seem to always fall victim to the state’s own hidden expectations of connection, opportunity and ability.  Hunted by recruiters since there’s little actual income to go around.  The rich are hording it without paying taxes.  So the military often bullies people into the reserves when there’s no valid occupational work or space on corporate payrolls.  Fight their wars as a gateway into a career in cybersecurity I’m already overqualified for. My current state of wealth is due to a benefit known as a pension.  This is to say I actually worked for it.  And this is also to say I’m not exactly retired by choice.  But I worked with a lot of people I knew for over twenty years.  I literally got people jobs at that place.  My ex girlfriend for one.  That ended horribly.  The other people I helped out to try to connect ghosted me out of guilt presumably.  And so the only people I seem to be able to rely on are in the culture I have built or connected to myself.  This blog has been one of those lifelines in ways I am not at liberty to divulge at times.  There’s people I have better friendships through a click of a button than I’ve had ever in my life.  I used to try to explain these things to people.  And generally my exile from anyone in real life giving a fuck is a harsh lesson in the reality.  People don’t actually listen.  They don’t actually communicate in anything other than comparison and contrast and monetary valuation.  I was reading how a person just literally asked to buy the rights to one of Elon Musk’s tweets for 7777$.  How a sentence from a billionaire is worth more than my pain in this entire process or the lives of the worker’s in his factories even.  We just got six hundred dollars.  That should be enough for us.  But I wasn’t valuable enough to insure past October even though I was paying the premiums.  It would seem the real world’s network isn’t very reliable or at least focused on something so out of sync it seems comically evil.  What can I rely on?  It seems a lot.  I never have felt alone in the last year or so.  Ever since Valentine’s day really.  Sometimes you can show you care by not even saying a word.  Words are worthless when you can buy them for seven grand I guess.  It’s the action of caring and attention that counts.  If you built a foundation on people who didn’t care, your path ahead will be volatile at best.  If you limit someone based on your fear of them outshining you, the results will be constantly mediocre.  And many times, later in life you find you’ve outgrown these limitations people envision you in.  And through that worthless feeling you seek out something true.  You take the once in a lifetime risk to set up your own network.  To leave the baggage and the past behind and see it for what it really is.  Your self worth is no longer shackled by people’s envy, jealousy and active sabotage.  You are a defective crash test dummy that served it’s purpose for capitalism.  Or you can leave the car wreck behind and opt out of the American social experiment entirely.  It’s a free country after all.

The baby boomers did have an answer to all of this.  Shut up and take their money because they know what’s best.  My dad would always say later on in life I’d understand Republicans.  Maybe I’d even want to become one.  Like many Republicans from the suburbs, he’d never be caught dead in the rougher areas of the city much less outside of the country.  I’ve never seen any politicians talking to people on the streets in passing.  I’ve never seen anyone answering, speaking for, or actively working on this privilege that acts like a monkey on my back.  I’m an only child.  When my parents die, my bloodline is some bullshit.  I’ll most certainly have to deal with some estate affairs on either side.  But when I die, who knows where my legacy will go.  Will I get married?  Will I have children?  Will I be able to fulfill my role in the helping America achieve it’s desired GDP?  I can’t even count on my government during a Pandemic let alone to hold people accountable for crimes.  Will I die alone, invisible, broke but talked about on the Internet.  Will people watch my life until the very end to see the tragedy unmatched to their own?  Are people just drunk on making me some sort of talking point?  The gossip will never end.  The sad truth of the last five to ten years for me is simple.  There is an opposite to block chain.  A network of people who only cover for themselves and their lies.  The great lie as they spoke of in Germany did something horribly foul.  A lie when it gets out of control.  A lie when it eclipses the truth.  When every word out of your mouth is gaslighted to protect an entire ecosystem that feeds itself and protects the criminal.  When your very presence needs to be edited and erased to continue the engine running.  A great lie can tear a hole in the very fabric of reality and the truth of a narrative.  And it can suck somebody so far out into space that they have to terraform a whole new network of support.  These days the writing is on the wall.  We trust everything and doubt further.  I have only had the luxury of looking to myself for answers.  I have other inspiration.  The best inspiration if you ask me.  But I keep that to myself for fear of breaches in trust.  But it’s no lie what I believe in.  A freedom that allows love to bloom.  A freedom that values people for what they do in deeds not speculation.  A freedom that is accountable in broad daylight and answers for what it represents.  Opportunities that exist outside of war economies and mark to market accounting.  Making art that connects people without controlling the dialog.  Being part of a culture and democratically so without disrespecting the read receipts.  I’ve been real for longer than most people have been breathing.  Not long enough to claw my way out of the designs these dinosaurs outspend me on.  But the one thing I know going forward is that you cannot get anymore hardcore of a foundation other than being true to yourself.  And I’m proud to surround myself with people who are true to me.  Wherever the fuck you may be.  You all live deeply inside my heart.  And that’s something there’s no price on to betray.  So let’s stop speculating and let’s live in the moment.  I built this Yolonet for us.  And instead of hello world.  Let the first words be simple.  I love you.  World peace forever.  Drink some water.  It’s your human right.  <3 Tim

[nemesis-nexus]

Full Pink Supermoon 2020

HAIL THE ANCIENT FAMILY, HEAR US! It never ceases to amaze me how much we take life and everything in it for granted. What is happening to the world now really should not come as any surprise considering that you can only kick a dog so many times before it jumps up and bites you! In this case the dog is Mother Nature and the bite is in the form of a very serious illness that has forced the human population into the very same form of isolation they have been forcing several other species such as the coyote, bear and wolf into in the sense that the humans are no longer able to go wherever and do whatever they want to because there is a predator on the loose that they can’t see that is threatening their existence! Somehow I don’t think they like the idea of being herded and corralled too much, but what is the likeliness that they’ll transfer this disruption to their lives and attribute it to how they treat the animal kingdom or the ecosystem in general?

I find it interesting that with the resurgence of Paganism and Heathenism that this catastrophic event is occurring now! I mean one (of several) things that we Pagans/Heathens are known for is respecting and coexisting with nature. I’m not saying that we are alone in this HOWEVER this is something we HAVE in fact been SLAUGHTERED for and accused of evil practices and what have you when ALL we were doing was acknowledging the Spirits that exist in all living things including the Earth, Air, Water and Fire and utilizing their properties as Nature intended, in medicines, hunting and religious/spiritual rituals and work! Never taking more than what was needed and ALWAYS replacing what was picked and using every last part of what was taken from the hunt! These are the things that were seriously discouraged against under the severely misguided assumption that everything here is ONLY here for the human race to use, abuse, deplete and destroy yet they can’t fathom how we got to where we are and of course there’s always the scapegoat, the excuse, the one that everyone hangs their hat on so as to avoid having to take responsibility for their actions because of course it’s never their fault!

Unfortunately for them they are going to have to own up to their responsibilities in the latest disaster that is plaguing and I do mean that quite literally plaguing this planet because I believe it's man-made in fact I know it's man-made there is ample proof of this being man-made but that's neither here nor there, the fact of the matter is we need to retrace every step that we have taken that led up to what's currently happening and the fact of the matter is what's going on is born out of indifference, greed, distrust, selfishness and arrogance! What makes me say this? Think about it, why would you mess with a biologic that you know is destructive on such a grand scale that you need to wear hazmat suits yourselves to handle it in a laboratory? What is the point or purpose of having such a biologic in the first place if not to unleash it on the masses to do the irreparable harm that it has done? What other possible motive could you have to engineer something like that and the response really is that there is no other reason why you would create something like this except to do the damage that has done! I am hoping that I am wrong and that this whole fiasco was a terrible mistake but you will have to excuse me if I, with everything else the human race has done, am having a VERY hard time believing this was an accident!

