Rabbits of the World of Death
Father Death created the 4 Archangels; a Dragon, a Sheep, a Rabbit, and a Canine. The Archangels in turn created 6 Angels each, matching their own species, aged 100 years apart.
Archangel - Yue
The soft-natured rabbits of the World of Death were once the backbone of the Angels of Death, but only the Reaper remains. Despite Archangel Yue's outgoing, bubbly personality, all of her Angels turned out to be patient and quiet, the exact opposite of Yue's own personality.
Angel - Reed
When the Archaic War emerged, the eldest became vulnerable, tainted by the magic of the demon race that plagued the land. The varying degrees of obsession among the tainted Angels usually entailed violent bloodlust and dangerous activities, though Reed's gentle-nature was somehow still present even when tainted. Instead of insatiable bloodlust, she had an unfulfilled desire to have large amounts of children, and she would stop at nothing to get those children, even though she herself could not conceive.
Angel - Cyllene
The Angel Cyllene was lost during the Archaic War, presumably with one of her twin daughters being taken with her. Still, her husband, the death investigator Icor, never found her soul, nor the child he never got to raise.
Angel - Livi
The soft-hearted Archangel created a lively drag-queen Angel named Livi in a day and age where 'drag' was not a term, making Livi an atypical personality that delighted the people he met. Livi's fate during the Archaic War is still unknown in the present day.
Angel - Kahlua
The Angel Kahlua was known for being almost entirely silent. As a small child, he was a talkative sort, but his demeanor changed and he seemed somewhat enlightened and wise after being struck by lightning as a teen. Kahlua is presumed deceased during the Archaic War due to journal entries of other Angels, though his soul was never found.
Angel - Jiiraan
The beautiful Jiiraan is now known only for the compassionate, careful son of Life and Death that still lives in this world. When her child was still quite young, some dangerous humans poisoned this loving mother and robbed her son of his only parent.
Reaper - Pluta
As the only surviving Rabbit Angel of Death and one of the Reapers in the World of Death, Pluta has a lot to live for. Pluta was once quiet and reserved, but found herself more lively as she grew older. She's now known for her fierce strength in battle as she slays demonkin on a daily basis to protect Death City.
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Interesting Papers for Week 14, 2024
Testing predictive coding theories of autism spectrum disorder using models of active inference. Arthur, T., Vine, S., Buckingham, G., Brosnan, M., Wilson, M., & Harris, D. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(9), e1011473.
Distinct context- and content-dependent population codes in superior colliculus during sensation and action. Ayar, E. C., Heusser, M. R., Bourrelly, C., & Gandhi, N. J. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(40), e2303523120.
Unique functional responses differentially map onto genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons. Azcorra, M., Gaertner, Z., Davidson, C., He, Q., Kim, H., Nagappan, S., … Dombeck, D. A. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(10), 1762–1774.
A role for cortical interneurons as adversarial discriminators. Benjamin, A. S., & Kording, K. P. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(9), e1011484.
Bidirectional synaptic changes in deep and superficial hippocampal neurons following in vivo activity. Berndt, M., Trusel, M., Roberts, T. F., