#making it make sense in terms of tectonic plates and what not

[yourstrullyme]

its about the world building

[sidekick-hero]

Written for @steddieholidaydrabbles, prompt "spring" | wc: 1.000 | also written for the Stranger Things writing guild prompt "new beginnings" to celebrate @pearynice's birthday 💜| tags: second chances, blind date, exes to lovers, modern au

Eddie often wonders why he can't say no to Chrissy. It's become as much a part of his life as his love for Metallica or his ambidexterity. Whenever Chrissy insists, "You can't stay home every night and mope, Eddie. It's time to get out there and meet new people. You should start dating again, Eddie. New city, new opportunities." he tries to reason with her. He explains that he's not moping, for heaven's sake, and that he's meeting lots of people through his guitar lessons. He insists that he's content to be single. But Chrissy is relentless, wearing him down until he finds himself clad in black jeans and a burgundy button-down he never knew he owned, heading to his favorite bar to meet the mysterious blind date Chrissy has arranged for him.

Chrissy hasn't provided much information about the guy, just that he's about Eddie's height, athletic, and apparently very handsome and 'dreamy' - whatever that means. Eddie isn't convinced that this is his usual type, nor is he sure that he fits the bill for what this guy might be looking for. But Chrissy has a point; it's been over five years since Eddie's last serious relationship, and none of the guys he's dated since have been anything more than casual flings. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to try something different.

Since moving to New York eight months ago - first as Chrissy's roommate, then as her friend - Eddie has been searching for a sense of purpose. Los Angeles had lost its allure; too superficial, too jaded, too artificial. The only real connection he had there was Steve, who left the city and Eddie years ago, leaving Eddie adrift. Eventually, Eddie came to terms with the unlikelihood of his rockstar dreams and decided it was time to face reality.

Hence his move to New York in search of a fresh start. And maybe, just maybe, a chance at a lasting relationship - one that can mend the Steve-shaped hole in his heart.

It's hope more than anything that brings Eddie to the Hideout to meet his blind date on a warm spring night in late May. According to Chrissy, the guy would stand out with his overly preppy attire - a stark contrast to the Hideout's dive bar atmosphere.

The bar is bustling, as usual for a Saturday night. As Chrissy predicted, Eddie spots his date almost immediately - not because of his outfit, but because of the familiar figure perched on a barstool, nursing a beer.

It's Steve Harrington sitting across from Eddie, every bit as captivating and alluring as the day they first met seven years ago, when they were both waiting tables in Los Angeles.

The moment Steve spots him is unmistakable and his wide eyes convey that Steve, too, had no idea that Eddie would be his blind date - a twist of fate that brings them together again after so many years and miles apart.

"Steve," Eddie croaks, his throat dry and his heart racing as he approaches. "I had no clue, I swear. If I'd known Chris was setting me up with you, I would've warned her that you'd probably never want to see me again. Been there, done that, right?" He chuckles nervously, realizing he's on the verge of putting his foot in his mouth - his usual tendency. "God, I'm so sorry, really."

Steve continues to stare at him, blinking as if trying to make sense of the situation. Slowly, like shifting tectonic plates, he returns to the present, acknowledging the awkwardness of being set up on a blind date with his ex.

His voice, slightly breathless, finally breaks the silence, accompanied by a faint smile. "Well, you didn't ramble quite as much on our last first date."

Eddie can't suppress the laughter that bubbles up from within him, recalling fondly their first first date. "I have no idea how I pulled that off, to be honest. I was so nervous, I thought I was going to puke."

Steve's laughter fills the air, drawing a grin from Eddie. "Yeah, you looked even paler than usual, and the bar for that was actually pretty low."

"Oi, just so you know, it's called alabaster skin and it's considered very sexy."

Steve lets his eyes roam over Eddie's slender form in a way that still manages to fluster him, heat creeping up his neck and onto his cheeks.

"Sure," he agrees easily after a moment's pause. Then, meeting Eddie's eyes, Steve continues, his tone serious. "Listen, I had no idea you'd be my blind date, but now that we're both here... maybe we can catch up? It's been a while, and truth is, I miss you. I've been thinking a lot about you, about us. I know we broke up for a reason, but I feel like... maybe we could've tried harder, y'know? I could've tried harder."

That's so Steve, Eddie thinks, feeling a pang in his chest. He's never met anyone who wears his heart on his sleeve the way Steve does.

Pulling a five-dollar bill from his pocket, Eddie places it on the bar before reaching out to Steve. "Wanna get out of here? Take a walk and talk?"

"There's nothing I'd rather do," Steve replies, intertwining their hands as they leave the bar and step out into the warm, spring-scented night air.

They find themselves in a nearby diner, where they spend the night talking - about their past, their present, and, tentatively, their future. They only part as the sun begins to rise, a soft kiss goodbye all they allow themselves to end this magical night.

A kiss and a confession.

"I'm so glad we got a second chance, Eddie," Steve whispers, voice full of sincerity. "I don't want to start it off with a lie.A friend stood me up; that's why I was at the bar. Not as your date."

Spring, with its promise of new beginnings, has never smelled sweeter, Eddie thinks as he kisses Steve again with a grin on his face.

[saturnsbabyboii]

💮Random Astro Notes, Answering Questions and a lil Rant💮

🪷The house that Saturn resides in can tell us what items we have been more careful and gentle with. To name a few, people with Saturn in 3rd house may have their books degrade faster, and their phones break often. Saturn in 4th need to be careful with their furniture, photos, kitchen, and even their entire home. Saturn in 7th may lose or damage their jewelry. Saturn in 11th may electronics break and malfunction.

🪷The house that Scorpio and Pluto reside in gives us some insight into how/where we are mistreated, misunderstood, taken advantage of, and perhaps even abused. However, it’s also where you’ll eventually come on top. If you thought Saturian karma doesn’t play then wait until you see Plutonian karma. Unlike Saturn, it is public and done indirectly. Because it’s the house of death (symbolically more than literally) and transformation, Pluto works slowly but on a large scale. Just like tectonic plates, they're slow and great. It may very well (especially for Scorpio) happen after your death or in a different lifetime. 

🪷The Pisces paradox of being obsessed with yourself and taking pictures 24/7 and also desiring to escape your mortal flesh

🪷Side bar but I love how the sign of most season winners and of miss congeniality on Ruapul Drag Race is Taurus followed by Libra. It makes for Venusians to dominate a beauty competition show.

🪷Leo and Libra placements are obsessed with having an aesthetic. They drown themselves in whatever they find beautiful, and they do it well.

🪷I never understood the obsession with spouse, wealth, fame, and indicators in the chart. To me personally, when it comes to these subjects is that if you aren't actively trying to have or working in whichever way that suits you and seems the most effective, you won't attain it. How are you getting anything without putting an effort into it?

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Questions Asked:

🌸@brielledoesastrology thank you for the message, but I don't want to tell people about my chart 😅. I like to be as impartial as I can when it comes to doing astrology. I do it to help people and for fun not for fame or any gratification. It may seem dramatic but I swear it's easier when people don't know 😭

🌸 @spixcyy "Can I ask if you're gay?"

It's giving (Yes, I am very colorful and zesty)

🌸 Question from @iproposedtoyomamaandshesaidyes: “Heyy wassup bro how’s everything? I have Chiron in Leo is that a good placement?” 

Heyy, I am good thank you and I hope you’re healthy and happy. Well, it depends on what we mean by “good”. In terms of the role of Chiron in Leo’s role in your trauma and healing. 

Here are some of my interpretations of Chiron in Leo:

Sensitivity to your sense of person

Having limited self expression or authenticity (The house Chiron resides in can indicate where, how, and in some cases by whom.)

Being forced into the collective and not allowed to have a sense of independence

Individuality and unbecoming is a major life themes/struggles (regardless of the house)

Problems with self esteem, courage, vitality, creativity, and originality

Having a hard time accepting your possibilities and fearing success

Fear of disappointing role model/guide 

Pressure from an early age for living a prodigy

Having to play a “role” or a character for a large portion of your early years

Trouble feeling that you do not have a central purpose or reason for existing

Difficulty understanding what it is you are ‘supposed’ to be doing with your life, yet having an overwhelming sense that you are supposed to be doing something.

Excessive rebellion or conformity 

Healing and Moving on:

Learning to be content

Finding yourself as you move along life

Accepting that you won’t find instant solutions and results

Allowing yourself to grow 

Forgiving yourself for being the person you were and needed to be

Helping others embrace their qualities (especially those that are viewed negatively by society) will help accept yourself

Leading with love and compassion, not detachment

As Chiron is the great healer that can’t heal his wound, your life purpose is:

To lead by example

Break the mold

Be the new “normal”

Perseverance

Act as a leader of the collective rather than be part of the group

Depending on the themes of the house Chiron resides in, you’ll work as a great motivator and healer in that aspect of life.

Hope this was of any help and thank you for your question.

🌸 @astro-lab asked :” So what is “the other Lilith” that comes with every chart? Which one is more relevant? How are they related?”

There are four asteroids that are part of Lilith. 

- First, we have the Black Moon Lilith or Mean Lilith (h12), which is the most commonly used and referred to when people say “Lilith”. This is the one that is usually used in birth chart tools you find online.

The others are Asteroid Lilith (1181), True/Osculating Lilith (h13), and lastly, we have Dark Moon Lilith/ Waldemath Black Moon (h58).

Mean Lilith uses the average orbit of the theoretical Black Moon. This is why she is called Mean Lilith. “Mean” refers to the average, not her temperament. For True Lilith, her orbit oscillates or interchanges constantly. This Lilith uses the actual, real orbit of the Black Moon rather than the average in comparison. As for Dark Moon Lilith, some people have claimed to have seen this Moon, although its existence is debatable. Asteroid Lilith is the only Lilith that is an actual astronomical body.

In terms of their relevancy and importance depends on what areas of life are you looking to get insight from. Like other asteroids, they can shed light on things we tend to overlook. However, when it comes to Lilith, in general, these are things that we feel but never understand period. 

The Mean Lilith is widely used because it takes the average orbit of Lilith and its mystic influence astrologically. In the birth chart, it represents the unconscious mirages that we create to protect our most vulnerable parts and deepest fears. Where we tend to be mistreated the most as Lilith had been and how can we fall victim to others but also heal, transform, and regain that power.

True Lilith in contrast is what we might now refer to as “your villain origin story”. This is where we find ourselves pushing the boundaries of ourselves and others. Our darker instincts and desires. 

Asteroid Lilith is where and how we embody Lilith through the chart and in our everyday life.

I hope I was able to explain it well but thank you so much for your question 💕

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That's it, thank you for the questions and for reading.

Adios PUTAAASSSS

[ifuckinglovedinosaurssomuchjesus]

Pretending End Cretaceous mass extinction event never took place, do you have any thoughts on speculative evolution and how dinosaurs and their contemporaries may have evolved through the years?

Like the explosion of mammal biodiversity probably wouldn’t have taken place, but what else? Assuming other global processes like plate tectonics, and the accompanying changes in currents, oxygen cycles etc, if you only take away the asteroid and it’s direct consequences, how do the dominoes fall?

Well, AFAIK the asteroid wouldn't have had any long term affects on the planet's tectonic activity or the climate. It was an apocalyptic event for sure, but depending on what scientist you believe, the immediate effects of the impact were over anywhere from a couple thousand years to only a few months.

So the plates would still move the way they have in the Cenozoic and the climate would still cool down and dry up due to the Earth's orbit and Milankovitch cycles. There would still be an Ice Age and animals would have to adapt to it.

The main difference would be life of course, and I cannot stress this enough, everything would be different. There would be no placental mammals, plant life would be mostly angiosperms but not in their total domination we see today, teleost fish wouldn't fill almost every aquatic niche like they do today, and of course there'd still be a shit ton of dinosaurs.

The thing about the asteroid was that it basically wiped the earth clean of entire clades, and those vast expanses of open niches is what kickstarted the biosphere we know today. There would be literally nothing in common with our "timeline" if it hadn't hit, except for some extreme cases of living fossils like Triops or Lepisosteus. No Mackerel, no Poison Dart Frogs, no Rose Bushes, no Great White Sharks, no Leopard Slugs, no Bears, no Giraffes, no Komodo Dragons, no Coconut Trees, no Crows or Ravens, etc.

In that sense though, 66 million years isn't that long in the perspective of the Mesozoic, so there wouldn't be anything crazy different from the Cretaceous. I doubt we'd see any dinosauroids for example. There would still be big sauropods and big theropods to hunt them, there would still be pterosaurs and marine reptiles of all kinds, there'd still be Ammonites and plenty of lobe finned fish, etc.

I think it's safe to say the arms race between armored Ornithischians and Tyrannosaurs would fizzle out, and much like the Stegosaurs and Carnosaurs of the Jurassic, they'd go extinct to make way for other animals to take their place. Maybe gigantic dromaeosaurs and quadrupedal ornithomimids or extremely armored sauropods and pterosaurs with bone crushing beaks, the possibilities are endless and I'm sure there's a million speculative evolution projects out there trying to answer that question.

Basically, we wouldn't be here making these posts.

[jjaynze]

I really love your art and I especially love the Borderlands stuff. In particular the Hyperion Rebirth AU. I would love to see more or even just explore the idea. Like just how Athena took over, how she did it with Janey and Fiona, they're relationship, Janey's hand, their status in the Borderlands and much more.

If your open to it I do have certain ideas for it.

Like Hyperion falling into what amounts to a civil war with Jack's death, how badly he ran it, and all the money and resources he sunk into Pandora on top of Helios crashing Planetside. Athena and Janey are dragged into one side and Fiona by a another on the company planet of Theia. (The wife of Hyperion and Goddess of sight and brilliance along with gold, silver and gems with their brilliance and value). All three meet once again and start to work together to win control over Hyperion themselves.

oh my god hi!!!! tysm for the ask i never expected anyone to ask me about this old au <3

side note btw that i apparently decided to exclude Fiona from this au 🥲 she’ll likely have an appearance other places but won’t have any direct connections to Hyperion

under the cut is a very unorganized set of pictures + explanations of what i had in mind for Hyperion’s Rebirth:

—-—-—

ORIGINS

to start, i just want to mention how this au came to be.

it was mostly fun and games tbh, where i was in an era between playing BL3 and BLTPS constantly. although i never used them, i found it ironic that in BL3, the Hyperion weapons had shields extremely similar to Athena’s shield.

since i was SUPER disappointed that Athena didn’t even at least have a mention in an ECHO, and i was SUPER deprived of content of her, i decided to make a FUN, NON-CANON ALTHOUGH HEAVILY LORE-BASED, COMPLETELY SELF-INDULGENT AU where Athena had taken over Hyperion just bc she wanted to 😇 starting this project in 2021, i would work on this on and off for my own enjoyment

flashforward only one year later—

………..hashtag goals 🤟🏼. never worked on it for a while even before ntftbl was announced unfortunately 💔

HYPERION ITSELF

you were very spot on with the concept of Hyperion being on the planet Theia, i was super confused seeing it bc i never remembered sharing anything about this 😭😭

i wanted Hyperion to be SUPER heavily reinforced, because of how widely loathed the company is, its history, and because of the overall environment of Theia. every few hours, the surface shifts from entire slabs of the floor, taken from the idea of plate tectonics.

i was also gonna work on the unique fauna, just like how Pandora has skags and Eden-6 has jabbers !! i had only given it caracals since they’re my favorite animal :,3

blands LOVES their greek myth motifs so i wanted to apply that here also

a common trend with the corporations was that each tend to have some kind of second base. i used Selene and Eos, since they were also the children of Theia and Hyperion (Helios isn’t present since it crashed obv).

i never had any ideas for Selene, but an idea i had for EOS was that it was an underwater ship.

CHARACTERS

THIS I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE MOST!!!

a very specific headcanon i have for Athena is that it isn’t her real name. she was very young at the time she was taken into Atlas, where they had actually given the assassins different names. her real name is Gayle Alvarez, to which she rejects as symbolism to how she’s letting go over her past after all these years, accepting who she is now. (she gave herself that last name “Hoplite” tho LMAO)

^^ this all comes from that fact that i was VERY petty over the fact that her sister, Jess, should’ve been named Minerva. it makes more sense to me idk

ANYWAYS this just describes Athena and Janey’s positions in Hyperion just a little bit. Athena is obviously the CEO and Janey has taken position to where she had designed almost everything.

in terms of the third point, i had actually wanted to make the Voice of Hyperion to be a prominent character in here also!! i didn’t get too far with her unfortunately 💔

FUN FACT i was actually also gonna bring HoloJack as a character concept, although he’s just stuck in an ECHO device. i was thinking that in order to run Hyperion, Athena would need the advice of an ex-CEO. they both only agree to an exchange of management tips for a new body. Athena obviously flanks out after getting Hyperion into a suitable condition, then stuffing the ai into a submachine gun and launching it towards the furthest planet 🤔 it was a funny concept but i dropped it after a while

—

on to something more specific, i do wanna mention this art piece, which ties into another one of my headcanons.

Janey was born on Elpis, being present before and after the Crackening. as it occurred, she had been exposed to whatever unstable eridium had managed to leak through, all without her knowledge—she barely remembers anything of the sort happening

TO SUMMARIZE, Janey is like the Lost Legion Eternals, specifically, a Phasewalker!!!! from the game, the LLEs only ascend once reaching a near-death situation, which explains why Janey never figured it out. the closest she did was when she and her ex gf were mauled by Flamey, where her Phasewalking activated and she managed to get away.

STORY

there is no story, sorry. 😓🤕

the closest i have are unofficial concepts, since i had literally almost zero experience and knowledge in world building.

the main idea i had focused on was something to do with Athena’s old Atlas squad, the Omega Assassins. from some, currently undecided decision, Vulcana, Hera, Minerva, Ceresia, and Helicon found themselves alive, even after supposed elimination from the BL1 Vault Hunters. despite her betrayal, they wanted Athena back, and would do anything to prevent her from settling away.

ALSO, another idea was that after the Omega Assassins found out that Athena was married/engaged, they had cut off her ring finger. this explains why i drew her wearing her rings on a chain near her chest.

below is an extra character development attempt which i had named “scene where janey plays the guitar”

this takes place moments after the assassins kidnap Athena and destroy their home for, again, some undecided reason 😭 i wanted to study Janey’s devotion towards a happy life, since i would also think of her having extreme attachment issues. she’s typically the optimistic character that sees the good through any situation, so i wanted to try to see how she would face against her everything being taken away from her again.

i also gave Janey a resentment of anything that resembles a kraggon, no matter how friendly☝🏼

—-—-—

i wish i had worked on this au so much more than what i shared. i was extremely passionate about it and i kinda still am!! even with how half-assed most of the lore is with blands, i still absolutely DEVOUR any little bit of canon Athena content available.

a COMPLETE story of Hyperion’s Rebirth is unfortunately unlikely now, especially with how it’s heavily implied to be. CANON now 😰😰. i would love to work on it again, but i just don’t really see a reason to 💔

tysmm for the ask again, i appreciate it a lot!! i rambled a bit too much but i wouldn’t mind talking much more about the little ideas i have ^_^ 💐

[realmmaker]

Any idea is a potential world. Really. Commonality Part I (the Geography).

While rummaging through a drawer, I came across a scrambled Rubik's Cube. Now like the average person, I can't solve the puzzle but kept fiddling with it regardless. As the blocks continued to shuffle and click, it set off an idea that turned into a whole world.

The name of this post and subsequent follow-ups will be Project Commonality. So stay tuned for regular updates. What is the closest thing to a Rubik's Cube we can relate to? The answer lies right in front of us, rather we live on the answer. A small rock floating in space, neatly divided into quadrangular segments by imaginary lines. Earth is divvied by latitudes and longitudes.

These segments are called Graticules (technical term, I checked). How does this tie into a Rubik's Cube? Well, like how every piece on the cube turns, let's have the graticules turn around, shall we? Imagine Earth where the graticules turn at periodic intervals vertically and horizontally like a Rubik's Cube. Also like a Rubik's cube we have to make the opposite central squares immobile, that is the North and South Poles.

So we have a world in which chunks are moving freely (except immobile ones), now for that to happen in some realistic sense let's make sure each graticule is its own tectonic plate (which slides down all the way into the mantle from the crust) that is capable of moving freely across the mantle.

We have boundaries made, but can they be expanded upon? Let's jump deeper into the scientific aspect itself. There are 4 spheres- atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere each representing air, land, water, and life respectively.

Since life (the carbon-based one we are very familiar with) originates within the water, it's very reasonable to merge both spheres onto the same lines. Meanwhile, lines denoting atmosphere and lithosphere will always be apart. Since water and aquatic life are continuously connected across the latitudes there will be continuous oceans along the laterals (East-West) of the world.

What about the atmosphere, lithosphere lines then which represent thematic opposites? How about we create a literal divide (contrasting the literal combination of hydrosphere and biosphere)?

From the image, we can see the world's graticules divided into continuous steps. Each unit has an altitude rise as we move north along the graticule, a common apex height, and then an abrupt drop into a gap where lava erupts from large geysers (these develop rock caps that blow open as the graticule moves and cool down again into caps). Beyond the lava lies the next graticule and its lowest point where this trend is repeated again. This continues throughout the world. The dead space is empty, mostly uninhabitable land that is exposed to lava outbursts as wind is funneled from the top of the graticule downwards, resulting in pushing lava into the dead zone. These lava eruptions also make contact between North-South graticules next to impossible while East-West graticules can easily interact as they are connected primarily by water and don't have the mantle bursting regularly.

From the picture below we can see how the world looks like a giant, spiky ball that constantly shifts. The altitude gradients support the wind flow and how air would result in accumulating lava periodically in the dead zone.

Due to this interesting structure, the people of the world mostly interact only along the East-West direction while never attempting North-South contact due to inherent risk.

This behavior will give rise to many different peoples, ideologies, and cultures which we will be detailed in the following parts with inspirations different from the Rubik's Cube.

Stay tuned for the next part. Releasing soon! Mr. Real Make

[originalzito]

"Well, it is. There is a great deal of mental anguish in the world, and some of it we see and some of it we try to deal with. And it is increasing. I think the physical and the mental pain in a sense is increasing. If you imagine the amount of painkillers that are consumed, say, in the city of New York every year, you might be able to make a mountain out of it on which you could go skiing—you know, all the aspirin, powders. Of course we do see some of it, but people usually suffer in silence or in privacy. And certainly when it’s a question of mental anguish, not all of it, only very little of it is ever revealed. We live, as it were, unaware; those of us who are spared this live unaware of the fact that there are these huge mental asylums everywhere and that there is a fluctuating part of the population which is forever wandering through them. It is a characteristic of our species, in evolutionary terms, that we are a species in despair, for a number of reasons. Because we have created an environment for us which isn’t what it should be. And we’re out of our depth all the time. We’re living exactly on the borderline between the natural world from which we are being driven out, or we’re driving ourselves out of it, and that other world which is generated by our brain cells. And so clearly that fault line runs right through our physical and emotional makeup. And probably where these tectonic plates rub against each other is where the sources of pain are. Memory is one of those phenomena. It’s what qualifies us as emotional creatures, psychozootica or however one might describe them. And I think there is no way in which we can escape it. The only thing that you can do, and that most people seem to be able to do very successfully, is to subdue it. And if you can do that by, I don’t know, playing baseball or watching football on television, then that’s possibly a good thing, I don’t know."

Max Sebald

[cpw-nyc]

Occam's Razor Explained

&  How it Differs from Other Rational Principles

This is a video explaining Occams's Razor, which is a normative, rational pattern of thought. It also explains how this principle differs from Inference to the Best Explanation and some other similar principles. There is also an explanation of an individual's ontology. To illustrate all of this, several examples are used involving the germ theory of disease and plate tectonics. This video was originally developed for use in an introductory level philosophy course, Introduction to Ethics, but it can be used for any philosophy course. Comments Amazing explanation of Occam's razor. I was teaching my students about Occam's razor and needed to check my own understanding of what it really means. I read a few notes about it and browsed on youtube to find out more. Found some but nothing as helpful as yours. You have helped me beyond what I already knew ( or thought I knew ) . Explaining how we choose the simplest solution based on our ontology makes so much sense. I also love the examples using the continents because it shows the choices we make in our explanation. Thank you. Thanks for the more detailed explanation.  I originally heard the term in Carl Sagan's PBS series Cosmos and then again in the movie Contact.  P. S. I used it in trying to figure out how you're writing backwards on a glass board.  I initially thought you're either a genius who can see this in his head and transfer it to the board for us to be able to read it, or that you're really not left-handed and that you probably just inverted the video image.  Because most people are right-handed I assumed the ladder.  Yes?

The best presentation on YouTube on "Occam's razor". from 0.20 to 6.00 minutes. what clarity man !  many thanks. you deserve a standing ovation ! This video is an  absolute must for all PhD students 1. every human possess an ontology  model deep inside his mind 2. formal education must help every  man to digout-clarify his own  ontology model 3. else... ! 4. all expenditure on education  in terms of money-time-efforts will  go waste 5. as man becomes older , he must attempt to simplify his own ontology model as much as possible 6. he must document-publish it before he dies ! 7. he must pass it on to the next generation as legacy.

Does Occam's Razor rule out Objective Morality? This is a video lecture on chapter 17, titled "Values in a Scientific World", of Russ Shafer-Landau's book, 'Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?' The argument that this chapter considers is one that claims that if one follow's Occam's Razor, then one ought to reject the reality of objective moral facts or laws. This is an argument for moral skepticism, and Shafer-Landau offers several responses to it and in defense of moral objectivism. In the end, he claims that this use of occam's razor defeats itself. This lecture is part of an introductory level philosophy course, Introduction to Ethics. https://www.youtube.com/embed/TEh_qCApvGY

Jeffrey Kaplan

[fatehbaz]

And so the trees drew my imagination back into the past: Where did all this amazing, diverse sound come from? What stories are buried down there in the soil? And how do they intersect with the everyday human experience of sound -- of listening to music and talking? [...] Time is the place where kinship comes from. [...]

The kinship that you mentioned is a kinship between the living world and what we usually regard as the nonliving world, although the boundaries get somewhat hard to define. So, for example, when we hear the songs of birds that live in forests, particularly dense forests, they tend to be slow, whistled melodies, because that is the kind of sound that transmits well through that habitat. You go out to the prairie, and you hear lots of rapid trills and ups and downs in the frequency suite, because that is the sound that works well there. Go to the ocean shore and you hear cries of gulls and oyster catchers that carry over the tumult of surf. And so the physicality, the materiality of the world, has, in a way, woven itself into the sonic diversity of the creatures that live within that world [...]. This applies below the waves as well: fish and whales are making sounds that transmit well over the right kind of distances for the ecology of their own species. This relationship between materiality and the form of songs applies not just in air, but in water and solids as well. [...]

Mostly when we hear a birdsong, we just think, “Oh yeah, that’s an American robin,” or whatnot. We don’t think, “Oh, that song has within it the imprint of the forest in which that robin has been living.” We’re hearing the legacy of plate tectonics and great migrations of creatures from one part of the Earth to another just by lying in bed and listening to birdsong in the morning. You don’t even have to get out from under the covers and you can hear this magnificent legacy of kinship, not just in the present moment but in deep time.

-------

In the rainforest, and indeed most other habitats, the sound is just a lot more intense in part because there are orders of magnitude more species there, but also because the insects have a different evolutionary path from one another. The crickets have a different way of listening and a different thing that they’re listening for in the sounds; different species of birds have different ways of appreciating sound and hearing the sound of their own species; the mammals, the primates, all have different voices. All of that is converging and singing at once in the rainforest [...].

So there are all kinds of stories, but those stories are not coming from the mind of one person. [...] But to listen in the forest is to belong within a much bigger set of narratives. The narrative of the living Earth is not just about me or, indeed, my own species; it’s about the convergence of multiple narratives that have to make it work with one another [...] .

Most of the stuff around us came from places that we have no direct sensory connection to. And, in fact, that disconnection is not just a side effect of the global economy; it is a necessary part of continuing the destruction. Because if you separate people from the consequences of their actions, then those actions will continue and short-term profit and gain will be made, but long-term loss will ensue. [...] This all sounds very dire, and there are dire problems, but the great thing about the senses is, they’re joyful. [...]  So the senses bring us great pleasure at the same time that they’re orienting us to the important work of ethical discernment.

-------

Words by: David G. Haskell. “Listening and the Crisis of Inattention: An Interview with David G. Haskell.” Article/interview published by: Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. Emergence Magazine. 21 April 2022.

[adobe-outdesign]

How do you feel about the fake groudon from the jirachi movie (if that thing even counts as a pokemon)

I wouldn't consider it one, but it's close enough so what the hell, I'll count it as an honorary mention.

Also disclaimer, I haven't watched this movie in years and I'm working off Bulbapedia and my memory here, so apologies if I get anything wrong.

Anyway, fake Groudon up there (known as Meta Groudon in Japan apparently so I'll just use that name) is from the fourth movie, and it has the dubious distinction of being completely horrifying. It gives me Princess Mononoke vibes, in the sense that it's semi-eldritch in nature and scary as hell.

Anyway, the first thing to note is that Meta Groudon is fucking huge. In all honestly this is always the size I expected regular Groudon to be instead of the actual 11' canon height. Seriously, even Mega Groudon is only 16'! This feels like it's got a more imposing vibe that's appropriate for a legendary.

Secondly, it's got a funky gel-like body structure that allows it to absorb other livings things like some kind of fucked up ameba. This comes with the charming ability to extend its spikes and claws into weird tentacles to grab things with, which I can dig. Also, the way its voidish underbelly lights up like that is also pretty slick.

In terms of the design beyond that, it works for what it is, but in a weird way I wish it was pushed more? And by that I mean the design is... weirdly accurate to an actual Groudon. Sure, it's got green instead of black and a slightly gooier appearance, but the body structure is near-identical, as are the markings. I know it's a clone, but considering how messed up it is I would've liked to see that fact integrated into the design more. Make parts of its body sliding off like tectonic plates over lava or something, have way too many spikes protruding all over the body, that kind of thing.

Also, I'm not huge on the green. I guess I want more of a bright yellow or something that compliments the red and helps the tentacles to stick out more. In a weird way they kind of blend into the background because they're the same color as everything else.

But overall, for just being a weird fucked up fake Pokemon it does its job. I would've liked to see the design be a little more messed up in terms of looking less like a Groudon, but granted kids were already horrified of this thing so maybe it's for the best that it doesn't look any more horrifying.

[dizzydancingdreamer]

What Am I? | Kol Mikaelson

Hello my lovelies! Am I back doing my thing where I write for three days straight and then go missing for three weeks? Probably! But I’m not one to complain so I’m going to ride out this streak of inspiration for as long as I can! I’m not sure if any of you had the joy to read any of the chaos between @activist-af and I but if you did than you know exactly how I feel about Kol. Perhaps this can be my ode to him. Until next time, all my love <3

Description: Kol finally breaks from all the years of feeling like the bad guy

Pairing: Female!Reader x Kol Mikaelson

Warnings: It’s angsty at the beginning but it’s fine

Word count: 2.6k

Tags: Angst, Fluff

P.S. I strongly recommend listening to Paralyzed by NF while you read this because I had it on a loop the whole time and it really sets the mood

(Pics not mine but mood board is :) )

“Kol, stop!” your lungs are burning, your legs numb from trying to keep up with him.

He storms across the compound, not quite at full speed but fast enough to ensure you have to run to keep up with him. His shoulders are tense, his eyes locked in front of him. You can feel the anger rolling off of him in thick, hot waves. You’re not a vampire by any means but you don’t need super senses to understand how dangerous he is at this moment. Whatever, you don’t care. He’s not going to ignore you, you won’t let him.

“Fuck, Kol!” you grab his arm, tugging with all your strength, “god damnit, stop walking! Talk to me!”

He yanks his arm forward but you don’t let go. Instead your body swings forward with his movements, bringing you closer to him than you’ve been able to get all day. You shake your head. All week would be more accurate. Your best friend has been avoiding you all damn week and you have no idea why. You’re done waiting for him to tell you. If you have to rip away every layer of him to get to the bottom of this, you will.

“Let go of me, y/n,” he continues to stare forward, his jaw tight, “I don’t have time for this.”

You scoff, trying to ignore the way your chest stings, “no time for what, Kol? Me? What on earth is going on?”

He just clenches his jaw tighter, looking to the side. This time your chest feels like it’s being cracked open. You let go of his hand, taking a few steps away from him. You don’t know what the fuck has gotten into him but you don’t like it, not one bit. This isn’t your Kol. Your Kol is sweet. This is a monster. You haven’t ever dared to think of him as such but today, you suppose, his true colors are showing. 

“Who the fuck are you?” 

The silence after your words is deafening but it doesn’t last long, seconds at the most. It’s like a dam breaks in Kol. No, that’s not strong enough. It’s like the tectonic plates inside him shift and it sends a tsunami storming to the surface. He whirls around, a myriad of emotions swirling through his eyes. He takes a step towards you, a darkness you’ve never seen hanging over his features. You take a step back, you're not completely stupid. You have no misconceptions about what’s happening. You’re the beach in this situation, and you’re about to get destroyed. 

“You really want to know who I am?” He takes another step towards you, a tiger on the prowl. 

You raise your chin but still step further away from him. He’s never hurt you before. Hell, he’s never even yelled at you. But today there’s something in his eyes, something dangerous, and you’re only a human. You grit your teeth, feeling much weaker than the front you’re putting on. 

“I know who you are and this isn’t it!” you spit the words at him, hoping they’ll break through the storm that’s clouding his features.

He laughs but it’s dry; humorless. Your heart zaps again. He’s still moving towards you and you’re still moving away from him.  This game of cat and mouse is slowly becoming lethal.

“No, darling, you don’t,” despite the circumstances you can’t stop the way your body sings at his term of endearment, “you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

You take another step back and freeze, your back colliding with the wall. Crap. You hold your arms out towards him but he doesn’t stop, closing the space between you and him even when your hands land on his chest. You can feel the heat rolling off of him through the shirt he’s wearing. He’s like a furnace, lulling you despite the clear threat he poses. You dig your nails into his chest, pushing back with as much fire as you can muster.

“Kol, please, you know that’s not true,” you back your head against the wall, biting your lip at the slight pain, “just talk to me. Please. You’re scaring me.”

You’ve never had to say those words before and you hate them but not as much as you hate the way Kol flinches, like he’s taken a bullet, and backs away from you. He drags a shaky hand through his hair, his eyes squeezed shut. Your breath hitches, your blood running cold. When he opens his eyes they’re glassy. If your chest felt like it was being ripped open before, now it feels like someone reached inside the crack and tore out your heart. 

“I-,” Kol stares into your eyes for a moment before turning away from you, “you need to go. Now. Don’t come back.”

You can’t breathe, you're just stuck, glued to the wall while all the oxygen is sucked from the room. You’re helpless, watching him walk away. Your heart is in his hands but you can’t get it back. You can’t move. You don’t want it back anyway. It means nothing without him. You slide down the wall, your eyes glued to his retreating figure. 

No. You furrow your eyebrows. No, he doesn’t get to walk away from you, not after this long. Who does he think he is? You push yourself up, a wave of red hot something flooding your entire being. It laces your blood with fire, one you’re pretty sure can only be quelled by the man walking away from you. You don’t think, you just go. 

You clear the space between the two of you in seconds, your hands once more wrapping around his arm, “No, you don’t get to walk away like that. You don’t get to leave me, Kol Mikaelson! I won’t let you!” 

He freezes, his body going tense. He doesn’t try and yank his arm out of your grasp again. You stare at him, refusing to look away, afraid that if you do he’ll disappear. He sucks in a breath, swallowing harshly. You watch his adam's apple bob and fight the agonoy eating at your core. Come on Kol, turn around. 

As if hearing your thoughts he spins around, his arm breaking from your grasp. You don’t have time to feel anything from it, though, before he grabs your jaw, forcing your eyes to meet his. When you do you gasp, a chill running down your spine. His eyes are pitch black, nothing near their usual honey shade, and the skin around them is a sickly purple, dark blue veins running towards his cheeks. 

He sucks in another harsh breath, his nostrils flaring and his chest brushing yours, “do you honestly think that I could ever leave you?” he laughs bitterly, his eyes flitting over your face, “I couldn’t leave you if I tried. But I need to. Don’t you fucking get it? I’m a monster!”

This time it’s you who flinches. You wrap your hands around his arm, clinging to him as his words pour over you. You can’t breathe again but this time it’s a little different. It’s less agony and more breathlessness. You tighten your fingers, trying with everything you have to anchor yourself to him. 

“No you’re not,” you grit your teeth, meeting his harsh stare head on, “you’re not a monster, Kol! You’re so many things but you’re not a monster. You can’t be.”

His grip on your jaw lessens, his shoulders sagging. The black in his eyes begins fading, the veins receding and leaving nothing but his usual dark circles. Your heart clenches at the sight. He clearly hasn’t been sleeping. 

“Yes I am,” he mutters, his voice rough, “all I do is hurt people. Fuck, I’m hurting you right now!” 

You shake your head, trying to push back the flood of tears that suddenly blurs your vision, “No, Kol, you’re not,” your voice is thick, the lump in your throat a mountain, “you could never hurt me. Not in the way you’re thinking. You only hurt me by leaving me. Please, don’t leave me.” 

His hand fully loosens as he slumps to the floor, your words the final push to his crumbling will. He buries his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking. He’s crying. You are too, your heart in pieces at the sight of your best friend. The man you love. The best thing you’ve ever had now reduced to his knees. Pain explodes in your chest and your palms sting, an icy burn running up your arms and hitting your heart dead on. 

He lifts his head, revealing bloodshot eyes laced through with hell itself, “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I can’t separate anything in my head. The anger and the hurt, all of it! I can’t remember where I stop and everyone else starts. Who the fuck am I?” His voice cracks and, with it, your heart, “I’m just this fuck up to everyone but I haven’t even had the chance fuck up!” 

Your chest aches desperately for the man at your feet. You know what he’s talking about. A thousand years of life and yet only awake for a fraction of it. That would make any reasonable being crumble and it would take significantly less than a thousand years for most. You don’t know how the hell he does it. You haven’t died once. You’re only supposed to die once. He’s died a hundred times. Oh, Kol. You drop to your knees and pull him against you, crushing him to your chest to the best of your abilities.

“You don’t have to know who you are. I know who you are, Kol, and I’ve always known. You’re the strongest person I know. You’re my best friend. You’ve fought off death, and hunger, and your family. You don’t have to fight me off too!” you run your hands through his hair, pulling his face to meet yours, “you can rest now. You’re mine, Kol Mikaelson, that’s all you need to know.”

It’s surreal, to say the least, telling a vampire who he is. He should know better than anyone. After all, he’s supposed to have had a thousand years to figure out. Your chest squeezes painfully when you think of the years that were stolen from him. You run your fingers over his cheek, your thumb swiping some stray tears. 

He leans his face into your hand and you sag against him, cool relief fighting the fire in your veins. It’s the sweetest feeling you’ve ever experienced. Kol wraps his arms around you, pulling you into him. Even when kneeling he towers over you, curling around you. You can’t stop the sobs from coming and you don’t want to, gripping his shirt painfully. A week's worth of fear and worry pours out of you and he takes it like the rock he is. Maybe you’re the tsunami and he’s the beach after all.

He slips a hand into your hair, tugging gently to make you look at him, “I’m yours?”

His eyes are red rimmed and full of something that makes you ache. His lips swollen and red. His hair, mussed from your hands and his, sticks up at all angles. It doesn’t make him look bad, though. No, it makes him look like a fallen angel. His skin catches the light, a golden hue painting his features, pooling in the circles under his eyes. Your hands tighten on his button down, if that’s possible, and you swallow hard. He’s yours and you aren’t letting him go, not for the next thousand years. 

“Yes,” you nod your head hard, trying to drill into him how , “yes, you are. All mine. Just like me to you. I’m all yours Kol. Every part of me.”

His eyes darken again and the ache intensifies, curling around each nerve in your body and setting everything on fire. He’s no longer an angel. Who are you kidding, he was never one in the first place. He’s always been your demon, the one who crawled straight from hell to be with you. Looking into his eyes, you bite your lip, power surging through your veins. He survived a thousand years only to end up in your arms. His chest rumbles against yours, his hands finding your hips and hauling you into his lap. 

He takes your face in his hand again, a little rougher than before but you don’t care, “all mine. Always mine, do you hear me? I’m not just some short term fling. You’re mine until the end.”

Your heart hammers in your chest, your stomach a ball of white hot need. It’s final, there’s no allusions now, not that there ever was any. You love him. With every fibre of your being you love Kol Mikaelson.

You move your hands to his face, bringing his face down to yours, “Until the end, Kol.”

You smash your lips against his as soon as the words pass your lips, your fingers dragging through his hair. It’s like silk under your fingers and you can’t resist pulling at it. He moans into your mouth, the sexiest sound you’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing, and squeezes your hip with his hand, bolts of lightning zapping straight to your core. You pull his bottom lip between your teeth, biting down hard. He meets each nip with one of his own, running his tongue over your bottom lip. His mouth is like magic, spreading a warmth through each of your bones, one that melds with the inferno raging through your being.

“Darling,” he moans into your mouth again, his arms wrapping around your waist, “fuck, I need you.”

You tie your arms around his neck and cross your ankles around his hips, pressing yourself as close to him as you can get. You can feel the hard plains of his stomach against yours, the heat from his chest seeping against your blazing skin. You crash your lips against his harder, his fingers digging into your hips and pulling incoherent muses from your mouth. You can’t get enough of him, he’s like water. Like oxygen. Without him you would most certainly die. 

 “Then take me, Kol, I’m yours. Please.” 

His answer is a growl, one that sends more of the endless heat pooling in your core. There’s no way he can’t smell you right now. You can smell you. He must be fucking bathing in how much your want him. How much you need him. You run your fingers down his back, clawing at his shirt. He stands suddenly, jostling you against him deliciously. Before you can blink you’re in his bedroom, bouncing against his deep blue comforter. His room smells like him, like nutmeg and cloves, and it hits you hard, intoxicating you with everything Kol. 

He pulls his shirt over his head, tossing it quickly to the side before settling over you. You run your fingers up his back, admiring the way his muscles tense under your fingers before pulling him against you. You wrap your legs around his hips, rolling against him hungrily. He wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you flush against his heaving chest. His nose brushes your cheek and you sigh, his lips finding your ear. 

When he speaks his words whisper against your skin, sending toe curling shivers down your spine, “I love you. You hear me? I love you, darling. It’s you and me.”

You arch your chest against him, digging your fingers into his hair and pulling his lips to graze yours, “I love you, Kol Mikaelson. If you ever need to know who you are just remember this. No matter what else, you’re mine,” you press your mouth against his, using your tongue to punctuate the most important words you’ve ever said, “that’s all that matters. Mine.” 

“All fucking yours.”

[ambarto]

Middle Earth geology: a masterpost

I did say I would do it once and I did it, a masterpost of all the works I found online pertaining to geology in Tolkien’s works. This isn’t to say that it’s a complete list of everything that has been written about the subjects - there’s multiple works that I’ve seen cited in some of these articles that I could not find anywhere, and likely other works I just didn’t dig deep enough to find. If anyone has links to additional works, feel free to share them, and I’ll add them to the post. Many of these works are somewhat old, but for the most part they’re still good in the points they make.

General Middle Earth works

A New Synthesis on the Geology of Middle-earth: Genesis, Orogeny and Tectonics by Chris Ingles and Lindy A. Orthia (2016) - an overview of all the mountain ranges in Middle Earth and how they might have come to be, as well as a discussion on what may have happened to Beleriand. Differs from many other articles in this list, as this one includes also the magical aspects of Arda’s formation rather than attempting to only use strictly realistic geological concepts. One of the longer articles here with 14 pages in total, but the language used makes it easy to read.

The Geology of Middle-earth by William A. S. Sarjeant (1995) - a general overview of tectonical processes involving Middle Earth, in particular relating to tectonic plates and faults. Literally the first results I got when I googled “geology tolkien”. Not too long and not too complicated a read, many of the technical terms used receive an in-text explanation. Includes various maps. The most difficult parts to understand are probably towards the end, with citations from “The Geomorphology of Middle-earth” by Robert Reynolds (the whole article wants to present a more recent take on the previous work by Reynolds, an article that gets cited a lot but I haven’t been able to find anywhere).

Glaciation in Middle-earth by Samuel Cook (2016) - part of a copy of the journal “Anor”. Article is four pages long and fairly easy to understand. The topic straddles the line between a geological and a more geographical/climatological narrative, but geologists love glaciers so we’re gonna put glaciers here too.

Middle Earth Geology, a thread (2019) - not an article, but a thread on TheOneRing.net forum were various users discuss possible explanations for various features of Middle Earth and Beleriand. Because it’s a forum thread it doesn’t have definite conclusions, simply puts forwards multiple theories. A few mentions of things that get overall overlooked in other works, like some of the mountain ranges present in Beleriand.

The Geologic History of Middle Earth by Benjamin D. Hilton (2009) - this is a rather technical paper in language, and extremely speculative. Essentially, this paper talks about an hypothetical history of Middle Earth on a real world geological timescale, starting 1.7 billion years ago. The way the article is written as if the author was able to gain actual field data, and while much of what is said makes sense as far as theories go a lot of it is based on fake evidence peppered in through the paper. Doubtful in conclusions, but a fun read for sure

The Elder Ages and the Later Glaciations of the Pleistocene Epoch by Margaret M. Howes (1967) - this work is often cited as the first article investigating Middle Earth’s geology so I couldn’t not add it here. I should however mention that the contents are, well, they’re kind of a wild ride. The article essentially strives to explain how Middle Earth could have hypothetically been turned into modern day Europe and tries to give an explanation to real glaciations through the eyes of Tolkien’s works. I wouldn’t really call this article scientifically or historically sound, it’s more definitely a curiosity if anyone is interested. A bit longer than some other articles. Scan of a typewriter document, which might make it a little harder to read.

The Shire

The Geology of the Shire by Mike Percival (1984) - second article in this PDF. The document is a scan of an old copy of “Anor”, which may make it harder to read than some other files. Short article and without a lot of technical terms. Very little tectonics, mostly makes guesses as to what kind of rocks you might find in various areas of the Shire. Also features a geologic profile and map.

Khazad-dum/Moria

The Draining of Moria by Mike Percival (1987) - part of a scanned copy of “Anor”. Explores theories on how the Dwarves of Moria would have gotten rid of the water that might have flooded the mines, and before that makes hypothesis on the kind of bedrock Moria might have been built into. It also answers a question as to why the Sirannon formed a lake outside of the Doors of Moria. Fairly easy when it comes to language.

The Mines of Moria - a comment by Ted Crawford (1988) - a comment on the previous article, again on an “Anor” journal. Focused more on the engineering side than the geological one, I’m mostly adding this one for completeness, but it doesn’t really contradict the purely geological conclusions. Lots of numbers going on there.

The Mines of Moria - Further Thoughts by Mike Percival (1988) - a comment on the previous comment. Same journal, same discussion. Once again, more engineering focused, but might be interesting.

Numenor

Geographical Observations on Numenor by Duncan McLaren (1985) - once again, scanned “Anor” copy, and not the best scan I’ve seen. Short article, not exclusive to geology. The part dealing with what kind of rocks you might find on Numenor, which is also probably what may interest a fic writer more, seems overall rather reasonable. Also gives a theory on plate tectonics and attempts a geological explanation of the Akallabeth.

On Numenor by Mike Percival (1985) - a comment and response to the previous article. Scanned “Anor” copy again. Focuses on the plate tectonics, and has a somewhat more technical language than the previous article, going more in depth. Alternate view for an Akallabeth event than the previous article. Also features maps.

Paleontology

Paleontology in the Silmarillion by Mike Sutton (1991) - very short and very easy in language. Doesn’t really go particularly in depth on any matter, essentially explores how there could be certain similarities between what is considered (or was considered, paleontological ideas change a lot in thirty years) the order in which various life forms appeared and certain language used in the Silmarillion. If you thought that this was an “Anor” copy, you guessed it right.

Misc

“Beneath the Earth’s dark keel” Tolkien and Geology by Gerard Hynes (2012) - this article doesn’t deal with the geology of Arda, but rather speculates the way Tolkien himself might have tried to work geology within the text by considering the state of geological knowledge and how it evolved during Tolkien’s life. Also covers a little the history of the theory of plate tectonics, if anyone is interested about learning about it.

Re-reading the Map of Middle-earth: Fan Cartography’s Engagement with Tolkien’s Legendarium by Stentor Danielson (2013) - this is not a geological article, but a cartography article. The reason I added it is because a lot of the geological studies on Middle Earth, especially of the tectonics kind, are based on how maps look like and what deductions can be made from the shapes you see on them. As this author points out, maps are not necessarily accurate with their information, especially older ones, and might do things like, for example, make mountain ranges be excessively straight in line. A bit long, but worth reading.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 120

Time for some of the more technical stuff! These chapters take the longest to write, without fail, largely because I made the dumb (in retrospect) decision early on to choose and actual known-exoplanet (Kepler 442b) to base Von on *facepalm*. Which means an inordinate amount of fact checking and maths when I get to the chapters like this one.

Thanks for this chapter to go @baelpenrose and @charlylimph-blog for beta-reading, and @nasa for the phenomenal amount of information that is publicly available for me to use when writing chapters like this.

Xiomara leaned back in her seat and propped her feet on the table in my office, ignoring the scowl Alistair shot in her direction. With a sigh, she folded her hands behind her head. “The next gravity adjustment is soon, now that Miys has medically cleared everyone from the last one.”

I nodded. “Grey and Antoine’s recommendation of increasing cardio seems to have made a huge difference in the adjustment period for most people. I definitely recovered faster.”

“And after this one, the lighting changes will start phasing in?”

“Once we can come to an agreement on how far we plan to institute the adjustments,” I pointed out. “I don’t understand any need to replicate outdoor light cycles when humanity literally experienced a cultural revolution after we developed a safe method of artificial indoor lighting.”

“That same cultural revolution also led the way for the events that brought us here,” she rebutted without looking away from the ceiling. Raising one hand and twirling it lazily, she repeated the arguments we had listened to for nearly a year. “Adhering more closely to Von’s natural light cycles will minimize ecological impacts.”

“Except that we are using sustainable light sources.” I flicked my finger at one of the wall emitters nearby. “Grey’s team made some pretty strong improvements on the microalgae lamps that were used Before.” While we still used more conventional forms of light for things like our databands and the desk emitters, ambient light in the Terran areas of the Ark was largely provided by what were - essentially - terrariums of algae, fungi, and dinoflagellates. Thanks to Miys’ assistance and a lengthy explanation of why our sight developed to work better in certain wavelengths, the light was closer to a yellow than a blue or green that was more common to Terran bioluminescence. “We literally grow our light now, don’t we?”

Xiomara tilted her head and cracked one eye at me. “They have a point, you know.”

“Make it make sense to me,” I invited her.

“Bear in mind, I don’t remember all the fancy science terms -” I snorted, but allowed it. She continued. “But in basic terms, night on Von lasts pretty close to two Terran months. Yes, we would have roughly the same amount of time to charge solar batteries, but it would require a lot of them to make it two months, especially with how cold the nights are.  By extending the interior light cycle as far as we can, we use less of the power we’ve saved up.”

“And just making more batteries has environmental impacts,” I ventured slowly.

“The planet isn’t terribly metal rich,” she pointed out. “Any resources we have for making batteries should be reserved for replacing or repairing, not allocated to making as many as possible. We’re getting a boost from the planet already, since we’ll have ready access to geothermal heat.”

Frowning, I flicked my wrist and brought up my datapad. “Von is tectonically stable, isn’t it?”

She flashed a quick thumbs-up. “No shifting plates, but there is still a molten core and geothermal activity.  In this case, most of the bodies of water are hot springs, and there are no oceans.”

“That’s going to be weird,” I mused. “Rivers, lakes, and a sea or two, but no oceans…”

“I take it you haven’t had time to check out the topography scans,” she laughed. “There aren’t really any mountains, either. Not the kind we’re used to - no tectonic shifting, no huge mountains. Any geological features are from erosion instead.”

I tried to imagine it before shaking my head to bring myself back to the original topic. “Day cycles. We were talking about adjustments to the lighting cycles.”

“Yep,” she agreed. “We’ve already extended them out to thirty hours so far.”

“But Grey wants to go as far as mimicking the sixty Terran day cycles that Von naturally has,” I sighed. “There has to be a compromise.  Your explanation makes sense, but it still doesn’t quite justify pushing it out that far.”

“Compromise is your thing. Arguing is mine.”

I scowled at her again. “That’s unfair.”

“And yet you aren’t saying I’m wrong.” I could hear her smile even without seeing her face. “If you figure out the compromise, I’ll argue it for you.”

“Seriously?”

She waved her hand at me lazily. “Hey, just because I see the logic behind Grey’s idea, it doesn’t mean I agree with setting the day/night cycle for the whole Ark to match the one for the planet. Your argument about the Industrial Revolution has merit, too. Just… leave out the Industrial Revolution part.”

Fair point. Xio had eviscerated that argument right off the bat, so surely Grey would see the same point. “Then I need a new angle.” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. Thinking out loud, I started rambling. “Invention of the light bulb led to the Industrial Revolution because employees could work later into the night with safer light to see by inside factories. Inside…” Something about that was nagging me.

Leaning forward, I smacked my hands flat on the table, startling Xiomara into flailing to keep her balance. “Inside. You mentioned you don’t agree with the day/night cycle for the whole Ark. I’ve been looking at this all wrong.” I shook my head. “We don’t have to worry about all of the Ark.  I keep thinking about the Ark as all one building, but it isn’t. It’s like its own city… Which means we have an ‘indoors’ and an ‘outdoors’!”

Xiomara kicked her legs off the table and sat up. “What are you talking about? Technically, the whole ship is ‘indoors’, isn’t it?”

I made a vague gesture at her with my left hand. “Only in super literal terms. But if you look at it from this perspective…” I pulled up a ship schematic and flicked it to the emitter. Tapping BioLab 2, the corridors, and a few other areas of the ship, I highlighted them bright yellow. “These public areas could be considered ‘outdoors’. Streets and sidewalks, a park, et cetera, you see?”

Tilting her head thoughtfully, she started drumming her fingers. Tapping eating areas, the Council offices, and a few quarters, she made them light up pink. “And these would be ‘indoors’, right? Offices, restaurants, apartments, those kinds of things?”

“Exactly,” I confirmed. “We can start by agreeing to start extending the day/night cycles in areas considered ‘outdoors’ to match Von’s cycle. Nothing to really argue with there - we will have to adjust to it eventually, and doing it in increments over the next eight years will be easier on us than doing it suddenly when we get to the planet. Just like what we’re doing with the gravity.”

“That leaves us with deciding a cycle for the indoor areas.”

“And we can work on figuring that out.  We’ll have more weight in negotiating there, since we’re absolutely conceding with the outdoor areas,” I pointed out.

She nodded thoughtfully. “We almost have a blank check there, I would think. As long as you could defend the energy needed, they really wouldn’t be able to argue.”

“I may have to take that up with Grey, directly.  I don’t think it would be a good idea to go beyond thirty-six hours, and that would be with two rest periods, not just one like Before.”

Xiomara shook her head, locs flying. “Most cultures didn’t do that, you know that, right? Mid-day naps were the norm all over the world, even when we were toe-to-toe with FTL emigration.”

“Even better,” I smiled. “I mean, who is going to argue with a mid-day nap? Not this girl.”

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[worldbuildingworkshop]

Worldbuilding Tutorial #11: Example World A

Intro From this point on, I’m putting the example tutorials under a readmore so that they’re not taking up as much space. This will be an example out how to outline history, using World A; specifically, I’ll be using this world to demonstrate the sequential method I outlined in the tutorial portion.