We can sit here and we can spit nails, we can light it up, we can do whatever but the reality is we are where we are right now and regardless of who's responsible and yes those who are directly responsible DO need to be brought to justice and be held accountable for what they allowed to happen! In the meantime we need to put our egos in our pockets and leave them at the door, we need to step back and say look we can't change what happened 6 months ago but we can work on what's happening now so that it's not still happening 6 months from now and if the one of the best ways to staunch the spread of the virus is to socially isolate ourselves then that's what we're going to have to do, it may be frustrating, but it won’t last forever!

For those of you who are Spiritual you know that even if you are away from the rest of the world that we are NOT alone we will always have our ancestors by our side, we will always have our Gods at the helm, we will always have our higher spiritual selves guiding us because at the end of the day that's really all we have - obviously besides the Earth and all the physical things - I'm talking about metaphysical and in these kinds of situations people need to rely on their faith, it is what will get us through even the hardest times. Our Ancestors are proof positive of this fact, it was their beliefs that saw them through some of the most arduous times of human history!

During this time of quarantine it is absolutely imperative that people remember that there are places without walls that do still exist and you can travel to them even while isolated. Again if one is Spiritual you know the physical is not the only realm we operate in and therefore not the only plane we exist on, some people are highly proficient at this and other who are just starting out not so much but Astral Projection is very useful, not just in times like these but during times of personal and Spiritual introspection and just to take Spiritual journey without leaving where you are physically. For those who are not familiar, Astral Projection is the art of being physically in on spot, for example sitting in your bedroom while allowing your Spirit or Soul to transcend your physical being and the physical world and go flying around the Astral Plane.

In other words the metaphysical version of our selves and the realm that exists all around us enables us to take a trip to the woods, take a walk on the beach, do whatever we need to do to get out of our own heads without ever leaving the house! Now like I said those who are not as experienced with using this particular practice may find it a little difficult at first, don’t be discouraged! We all start somewhere and the easiest way to start this is through your basic meditations; deep breathing exercises and an environment conducive to calmness and clarity. Once you setup your workspace, mind you this can be done in Darkness OR Light, it depends on what the individual is more comfortable with, I personally prefer the Darkness but that's just me.

Once you are all set up, sit there and try to relax, again if you're not used to this it might take a few attempts to relax, it may not happen right away but practice makes perfect so just keep at it and you will get it in your own time! Once you are ready close your eyes, breathe deep in through the nose, out through the mouth. Do this for maybe five minutes or however long it takes you to get relaxed and then in your mind envision where it is you want to go, you can just walk around or you can pick a very specific location, for example I love the Ocean! In my Heart I'm always on the beach anytime I get overly stressed or if I'm feeling particularly feisty or melancholy I’m down on the shoreline because the Water is a catalyst, it's also very representative of my Spiritual being in that you may know what I'm dealing with anytime depending on what the Water is doing; for example if the Water is crashing against the Seawall and flying over across the street, chances are I'm a little ticked off or going through a rough time and feeling a wee bit…Energetic… not necessarily in a good way but not necessarily in a bad way; if the Water is calm then I am feeling more contemplative and most likely lost in thought.

I love being on the beach during a Full Moon, gazing at the Moon Trail leading out to the Moon Pool is very alluring, I can't tell you how many times I’ve fantasized about following that trail right up to the pool, obvious problem is the pool is kind of sort of in the middle of the ocean and yeah undertow and riptides are a thing that oftentimes are quite dangerous. This is an example of the Balance that exists everywhere in Nature and why we need to keep alert ESPECIALLY when wandering around the Astral Plane. My point is that by allowing your Spirit to wander by allowing your Heart and your Mind to take flight you're not only alleviating the stress and the strain that you're under, you're also seeing the world through completely different eyes! You are seeing the world the way it was meant to be seen, through the Spiritual and maybe just maybe you'll see it is not necessarily a cage to be trapped, but a MULTIFACETED playground of sorts that adjoins all energy on every level of the Multiverse!

If you're from an inner-city and you're not able to get to a Forest or to the Ocean, it's very difficult it can be very Spiritually draining, but at the same time you have an environment that other people don't deal with and it is important that you stay in tune with it so that when you meet other people from around the world you can explain (not that you owe anyone an explanation) why you're not as able to relax as easily as they are being from a place that may be less volatile. One of the most consistent things that I get told when I talk to people about meditation is that they have a very hard time turning it off, meaning the voices in their head - no I'm not (necessarily) talking about schizophrenia, but generally loud and persistent thoughts. You know when you're going through a very stressful time and replaying the situation or situations depending on what's going on over and over and over again it can be very hard to turn it off.

A great example of this is where a person is located; when you live in a city, especially one that's prone to violence and I don't mean like every other day somebody might get pushed, I'm talking about everyday somebody's getting shot or stabbed or some other horrific thing, chances are you're not likely to be able to relax right away, it depends on the person but you're not as likely to be able to meditate easily because obviously you're concerned about your own safety and that of your family. Unfortunately even here in Boston there have been people who were sitting in their own living rooms minding their own business who have gotten shot and that's inconceivable , I can't even use the word unfortunate it's actually very distressing that you can't even sit in your own home alone and not have to worry about whether or not a bullet is going to come flying through the wall at you! I remember a story a few years ago that there was a three-year-old up on I think it was a third-floor balcony and she ended up getting shot in the spine, it rendered her a paraplegic, however, this Wee Ones Spirit was and is such that she is STILL pushing onward!

It's this kind of craziness that the human race has allowed itself to devolve to that is undermining our ability to move forward as a whole! Our slick, fast-paced, instant gratification culture dictates that we need it RIGHT NOW or all interest is lost in it, there is no patience or tenacity anymore. What is worse is not only do people want instant gratification about everything but they don't care about what happens after they're gone! Now I've touched base on this before and while I can't remember who actually said it, this person states that “the entire purpose of life is to create something that will outlast us” I agree with this wholeheartedly and right now what's going on is a perfect opportunity to do just that because right now we need to remember that we are NOT the only ones living on the Earth, we are NOT the only ones who rely on the ecosystem to live! EVERYTHING here relies on the ecosystem to thrive and everything here needs everything else to exist! We are all connected in the Web of Existence and Life, no one part anywhere can exist on its own, it doesn't matter if you're a bear or squirrel or badger or water lily or deer or whatever it doesn't matter if you are 4 million year old fossil in the in the North Sea somewhere!

It doesn't matter because EVERYTHING is connected and if any one part of that Web falls out of place or collapses or in any way shape or form becomes compromised, everything else suffers and you know how I can prove it? LOOK AT THE WORLD AS IT IS AROUND YOU RIGHT NOW cuz everything that is happening right now is a perfect example of exactly what I'm talking about our environment has been severely compromised on all levels and who's responsible for it??? I’ll give you a hint; it isn't the coyote who lost his habitat because developers decided he wasn't important enough to allow him to have a home, it wasn't the bear in the same situation who was just minding his own damn business eating a fish and just some self important human decided to shoot it, not because it was doing anything, but because it was THERE! It wasn't the cheetah on the savanna and it sure as hell wasn't the polar bear who is currently STARVING TO DEATH because of human greed! It wasn't any of them, they weren’t harming any human, only engaging in what Nature ingrained into them to do, what they have been doing forever without any issues among them! So who's to blame? Yes exactly, the humans who decided that they were above the Natural Order!

The humans are to blame for the wanton destruction and extinction of multiple species both animal and botanical. Now again we can sit here and we can pipsquawk about it, we can raise the roof on it, but that alone is not going to change anything. What needs to happen is we need actions to accompany our words, so addressing the issues is a good start but formulating ideas as to how to go about improving the situation also needs to happen or we are no better off than we were before! I believe this is happening at the very time that Paganism and Heathenism are resurging - mind you I'm not saying resurfacing because that indicates that it went away and disappeared, oh no oh no no no no no, we've been here the whole time watching and waiting, we never went anywhere - just because we were underground doesn't mean that we disappeared no matter how much some people would like to think!

I believe that this is a giant wake up call to everybody and it does not surprise me in the least at all that this is occurring at the time that Paganism and Heathen is resurging as we are the ones who always had a deep respect for Nature and again it's not just us, other cultures all over the world existed and coexisted within the parameters of the Natural World I mean you could call them Heathens as we since the word really only means anybody who doesn't believe in the Abrahamic doctrines which is pretty much anyone. My point is that those who have always respected Nature, those who have always existed within the parameters, those who have always coexisted with the Natural World, that we are making that resurgence and every day I see more and more people wanting to cast off the shackles of Abraham because they are fed up with the hypocrisy, greed, hate and oppression, they are looking to come HOME where they are welcomed as they are and not shamed or beaten into submission over someone else’s self serving agenda!

A few years ago couple years ago in North Dakota when the #NODAPL protests were occurring people from ALL OVER THE WORLD descended upon the Standing Rock Reservation to stand in solidarity with the Sioux. These are people who have NEVER met, had no personal agenda except protecting the Water and Earth, yet they came from EVERYWHERE to let it be known where they stand! There is a Hopi prophecy that says and I'm paraphrasing cuz I can't remember exactly how it is worded but it says that “When the world is in jeopardy and everything is really really bad, that the people will come together from everywhere, united as one and they will be called the Rainbow Warriors” and that is exactly what I'm talking about right now because the Indigenous peoples are very very in tune with Nature and they too could also be considered Heathens, in fact they were called SAVAGES, because they didn't do things the way that the pilgrims did them and like us refused to convert and as a result were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands!

I agree with the Rainbow Tribe prophecy and again it does not surprise me especially after what's been happening since 2016 (and that's very recent yet most certainly not the only example) that the resurgence of Paganism and Heathenism among other Nature based Paths is occurring at the very same time that this is because again I think it's a wake-up call! I think people need to pay attention and realize that we cannot continue to abuse Mother Earth, we cannot continue to abuse the Waters, we cannot continue to abuse the Air or the Fire or the Spirit and NOT expect at some point for it all to turn around and bite us right in the ass! That's exactly what it's going to do and that's what it's doing right now and our only option (in my opinion) is we need to take a step back and realize what is important and what's important is not money it is NOT material wealth nor is it about acquiring all the toys before you die; what's important is LIFE across the board!

If we do not take care of what is happening now anybody who has kids, anybody who has or wants grandkids or has nieces and/or nephews should be aware that it’s YOUR CHILDREN who are going to suffer - and I'm not even going to say from your mistakes as that indicates something occurring accidentally - they're going to suffer from your DELIBERATE AND CALCULATED misdeeds and for those of you who don't have kids who have this “well I'm not going to be here x amount of years from now so I really don't care” you know what? That's the SAME attitude that people who came before you had and look where YOU are! Is that the reason why you feel the way you do? You're so bitter over what they’ve done to you and the things that might have been taken away from you and just destroyed before you had a chance to enjoy them that you don't care if anyone else ends up in that situation?

If so you really need to reevaluate your priorities and get a handle on your ego, realize that you have the power to make the change for somebody else that should have been made for you a long time ago and if you're actively deciding to NOT do that then you are directly contributing to the problem which means you're directly contributing to all those people - NOT just the human people - who are suffering and in many cases are dying not just from covid-19, not just from influenza or the poison pills that Big Pharma churns out regularly to combat a laundry list of imaginary afflictions, not just from pollution, but from lack of give a damn! There are so many out there who need a little help and it doesn't take a whole lot to lend someone a helping hand, you don’t even have to tell them it was you who did it if you are more inclined to do so anonymously.

For example there are commercials that are run on TV for Shriners Hospital that have the kids who are being assisted expressing their gratitude that people care enough to enable them to be kids! While these kids are all amazing and accomplishing great things, it is the ones that are donating to the hospital that are enabling these kids to have a normal life and that's what I'm talking about, a little give a damn goes a long way! When we come together any little thing that we do will help in creating a bigger and better picture for all concerned! We can overcome any problem but we really have to stop thinking about ourselves and lose this me me me me I want I want I want attitude because it’s not helping anyone including ourselves!

We can't live in a self-righteous vacuum like that anymore, we cannot put the ecosystem on the backburner anymore because we are engineering our own destruction when we continue to do this and the evidence is all around us! If we keep traveling down this road we will end up in a sense committing mass suicide and the human race will NOT be the only one to be erased as a result of our arrogance! Our irresponsibility has gotten us to the point where we no longer have the option to put off acknowledging just how much trouble the world is in, we no longer have the luxury to put it aside and not pay attention to it because the ecosystem is just a ‘thing’, it is a thing all right, it is the LIVING and DYING thing that is going to do whatever it needs to do to ensure its own survival with or WITHOUT us!

When you have entire countries going on lockdown forbidding people to travel, in or out, that is a sign of the times and it's not a good one! My Danish friend told me that Denmark is completely locked down and will be so until at least August canceling any and all summertime activities which obviously the people, the kids especially, are not happy about but at the same time I'm sure they would rather live to see next year’s festivities than tempt fate this year and not be around to enjoy next year, so even though it is going to be very difficult I am sure that next year’s events will be that much more rambunctious as a result! It is going to be an extremely trying time but so long as we stand together, so long as we have each other's backs, so long as we take care and give a damn about our neighbors, we WILL get through this, but it's not just about getting through this, it's about what we're going to do AFTER we get through this, how are we going to handle ourselves AFTER we get through this, how are we going to view the world AFTER we get through this, how are we going to treat the environment AFTER we get through this, how are we going to look at our financial situation AFTER we get through this? Why do I bring up finances? Because again one of the MAIN factors that got us to where we are is the never-ending pursuit of the almighty dollar by any means necessary, no matter who it hurts or what kind of devastation it leaves in its wake!

We all know that money is an illusion, it’s really just a form of invisible slavery keeping people on the hook of a faceless entity! It is invisible meaning that you don't actually see your money when it's in the bank but because you have an account you also have a collar around your neck and this is what the world tells you is your personal worth! This is one of several reasons why I believe the human race has lost its way, because the human race has has equated material possessions and money as being a paramount to EVERYTHING else including Life across the board! Many people have this attitude that if you have enough money then you can do whatever you want to, you can burn down the rainforest, you can cut down the woods and develop on the land then kill any animal that has the nerve to be taking a walk through what used to be its home, you can dump all your toxic waste into the rivers and the watershed, you can allow toxins from various industries to pollute the air causing acid rain, you can kill all the animals you want and just toss out the carcass, you can slaughter those wolves and kill that 10-point buck just to have a head for your wall! Hell you can even rape and kill other humans and get away with it so long as you write a big enough check to whoever’s reelection!