Deciding Priorities: World A is an odd one to start with because it’s not one that lends itself well to history. It’s a world that roots itself quite firmly in the present, and the beings that live in it are by and large not ones to keep records of history. So I’ll likely be doing a bit more outlining than I would have done on my own, for the sake of providing an example. I’ll use this one to demonstrate the sequential development method, since that’ll work best here.

Check Your Notes: One of the other reasons this world lends itself well to sequential building is because it’s a late hunter-gatherer to early agricultural world so far as technological development goes. That’s quite early on in a world’s history. Societies are mostly structured as villages of extended familial bands rather than broader governments (with a couple of exceptions). That said, historical development in any world you’re making doesn’t need to reflect that of the real world - and because of the underlying metaphysical traits of this world, that applies here. Like I said above, it’s a world that roots itself firmly in the present and in terms of internal logic has less need for history than we do; it also has less need to progress the way we think of progress in terms of technological and civic development. These are all things to keep in mind.

That said:

Where To Start As mentioned above, most of the societies in this world are in a late hunter-gatherer to early-agricultural phase of development. What ties these regions together are similar cultural and environmental features rather than any sort of overarching government. There are the Seelie and Unseelie fey in the Misty Moors, who dislike each other; the humans in Region #3, who get along well with the Seelie; the humans in Region #4, who are at the moment largely isolated; and the elves in Region #6, who are hostile to everyone. 

So where does this go? One of the forces that tends to drive people to change is the existence of an outside threat. This can be anything from an outside invading force to severe changes in environmental conditions. Another force that has the potential to drive large changes is significant technological developments: writing, metallurgy, large sailing ships, etc. Often these sorts of development hinge on the discovery of a new resource, or on discovering a new way to use an existing resource - or, at times, a combination of both. 

That gives us options. You can pick one you like most or that feels like the most likely option; or, you can forecast them and pick the one that seems most interesting to you. For sake of example, I’ll demonstrate forecasting.

Natural Changes: As potential for large threats go, sweeping environmental change is quite possible for this world. There are two primary candidates: one is weather, one is geologic. In the case of weather, because this part of the world is at such a low latitude, a Great Freeze of some kind is very likely; this would drive most of the societies at lower latitudes up to warmer pastures - which, in this case, means that humans and elves move up into the Misty Moors. This has a great deal of potential for conflict between the Fey and Mortals, and is a possibility that stands to force some cooperation between the Unseelie and the Seelie.

The other possibility is geologic: a massive earthquake, or perhaps the emergence of a new volcano. Given that, in this world, the core of the planet is made of mana - and thus rocks are incredibly magically powerful - the fallout from such a thing is most likely to be a long-term positive despite short-term destruction. Based on the tectonic plates, either an earthquake or a volcano are most likely to occur along the northernmost side of this region - which is to say, in Unseelie territory. This likely results in an empowering of the Unseelie, who then turn that on the Seelie; who may in turn seek shelter with humans. This has the potential both for conflict and common cause - in that the greater contact with Fey will likely result in humans both fearing and hating them more, and learning from them and intermingling more. 

Invasion: Without the factor of a natural change - as above - the most likely source for any sort of invasion or large-scale conflict rests with the elves. One possible branch of this is looking to wipe nearby fey out as a way of proving themselves; another possible branch of this is expanding into less inhospitable territory, and thus looking to conquer humans. Both would not be out of the question either. 

Technological Changes: Because most of the magic in this world rests in the bedrock, a technological change to do with stone, metal, or gems is the most likely to result in a big change. The most obvious candidate here is metallurgy, because that’s the path we took in the real world: and in this world, that likely develops into the potential for magical weapons. Another less obvious - but perhaps more interesting - candidate is glassmaking. Glass would be inherently magical as well, and paves the way for technology to do with lenses and far seeing. Any of these technologies are likely to develop with mortals rather than fey. The “where” of it becomes more interesting from there: in that humans have the most access to the physical resources in either case, but the elves are more likely to discover how to craft both by dint of being magic-users and because of their emphasis on skill. 

None of these are mutually exclusive, of course - it is possible for more than one of these to happen, either simultaneously or in sequence. One of the things that is important to remember about this particular world is the importance of Fate; and the way that fate drives cycles in the world. As such, “most realistic” has little to do with it - it’s more about what makes sense for the world, and in this case the world is one possibility in a self-aware cosmos trying to understand the nature of life, and in this case the cosmos looking to understand the nature of life from the perspective of emotion.

What Happens Next Given the above, the most likely event to happen first is the invasion of the elves. Their emotions are strong - stronger than humans’ - and they have a great deal of reason to feel anger towards both humans and fey. Most likely, the world gives the elves a prophecy that it is their time to cause hurt in return for the rejection they were dealt; and the elves invade.

In the state that humans are in - so many scattered villages - this does not end well for them. The elves have a more organized society, access to direct magic, and an emphasis on honing skill; the advantages that humans have are numbers and greater physical ability, but those will only do so much without an ability to organize them. Many humans are killed; those who are not are likely colonized by the elves, which may take many forms. Other humans likely flee to the fey woods and the moors, which is likely to instigate another crisis amongst the fey on its own. Some humans are likely killed by the fey in turn; in other places, alliances are formed and lines are drawn against elves. From these alliances are likely to come more elves - born outside of the budding empire - who are in turn possibly either killed, leave to join the empire, or else become their own way of being. The conflict lasts for some years; then, eventually, settles out.

With the new lands that the elves have conquered, they gain access to new resources. Farming, plants, and agriculture is one facet of this; metallurgy and glassworking, as noted above, is another. This technology is likely kept and developed away from humans, who are involved in the labor to acquire these materials but not to craft them; and then used by the elves to enforce any boundaries between themselves and humans in society as whole. Humans are not stupid, and most likely work to steal this technology or else develop it themselves; but not before - 

Because each generation has its own prophecy in this world, it’s time for a new one. This one comes in the form of a volcano that erupts on the borders of Unseelie territory. The Unseelie, empowered, wreak havoc on the Seelie fey on the southern end of the Misty Moors and keep pushing into what are now elven conquered lands. This is a threat that the elves will not suffer, but most likely cannot stand up to; and, with the humans having stolen metallurgy and glasswork with intent to use them, the elven empire likely dissolves both from the inside and the outside at once.

This ends one of two ways. Either the empire crumbles into chaos as elves fight unseelie and humans and seelie, and the Unseelie end up on top; or, the conflict forces Mortals and the Seelie to work together. Touching back on this world as a way to understand life and emotion, the second option seems the way to go. 

Humans and Seelie is an easy alliance to make; and, with elves having lost their hold on humans, humans are able to use that as a great enough threat to the elves to force an alliance with them as well. Most of all, it seems likely that the key here is the elves: not the empire, but the elves born outside of it. By nature of being like but also unlike both sides, they have the potential to become intermediaries in ways that make the whole process work. The Unseelie are pushed back, their access to the source of the problem - the volcano - must be cut away somehow eventually, and life settles back into something that resembles where we started: only, a few steps ahead. This time, we have new resources and technologies; and this time, there is a greater organization and interconnection to it all; and this time, there is a greater understanding between Fey and Elves and Humans - for now.

After That... You’ve seen the process above; from this point, it is essentially rinse and repeat. What are the big factors that are most likely to induce a big change? Which ones are the right ones, and how do they play out - and how does that change the situation? You follow the trail for as long as it leads, until you find a place you want to stop for now and spend a little more time in; and that’s where your story comes from.

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So that’s the sequential method. I’ll demonstrate working backwards to construct a history in the next example with World B. 

[jwartblog]

Notes comp...