If you have the money you're special and you can get away with anything - well we're seeing the result of that right now and the result is you are NOT special, you will NOT get away with anything, you are NOT exempt from anything that you have done and will do! You WILL be held accountable for it all, if not by the human population, then by the Divine, by the Nature Spirits who are always watching over everything! We need to remember who we are we are –we are Water Protectors, we are Earth Guardians, we are here to maintain the Natural Order, we are here to take care of the planet for all current and future generations of Life across the board! Mother Nature really doesn't need for us to do a whole lot of anything as far as taking care of things is concerned; she has been taking care of business for TRILLIONS of millennia and will continue to do so long after we are gone!

What she needs for us to do is STOP taking for granted that things will always be there when we need them as they won’t be if we continue to use up and deplete our natural resources, she needs us to STOP destroying everything because we think we are above it all, what she needs for us to do is make sure that everything is running smoothly so that everything here can stay here! I mean yes we are also here to work the land and to take care of it ourselves and everything else but what we're not here to do is take advantage or to be abusive, to treat everything as though it is beneath us because nothing is beneath us, if anything we are at the mercy of Nature and how well we care for the ecosystem directly determines how well it will take care of us! Remember -the Earth does NOT need us, we need the Earth! We all exist together, we are not above or below anything else, we all exist in the same Circle!

Now with everything that's happening this is the time to take that step back, to take stock of your Life to see what it is that you've been doing up to this point, what it is that you could be doing at this point, what it is you will do tomorrow to help not only yourself but your fellow man as well as the environment! While this is a sermon I am not trying to be overly preachy or anything like that because I know everybody is stressed out, everybody is nearing the ends of their tethers. There's a lot of malaise running rampant and unfortunately this isn't the only thing that's going on for some people. There have been deaths in the family for some people, there have been losses of jobs and income which is obviously not helping the stress levels go down and there are other things that are happening in addition to this virus and the social isolation it made necessary. So yes it is a very trying time but we are a very resilient people, we are a very strong and tough species, we know that we are because if we weren't we wouldn't have survived all these years all these millennia given everything our Ancestors had to work through!

However, sometimes that kind of strength and that kind of stubbornness allows your ego to become a little inflamed and you end up doing what the human race has been doing that brought us to where we are today. While we can't do anything about the past, what we can do is learn from it so that it doesn’t happen again! This is why history is very VERY important as those who forget history as well as those who never knew history and refuse to learn about it, are the enablers! They are the ones that will enable the tragedies and hardships of the past to reoccur! Ignorance is not bliss and we no longer have the luxury of claiming that we didn’t and don’t know just how bad off we are, but again we DO have the power to change course to bring everything back. We can still come back Full Circle and resume showing our Mother Nature the respect and appreciation she damn well deserves because she is the one that provides all of us with everything regardless of what Path we walk, she only cares that WE care!

Without our Mother Nature to provide everything from the Air we breathe, to the Fire that warms us, the Earth we are comprised of, the Water that is Life (MNI WICONI), without her we are NOTHING, we do NOT exist and now is the time to step up and remember this, it's not too late! Yes things are bad, things are VERY bad but it is not too late to change ourselves and in turn change our circumstances! We can, instead of just stewing at home, take this time to contemplate; I mean really, REALLY take into consideration what we want out of Life and how we're going to go about achieving it! Not only that what can we do to improve the situation generally speaking, not just for our neighbors, but for the Earth!

We can clean up the mess we made and even though chances are we're not going to clean up the entire mess in our lifetime, we no longer have any excuses left as to why we can’t at least get the boulder rolling! This is the reason why we utilize what time we do have to create something that will in fact outlast us because if we start now then we can pass on these new values that are directly connected to the Old Ways and eventually one of the future generations will bring it back Full Circle and hopefully at that time a fully replenished Earth and Natural coexistence will once again reign supreme and every species from the Human Race to the Animal Kingdom to the Flora and the Fauna will continue to uphold each other just like we used to before the fevered egos took over!

I still have hope that this is possible and I know I'm not alone on this so we all need to remember that no matter how alone we might feel right now that we are one even though we are many and we stand strongest when we stand together no matter where we are no matter what's going on when it comes to matters of the Heart and Mind distance does not exist, we are all connected through the Spirit!

Those of you who are familiar with my writing know that I like to end my sermons with a personal poem/prayer/song whatever you’d like to call it or with a song that exemplifies everything written in the sermon. This time I am including Heilung’s “Galgadr” because it speaks directly to everything I talked about and being that the song is about Ragnarock, makes it the perfect song for not only this sermon, but to explain WHY the colossal upheaval that is currently underway is absolutely necessary!

This excerpt started life as a stream of thought but since it falls in direct correlation to the sermon, I decided to include it in its entirety!

We WILL get through this so long as we work together and do what we need to do to create a stopping point where this virus finds itself at the end of its own road with nowhere left to go!

Keep the faith! So long as we keep our minds on the present and our focus on the future, there are brighter days ahead! Look no further for proof of this than how much healing the ecosystem has undergone in the couple of months that the virus has forced the humans to be quarantined in their own homes!

It may seem like a harsh observation, HOWEVER, had the human race's consistent assault on the ecosystem not been what it was (and still is) for all this time then perhaps the extreme response from Nature wouldn't have been warranted!

It is time we got past our own fevered egos and came together as the Sisters and Brothers that we're supposed to be, to work towards a mutual resolution that benefits not only the human race but continues to further the healing of our Great Mother Earth!

While we know it is human nature to be social, we also know it's human nature to be competitive. That being said this is not the Hunger Games or Game of Thrones or any other Hollywood inspired garbage, this is REAL LIFE with consequences you take to the grave!

So don't be stupid and don't be arrogant, don't think that because you're asymptomatic that you're not infected and/or can't infect other people! If your local government tells you to stay at home for a period of time then do so!

Remember this is not just about you but about everybody you know! I'm not usually one to obey anything any government says but when it comes to something like this precautions are necessary!

We know that there will be resistors regardless of how much information is put out there so instead of enabling them, let us take care of ourselves and our beloved ones!

"Brothers shall fight

and fell each other,

And sisters' sons

shall kinship stain;

Hard is it on earth,

with mighty whoredom;

Axe-time, sword-time,

shields are sundered,

Wind-time, wolf-time,

ere the world falls;

Nor ever shall men

each other spare.

axe-time,

sword-time,

wind-time,

wolf-time.

I incant against the spirit;

against the walking (spirit),

against the riding one,

against the running one,

against the sitting one,

against the signing one,

against the travelling one,

against the flying one,

It shall completely wither and die.

Now do I see

the earth anew

Rise all green

from the waves again;

The cataracts fall,

and the eagle flies,

And fish he catches

beneath the cliffs.

-Heilung ("Galgaldr")

The point of quoting this song is because it is the perfect description of what is happening right now. It's perfect because what it's describing is in fact the end of the world which is not what people think it is; it is not creation ceasing to exist. What it really is is the destruction of everything that no longer works so that the creation can go on existing and thrive once again!

We know that death is not just a physical thing we have discussed this before, it is Spiritual and Metaphysical as well! We've also discussed that there is no creation without destruction, no life without death! These two things while they may seem like polar opposites are actually what keeps everything in Balance!

The only way for the new world to arise as for the previous world to die off. It may sound harsh but unfortunately in order for the Phenex to rise from the fire it has to burn itself to death first! What emerges from this seeming act of self-destruction is in all reality a more vital and vibrant world!

We are going through such a transition right now and as scary as it is at times, we will get through if we work together AND we will come out stronger and better for it!

ZI ANA KANPA!

(HAIL THE PRIEST OF THE SKY!)

ZI KIA KANPA!

(HAIL THE PRIEST OF THE EARTH!)

MAY THE DEAD RISE AND SMELL THE INCENSE!

(THE WARRIORS WHO WILL RISE UP TO FIGHT THE FINAL BATTLE!)

NEVER Back Up! NEVER Back Down!

NEVER Give Up! NEVER Give In!

HAIL CERRENOUS!

HAIL MORGANA !

HAIL DIANA!

HAIL LUGH!

AVÉ IGGIGI!

AVÉ ANUNNA!

AVÉ DRACHE!

HAIL THE GREAT SERPENT!

RESPECT TO TYR!

RESPECT TO ODINN!

RESPECT TO FRIGGA!

RESPECT TO NJÖRD!

RESPECT TO RAN!

RESPECT TO AEGIR!

RESPECT TO THE NINE SISTERS!

RESPECT TO ALL AQUATIC SPIRITS!

RESPECT TO FREYA!

RESPECT TO FREYR!

RESPECT TO ÞOR!

RESPECT TO BALDUR!

RESPECT TO EIR!

RESPECT TO HEL!

We are ONE even though we are MANY and we stand STRONGEST when we stand TOGETHER!

HAIL THE ANCIENT FAMILY!

🐍🌎🌬🛶💖🌿🦌🐺🐲💧🔥🐉

HPS Meg “Nemesis Nexus” Prentiss

[0100100100101101]

I’ve heard that in the future computerized AIs will become so much smarter than us that they will take all our jobs and resources, and humans will go extinct. Is this true?

That’s the most common question I get whenever I give a talk about AI. The questioners are earnest; their worry stems in part from some experts who are asking themselves the same thing. These folks are some of the smartest people alive today, such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Max Tegmark, Sam Harris, and Bill Gates, and they believe this scenario very likely could be true. Recently at a conference convened to discuss these AI issues, a panel of nine of the most informed gurus on AI all agreed this superhuman intelligence was inevitable and not far away.

Yet buried in this scenario of a takeover of superhuman artificial intelligence are five assumptions which, when examined closely, are not based on any evidence. These claims might be true in the future, but there is no evidence to date to support them. The assumptions behind a superhuman intelligence arising soon are:

Artificial intelligence is already getting smarter than us, at an exponential rate.

We’ll make AIs into a general purpose intelligence, like our own.

We can make human intelligence in silicon.

Intelligence can be expanded without limit.

Once we have exploding superintelligence it can solve most of our problems.

In contradistinction to this orthodoxy, I find the following five heresies to have more evidence to support them.

Intelligence is not a single dimension, so “smarter than humans” is a meaningless concept.

Humans do not have general purpose minds, and neither will AIs.

Emulation of human thinking in other media will be constrained by cost.

Dimensions of intelligence are not infinite.

Intelligences are only one factor in progress.

If the expectation of a superhuman AI takeover is built on five key assumptions that have no basis in evidence, then this idea is more akin to a religious belief — a myth. In the following paragraphs I expand my evidence for each of these five counter-assumptions, and make the case that, indeed, a superhuman AI is a kind of myth.

1.

The most common misconception about artificial intelligence begins with the common misconception about natural intelligence. This misconception is that intelligence is a single dimension. Most technical people tend to graph intelligence the way Nick Bostrom does in his book, Superintelligence — as a literal, single-dimension, linear graph of increasing amplitude. At one end is the low intelligence of, say, a small animal; at the other end is the high intelligence, of, say, a genius—almost as if intelligence were a sound level in decibels. Of course, it is then very easy to imagine the extension so that the loudness of intelligence continues to grow, eventually to exceed our own high intelligence and become a super-loud intelligence — a roar! — way beyond us, and maybe even off the chart.

This model is topologically equivalent to a ladder, so that each rung of intelligence is a step higher than the one before. Inferior animals are situated on lower rungs below us, while higher-level intelligence AIs will inevitably overstep us onto higher rungs. Time scales of when it happens are not important; what is important is the ranking—the metric of increasing intelligence.

The problem with this model is that it is mythical, like the ladder of evolution. The pre-Darwinian view of the natural world supposed a ladder of being, with inferior animals residing on rungs below human. Even post-Darwin, a very common notion is the “ladder” of evolution, with fish evolving into reptiles, then up a step into mammals, up into primates, into humans, each one a little more evolved (and of course smarter) than the one before it. So the ladder of intelligence parallels the ladder of existence. But both of these models supply a thoroughly unscientific view.

A more accurate chart of the natural evolution of species is a disk radiating outward, like this one (above) first devised by David Hillis at the University of Texas and based on DNA. This deep genealogy mandala begins in the middle with the most primeval life forms, and then branches outward in time. Time moves outward so that the most recent species of life living on the planet today form the perimeter of the circumference of this circle. This picture emphasizes a fundamental fact of evolution that is hard to appreciate: Every species alive today is equally evolved. Humans exist on this outer ring alongside cockroaches, clams, ferns, foxes, and bacteria. Every one of these species has undergone an unbroken chain of three billion years of successful reproduction, which means that bacteria and cockroaches today are as highly evolved as humans. There is no ladder.

Likewise, there is no ladder of intelligence. Intelligence is not a single dimension. It is a complex of many types and modes of cognition, each one a continuum. Let’s take the very simple task of measuring animal intelligence. If intelligence were a single dimension we should be able to arrange the intelligences of a parrot, a dolphin, a horse, a squirrel, an octopus, a blue whale, a cat, and a gorilla in the correct ascending order in a line. We currently have no scientific evidence of such a line. One reason might be that there is no difference between animal intelligences, but we don’t see that either. Zoology is full of remarkable differences in how animals think. But maybe they all have the same relative “general intelligence?” It could be, but we have no measurement, no single metric for that intelligence. Instead we have many different metrics for many different types of cognition.

Instead of a single decibel line, a more accurate model for intelligence is to chart its possibility space, like the above rendering of possible forms created by an algorithm written by Richard Dawkins. Intelligence is a combinatorial continuum. Multiple nodes, each node a continuum, create complexes of high diversity in high dimensions. Some intelligences may be very complex, with many sub-nodes of thinking. Others may be simpler but more extreme, off in a corner of the space. These complexes we call intelligences might be thought of as symphonies comprising many types of instruments. They vary not only in loudness, but also in pitch, melody, color, tempo, and so on. We could think of them as ecosystem. And in that sense, the different component nodes of thinking are co-dependent, and co-created.

Human minds are societies of minds, in the words of Marvin Minsky. We run on ecosystems of thinking. We contain multiple species of cognition that do many types of thinking: deduction, induction, symbolic reasoning, emotional intelligence, spacial logic, short-term memory, and long-term memory. The entire nervous system in our gut is also a type of brain with its own mode of cognition. We don’t really think with just our brain; rather, we think with our whole bodies.

These suites of cognition vary between individuals and between species. A squirrel can remember the exact location of several thousand acorns for years, a feat that blows human minds away. So in that one type of cognition, squirrels exceed humans. That superpower is bundled with some other modes that are dim compared to ours in order to produce a squirrel mind. There are many other specific feats of cognition in the animal kingdom that are superior to humans, again bundled into different systems.