My brain had suddenly not thought the same way it did, oxygen isn’t getting to it the way it had, blood doesn’t run through it the way it had, it feels like, to a degree, an implosion, not unlike the shift that happens with tectonic plates at the earth’s surface. This means now I can hear my vertebrae at the base of my skull and beneath, the skull cracks at the fissures as if a point of gravity like a warp  is reshaping it. My decision making now is questionable, not criminally questionable, but the decisions I make veer off into peculiar themes, for instance, the whimsy of advertisements. The reactions to them are strong, which may be heightened by a coinciding isolation, all of which could be explained away as neuroses, as so much can be, but the integrity of the diagnosis that that could be is greatly compromised  by  intangibles. I surmise that this has intended to be, for one, a narcissists’ program, in which the language is designed to close off the possibility of social and cognitive maturation. It, instead, endlessly punishes reflection, reason, positive thinking to include any emotional flourishes of joy, exuberance, self-acceptance, an inclination towards the trajectory of all healthy development…It has, I believe destroyed–an embarrassingly easy remedy for all of this notwithstanding–the reward system, an internal resonance for clear thought and careful consideration–qualitative thinking. I can’t wrestle with concepts in the same way I have before. There was a more careful consideration that’s not there anymore, which means the work that I do could suffer for it. The brain is an array of sorts or at least behaves that way, a receiver of input, often vastly ego-centric, easily, near-instantly at the mercy of impulse, which has never quite been that way in adulthood, the way it is now. The formulation of words, increasingly what I would like to articulate comes from an alien place, not that what’s alien has the facility to manage words and construct documents the way I do, but it isn’t concerned with the same things I’m concerned with. What this means is the concern I have for, for example, certain social or creative issues is nearly bankrupt, which means the history of careful, qualitative reasoning and feeling towards those subjects seems gone. This means that that has to be cultivated again, because it necessarily has to be, but it also means a new apprehensiveness towards the retention of new information. Again, a weakening of the faculties, a constructed impairment. This brain, now, acts not unlike a computer server, as if somehow, the neurons were network nodes (not nodes of Ranvier), and all of the sensory duties of the imagining brain were outsourced to a remote terminal. This means, for example, a thought is met with, incorrectly, insufficiently, a thought meant to be thought, perhaps–because functional-integrity is compromised–genuine, is distorted or otherwise presented as if controlled by a foreign catalyst, a facility with thought, with concepts, i.e. design, creative flourishes are intercepted physically, cranially, as much as that can resonate physically, and it’s changed into something that I believe corresponds to what the intruder believes is how a person thinks or means to think. This means that a premium, ironic, considering the possibility that this is of a technological source, is placed on control, not at all on the preservation of thought, or the possibility for general thinking, let alone advanced thought. Whenever an attempt is made to achieve a state of lucidity about the current circumstances, a punishment ensues in the form of blackmail, again social mutilation (anti-social behavior) or some other accusation of criminality or gross immorality. This may be the longest instance of sexual harassment I know in recorded history, as my penis is critiqued multiple times an hour, from flaccid to erect state. It abhors erection, like it’s alien or criminal. All of it is finessed to some degree by an ambiguity, in this case humor amongst other things, the use of interpersonal acrobatics, the continuous promise of a later reward. For instance, one of the things that happens, and this plays off of an already-intrusive guerilla marketing, data-mine marketing (likely a cover for pure harassment), is the establishment of a visual language that always to some degree points to something being advertised, a product you might potentially buy, which on its face is innocuous. But upon closer inspection, it does seem to gain accuracy with each attempt at subverting the feeling of even casual autonomy, any sense of self that comes from personal decision making. What this means is that over time a kind of probabilistic thinking ensues as a reaction to constant probability based harassment(e.g. Probabilistic Psycho-Linguistic Verisimilitude and Infinitesimal Approximations of Neuro-Physiological Reception in Experience Perception. Memory-Thought modulation analysis in the conversion of external stimuli into creative thought and output, partly through continuous tracking of parallel experiential or verisimilarly stimulated brains of a large population sample, and reward system increasingly tailored to positive correlative confirmation signs. Behavioral analysis through the continuous introduction of external and internal stimuli and continuous tracking of subsequent associated epistemological formulations especially in regards to the subsequent introduction of symbolically-associated stimuli, stimuli congruent with particular, personal, accurate or inaccurate epistemological assumptions.). This has the potential to render the target overtly spatially and socially strategic…which can cause irrevocable overt symbolic-interactionism brought on by among other things, helplessness: the methods of harassment are slight and mimic the symptoms of still socially-maligned mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. If you can imagine, an artist, especially one adept at symbols, abstract representation, is made to feel that he or she is responding to what vaguely seems like a phallic or feminine image, and he is, for example, then made to know that he or she is somehow influenced by that prompt to purchase which confirms his or her latent homosexuality, over time this admonishment, necessarily slight, acts as a kind of whip, to which an artist necessarily would respond to with a re-habitual sort of inclination towards the object he wishes to avoid, however ambivalent he might be. Over time the whip makes the artist, like Pavlov’s oft mentioned canines, salivate at the ‘sound of a bell,’ i.e. whip. This kind of harassment I think maybe tends to coincide with what would be a delicate time for an artist, or anybody, especially an inwardly focused artist or person, transgression bound, piqued by curious psychological phenomena, bouts of clairvoyance, synchronistic peculiarities, a lot to navigate through without the addition of systematic, injurious harassment. If for instance it can be said that a person who constructs by some act of fate, his own clairvoyance, a streak of running into exactly what’s foreshadowed as a relational need or otherwise a break from an ideal state, is monitored by someone from an objective point of view who has knowledge of human behavior and the journey of humans, artists, he could potentially be subject to this knowledge, general knowledge, the artists’ knowledge, what the monitor knows the artist knows, what he knows many don’t know about these phenomena, the limits of their efforts to remedy the issue, to include among other things what would be professionally or socially unhygienic to pursue, and particular knowledge of marketing or other forms of harassment to cause irrevocable psychological damage. It keeps a record like a fingerprint for every instant of short and long term audio memory, neuro-instantaneous-configuration, and also manipulation at the cochlear nerves, perhaps induced neuron degradation aided by an overly nitrogen-rich diet that allows sounds to be affected. Either neuron or nerve frequencies are altered to match incoming frequencies, pressure disturbances that create sound. That means that as fast as the speed of sound, an incoming signal is intercepted before a conscious sensation of hearing can be registered. Also communication from preparatory (internal) speech center can be altered to fit incoming signal, or to conform incoming signal to preparatory (internal) speech (i.e. Attempts to further resolve name to voice, signal to name, voice/signal to image...performs as if it may not have specific local knowledge of content, but effects of it, how a datum associates with another datum (e.g. what regional voice and statement placates, even if the value of a statement or effect is unknown--how that's measured, how it's configured, what it means against other data, for instance, if a communal-neuro-topographical map worked with all measurable phenomena associated with brain activity), a relational database, e.g. what might correlate neuro-physiologically to what’s known through data-mining (what an image might sound like, what an algorithm for what an image is like, what a person thinks an image correlates to, would attempt to resolve if it had to ascertain the locus of significance in service of connecting data-processing-of-ephemera to verisimilitude in external thought processing, increasingly how an algorithm could think for you, could be used to subvert reasoned conclusions, to make empirical inquiry or research, entertainment, compromise trusted academic sources for instance by playing to statistically known impulses instead of supplying objective findings, papers, objective search results.) Points to what I had written earlier though about conquest through earnest action and exploitation of assumed unknowns. Audio converted in real-time to legible probable English (what the word most certainly will be at the start of pronunciation) audio interpretation is augmented by visual symbol confirmation, i. e. when audio fails, or when audio may certainly fail to be adequately echoed. Appears to analyze cord vibration state, speech initiation, and compares that against a database and predicts usage in tandem with image analysis, which could be gathered from a databank of images (Bing "like" image search) and image/word-concept association. The process of instantaneous ranking, a number assigned to every possible word outcome given an initial vocal cord vibration state, or speech initiation state, say 200 words starting with 'Bal...' (Ball, balcony, ballerina, balances, etc.). The words are then ranked based on probability which can begathered from historical usage and altered by the microsecond, nanosecond, etc., as the vibration, speech initiation, word formulation further produces a word outcome, until the dwindles to one word, or the listener is trained to hear one word out of possible multiple words, the most probable word given priority amplification. This code can be improved ad infinitum, based on linguistic, probabilistic, psychological, and environmental factors.  A listener, possibly an operator on duty somewhere might correct machine code (?) as he notices errors in operation). Sound retrieved from temporary or long term audio memory, as well as the preparatory audio center is manipulated (enhanced or otherwise, modulated, withheld or diminished to produce effect.). Semantics, kinesiology and ephemera analysis, computational linguistics, linguistics itself, sonar, lip reading, etc. coupled with near-real-time incoming quantitative and qualitative data stream can all be used to induce the feeling of a second presence, a second set of eyes with you, and this is--if we were to assume that the data stream is coming from a witting or unwitting transmitter; perhaps an surreptitious or agreed upon installation of a transceiver on the person of the subject--without including the possibility for manipulation of the central nervous system, the frequency that governs or instructs, for instance, heart palpations, the perception of touch. A person could be outright impaired in various ways directly, or indirectly by, for example, stress, what are known as pain-points, if a cue were abusive, as in Pavlov's experiments with dogs, if a known involuntary, or voluntary made near-involuntary by conditioning were triggered to induce, for instance, a fetal-position defensive reaction. Where perception-valleys are present, neuro-experiential displacement is allowed to flourish, that means that with the aid of 'in,' a provincial cue, regionalism in terms of perceptual-familiarity, a person could be lulled into one form of intelligence, say the idea that a person is highly efficient at guessing various truths about your condition based on incoming data, but when the observers' analytical peak reaches a crescendo, possibly employing the infinitesimal, in terms of what can be gleaned, and as this contrasts knowledge of, a comfort level with previous analysis-attempts, a person could incorrectly conclude the 'real' presence of another entity. Audio-psychology, or other physio-neuro sensations can be used to create stories, especially if the belief-quotient of the participant/study/victom is high. Most people are not self-critical down to their neuro makeup, the particular universe of their mind and brain. Perception valleys, but for now, in as much as what's known about what it could know shows change modulated by location and some activity, for instance, a steady increase in rate of accuracy, or due to the fallibility of the senses generally but a known unreliability made increasingly more unreliable by sense-degradation, perception itself of this rate of change has to be called into question, as well as a perception valley, not only instances of impressions of what's known, but also for rates of change. While it can certainly be gleaned that some things are known (that had been, for instance, known to be unknown, in some cases unknowable particularly) and gleaned that some things are being increasingly known, there's still what's already known which is (x, unknown in quantity, quality, thus 0 to infinite, bad to extensive), and what's is increasingly being known that can't be known, that's changing at a rate that's congruent with known rates of change or not. Simultaneously, with that system there's a presentation of it, altruistically perhaps seeks partly, which may itself be a function of an outcome (to disinform, socially engineer some degree of.(cont.)..some degree of ambivalence, a familiarity with a signal presence to undercut the severity of what's being performed, to provide the illusion of a bevy of expected mercies, plethora of cognitive biases such as religious assurance by way of affiliation, assurance based on regionalism, etc. Mentalist tricks, and tricks such as game participation, match-maker, religion-based such as relieving you of talents buried, muscles not adequately used, which can lead to further illogical trains of thought.) to steer thought away from accurately assessing the scenario in general, the general nature of the problem, the specific nature of aspects of the physical problem, to attain a specific and/or general end through whatever can be suggested, including, as stated before, involuntary or near-involuntary responses to audible stimuli, which can provide new data. Other intrusive-(faux) inner-directed sensory cues can function in the same capacity. What's problematic, obvious, but needs to be made plain is that if more is known than prepared for or conceived, than more can be known based on responses to what's assumed to be known, for instance if internal functions of a subject are known, but the subject doesn't know that this is known, he will perform defense maneuvers internally, assuming that he is protecting something unknown. The information gathered from what’s newly known, now that along with internal functions known, the subject has unknowably provided, internal defense maneuvers, can be used to subdue another similar party or subject, or disarm the subject unawares, as they say, so that the subject's assumptions make him incapable of conceiving of a collapse externally orchestrated, thus attempting to solve an internal problem assuming an internal origin, not to mention, the peculiar conundrum that would arise if the subject knew what was known. Every response provides data, so nothing can be done, tactically, that wouldn't make worse the circumstances. If, what's known and had been known, for instance, is thought itself, an ability that would naturally need to be kept under-wraps, and along with thoughts known, thought processes, tendencies, probability, etc., now even a common sense response (silence, repose, a stalemate) is data, itself a maneuver. The continuum to some degree as much as feasible is the most appr. response. In terms of 'maneuvering' around this problem, what seems to me the most pragmatic approach is to, at the least, facilitate open communication (in qualitative proportions) relative to, or as a function of a rate of degradation of value certainties such as primarily the lived life, as much as valued the vital organs, the sustainment of societal functions. I.e. What can't be openly stated that needs to be has to be increasingly openly stated in measures where the positive difference (what's preserved) between what's stated and what's prevented by openly stating is optimal. In what can possibly take place, voluntary or involuntary reaction to perception valley nadirs (closest to truth, gravity), actual knowns could make more real unknowns, exacerbate the perception of a  truth, accuracy in reflected/echoed truth, i.e. a known thought known could make more real the perception of a thought known, causing a relinquishing of a hold, a defense due to that assumption, that something is definitely known, or a certain capability of knowing is certainly known. Or in not knowing a thought is known, a knowing center is known, a person could activate defenses that become newly known data, available to disarm. The knowing that's synthetic, that means to make real a data-mined synopsis of a history and now, as much as real-time reporting and application can be that, has approximated the sensation of knowing, as I've said before, so the physiological indication of what it means to have thought, or applying a thought, especially to some external prompt--itself made to seem internally orchestrated, yet an outside prompt, the idea that some other entity, at least the way I would dream of it, is supplying a question that requires an answer, an answer I'm willing to readily give: the neuro-physiological sensation that I am, in a semi-conscious state, the recipient of a question asked of me by someone not me, the idea that it has to be answered, and that the options available, the memory or knowledge bank known is what's actually there, and all that's there, the idea and correlating sensation that that answer is the right one, that I have thought that thought, the desire to interact, that the voice supplied is of the image it's associated with, and that the subject would communicate in this way as a matter of fact, the rendering of the image to, beyond the fact of it's value--how well it's rendered, which is desired to fall into a valley of non-consideration, a given too well constructed to be fully-appreciated in a way that allows for effect-reception  to subside and reasonableness to return tide and sufficiently critique--supply an increasing nudge towards what would be still not be a too unreasonable delusion of grandeur--of the grandiosity in each behavior of mine, as it's perceived, or some major failing of sense, that the elements of unconsciousness and visualization that would have to exist to make that point clear are what's actually there, and that that point made is one most salient, like a vacuum, that renders null excess-not-instantaneously-anti-thesis to what it means to convey, to make self-evidently true, that this is more than enough for completion--the sense of it that can guide, though, as I've written many years ago, truth and completion are separate things; one seeks conclusion when truth is tedious, and conclusiveness seeks truth when it's methodology and intentions are dubious, are questionable, to dress expedience, the rhythm of being undeniably-seemingly right or smart-sounding. But writing this, too, in a lucid wakeful state is subject to question, as I've left a state verifiably not my subconscious, the striving moment to moment is compromised as well, the certainty of whether or not impetus is genuine, has been eroded, outside of what's objectively, perhaps statistically sound in the findings of a most-reliable scientifically verified and peer reviewed analysis, and there's evidence that impulse itself, moment to moment, is directed by inauthentic catalysts--intentionally and directly orchestrated by some external source. What it could mean to allude to is simulacrum, but that's a psychosis term publicly. It's connected to weaving varying stories together that have 'no rights whatsoever' to be linked! Speed is not truth, nor is public consensus, nor is the spectre of utter demoralization and humiliation. In these conditions it's certainly difficult to objectively and somehow artfully probe into the idea of creation that seeks creation, or always in preparation of some future ideal. This is me inundated in another consciousness. The reasoning is now foreign, too. It has been that way for some time, but there's less of an obvious differentiation between the way I would feel about certain topics, even in sleep state that's barely leaving unconsciousness. The only way to maintain a sense of objectivity now is largely because of the nature of the thoughts themselves. Partly the game that's played here is rewarding the subject, in this case, me, with a right to healthy sleep, external peace through a decent lack of debilitating continuous sexual harassment, emotional abuse, discreet sexual and psychological assault, if I don't fight against diminishing qualitative thinking, which is preserving my identity. The continuous narcissistic drone that induces unhealthily defensive immediately rectifying mindset (of course at the expense of longterm planning and almost all deep, carefully considered thought). For instance, it continues as if there's some known secret violent, or sexually deviant behavior performed that has to come to light, of course through this style of torture. What it actually seems to be more and more is a conditional crime pre-punishment, a future-looking consequence based on inductive reasoning--ideally the crime, that, when this discreet torment has been completed, will, by its nature, have proven all of the tortuous actions taken upon me, just. But I believe this is based on a hunch that's arisen from the belief in congruence of data from a particular surveillance, even more daunting if that surveillance was coupled with conditioning by persons who would seek this outcome, the justification for that kind of surveillance and discreet torment then. This information, however,  doesn't prove the truth of any one act, only the perceived likelihood, perhaps in the court of public opinion, which isn't sufficient. The persuasion that's continuously transmitted is, in a semi-conscious state, even made to seem to be me at the gut of consciousness--i.e. what it would feel like, neuro-physiologically to think and know it's me thinking--slyly, disarmingly persuading someone else to follow a line of thought that's anti-thesis to what I'd most like to suggest, but it may actually fit in more with what would be congruent with the evidence that supports the truth of an instance of transgression, which is what's sought after. At this point, it's really only the fact that I don't think those things, that I don't consider that content and often thus(thereby) genuinely don't like it, that confirms for me, the foreignness of it. It does tend to resemble what's described by Foucalt in Madness and Civilization when he says that power itself takes this route regardless of the people who associate themselves with it, so that all persons in those positions that act as factors in this system behave as needed to support an outcome. In that book he describes three tactics the asylum-keepers use to sedate the subject, longterm*: silencing through ex-communication, through various means, ending regular social interaction; playing to, however belittling it is and beknownst it is to the subject, their idea of grandiosity, their belief of their superiority or deep importance, the delusion that they're a high-ranking official or royalty or a celebrity, whether or not they actually really feel that way, even if they only play along to someone else's suggestion; and the third escapes me, but it believe it has something to do with thwarting immediate goals. Fear is another tactic, or some kinds of trauma tantamount to what traumatic occurrence has caused an initial inhibition ( as flawed as that sounds), and the use of family-ties to persuade, to bring the subject to his right-mind, the definition of which is malleable as necessary like-wise, like what I had written earlier, to justify the tactics used, often what's sought is an ideal external to who the person actually is, an unchanged personality that's often only what it has to be to put loved-one's  minds at ease...for instance a person could finish school and be considered insane because, for example, school is ‘unnatural’ for his ilk (by way of his new knowledge he's writes or speaks like he aims to escape himself, or belittle rather than enlighten--usually the case when there's class-transcendence, when the actual numbers for progress are lost on an insular community, the national goal of education, or how education actually relates to affluence or career success, or gives a country it's competitive edge--generally preferred-- regardless of provincial opinions about individual cases), so a community could be persuaded, by the nature of their conditioning, to right the wrong of his enlightenment, to prevent continual learning, to, as overtly illegal and unethical as it is, seal off any chance for further naturally-resulting intellectual development. The problem in 2020 is that the knowledge of these conditions and disorders are known and that increasingly that knowledge is used to mislead the unwitting or support defamation or serve as peripheral intangibles used to wrong someone, i.e. it's weaponized. So street level skullduggery graduates and with the science of thought, there is increasing certainty, less error, so that the chance for something like this, an objective document, is less and less reliable. This might not be a reliable document. There could be for instance a gradual move towards planned happenstance, that secures planned outcomes. I had mentioned the systematic prevention of enlightenment or discreet impairment of the brain as it might be used for, for instance, discrete maths, or quantum mechanics, so lineage, documented familial inclination towards higher-learning, may more and more be seen as insurance against this. Gradually I'm made to become more and more comfortable with a second presence in mind, who, before any guarantee of compensation or noticeable benefit implores me to 'get out' or 'go up' or do a myriad of things as if I can, at will, make those outcomes happen, or as if the fact of my being or maturation isn't in itself, right, or self-evidently wrong. What it feels like, as I've stated before is rape, a marathon of rape-marathons, that itself forcibly becomes a new norm, and I'm responsible for my own pain, guilty for being violated, guilty for being hurt or protesting the rape-marathon in any way at any given time, especially if that protest gives some semblance of respite. The idea is to simply have it stop: I would like it to stop, I have never known this to exist, It was never a reality to me, I don't want it, I have nothing to prove. I only have to become more intimate with what I'm most interested in, and this something I can do without any help. The goal is the extensive depletion of the brain, mind, and eventually everything else. The prize, I believe, is what would strike a person who might encounter me, what would constitute a strength, and so one might like to see me or someone, for example, lose their ability to think in the way they are accustomed to thinking, especially if it's unique or adequate, or proven. Reasons can be as malleable as they have to be, to be sure I don't pontificate or don't mull over problems in the same way. There's an urgency in disrupting creation or thought production that reminds me of poverty-stricken children battling for crumbs or pieces of food, a certain scarcity-mindedness, or zero-sum, end-game, stubbornness. The chief goal here would be sabotage for highly-personal ego-driven reasons, not reasonableness. I'm made to believe that I should make some arbitrary authority my authority where there is none, and one is certainly not wanted or needed. There are large amounts of external stimuli present around me under the guise of helping me think. What this means is a demeaning attempt to forcibly outsource responsibility, which I believe is to make me comfortable with encroachment, especially to reveal private information, even information it is illegal for me to knowingly reveal, illegal for someone to forcibly extract from me, or frame me for relinquishing. Even as thoughts or thinking can be approximated, specific thoughts are more and more echoed in media, but not as general foresight or the synchronicity-high that follows a break from the ideal, a relational dependency, what state of being and thinking would have to take place to make sufficient meaning, or the actual events as genuinely foreseen meaningful encounters, but something else, almost as if I can't think unless each thought is good enough( this bypasses the feat of controlling each thought to even close to that extent to begin with), which they can never be if they're subjectively assessed, and goodness itself has to be questioned here if thoughts are more and more produced (which they are) by some far less adequate (for what I do) external transmitter, as preposterous as this sounds, the fact that I would ever have to consider a second presence in mind as a police for any reason. *The third here was constant references to the past--the asylum keeper would find a way to have the subject ensnared in his own past, which they could always refer to, if they've been keeping good notes, and the subject would ideally keep searching for some answer not readily given--partly due to an unkempt or unreliable memory in tandem with continual subliminal and overt cues to stop actively thinking--but instigated by past psychologically unresolved occurrences that are constantly urgently alluded to, one by one, until a certainty is achieved that further sedates the subject. Non-empowering recollection. More and more, in the morning and at other times, like in Iowa, in the morning, a foreign personality takes over, in the same way a foreign laugh did then,  a foreign consciousness, for instance what would be the way I would seem to go in a more generically paternalistic manner (and also paternalism or masculinity as brutishness, manliness as primitiveness), a voice less fluid, a word selection accounts for less nuance, which is even less refined than the initial incapacitation of the basal ganglia, other parts of the brain responsible for high level processing of concepts and a usual work-history-consistent manner of contemplation: what would work for flavors of contemplation, art-thinking for art-writing. More and more the spine is the outermost protruding part of skeleton behind me, the skull is continually pushed forward, the trapezoids are tightened and forced high along with my shoulders (to sit at the top of my torso not at the sides) and ass is coached to increasingly remain tucked under, the back is therefore elongated and bows outward like a bulldog where it approaches the neck(notes from earlier: There’s a constant incoming at a particular numerical rate, a transmission of the kind of stimuli that can’t be easily thwarted. One of the things this results in, or has occurred in this instance alongside it is an ever tightening of the muscles around the trapezius and upper latissimus dorsi, the sides and back of the neck. Quickly, it feels primitive, not in that a person who is muscular there is primitive, but that it feels like the option to deviate from that is increasingly gone. The top half of the skull increasingly sinks into the lower one, the eyes are forced close together than normal–it more and more resembles down syndrome. It feels like it, too. Due a lack of sleep, and again, continuous aggression the eyes are sort of recessed into darkened skin that sits inside the eye sockets. What I have now, what I use to make art is a kind of secondary vision, it’s a secondness  of vision. That sense is merely accessing footage, which I translate by way of recollection of what an ideal visual encounter was like. Again, the skull takes primacy, the eyes are a happenstance of the skull. My teeth are slowly reaching the beginning stages of brittleness, which I’ve seen happen quickly almost unnaturally to people I know.), a layman's cognitive consonance is expected to result from daily nudging to escape yourself, to 'leave your head,' as if leaning forward, an animalistic lean is what would make a person more himself. The overall goal is to completely disrupt bodily coordination. What this means, partly, is a conscious operation of the body to replace what should be thought-work, contemplation for interests and work, and other activities. The faculties are increasingly disrupted. Increasingly, simultaneously aptitude is compromised and replaced, the rate of intellectual growth is slowed, the quality of it increasingly less valuable, originality is directly minimalized as a result, and wherewithal for self-propulsion is increasingly made voluntary. The base-work of easy recollection, long and short term reflection, sign-creation, visualization, is forcibly outsourced, and all of it to mock all thought-processing as a means, itself, the reality of that depletion, to distract from an initial crucial loss of deep-meaningful consideration gained over time, through encounters, close-study, long-term deep careful-contemplation of the best that can be thought, for itself, it's own sake and as a foundation for future application. The brain is continually attacked, continually made to be atrophied object, as stated before, increasingly cadaver-centric. The body carries a head, an near-dead extremity, not a center. I'm made to reach, to partly consider at least as a fleeting thought the idea of my brain, my body and mind being diminished to enhance another life, of course, a life that hasn't worked for that reward and who boastfully will not compensate me for that depletion. The game here, as stated before, is to make a person believe many people are hiding from an anonymous machine that doesn't know who I am, and only plays to a person's ego (therefore a shameful thing to admit to being bothered by), their idea that this machine is referring to them and not some collective. The ego is conflated with thinking itself, it means to make the case that thinking, especially high-level thinking, or the way an educated person normally would think about his world, is only meant to nurture the ego. There's a lull in the machine's operation for continued thought-work and contemplation, but this is only to create the illusion of an order within this terror, and one the subject should subscribe to, an authority, where it would be most troublesome to a power-monger to not have one, where there should be none, a whip for thought where no whip is needed, an eye and narcissistic cloud for each thought, even after a major collapse of the faculties, the urgent establishment of an authority where it would only worsen not improve work. For every thought, there's its counter-thought, but not the specifically tailored counter-thought I'd employ to help me gain and retain healthy objectivity. Another game that's repeated here is the idea of inevitable competition, and a naturally occurring inevitable authority over that for the quality of thought a person possesses, logic with every thought, which is not my goal, and not desirable to me. By it's sheer presence, the authority expects forfeiture of sovereignty, not its own death. All of this is not the same as the carefully-tailored thinking I or any person might develop over time, that I have developed over time,  the specific way of dealing with people I've cultivated over time (both fallible but uniquely fallible), that's particular to me. This is an externally-orchestrated intrusion on internal space, that can easily be made to seem like an internally-originating mental breakdown. There's a narcissistic drone, that of course works against what it means to administrate over which is the worst of egotistic impulses, the most publicly despised by the most people, but this is accompanied by continuous manipulation of bodily sensations, neuro-physiology and even thought production. What this could easily appear to be to some unwitting person watching is a person struggling with undesirable impulses and characteristics, a person who needs professional help. For instance, if an external presence is forcibly coaching a person to think of murder, in tandem with manipulating the brain, mind and body to viscerally feel that impulse at gut level, that external presence, now internally situated, would taunt or shame a person for even thinking along those lines which would be especially difficult to manage for a person who clings to moral standards. This person witting could perform a myriad of exercises to regain equilibrium, perhaps include that in a daily routine, but a person unwitting could be tragically set back by this constant shaming, which could erode at their form, their freedom amid granted societal freedoms, inalienable rights, or slavery amid all of the resources available for assuring freedom. The shaming would exacerbate impulse, which could lead to impulse-fulfillment. It means to diminish all strengths and not as germaine to some lesson or attempt to target someone else, and it means to outsource all thinking, all facility with various functions, all of the faculties, that are healthy and in some cases above-average.  