Likewise in AI. Artificial minds already exceed humans in certain dimensions. Your calculator is a genius in math; Google’s memory is already beyond our own in a certain dimension. We are engineering AIs to excel in specific modes. Some of these modes are things we can do, but they can do better, such as probability or math. Others are type of thinking we can’t do at all — memorize every single word on six billion web pages, a feat any search engine can do. In the future, we will invent whole new modes of cognition that don’t exist in us and don’t exist anywhere in biology. When we invented artificial flying we were inspired by biological modes of flying, primarily flapping wings. But the flying we invented — propellers bolted to a wide fixed wing — was a new mode of flying unknown in our biological world. It is alien flying. Similarly, we will invent whole new modes of thinking that do not exist in nature. In many cases they will be new, narrow, “small,” specific modes for specific jobs — perhaps a type of reasoning only useful in statistics and probability.

In other cases the new mind will be complex types of cognition that we can use to solve problems our intelligence alone cannot. Some of the hardest problems in business and science may require a two-step solution. Step one is: Invent a new mode of thought to work with our minds. Step two: Combine to solve the problem. Because we are solving problems we could not solve before, we want to call this cognition “smarter” than us, but really it is different than us. It’s the differences in thinking that are the main benefits of AI. I think a useful model of AI is to think of it as alien intelligence (or artificial aliens). Its alienness will be its chief asset.

At the same time we will integrate these various modes of cognition into more complicated, complex societies of mind. Some of these complexes will be more complex than us, and because they will be able to solve problems we can’t, some will want to call them superhuman. But we don’t call Google a superhuman AI even though its memory is beyond us, because there are many things we can do better than it. These complexes of artificial intelligences will for sure be able to exceed us in many dimensions, but no one entity will do all we do better. It’s similar to the physical powers of humans. The industrial revolution is 200 years old, and while all machines as a class can beat the physical achievements of an individual human (speed of running, weight lifting, precision cutting, etc.), there is no one machine that can beat an average human in everything he or she does.

Even as the society of minds in an AI become more complex, that complexity is hard to measure scientifically at the moment. We don’t have good operational metrics of complexity that could determine whether a cucumber is more complex than a Boeing 747, or the ways their complexity might differ. That is one of the reasons why we don’t have good metrics for smartness as well. It will become very difficult to ascertain whether mind A is more complex than mind B, and for the same reason to declare whether mind A is smarter than mind B. We will soon arrive at the obvious realization that “smartness” is not a single dimension, and that what we really care about are the many other ways in which intelligence operates — all the other nodes of cognition we have not yet discovered.

2.

The second misconception about human intelligence is our belief that we have a general purpose intelligence. This repeated belief influences a commonly stated goal of AI researchers to create an artificial general purpose intelligence (AGI). However, if we view intelligence as providing a large possibility space, there is no general purpose state. Human intelligence is not in some central position, with other specialized intelligence revolving around it. Rather, human intelligence is a very, very specific type of intelligence that has evolved over many millions of years to enable our species to survive on this planet. Mapped in the space of all possible intelligences, a human-type of intelligence will be stuck in the corner somewhere, just as our world is stuck at the edge of vast galaxy.

We can certainly imagine, and even invent, a Swiss-army knife type of thinking. It kind of does a bunch of things okay, but none of them very well. AIs will follow the same engineering maxim that all things made or born must follow: You cannot optimize every dimension. You can only have tradeoffs. You can’t have a general multi-purpose unit outperform specialized functions. A big “do everything” mind can’t do everything as well as those things done by specialized agents. Because we believe our human minds are general purpose, we tend to believe that cognition does not follow the engineer’s tradeoff, that it will be possible to build an intelligence that maximizes all modes of thinking. But I see no evidence of that. We simply haven’t invented enough varieties of minds to see the full space (and so far we have tended to dismiss animal minds as a singular type with variable amplitude on a single dimension.)

3.

Part of this belief in maximum general-purpose thinking comes from the concept of universal computation. Formally described as the Church-Turing hypothesis in 1950, this conjecture states that all computation that meets a certain threshold is equivalent. Therefore there is a universal core to all computation, whether it occurs in one machine with many fast parts, or slow parts, or even if it occurs in a biological brain, it is the same logical process. Which means that you should be able to emulate any computational process (thinking) in any machine that can do “universal” computation. Singularitans rely on this principle for their expectation that we will be able to engineer silicon brains to hold human minds, and that we can make artificial minds that think like humans, only much smarter. We should be skeptical of this hope because it relies on a misunderstanding of the Church-Turing hypothesis.

The starting point of the theory is: “Given infinite tape [memory] and time, all computation is equivalent.” The problem is that in reality, no computer has infinite memory or time. When you are operating in the real world, real time makes a huge difference, often a life-or-death difference. Yes, all thinking is equivalent if you ignore time. Yes, you can emulate human-type thinking in any matrix you want, as long as you ignore time or the real-life constraints of storage and memory. However, if you incorporate time, then you have to restate the principal in a significant way: Two computing systems operating on vastly different platforms won’t be equivalent in real time. That can be restated again as: The only way to have equivalent modes of thinking is to run them on equivalent substrates. The physical matter you run your computation on — particularly as it gets more complex — greatly influences the type of cognition that can be done well in real time.

I will extend that further to claim that the only way to get a very human-like thought process is to run the computation on very human-like wet tissue. That also means that very big, complex artificial intelligences run on dry silicon will produce big, complex, unhuman-like minds. If it would be possible to build artificial wet brains using human-like grown neurons, my prediction is that their thought will be more similar to ours. The benefits of such a wet brain are proportional to how similar we make the substrate. The costs of creating wetware is huge and the closer that tissue is to human brain tissue, the more cost-efficient it is to just make a human. After all, making a human is something we can do in nine months.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, we think with our whole bodies, not just with our minds. We have plenty of data showing how our gut’s nervous system guides our “rational” decision-making processes, and can predict and learn. The more we model the entire human body system, the closer we get to replicating it. An intelligence running on a very different body (in dry silicon instead of wet carbon) would think differently.

I don’t see that as a bug but rather as a feature. As I argue in point 2, thinking differently from humans is AI’s chief asset. This is yet another reason why calling it “smarter than humans” is misleading and misguided.

4.

At the core of the notion of a superhuman intelligence — particularly the view that this intelligence will keep improving itself — is the essential belief that intelligence has an infinite scale. I find no evidence for this. Again, mistaking intelligence as a single dimension helps this belief, but we should understand it as a belief. There is no other physical dimension in the universe that is infinite, as far as science knows so far. Temperature is not infinite — there is finite cold and finite heat. There is finite space and time. Finite speed. Perhaps the mathematical number line is infinite, but all other physical attributes are finite. It stands to reason that reason itself is finite, and not infinite. So the question is, where is the limit of intelligence? We tend to believe that the limit is way beyond us, way “above” us, as we are “above” an ant. Setting aside the recurring problem of a single dimension, what evidence do we have that the limit is not us? Why can’t we be at the maximum? Or maybe the limits are only a short distance away from us? Why do we believe that intelligence is something that can continue to expand forever?

A much better way to think about this is to see our intelligence as one of a million types of possible intelligences. So while each dimension of cognition and computation has a limit, if there are hundreds of dimensions, then there are uncountable varieties of mind — none of them infinite in any dimension. As we build or encounter these uncountable varieties of mind we might naturally think of some of them as exceeding us. In my recent book The Inevitable, I sketched out some of that variety of minds that were superior to us in some way. 

Some folks today may want to call each of these entities a superhuman AI, but the sheer variety and alienness of these minds will steer us to new vocabularies and insights about intelligence and smartness.

Second, believers of Superhuman AI assume intelligence will increase exponentially (in some unidentified single metric), probably because they also assume it is already expanding exponentially. However, there is zero evidence so far that intelligence — no matter how you measure it — is increasing exponentially. By exponential growth I mean that artificial intelligence doubles in power on some regular interval. Where is that evidence? Nowhere I can find. If there is none now, why do we assume it will happen soon? The only thing expanding on an exponential curve are the inputs in AI, the resources devoted to producing the smartness or intelligences. But the output performance is not on a Moore’s law rise. AIs are not getting twice as smart every 3 years, or even every 10 years.

I asked a lot of AI experts for evidence that intelligence performance is on an exponential gain, but all agreed we don’t have metrics for intelligence, and besides, it wasn’t working that way. When I asked Ray Kurzweil, the exponential wizard himself, where the evidence for exponential AI was, he wrote to me that AI does not increase explosively but rather by levels. He said: “It takes an exponential improvement both in computation and algorithmic complexity to add each additional level to the hierarchy…. So we can expect to add levels linearly because it requires exponentially more complexity to add each additional layer, and we are indeed making exponential progress in our ability to do this. We are not that many levels away from being comparable to what the neocortex can do, so my 2029 date continues to look comfortable to me.”

What Ray seems to be saying is that it is not that the power of artificial intelligence is exploding exponentially, but that the effort to produce it is exploding exponentially, while the output is merely raising a level at a time. This is almost the opposite of the assumption that intelligence is exploding. This could change at some time in the future, but artificial intelligence is clearly not increasing exponentially now.

Therefore when we imagine an “intelligence explosion,” we should imagine it not as a cascading boom but rather as a scattering exfoliation of new varieties. A Cambrian explosion rather than a nuclear explosion. The results of accelerating technology will most likely not be super-human, but extra-human. Outside of our experience, but not necessarily “above” it.

5.

Another unchallenged belief of a super AI takeover, with little evidence, is that a super, near-infinite intelligence can quickly solve our major unsolved problems.

Many proponents of an explosion of intelligence expect it will produce an explosion of progress. I call this mythical belief “thinkism.” It’s the fallacy that future levels of progress are only hindered by a lack of thinking power, or intelligence. (I might also note that the belief that thinking is the magic super ingredient to a cure-all is held by a lot of guys who like to think.)

Let’s take curing cancer or prolonging longevity. These are problems that thinking alone cannot solve. No amount of thinkism will discover how the cell ages, or how telomeres fall off. No intelligence, no matter how super duper, can figure out how the human body works simply by reading all the known scientific literature in the world today and then contemplating it. No super AI can simply think about all the current and past nuclear fission experiments and then come up with working nuclear fusion in a day. A lot more than just thinking is needed to move between not knowing how things work and knowing how they work. There are tons of experiments in the real world, each of which yields tons and tons of contradictory data, requiring further experiments that will be required to form the correct working hypothesis. Thinking about the potential data will not yield the correct data.

Thinking (intelligence) is only part of science; maybe even a small part. As one example, we don’t have enough proper data to come close to solving the death problem. In the case of working with living organisms, most of these experiments take calendar time. The slow metabolism of a cell cannot be sped up. They take years, or months, or at least days, to get results. If we want to know what happens to subatomic particles, we can’t just think about them. We have to build very large, very complex, very tricky physical structures to find out. Even if the smartest physicists were 1,000 times smarter than they are now, without a Collider, they will know nothing new.

There is no doubt that a super AI can accelerate the process of science. We can make computer simulations of atoms or cells and we can keep speeding them up by many factors, but two issues limit the usefulness of simulations in obtaining instant progress. First, simulations and models can only be faster than their subjects because they leave something out. That is the nature of a model or simulation. Also worth noting: The testing, vetting and proving of those models also has to take place in calendar time to match the rate of their subjects. The testing of ground truth can’t be sped up.

These simplified versions in a simulation are useful in winnowing down the most promising paths, so they can accelerate progress. But there is no excess in reality; everything real makes a difference to some extent; that is one definition of reality. As models and simulations are beefed up with more and more detail, they come up against the limit that reality runs faster than a 100 percent complete simulation of it. That is another definition of reality: the fastest possible version of all the details and degrees of freedom present. If you were able to model all the molecules in a cell and all the cells in a human body, this simulation would not run as fast as a human body. No matter how much you thought about it, you still need to take time to do experiments, whether in real systems or in simulated systems.

To be useful, artificial intelligences have to be embodied in the world, and that world will often set their pace of innovations. Without conducting experiments, building prototypes, having failures, and engaging in reality, an intelligence can have thoughts but not results. There won’t be instant discoveries the minute, hour, day or year a so-called “smarter-than-human” AI appears. Certainly the rate of discovery will be significantly accelerated by AI advances, in part because alien-ish AI will ask questions no human would ask, but even a vastly powerful (compared to us) intelligence doesn’t mean instant progress. Problems need far more than just intelligence to be solved.

Not only are cancer and longevity problems that intelligence alone can’t solve, so is intelligence itself. The common trope among Singularitans is that once you make an AI “smarter than humans” then all of sudden it thinks hard and invents an AI “smarter than itself,” which thinks harder and invents one yet smarter, until it explodes in power, almost becoming godlike. We have no evidence that merely thinking about intelligence is enough to create new levels of intelligence. This kind of thinkism is a belief. We have a lot of evidence that in addition to great quantities of intelligence we need experiments, data, trial and error, weird lines of questioning, and all kinds of things beyond smartness to invent new kinds of successful minds.

I’d conclude by saying that I could be wrong about these claims. We are in the early days. We might discover a universal metric for intelligence; we might discover it is infinite in all directions. Because we know so little about what intelligence is (let alone consciousness), the possibility of some kind of AI singularity is greater than zero. I think all the evidence suggests that such a scenario is highly unlikely, but it is greater than zero.

So while I disagree on its probability, I am in agreement with the wider aims of OpenAI and the smart people who worry about a superhuman AI — that we should engineer friendly AIs and figure out how to instill self-replicating values that match ours. Though I think a superhuman AI is a remote possible existential threat (and worthy of considering), I think its unlikeliness (based on the evidence we have so far) should not be the guide for our science, policies, and development. An asteroid strike on the Earth would be catastrophic. Its probability is greater than zero (and so we should support the B612 Foundation), but we shouldn’t let the possibility of an asteroid strike govern our efforts in, say, climate change, or space travel, or even city planning.

Likewise, the evidence so far suggests AIs most likely won’t be superhuman but will be many hundreds of extra-human new species of thinking, most different from humans, none that will be general purpose, and none that will be an instant god solving major problems in a flash. Instead there will be a galaxy of finite intelligences, working in unfamiliar dimensions, exceeding our thinking in many of them, working together with us in time to solve existing problems and create new problems.

I understand the beautiful attraction of a superhuman AI god. It’s like a new Superman. But like Superman, it is a mythical figure. Somewhere in the universe a Superman might exist, but he is very unlikely. However myths can be useful, and once invented they won’t go away. The idea of a Superman will never die. The idea of a superhuman AI Singularity, now that it has been birthed, will never go away either. But we should recognize that it is a religious idea at this moment and not a scientific one. If we inspect the evidence we have so far about intelligence, artificial and natural, we can only conclude that our speculations about a mythical superhuman AI god are just that: myths.