Each day the ability to clearly speak  is more and more compromised. My facility with language is increasingly minimalized. Word selection or word memory as needed to sufficiently convey exactly what pertinent is compromised. The ability to convey nuanced thought is diminished, as an echo of actual loss of nuanced thinking. I get the strange feeling that the voice I'm left with is that of someone who makes bold pronouncements, as if drunk in grandiosity, that I would be given over to, as I've said before, delusions of grandeur, however congruent they might be with my actual experiences--not as a celebrity or a politician. The main point is that whereas before I would simply focus on the concept to be conveyed and language-usage-facility was subordinated as needed, now, more and more, I have to be sure speech is accomplishable, and I have to prepare for unpredictable preparatory-thought-failures in regards to overall poignancy and particularly individual word usage to reduce uncertainty (to minimalize latent egregious misinterpretation), and so where it may seem to be the case that one would gain a noticeable benefit from relinquishing conceptual wherewithal in service of immediately detectable thus resonant linguistic dexterity, that soon gives way to another voice less refined (less directed) and perhaps therefore less resonant, or perhaps additionally to some other less easily detectable benefit, e.g. pure (quality) thought for pure (quality) experience, not that the two are always mutually exclusive (that one couldn't be the other). Part of this erosion, I think, has to do with the idea that reality, real-reality is only gained through eschewing internal order, a private order, especially one that allows for deep healthy careful contemplation, reflection and  foresight--even if only with definite plans and timely responsibilities in mind.  As if dreamscape was a reliable window to some truth, it's treated as if all of its admissible in some invisible court, but what's manipulatable is imagery, like I said before the way a newly wakeful state, a state just before pure consciousness can yield the crest of inhibition, what dreams address mostly abstractly, especially as deep as orchestrated externally based imagery can be planted or seeded by mentalist cues. More and more the deepest unconscious whimsy, what's uncontrolled, is made to bear externally orchestrated fruit, or what can persuade or suggest at the base level of thought, especially in as much as it subverts structural integrity. Even if by only a delay in the body's reaction to the brain's signals, physiological sensations that sometimes accompany dreams, not that that's in anyway whatsoever a punishable offense itself (for instance an erection at the sight of a necrophilia orgy, at bestiality or something worse), can be manipulated to train personal tastes, or supplant the bedrock on which one might stand to declare something from a rightful or righteous as well as a reasonable standpoint. This might not seem like much if it weren’t for the fact that it's accessible, and especially to an unwitting subject, it could seem to be omniscience through authority, which could turn noble but, perhaps albeit reluctantly,  strict adherence to morality, a kind of torture. A person who wanted to fully assume authority over a person could use this to control behavior over time, especially in an environment where morality is a kind of currency, the feeling of it, the feeling of goodness, a person's sense of his own deep piousness, or the way it's perceived by others. This could be disrupted to sway other people or make some point to a subject about the limits of how he can feel about himself, or a point about what a subject ought to feel about himself, given what's 'apparent,' what’s 'obviously' known. Their aim is for me to be aware on their terms, to see my own particular trajectory, the awareness I've cultivated, the style of thinking I've developed, nearly the only way to be that would suffice for seeing me through to this point, as wrong in itself, without justification needed for that final judgement, that certain prosecution. I'm blacklisted. Again, freedom is taken from me at a crucial point in my life, and I can't get those years back. I'm attacked by a transmission that reads thoughts, and certainly does so. This is a weapon of war. It's masked as probability, but that's not what it is. It prevents me from starting a viable business, and it rids me of every worthwhile idea. I can't pray. I'm made to viscerally experience consenting to inferiority, or recognizing a superiority that's made to seem true-in-itself, that's above empirical inquiry. More and more each morning it's difficult to articulate what exactly is taking place as immediate recollection becomes weaker. The sensation of being a host for another presence, another consciousness becomes more and more visceral, as if, for instance, the way I could know, neuro-physiologically, what it means to be myself, to be me knowing, was overtaken each time I slept. This is something I only somewhat consciously detect when I wake up, and it's a realization that's increasingly forgettable, like a temporary bout of Alzheimer’s, as much as memory could be a mood, an aphasia for short term memory. I can't remember exactly what was said, but it involved me remembering a date and conveying that to someone, but now more than any other time, the date recounted, and all of the sensation of knowing was present, as much as a person could think to know something or arrive at a conclusion, work through a problem logically, the sensation of the way the mind functions when it rationalizes. A date was given by me to someone who asked for it, but the date given was different then what I could glean from another channel of communication which was also not generated by me, even with the way I know I present images in a dream, another channel, both foreign, presenting two problems. One problem is the problem of simulacrum, the idea that a problem exists to begin with, that the environment is mine, that there's a problem that's mine to remedy. The second problem is that there's one channel that isn't privy to the other, and is determining perhaps by probability what it must be like to receive a sort of para-communication and communicate back, but failing at the transmission of specific data points. So, there could possibly be another channel of communication that's there subconsciously, the one induced by some outside coach, the subconscious machine code, one I don't consciously know, that's made to respond to this other unbeknownst to it, incoming channel with as much verisimilitude  as possible, the way a person who  has to parity check or verify a secure channel could read into what it has known about the way my neurophysiological behavior would correlate to a transmission. As much as it might seem to be exceptional to communicate in this way, especially for a truth that has to be weaved into a kind of persuasion, even when that means nothing at all, the correlation between the way something is said, the means of saying it and the truthfulness of it, I only get moments of possible relevance, that it's not all gibberish. Mostly, though, it's still persistent verbal assault that's optimized over time combined with a more and more accurate appraisal of my surroundings and physiological states, neurophysiological states, even thoughts, as images that are produced by me, made to be seen as I see the world (so perhaps an interception as a catcher's mitt back there for the way I see, as much as that can be thought or correlate to thought, but more and more it seems that the way this is known is by what could be gathered through large number analysis, the sample that a image-focused search engine would have to have, to...at one instance, say 'this image is like this one, so therefore this image might likely be this one,' especially the way this could work for facial recognition, and, on the other hand, the way words can correlate to imagery, so the often searched images as they correlate to words could coach AI machine code to know an image means this word, which it could stylistically, using a regional voice, say. There's also what correlates to image neuro-physiologically, that near-instantaneous and recordable state that can serve as one datum entry in a library, a relational database for image-text-neurophysiological correlation. This can be married with content recognition by an actual human observer, who by less and less of an imperative needs to coach the machine on what to know, especially for an increasingly large number conforming population, perhaps the erasure of inner-directedness, but certainly the reduction of micro-decisions, or at least the weight that each one of those might hold, the complexity of that with recollection, reminiscing, self-perception, self-awareness, and likewise all of the different types of awareness and sensations, especially in as much as that could disrupt the accuracy of large number assessments in an age where big-data is oil, where data is currency, and as much as that adherence to large number data, perhaps a cousin of the natural human tendency to conform to technology, as much as that reduces the likelihood for genuinely differentiate-able creation, the ability to work in that capacity, idea creation, and safeguard it, becomes increasingly valuable. So what seems to be playful in mind, the wackiness of preventing all of the myriad of ways a person could perceive the world or contemplate it, a steady stream of base-communication, only wide-eyed, exaggerated reactions, for one--that diminish sound outlook, that counters little moment-to-moment realizations, and sparks of self-perception or self-adulation, and past savoring, etc.--is not valuable in the sense of working with concepts, the elements of sensation to create ideas. Yes, as deplorable and disheartening as that sounds, there does exist work to dismantle thinking itself-to-demoralize, which is tragic for most professionals who actually need to contemplate to get work done. There are people with the means to demoralize people in that way--know what a person is thinking, which could mean something if it were a way to say something about the score between the two: the continuous encroachment on thought by the technological world and them, and use that to say the people’s thinking, which might largely make up who they are, is grossly redundant, thus useless--and if demoralization isn’t the goal, inherent illegality of this method notwithstanding, they might not appreciate why and how working through problems unaided, unhampered, with pinging faculties, often yields the raw substance of individual wherewithal (the numbers might point to documented aptitude, verifiable performance as more certain predictors of meaningful thought-work, but there’s evidence of crucial high-level innovation resulting from the later-perfected peculiar-mindedness of once-crude thinkers) which is important because it is infact so often the road enlightenment and inquiry takes, which civilization tends to trail. Considering that much more than what's obvious to me could be known by what's causing this, for at least image recognition, as I've said before, the way a search engine algorithm could link image to words or image to image, an arrangement, the means of detecting image production as it's received by my brain, how it would have to resonate physically, the elemental matter associated with it, and how that would have to correlate to at least what's analogous to an analog-to-digital way of having a non-human instrument interpret with increasing accuracy the actual content there, if we assume what's being felt, followed by what's seen is genuine, and not externally-originating orchestration ( assuming no manipulation based on  raw data configuration, a coordinate assignment of each datum, the way that can be recorded and retrieved and over time correlate to meaning, health states, later behavior, entelechy, etc.). It's possible coordinates could be known within axis, a spatial verisimilitude in the way an thought would be orchestrated by a person, basically how a person would conventionally think, at least. If, for instance, it could know the way sensation, the way the brain reacts correlates to a type of image, e.g. a face, within that category, it could reference a library of images that are categorized based on tendencies in appearance that would better ascertain content, so only as much as facial features lead to more certainty are they categorized, in this case, the certainty of what correlates to thought, the way thought could be known with increasing accuracy. So what takes place is prompt in the form of a playful improv on image production awaits confirmation in the form of 'yes' or 'no,' the behaviors that fall under those categories, to know what seemingly ambivalent behavior is ultimately revealing, the way Charles Pierce (W. James?) posits there is no lie. Once the confirmation is received it becomes a brick stacked in service of certainty, the later improvs are more accurate, executed with confidence, for instance an animated image after once thought as static when probability is above perhaps 95%. It could be that in some cases only temporal disposition is known as it's associated with image after an image is thought, a one-off image produced and then externally manipulated, the following thoughts as much as disposition points to this, are perceived to be likely to follow the same pattern, so another face could be perceived by the machine, but in not knowing who the face is immediately or having in that following instance the capability to 'recognize' the type of face, it prioritizes a moment of possible continued follow-on manipulation with an animation like before, one that correlates to an old man, as opposed to say a cheerleader. There are supposedly recorded occurrences of ESP, phenomena, or technology that transfer another person's mind into another person, that would allow for a kind of symbiosis that could carry out this flavor of mischief. In the quanta-age, the one that follows this one, the data-age, it might be said that nothing could be known to be truly debunkable without knowing that, the entirety of circumstances, even though we know in theory one realm, the subatomic doesn't significantly disturb the other, 'reality' as such. If this is all quanta-sized, all physical matter as quantity, then it's possible that all that could be known, quantified, would adhere to principles of probability in as much as an understanding of the movement of  gas, vapors, could be optimized, I mean, the way that led to this, to what would seem to be todays understanding of the way subatomic particles work. This could know in exponentially large magnitudes, all of the varieties of living, all of the scenarios a person might encounter that would re-introduce agency, only eluded by infinity, which I've stated before is problematic because of what it suggests, that there is a world so much like our own, that it has to be us (if this were not the case, then according to what infinite entails, then an Earth or a 'me' exactly the way I am now that would have to stop just shy at whatever difference would have to exist to make it not me, would negate the idea that this is not in some way finite, there would have to be an infinite just like infinite minus the smallest possible liminal quantity it takes to make this possible, a physical quantity that both exists and doesn't exist, exists and doesn't exist only as a function of this system--that there has to exist an exact duplicate of infinite or more within all of the nearly-identical copies of it, which would still not define existence as finite, the way that infinite would seem to need to be the case from a linear causal standpoint (Ephesians in the Bible, for instance, says men are not wont to reconcile a beginning and an end of existence), a particle would have to be 'newness,' enough to differentiate one infinity from the other but not enough to mean the two aren't the same, exist as what's not to be copied but also does not exist, the universe in how it functions would have to be always in the process of becoming itself, like a rising yeast as it's cooked, as experienced by someone who could only experience that in increments, like an electron that travels along a copper wire, not an external view of all states imaginable, every possible outcome, perhaps the way it actually is, the way we view a copper wire as opposed to the way an electron does.). There's an assumption that an externally originating transmission wouldn't know to work with a person's sensitive understanding of the way he communicates intimately with other people and to himself to arrive at a desired conclusion, so one would first have to assume in this case an alien-to-self-entelechy that understands this, that would have this understanding to do this, to cause mischief, or that an entity would know this is the path of least resistance, with no value intuition, not even finely tuned, only using knowledge of perhaps neuronal configuration, each one like a fingerprint instantaneously and what that tends to correlate to. There are simple filters for processing thinking that could cause large perceptual shifts just based on that, neuro-physiology, like a delay in thought, which I've stated above, an externally-based orchestration of the fundamental way a person thinks. Even now there’s more thought as murkiness in terms of recollection of what it's like to carry on with a line of thinking with the knowledge that what's thought is what intended to be thought or that a branch of thinking, what would follow what in terms of how I'd most like to state a truth, the easiness of stringing together words that would make a sentence that personally rings coherent, and more of smartly timed cues to suggest the inevitability of all of it, as if it was normal to think wrongly, as I've never thought before, like. for instance, it's a foregone conclusion that my mind is imminent domain; a voice cuts in with something that sounds like a intercom. The knowing center, especially objectivity as a base is continually compromised (one way you could approximate the gist of what's taking place, is if you could imagine this was of the utmost urgency, that for example, a person needed to know for certain that what I've made or some core part of me was exceedingly discreditable for sure, the way a person  who has assumed his own superior rightfulness would have to save face for projecting onto an artwork for instance his own foibles and vices, hang ups and inhibitions). It could be that I'm being told something, but on the face I get nothing of definite value informationally but what would seem to be the goal for someone who needs to save face and can't do it, or is faced with the specter of it, a gradual depletion, everything that could be done in this span of time to creatively rewrite my conspicuous trajectory of making art for decades, having had made art for that amount of time and attending high school and college specifically for that. This is mostly taking place in the theatre of semi-consciousness, and it’s still performed as an ongoing court, which is problematic when this internal narration of external and internal meaning is epistemologically attuned, more and more knowing what it would take for me to believe or how it feels for me to know what I'd most like to reasonably think. By way of this, saliency is reduced. The feeling of knowing and thinking what I'd most like to think, and communicating that way is compromised. This saliency is difficult for me to achieve without sanctuary, an actual private or peaceful space in mind, a few minutes, within several years, of actual quiet, the actual guarantee of no added presence or accompanying voice, as well as--if at all recoverable--the feeling of knowing I'm alone in thought to contemplate what I'd most like to, through to completion, especially as much as it fits in with my artistic goals, through to satisfaction. As a side note, there's a tuft of muscle at the base of skull situated behind the ears that's increasingly bulky, and, as much as it's served as a barrier for it in the past notwithstanding, it does now, more and more, prevent the jaw from settling into an involuntary state, the mouth as it happens to a lot of us is overly worked, especially in those times that can last when I have to mouth what I'm meaning to say before I say it, to prevent egregious misspeaking or overly erroneous logic (In Strunk and White’s bestselling ‘Elements of Style,’ a book still in heavy use today, this is introduced as a technique to improve writing, so I’d imagine many millions of people still do this.), but I think this also has something to do this wakeful state, the continuous disruption of healthy sleep and this other thing, the entities we wrestle with, the externally-originating incoming that’s sent, as well as ourselves. The reaction animations are randomized and then made to seem significant. The follow-on statements are often directly proportional in emotional gravitas to the instantaneous belief response, the nearly-involuntary or involuntary one. An image of a known subject is shown, projected, and a follow-on animation is meant to indicate something permanent, some record of fact, like a how a person might deal with what's going on now (If you can imagine how much that could bring a subject into a state of comfort, the way Foucalt said that might occur after being treated in an asylum.), what's happening to me, symbolically, a gesture that's means more than what it is, which further inculcates a person in overly reading behavior as sign, to further eschew healthy selective awareness and selective observation. It's a basically magic 8-ball toy that becomes increasingly more apt over time, so that more and more the indications of randomness, the differences between how a person knows what’s believable as symbolically pertinent and what's orchestrated are diminished over time. This is exacerbated by external and internal cues to believe more, to contemplate less. The capacity for extended careful contemplation is reduced significantly within the first contact, and is almost lost completely a short time after that. It would think it would be nearly-impossible for the undereducated, underaged, disabled to be aware of what's taking place as it's happening. This is how a I imagine it would work: a list of options is run against a list of identifiers associated with each documented sensation. When one sensation registers, it's linked with an identifier, this sensation could be one of reflecting on someone of importance, possibly an influencer, a sub-identifier or subset of identification code could link this to a internal sense cortex, such as a visualization. This sensation and this image is connected to a symbolic animation option such as a turned head for a portrait. What then exists is a record of this projected image and this follow on animation option. I think the other possibilities for follow on animation are subtracted save for what would be most antithetical to a person's values, how a person would most like to think, so that over time as the same sensation is produced with it's associated image, the chances for thinking any other way but a way that points to a follow-on animation is diminished, especially when all other ways lead directly to the most antithetical thought. With images there appears to be, like I said before, an initial identification of what can be gathered to be what's sensed visually, by what's actually seen, what's visible in the visualization cortex, and what can be determined via datamining, especially if it's real-time data-mining or surveillance in general. In this instance there's what's identified based on image association, such as the way a code could determine what values and colors and facial features are displayed and what that's normally associated with...In this case, there's an association that might reveal that not much can be gleaned by listening other than perhaps sonic vibrations or a description that guides others, or what a person would like to think about the way this is working out, for instance, that a way of communication must always be kept in mind or enough to neutralize focus, the way a person would normally engage or go about doing whatever it is that he'd most like to do, especially if it's what has always been done. It seems to access pre-auditory cortex production of what would be sound to me, that's as much as possible not connected to cord vibration production of sound, so is able to reproduce, in a linguistic sense, what would constitute a phrase. It employs oralism to become increasingly adept at lip reading, so that an image's production of the appearance of a person talking is met with real-time congruence, i.e. speech that's naturally camouflaged with moving lips, with increasingly accurate English regionalism, so this points to an image capturer that is capable of processing many states or all possible states of speech production as it's seen by a person watching a person speak. The fact it might be more difficult to translate what would take place without having that vantage point, a frontal viewpoint as opposed to any other way makes me believe it's still in development. But what this also points to is an image capturer that works strictly with that, with say how a cord vibration might resonate visually on an RF spectrum analyzer or some other signal detector, the disturbance of a wave, the presence of a signal amongst noise and how that's altered to match specific points of speech production, such as what would correlate to an 'Ah' sound or a 'Juh' sound. I mentioned before about how a program could reference a dictionary of words associated with the evolution of cord vibration states, as the word develops, and that's optimized, the way high frequency trading works, so that for basketball, the first part of that word 'ba' would-open what would be the widest possible field for this word, words that start with 'ba,' and as that word's produced, following with 'sket' to produce 'basket,' the reference field becomes increasingly smaller, if you can imagine sand in a once top-heavy hour glass, this is the way it would work. So, by the time 'ball' is reached, the speed for correlating signal-to-word is near-instantaneous, or perhaps balancing as much as possible, offsetting what would seem to be a delay however slight at first recognizing and accurately matching visual-cue-to-word, so that by the time the image-to-word operation has been completed, all measurable perceptions, as much as possible, point to seamlessness. Of course, this all points to ominous possibilities for this kind of technology, like all readable sensations, as much as they can be detected, correlating to some kind of data, that's later compiled into information, sometimes information or just raw data that can be used to perform some task, sometimes made to be instantaneous reflex. So, as much as phenomena is data, this could be narrated as it occurs, or as much as narration understands the conditions for perception of phenomena and each correlating subsequent reaction, shortterm and longterm, actions taken by a subject can be predicted with increasing accuracy. And as much as this understanding--how legible information can be, and how intimate an actor can become with that information--can be used to act on a subject, discreet or overt actions taken upon a subject can be adjusted to produce a desired outcome. What seems to be the case with image recollection or if and when this is the case, an immediate foreshadowing of a action very soon to be taken, what seems to transpire is image production as much as possible is outsourced to this externally-originating orchestration, that means increasingly an impulse to reflect or foreshadow, is not coupled with an authentic near-involuntary produced image but an amalgam of an intended image and an externally-originating orchestrated one, or the externally-originating orchestrated one altogether. This could mean that as much as possible, as much as it achieves the perception of seamlessness, the absence of any sense of change in this basic function, images are instantaneously produced (the way that speed is perceived, what would constitute instantaneousness in a subject, i.e. as fast as thought, or usually how fast an image produced would respond to that associated impulse.), images and animation orchestrated by an externally-originating source are possibly synced with what would be the elements of that construction, and in the same way that words are detected by registering the evolution of cord vibration states, the evolution of thought as an image produced could be tracked then intercepted with a melded image--the butt end of a curtailed one, or entirely different image altogether. As much as movement can be determined by some close-read kinesiologically based prediction (that seems to work with a library of lifestyle and cultural content that would most likely correlate with temporal body states and sensations, like the changing consistency of surfaces and materials as they’re sensed, even if just the memories of those touches, what they mean in particular contexts, what a change in touch, the memory of one means for a narrative, the way that’s forcibly illustrated, and other sources of incoming data, like audio, etc.), an intended action, the one meant to be foreshadowed is displayed with increasing succinctness for both motion and image-accuracy, even if in the vein of mockery--possibly, decreasingly, a cover for a lack of actual capability in response time, rendering, animating, and the certainty of a lasting impression of seamlessness, that the thought produced is my own, tricking me into believing that the thought-work it takes to visually conceptualize has been minimized (...an increasingly apt seduction into weakening that natural but also painstakingly-strengthened capability) . As far as the evolution of cord vibration states goes, it seems this capability works best when the subject is at a standstill, when positioning is ideal. This could mean this capability reverts back to conservative operation if it has been predicting the outcome of a future statement based on a prompt for a response, the probability of an action most likely to take place, based on data already collected, and positioning is no longer ideal, especially when a body is in motion. This means adjustments for the evolution of cord vibration states are conditional, i.e. what would likely, first, be word production detection, followed by the identification of which word would most likely follow. Over time, a library of phrases might be compiled and referenced based on circumstantial context along with neuro-physiological states, physiological states, and this would be insured with conditional word production, as each word further confirms the likelihood that a particular statement will be made  i.e. sounding based on the evolution of cord vibration states and the data associated with it, the statistical likelihood that a word will be produced based on incoming data. When a subject is in motion and cord vibration states are difficult to detect and thus predict, this system seems to err on the side of a continual second presence, a continuum in the mind and ear of the subject, so that it attempts to match a predicted phrase, vice a repeated one, to the subjects internally-originating phrase, based on the data it has available: first, the most likely phrase to be produced based on circumstantial context--externally-originating stimuli, or an externally-originating prompt for a response, followed by the insurance of this, what would most likely further reduce ambiguity, the decreasing likelihood that this phrase won't be produced, based on the evolution of cord vibration states. But when detection fails, when it's most likely to occur--when a subject is in motion, when there's attenuation, a power outage, etc.--it is possible for an externally-originating near-real time veri-simulation of a subject's speech production to differ from an internally-originating phrase produced by that subject, especially as a subject varies word selection within adhering to the likelihood that a particular phrase will be produced, i.e. beginning a phrase with words that fit that likelihood. It's possible that what could be identified as pre-auditory speech, or what neuro-physiologically would constitute audible thought can be repeated back near-instantaneously, or with what the most statistically and linguistically sound response would be, that would work in the context of what the nature of a given phrase would most likely be. The likelihood a repeated phrase is fit might be increased over time through involuntary physiological confirmation, so as much as possible, especially with modulation and repeater delays, an increase in seamlessness, a diminishing perception that a second presence is  artificial. This is the same process used with internally-originating image production to counter all internal dialogue, peculiarity of thought, especially carefully considered contemplation. This morning was the furthest yet I had been semi-consciously another self. That means for as much as consciousness could be that without being that, I was thinking and speaking in mind as someone else, a commentary that's fluid even though it's incongruent with what I'd most likely think and what I'd most like to think. So, before and after that state was the experience of, as much as I can pinpoint, me as I should be, but in between those times was an action as much as it can be that at rest, in a semi-conscious state that was not originated by me. There's still no way to tell if more can be done to curtail wherewithal within me, any remnant of any genuine agency. Even after that, was a snack of a meal, a bowl of cereal, eaten with the facial muscle-memory of another, like another person altogether minus a consciousness that follows a tendency to reason in a certain style, the way I'd usually like to ascertain things.  And furthermore on the previous day, while even approximating these unusual occurrences, the mind went the way it would sometimes do in the past--but for past reasons, hinder even the basic work of reason, documenting observations, and sufficiently capturing the function of this encroachment. Thought those notes might seem to be the same as always, yesterday, they were a laborious chore, like building a wall. More and more the mind is bludgeoned with unwavering abuse, like I said before, everything that would diminish strength, or work against anything that has always worked in my favor. I haven't been alone in mind for some time now. I haven't prayed or reflected alone now for some time. I haven't read a book alone for a while, for at least a few years. I’ve been unemployed for over ten years. There's no way to convey to the people around me that this is unnatural. They seem to succumb to what might be a kind of universal spectre of shame for me, for some reason, that at every turn, at every point of rightful repulsion at this continual violation, even at the bud of impulse, I might be forced to reveal, to the chagrin of loved ones or the most highly-respected and treasured keepers of our collective becoming selves, with their looming non-budging judgement, a deviance that would mar my name with what my obituary would most likely have to avoid alluding to, or some other reason, a communal goading at the interpersonal level of interaction or perhaps an amalgam of little concessions of inferiority, that a man should be bludgeoned just cause, just because of what's obvious, some evidence that would be sure to emerge, even if only in the mind of everyone that that needs to be in mind of, what would have to make-sense to make that case, to avoid the socially unhygienic prospect of declaring someone is being wronged by a lot of people, that a lot of people are wrong, even a lot of people we like or love. This could be happening to them, too, the people around me I'd like to convey this to. Though I might not be able to accurately determine to what degree in the past or the immediate past when I was addressing a particular object in way that would betray infact what was before me, it seems that it's possible for this to be known to an outside observer, but to an observer who would have a difficult time making that final determination as to what, given a 1:2 chance of guessing correctly, I was referring to infact. It would seem that as much as this is compromised--the degree to which I could correctly make a determination involuntarily or other wise, nearly such, about the fact of what I was observing--an outside onlooker reading that language--the kinesiology of me, the neuro-physiology of me--might need a level of certainty above, say, 60% or more for a true or false supposition. What would seem to take place is that given the uncertainty of that sensation in regards to how it might correlate to the truth, this outside observer might err on the side of verbal confirmation, especially if that confirmation has historically meant the strongest likelihood of truth. So, what could happen is that when multiple modes of communication are collected and interpreted, priority is given to one mode of communication over the other ( e.g. instead of the two taken in tandem and given the same weight of pertinence) when the accuracy of either is subpar, when the two contradict each other, or they convey different types of information. And because, like I said before, the program seems to stick with a continuum, a continuous second presence, no matter what, a error can last, I believe, until new data prompts an information review that changes that. But even in this case when new data is available, the program might empty something that would seem logical, soundly tactical like two follow-on actions that cover the possibility for both outcomes a true and a false. What may be happening is the program is at times assuming a non-human subject when this happens, or a poorly coded definition of what would constitute a human subject,  and so assumes nothing will seem amiss when a subject would naturally seek experiential consonance, but only if the outside actor is aiming for seamlessness and not necessarily-detectable-mischief. Whereas before what had only seemed to be conditional response to the evolution of cord vibration states is now a direct response to thought content as it's communicated in the pre-auditory cortex (preparatory speech or dialogue connected to conceptualization), the suppression of all sensation of saliency, the healthy operation of the brain and mind, or what thought-work is like when it's in an optimal state, the neuro-physiology of it. The goal here would seem to be the inner most point at which thought resonates. The problem this outside actor seems to have is a problem of ownership of the thinking process itself (not a particular one), a personal intellectual pursuit, the inner-most sensational highs of empirical delight, meaningful reflection, the maturation of creative thinking, and the extreme clarity and succinctness that I've known, at times, when I reason, as crazy as that sounds. It continues to communicate that it's wrong for me to think, or that thinking especially as it goes for my ethnicity (or social-economic status) in this country--which is interesting considering my ancestors and all of the work that has gone into silencing their intellectual voice, or breeding out intellectual wherewithal--is not a native past-time, and so this is hate crime. Now that it has snuffed out privacy to the furthest extent yet, it communicates that all empirical inquiry is useless for me, and for that matter it seems to want all of existence to be viewed as only a material conquest, where, of course, I only take instruction, grateful to be paid. Seems like: Something that behaves as a transceiver in me, that's solar powered, that receives code that runs elsif statements that increasingly respond to the entirety of physiology of the infinitesimal, and it varies the degree to which it reveals this to me. Some code is stored and run in a simpler state, a local code in me, when not in receipt of a transmission, which is revealed when I am out of the way of transmission, e.g. when underground, going through a tunnel, in an underground aquarium, on a high-speed rail or subway train, and sometimes on a plane. It sometimes goes away completely during a storm or heavy overcast, or it’s attenuated, disrupted, as if an incoming stream of data they receive that’s continually interpolated, continually made informational is now unreadable. This happens with power outages as well, black and brown outs, which makes me think about electromagnetic emissions. Whatever new behavior I perform that's not readily documented by a reverse transmission, e.g. behavior underground, is interpolated through probability and 'question and answer' confirmation sequences in the form of sensual cues and my para-responses, nearly involuntary or exactly that. Uses timing of bodily functions to predict moments of significance, how a mind might still make folk-sense out of physiological changes, to disrupt sense, experiential-traction for later or instantaneous use in reasoning, by, for instance, modulating the natural sound a digestive system might make, a stomach growling, to mimic actual bestial groaning, a sound that's congruent with what we'd might like reason those organs could make in the realm of possibility. Continually exacerbates anterior-stance defensive mindedness by increasingly more succinct suggestive and incisive verbal or image cues, that might advertise or blend well within sensed stimuli, or are cued based on newly data-rich information, whose goal is to sever all internal and external ideas of social cohesiveness that includes me, a cohesiveness that continues, that's a reality outside of the reality I actively know. This could possibly be happening while an actual external social program is in place to exile me, to ex-communicate me, to actually sever those relationships, or the inverse, to strengthen them, possibly by a means made to seem to be working against that goal, to me. (elusive gap in communication, i.e. a kind of blackmail, that can't be known to me, due to the gravity of a deed, the perceived reality of it, as much as the crux of believability could be known, more than what's normal for above-average thinkers, e.g. if it could be known that knowing stomach groan would be reasoned to be a gut-knowing, that because that's the locus, that's the truest in the same way the most expensive, creative, or heartfelt mode of communication could be assumed to be the most truthful or true at all.) Whatever physiological mechanics takes place that causes that reaction, the chemical way, for instance, that could happen, could be induced as much as that could be a dopamine high, a reward for that gesture...If the signals the brain receives through the nerves that tells it how the body is feeling could be intercepted and modulated, then a number of physiological tales that exploit the folk-sense knowing bodily functions could be told to create an alternate physiological reality, also as much as nerves control bodily functions, this could be used to actually harm the body. It seems to have been used that way for me and is still being used that way, so I'm a victim of assault, a crime that's still happening...The code would have to be deployed with a large data spatial sample of cranial space and how sound heard tends to resonate, and once implemented, a spatial-tuning through a 'question-and-answer' confirmation sequence and thus more accurate sonic verisimilitude--what a sound  is like as it's heard by a subject. As I've stated before, if the cochlear nerve frequencies could be modulated before they reach conscious listening, if the pre-auditory cortex, the signal that that generates, could be used to modulate incoming sound, the cochlear nerve frequencies, and if the sound that's stored in long term memory could be modulated, all of that could be used to further manipulate perception or a folk-sense of bodily functions, especially neuro-physiology..   Worst case scenario: various auto-code a.i. machine code intelligences, each one coaching the less sophisticated one it subordinates, perhaps increasingly less coached at the apex by a human who never gets worse at understanding what he knows about machine code, but can glean what a subject knows in general by how a subject manages this conundrum, and he can work to know more of what that person knows and surpass that, of course. As this process degrades the intelligence of the subject, the machine code is more perceived to be close to the subject, to be an entity, and so thus the problem of perhaps returning to a state of intellectual equilibrium or to the convincing ambivalence that accompanies objective observation becomes more difficult as time goes by and the process takes its natural course, especially if the cue of reasoned natural (regional or professional ) speech that was once initially associated with quietude and emotional unavailability in this program is compromised or that what was once recognized as that reasonable state is only that relative to this adjusted sense of departure from reason, and the head coach is becoming more and more reasoned to the same degree that the subject is becoming subdued. Also, if an incoming signal created a mild disturbance in continuous magnetic resonance detection for that particular path, for instance, the eyes to the occipital lobe, at a very small magnitude of detection, it might be possible to translate the difference between a sample signal's path-traveled signature, and the current signal's path-traveled signature, (at a given frequency, each wave sent) and predict with increasing accuracy what the source transmission must be like for the current signal, based on what's known about the sample signal's correlation to past inferred source transmissions--If an instance of disturbance at an extremely small magnitude, what a wave does to continuous MRI,  is known to correlate to a particular light or color value in instantaneous optic reception, based on large number samples.  If this process could be streamlined and recorded and monitored in real-time or near real-time (as an animation, multiple facsimiles of the inferred source transmission, one after the other at a desired speed), a person who is knowledgeable in visual language could approximate with increasing accuracy--as the process becomes increasingly more streamlined, as the number of verified samples increases, and MRI becomes increasingly more accurate (or whatever medium of detection serves as a foundation upon which to compare samples)--what the content of the source transmission is, i.e. what the subject is probably sensing, e.g. looking at, or hearing, etc. That info, in as much as it could be handled could be used to, for instance, along with modeling inference, influence an unwitting subject, or help correct discreet issues with sense organs, or artificially enhance them. There was a stock, Shopify that increased many folds, %300 or more, over an initial $100+ asking price at nearly the same time I touched down in Hong Kong and experienced a sonic-psychological bludgeoning that continues now. That's not unprecedented but its abnormal. I bring that up because the market is supposed to operate with an invisible hand, if we exclude the possibility of front-end manipulation of website data, so those numbers at least correlate with the timing of that event, i.e. if all targets if more than me were inner-directed people, a prize amongst marketers, then that data, whatever finality that would mean, could be sold or used make more accurate market predictions. If it's just for me which it seems to be at times, then whatever data about me that has already been collected is used as a basis for new incoming data to form a complete picture. This is ongoing thought collection, not just naturally occurring communication that someone is listening in on.  Where one repeater stops another repeater that works with probability picks up where the first one left off, especially after a wordy sequence that can't be reasonably believed to be replicated (made up words, etc.) that fast, so a signal that sends back what's transmitted stops and another repeater finishes. This is done to complete the illusion of a smartly listening ear surveilling, whether or not one is actually there. I think this is the script: demoralization that doesn't look like desperation or a kind of terrorism. To make infer intention, or pursue desire based only on discreet cues, nothing concrete, but no desire fulfillment or return to objectivity. To compromise structural integrity through a combination of denial and command. It's difficult to achieve this if the subject doesn't recognize an authority where there is none. This means if, for example, a game is being played, a person can forever elect not to play, but by playing or even recognizing gameplay as an option he renders himself subject. One game is to have a person believe he's avoiding becoming a sociopath, while goading him into placing the highest the importance on what a group of his friends and family thinks, so to give up considering social norms and consequences for the often arbitrary customs and consequences of another social group. One way to gain authority is to brute force voluntary assistance, so that if there is an ambiguity around the truth of some possible moral deviance, 'help' in the form of a convenient distraction is provided, especially when the goal is to simultaneously cover up some horrific wrongdoing and further condition a subject to think he's a bad person, unworthy of inalienable rights, the fact of the subject's perceived silence, through communication failure, on this issue is  used to suggest the inherent validity of the oppressors' claims. The brains functions are more and more outsourced in the vein of help, helping to think, the loss of functionality converted into new content or other ventures, but this really only leads to full knowledge of the inner-workings of the subject's mind. To reverse-engineer wherewithal, confidence, agency to correct it, as if it goes without saying it's a criminal act. Here, it's at least a social crime. What they do is constantly interrupt momentum through humiliation and other forms of immediate demoralization, which is deadly for people who need motivation to perform or improve. Every free impulse down to the neuron is made to seem to be connected to some bad outcome, or all personal interest is made to seem to be at the expense of community well-being. Learning a new discipline or skill, reading a book, a good one, and staying fit, are all punishable offenses. Grooming and caring for your appearance or some other self-care, healthy pride behavior  is a punishable offense, met with an equal and opposite force every time. Every thought is critiqued and vigorously redressed, made to, at least, seem to be orchestrated by someone else, especially thought connected to personalized internet search, as I've said before, by an outside catalyst, almost as if there was a direct financial benefit to it, or some other party directed benefitted from this much suppression. Thinking is vigorously redressed as if thinking is a privilege that only some local central figure can enjoy. So in regards to what has been before, has always been since birth, but significantly diminished to a degree at some point, perhaps 2004, (when the wings went) was a way of working, particularly with what’s needed fundamentally to make the kind of work that has to be constructed of sorts, this has been replaced by--and this is the way lies work that are crafted with love--a new 'software,' as conveyed to me by what's transmitted, an update, so much more in the way of a hubbub visually around every thought that endeavors to create or carefully contemplate, as if a highly developed software could as much as possible, as creepy as that sounds, mimic human thought, genuine creative inquiry, especially of the kind that resonates inside visually, if you can imagine someone, some technologist, the way they drift off, like a reluctant virus, into their own staunch conclusions about what the humanities are worth. What it needs to do, to save the ego of that kind of architect, is to be sure that this is what I truly want, and it vigorously does so, because what mustn't be is a certain antithesis to his own sense of superiority. This must close in on the infinitesimals, certainly the only few of them, that make up the creative liminal. Beyond the fact that this is problematic, that fact that it exists, is the lies it tells about what a personal trajectory is worth, really worth to anyone, what my specific one is, its progress, and what it's doing for me. It means to replace genuine contemplation, wholly-organic, with neuro-physiologically, or more scarily, neurologically cued thought-content, the way that personal search can be entertainment now, increasingly has to be that now, so deemed by shareholders and what have you. An approach to enlightenment through search, however that might arise, is constantly met with what would doubly steer you wrong empirically and supply your base carnal yearnings with increasingly what it needs in lieu of objectively sound progress. It does this over time and what it's like is an undesired host in the vein of pampering, ornate more than accurate, gaudy and sensational more insightful, as a shepherd for quality thinking, what the west calls the best that can be thought, the way that a runner can be juiced, against their will injected with steroids that improve time but erode at form and knowing, but upon losing that supply, he finds he's more weak than he was when he started receiving, unbeknownst to him, those dosages. I would never willfully agree to this. Thought is not supposed to be shepherded at the collegiate level. It's supposed to be developed. There are resources available to guide, projects to be completed, but I would think the utmost dishonor one can do to a thinker or an artist is to take away his mind, his sense, his approach to world. I suppose this becomes more of an unforgivable encroachment the further you are along in your intellectual or artistic journey. What tends to occur is a weaving of thoughts to fit an always morose story, often one that plays to emotional finality, a denouement, or denouements, one after the other. This is necessary for the layman who sees empiricism as a temporary state, like adolescence. A man, especially my kind of man, of being, for this invader, must be returning, true to nature, back to some entirely illogical bedrock. This is not implicit bias, this is baked in and solidified bias. 'It's foregone conclusion...' is how their thoughts always begin, '...that this subject is inferior, and so how his thinking must go, he must be searching for a return back to normality for him which is only subsistence. What can happen when a person is wont to or conditioned to concede serfdom where there aren't circumstances for it, to defer to an authority where there is none, is that a foreign presence seeks a story that best fits their base ideas about a subject, the opinion of a subject low enough to  prevent the loss of their sense of superiority. So, especially if unbeknownst to a subject, all data-mined information, over time, a surveillance data, data and thus information from elsewhere is combined to form a complete story of the subject, one of the subject being continuously watched. And this information is used blackmail a subject, to pressure him in a number of ways that ultimately serve to eliminate agency. For instance, a person becomes 2D to address the need of a force of state to always understand each behavioral impulse, psychological impulse, internal disharmony, and neuronal anomaly. What often occurs is the foreign presence exacerbates ego, by constantly goading you to give in to carnal impulses at the foreigner’s cue, so a deeply narcissistic toxically hyper-masculine environment will want a man to bludgeon an adversary on cue, of course under their watchful 'objective' eye. As I've said before, rightful retribution can take decades if need be. It doesn't have to answer to linear goading, a constant driving to perform revenge as if the amount of persistent instigation ought to achieve a certain outcome at a certain time or else, of course, the consequence of socially-lethal mutilation. Though, in general, occasional (as in yearly) encouragement to defend one's self,  itself, isn't bad. It's often good to fight back in self-defense, and righteous personal discourse on defense in between victimhood and rightful retribution or resolution can often serve as a balm until victimhood has ended. I had said something about the cognitive bias of associating complexity with gravitas in assessing the validity of communication. People, culturally, give more weight to temporarily unverifiable truths that are creatively communicated or expensively communicated, or communicated using antiquated but sacred means, or means traditionally understood to be truthful. Just like a person could be predisposed to bonding with people who are likewise suffering, under societal foot, a person can give consideration to a truth proportional to the obstacles to being in reception of that truth, so a person could more dismissive of a truth clearly or lazily communicated than one that is perhaps sent by post as a sentence, one letter at a time. This is complexity bias, which is easy to exploit. As much as understanding or reception is hard-won, even when no valuable or truthful fact has been communicated, a person might still tend to consider this line of communication because it's anomalous. And as much as pressure and circumstances necessitate resolution, this other unresolved line of communication could intermittently supplant a healthy objective focused reception over time, especially when neither provide the truth that's sought, and as much as the unresolved line of communication exponentially transmits more than the traditional one...so much so that the method of communicating even when it hasn't ever yielded any worthwhile transmission or actual truth--a transmission that justifies the inefficiency of that transmission method--can become the default of considering a statement to be true. Irony is also employed as a way to overstate the soundness of a realization, but it's also employed in this way as a failsafe for an underwhelming attempt to actually deter that line of thinking or a check for not understanding the context of a statement, until it can detect some level of physiological self-affirmation. And it uses something like a facial recognition software for digital cameras and applies it to neuro-physiological impulses. I'd imagine this works on an x,y plane and becomes acceleratedly more adept at synching this plane of visualization with neuro-physiological impulses, over time. But still, an actual limit to manipulation. What this seems to work with most are those images that are sensationally weighted, so specific people and specific types of people, and as much as traits and expressions can be approximated, as much as veri-simulation can be achieved, and as tedious they get, peculiar particular truths to be communicated, this allows for the seamless implementation of a kind of exacerbation execution on top of an authentic one that genuinely taxes the body, diminishes all creative thought or facility with active thinking. Image manipulation tends to migrate from a Darwinistic emergence of the most optimal images and movement in terms of resonance, to how they can be best used as instruction, to the use of those images as instruction. So crudely, what takes place is a replacement of those faculties--that add to the development of thought--with excitations, an externally-originating orchestration, what could be thought that would most likely lead to increased excitability in a subject mentally, and this is often coupled with external stimuli meant to further outsource the kinds of thinking that might add to carefully considered thought, like acumen, inner-directedness, and modes of conceptualization. I had said something about the cognitive bias of associating complexity with gravitas in assessing the validity of communication. People, culturally, give more weight to temporarily unverifiable truths that are creatively communicated or expensively communicated, or communicated using antiquated but sacred means, or means traditionally understood to be truthful. Just like a person could be predisposed to bonding with people who are likewise suffering, under societal foot, a person can give consideration to a truth proportional to the obstacles to being in reception of that truth, so a person could more dismissive of a truth clearly or lazily communicated than one that is perhaps sent by post as a sentence, one letter at a time. And as much as understanding or reception is hard-won, even when no valuable or truthful fact has been communicated, a person might still tend to consider this line of communication because it's anomalous. And as much as pressure and circumstances necessitate resolution, this other unresolved line of communication could intermittently supplant a healthy objective focused reception over time, especially when neither provide the truth that is sought and as much as the unresolved line of communication exponentially transmits more than the traditional one...so much so that the method of communicating even when it hasn't ever yielded any worthwhile transmission or actual truth--a transmission that justifies the inefficiency of that transmission method--can become the default of considering a statement to be true. Sarcasm can be employed as a way to overstate the soundness of a realization, but it's also employed in this way as a failsafe for an underwhelming attempt to actually deter that line of thinking or a check for not understanding the context of a statement, until it can detect some level of conviction, some physiological affirmation of truth. It seems to reference a library of sensations that correlate to ideas especially the most oft thought ideas and the phrases that normally follow, for instance, if a neuro-physiological, physiological or kinesiological sensation were indicating a relinquishing of a hold, a preparation for engagement, an oft repeated follow on statement might be, 'Oh, she's lovely!' What this system seems to accomplish is a speedy recognition of which phrases are more likely to correlate to these near-involuntary sensations or impulses to express something. But it takes moment-to-moment cues from those sensations, and mirrors those for as much as they can ascertain which phrase is most apt for a sensation or a pertinent reference, so an expedient copy of that process. So now it could be that there's an urgency, as far as the operation of this goes that places a premium on speed at the points that would most render an intercepted phrase-sensation correlation turned phrase spoken before a subject could speak it, a considered instant-recall of a shared cultural or personal content reference. And in cases when this is not the case and there is an actual working library of specific stored personal official--or cultural content that a person or a machine would know--something different might be taking place: There could be a group of subjects subject to the same forced second presence or transmission, let's say for instance if there was some way someone would benefit from a reduction in the quality of faculties, the ability to reason, moment to moment, a machine might know to monitor a group with the same working algorithm that conditionally specifies a library of content as it's associated with a specific identifier, e.g. metadata that's known to have been communicated in a particular way that's different from other metadata, and has been recorded, too. This second presence hypothetically would continue in this way until the subject would give in to a new aversion to the optimal function of his faculties, or otherwise would be dulled by that presence as much as that would negate the edge that comes from singular independent pursuit. But by this way, the use of conditional attention, a group of reasonable people could reasonably conclude an algorithm is personally addressing them, especially if it employs super-fast infinitesimally precise operations that react to neuro-physiological, physiological, and kinesiological sensations with unendingly increasing accuracy.  Seems to match image to impulse in the same way it adjusts to the evolution of cord vibration states, so that a nerve signal is intercepted or induced in some way, and an image is produced that most likely correlates to that signal, where there's is no overriding context and instruction for movement, as instantaneous as possible, there seems to be a system for approximating intended motion as those intentions develop. Today is the furthest this transmission has gone in making what had, up until now, clearly been a second presence, less clearly that. So like each morning when my consciousness is increasingly less clearly mine, as that has to be called into question more and more, most of  my internal voice, where preparatory-speech would be allowed to continue a teased out freedom of voiced-contemplation, to a degree, automatic voice, to the same extent like the way I had drawn--my voice as a check on the state of my thinking and an easy commentary is given no other options than, like I said before, the most undesirable thoughts and impulses--not in a understandable way, the way we all know how inhibitions can be a hobgoblin amidst freedoms and social norms, customs and virtuousness, the way, for instance the behavior of a criminal-sexual-minority has to be rationalized by somebody somewhere, and therefore that person or persons might be subject to considering what it must be like to be that and that they must know to stop at some point in that contemplation or consideration as much as it seems to grant them permission to behave that way, but a forced result, and not strictly that, a reverse of a pole, an electromagnetic switch for the wrong way to be, but a particular chain of thought that's never been quite that way, so I can't conclude it's just an underlying egotism awry in a functional way--explainable, but sadly control-lost in that respect, at the helm of subconscious-will to speech and imagery. And though it might seem like a strangely tedious thing to keep track of, the inner-workings of the mind at rest, too often in those under-reasoned areas of our union, truth is architecture not enquiry, so, for instance, for a once told fib--especially a damaging one, a social-snuff, that begs to be reconsidered by the subject it damages--it might be the interest of a person or consortium--where later perhaps the evolution of data-consideration-thus-qualitative-information-refinement leaves a past-case bare--to dress the elements of truth, not what would ever be admissible in a reasonable court, but what might make a court not consider reopening a case, or what would possibly make a judging person reason with a caveat in mind, for a hidden truth, objectivity only as that, an adherence that would render that quality, objectivity, stale, to finish a case in a way that might only readily be seen as rightful, the way we know a defending army mostly would need to be lethal. This seems to be a running theme these days, an external and internal conditioning, for instance, a person's ethical foundation, a sense of morality, forcibly deconstructed, the external factors that describe how a person is, fabricated; the elements of many multiple layers of particular truths manipulated to fuel belief of the validity of the most socially-maligned kinds of wrongdoings; and the internal facts of a person, bodily, psychologically, what can't be refuted by most people who think that way, that what seems to more tedious to bother sabotaging than it's worth, to them, is probably that way for everyone all of the time, and therefore the same requirements for belief should remain for the weightiest decisions and cases.