Many isolated islands in Micronesia made their first contact with the outside world during World War II. Alien gods flew over their skies in noisy birds, dropped food and goods on their islands, and never returned. Religious cults sprang up on the islands praying to the gods to return and drop more cargo. Even now, fifty years later, many still wait for the cargo to return. It is possible that superhuman AI could turn out to be another cargo cult. A century from now, people may look back to this time as the moment when believers began to expect a superhuman AI to appear at any moment and deliver them goods of unimaginable value. Decade after decade they wait for the superhuman AI to appear, certain that it must arrive soon with its cargo.

Yet non-superhuman artificial intelligence is already here, for real. We keep redefining it, increasing its difficulty, which imprisons it in the future, but in the wider sense of alien intelligences — of a continuous spectrum of various smartness, intelligences, cognition, reasonings, learning, and consciousness — AI is already pervasive on this planet and will continue to spread, deepen, diversify, and amplify. No invention before will match its power to change our world, and by century’s end AI will touch and remake everything in our lives. Still the myth of a superhuman AI, poised to either gift us super-abundance or smite us into super-slavery (or both), will probably remain alive—a possibility too mythical to dismiss.

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Stories from the Blue: Beach Watch

For more than 20 years, volunteers with Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary's Beach Watch program have been surveying California coastal beaches. These volunteers walk the beaches of Greater Farallones and northern Monterey Bay national marine sanctuaries each month to collect data on live and dead species of birds and marine mammals, as well as on human activities. Read on for Beach Watch manager Kirsten Lindquist's Story from the Blue to learn what makes Beach Watch such a special program.

Kirsten Lindquist (at right) gives a lecture about California wildlife to a group of Beach Watch volunteers. (Photo: Philip Barlow)

Kirsten:

I graduated from school back in 2000, and spent 11 or 12 years doing remote field work. I had a lot of experience working with the same species that we have here in the San Francisco area, only in the places where they breed, like Alaska and Chile, and I was ready to set down roots. So, six years ago I came to Beach Watch because I have a skill set that is applicable to teaching people about the species that are found here. I never anticipated what I was getting into: walking in the door and suddenly working with a team of over 100 Beach Watch volunteers.

We currently have about 140 volunteers, and almost every one of them has been with the program more than five years. In fact, we have 12 who have been with the program almost 25 years. The volunteer retention rate for this program is phenomenal.

These volunteers are really life-long learners, and we are satisfying their curiosity about our wildlife in exchange for all of their time and energy in collecting data along the beach. We foster a sense of community by providing an opportunity for a group of really interesting people to come together and learn together, and together they provide an incredible data set on our stretch of coast that can start to speak to long-term biological and ecosystem trends.

"In many ways, we provide the eyes and ears on the beaches. The first step toward understanding the world begins for us on the beach. And there is nothing more exciting or challenging than what we do. Without solid, honest information it is impossible for communities to make long and short-term decisions. We are the army of citizen scientists who provide data and stand up for the Earth so that our children will have a better world than we did."

-- Ed Ryken, Beach Watch volunteer since 2008

We hold trainings for new volunteers every couple of years, and usually around 50 people apply who really want to be in the class. Usually our training classes are filled to capacity, at 25 spots. Those people go through an intensive process that equals about an 80-hour training and a mentorship period before they're actively collecting data. Once they've gone through the training they are assigned to a beach, where they conduct a survey one time a month. These people become the experts on that beach. They collect wildlife data about the birds and mammals that are using that stretch of coast, as well as record dead wildlife. They also monitor human uses and any oil deposition they may find on that beach. Those data then can be used in any number of ways.

We've had a number of oil spills along this coast that Beach Watch has recorded, and we've documented many other sanctuary management concerns. We also work with several different land managers with overlapping jurisdiction along this coast: two national parks and a number of state, county, and regional parks. All of those groups have access to Beach Watch data, and use them for their management purposes. So our volunteers get a lot of satisfaction from seeing how their data are used in so many different ways.

"You really feel like you're making a contribution to something much bigger than yourself, but your focus is on your beach, so it doesn't feel overwhelming. We are all on this planet together, and Beach Watch is a small part of what it will take to keep it healthy."

-- Anne Kelley, Beach Watch volunteer since 2012

In fall 2014, we had hosted two new training classes. Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary expanded northward in 2015, but just prior to that the Greater Farallones Association had already brought Beach Watch up the coast to that area. So we had added 40 new recruits  to the project to monitor the newly extended area, and they were super excited to get out on the beach. The day that our second training session ended, we got a phone call from one of our new volunteers saying, “there are 180 dead Cassin's auklets on my beach." This was before their surveys had actually started, but it was basically the very first time these 40 new Beach Watch volunteers were to strike out onto the beach, prepared for action. As it turned out, this occurred in the middle of the largest Cassin's auklet die-off that's ever been documented on the West Coast of North America.

It was a trial-by-fire initiation. We found ourselves literally wading through a massive number of dead birds, saying, 'this isn't characteristic, this isn't normal -- believe me! Oh please don't be scared off." Ultimately, not a single person quit -- not that they weren't fazed by it, because it was an incredible sight and fairly disturbing. However, they were prepared for it, and they were game. They knew that the data they were collecting reflected the leading edge of the storm. These new Beach Watch surveyors were collecting very timely and pertinent information that now, two years later, we are contributing to four manuscripts that will go out for peer review in 2017. Also, we've had 15 different conference presentations over the last couple of years on that die-off. Academics from all over the country have asked us for those data. So these poor volunteers, who I was so terrified would all bail, just toughed it out and were absolutely incredible about starting their Beach Watch "careers" at this disturbing but amazing time -- they could see just how important the Beach Watch data they gathered were.

It's one thing when we call out the troops for some unusual event like an oil spill or a die-off. But it's another thing altogether to be out there on the beach every month, over a period of several years, conducting regular, systematic surveys. Those are really the data that are so interesting and unique, because they provide us with a baseline of the normal conditions along our coast. We could then state with confidence and accuracy that the fall of 2014 was exceptional, because we had data reaching back 24 years that told us this was a huge and important event. We could prove it. But, to just go out during an event and say, "Wow, a lot of birds died!" -- well, what does that really mean without this historical baseline data? That is what is so important about what our Beach Watch volunteers do: they go out and collect the "zero" or baseline, data. Those data show what things are like here normally, so that we can then call out what is unusual, should an event occur in the future.

"I grew up on beaches and am intrigued with intertidal ecosystems and their inhabitants. I've seen many changes in the populations of intertidal animals and some seabirds over just the last 5-10 years and the kind of information obtained from this kind of monitoring contributes to the knowledge base needed for effective protections. On a personal level, I like being able to contribute to something important and it's such a tremendous learning experience."

-- Hollis Bewley, Beach Watch volunteer since 2014

We look for people who are really excited to learn, have a passion for wildlife, and who also have an aptitude for filling out forms -- as tedious as that is. We don't need someone to come to us and say, "I already know all the birds and mammals out there, I know the scientific method, I know all of these things." Instead, we welcome people who are hungry to learn even more about our wildlife and ecosystem, and to learn more about Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary's science and specific data collection methods. And ultimately, they understand how all of this ties into our conservation strategies. Beach Watchers see clearly that they play a significant role in the science and education community that supports this vital work.

Beach Watch volunteers survey a beach. (Photo: NOAA)

Videos by David J. Ruck/NOAA

Learn more about Beach Watch on the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary website.