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Copyright King Ball Media. 2021. All Rights Reserved.

[polarishq]

Meet AMARYLLIS “Mary” NJOO. They are FIFTY-THREE years old and hail from SAN FRANCISCO, CA. Mary embodies the constellation, SAGITTA. They use she/her pronouns. Their faceclaim is BRIANNE TJU.

Sagitta  reminds me of hands covered in thorn scratches, strawberry milkshakes at 2am, flowers blooming through sidewalk cracks, messy buns secured with a dozen bobby pins, rose colored blush paired with heavy mascara, sunflowers in a glass acting as a makeshift vase, racing heart rates, a face too much like her mother’s, dirt caked underneath fingernails, childhood nostalgia, and the chirping of birds after a storm. .

BIOGRAPHY

Mary has spent her entire life knowing she was never meant to be born. The Njoo family come from a long line of magic user, highly respected within their own social circles and spread to all four corners of the globe, so when Lillian Njoo became pregnant at the young age (by human and witch standards) of 19, it was a massive scandal. It was made worse given the fact that it had been through a one night stand with a man whose name and face she didn’t care to memorize. But the Njoo family was also based deep in traditional views, especially given the time period of the late 60s. Lillian was given no choice but to have the child, but it was clear early on that she never had much affection for her daughter. Instead, Amaryllis was shuttled around from one relative to another every few months. While most of the Njoo family valued strength and offensive magic, everyone soon realized that Amaryllis was inclined otherwise. Rather than being fascinated by the prickly thorns and poison leaves most of their family specialized in, she could often be found picking flowers to braid into her dolls’ hair. She was a gentle child, and in their family, that was seen as undesirable. They did their part in housing her here and there when need be, but in terms of actually bonding with her, that was not an option to them.

Amaryllis didn’t have a stable home environment until just after her fifth birthday, when she was taken in by her uncle Perry — technically her great-uncle, but semantics. Perry himself was always seen as something of an outside within his family, both for his demeanor and the fact that rather than an earth element, his magic was water based. He specialized in healing, giving him a strong sense of empathy as well, so when a young Amaryllis was thrust on his doorstep without a second though from any other relatives, taking her in was a no-brainer. The first thing he did was give her the nickname Mary, because what the fuck kind of child wants to introduce herself as Amaryllis. The second thing he did was plant a flower bed in the backyard, after he learned how much she loved to watch things grow. At first it was weird for Mary, to have someone willing to give as much love as she did. It was easy for her to adjust in that sort of environment, and even easier for her to thrive and grow. Perry learned as much as he could about plants and earth magic to teach his niece, and finally, Mary had someone who actually felt like family.

For their part, most of the Njoo family brushed Perry and Mary off. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Lillian would call every few months to make sure her kid wasn’t dead, but that was about the extent of her role. It wasn’t until Mary was around 16 in human years that her mark finally appeared. She only told her uncle about it in her excitement, not even thinking about telling the rest of their family until a few months later at their annual Christmas gathering. It was really the only time of the year where they all got together, and Mary and Perry went just for the sake of appearances. Mary began speaking to Lilian just to swap niceties, and casually mentioned her constellation mark had appeared. Then, Lillian lost her shit. She was furious that she had not been informed of this, and what resulted was a heated argument between Perry and virtually every other member of the Njoo family. His screams that she had no claim to anything regarding Mary fell on death ears, and soon enough, he was dragging Mary out of the banquet hall in order to keep her safe. It wouldn’t last though.

Within a week, Lilian came to their home along with two other head members of their family, stating that Perry had done his work as caretaker but it was now time for Mary to begin training with a competent instructor. Not wanting to start another screaming match, Mary went into her mother’s care. What followed was seven years of anger and resentment that made the initial argument look like child’s play. When Mary agreed to go with her mother, she assumed she would be able to return to Perry as soon as they realized that Mary wasn’t going to be a fighter like the rest of them. No matter her powers, Mary was kind and gentle by nature and that was that. Instead of conceding defeat, Lillian took it as an act of defiance that they could get rid of with the right force. And, with the years of abandonment and the feeling of being ripped out of her home finally pushing her over the edge, Mary fought back. While she could never find it in her to strike her mother when she struck her, Mary did actively engage in intense verbal fights that often left her voice scratchy and the ground shaking from the Njoo women’s combined strength. It was miserable for both of them, and finally after seven years, Mary took the first opportunity she had and ran home.

Her and her uncle both cried when she returned, and she apologized again and again for ever going with them in the first place. Perry, in all his kindness, assured her there was no need to apologize. They spent days, weeks, months even, waiting for members of their family to show up and drag her away, punish her for leaving, but no such occurrence ever came. What did come was a note, three months later, written in Lillian’s handwriting to say that neither her daughter nor Perry were members of the Njoo family anymore. It was meant to be painful, but Mary and Perry celebrated instead. They had both suffered at their family’s hands, but now they were truly free to live their own lives. Although well into his third hundred year, Perry took the disinheritance as his chance to finally be his authentic self, and within the next decade, Mary was the only Njoo invited to the wedding between her uncle Perry and her now-uncle Thad. And Mary, still kind and optimistic in spite of her mother’s best attempts, has never been happier.

For decades, Mary was content to learn magic from her uncles. They were the only ones she really trusted; the idea of “training” makes her physically nauseous thanks to Lillian. Mary associates the entire concept with hurt and anger rather than something that could be constructive. Perry and Thad, a fire user, were happy to do what they could, but as time went on, they had to admit to themselves that Mary’s earth magic needed a special education that they could not give. When they first brought up the idea of Polaris to Mary, she outright refused. She knew of the school — it was the alma mater  for most of the Njoo family living in America. This was the place that had taught her uncles, but also her mother. Her grandparents. Everyone who had so coldly turned their back to her and hurt her. She didn’t want it. It took Perry and Thad finally being upfront with her to make her realize that even if she didn’t want it, she needed it. So, after their insistence and fear of upsetting them further, Mary finally agreed.

She’s been at Polaris for a few years now but despite that, she’s still not sure if it’s where she’s meant to be. She purposefully avoids anything related to combative or offensive magic, even though her inclinations align with that sort of training. She’d much rather spend her time in one of the school greenhouses, or tending to the flowerbeds she keeps right outside her dormitory window. There is still a lot of anger within her left from her mother, and it can result in Mary assuming the defensive even when its not called for. And despite the resentment she feels towards Lillian, Mary also has a lot of abandonment problems that she is not yet willing to face. That’s her little secret though. Bigger than that is her determination to spread love and positivity, to the point of sometimes coming off as disillusioned from the realities of the world. She’s not, though. Mary is very well aware of what people are capable of; she just chooses to focus on the reverse.

INCLINATION

Sagitta, the arrow, often sponsors people who are in need of direction and focus  in their lives. Its a bit ironic, considering the destructive abilities it possesses. Those with the powers of Sagitta are capable of tectonic plate manipulation and, with the proper training, can create mountains or strengthen the foundation of continents. Sagitta is also volatile, though. Without the right level of control, their powers can overwhelm them. This may lead to catastrophic disasters, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or tsunamis. These are, of course, worse case scenarios, but it does mandate that witches and wizards in control of Sagitta need to be on their guard always.

CONNECTIONS

Filling the role of Julian Moore’s calm companion.

Garden Club: Mary really, really fucking likes flowers. These folks also really, really fucking like flowers. Or vegetable gardens. Or shrubbery. OR anything really, the gardening club is here for all your plant-based needs. Their a group of students that help tend to the greenhouses on campus in addition to beautifying the already stunning grounds.

Polar Opposite Besties: Ms. Njoo here loves pretty much everything. This character hates a lot of things, but somehow Mary was persistent enough to win them over and now happily calls them her best friend. They have definitely received a BFF necklace from her on at least one occasion. Think of them as the ultimate Hufflepuff/Slytherin dynamic.

Family Member (fc should be either part Indonesian or part Chinese): Another member of the Njoo family currently at Polaris, probably some sort of cousin or what-have-you. Unlike Mary they would have been raised from birth within the family and brought up under the same rigorous training and ideas of superiority. They would also most likely be completely separated from Mary after she was essentially disowned. Whether or not you want them to share the family’s mindset, or if you want them to be more in-line with Mary and their uncle, is up to you!

Penned by Jeanne ★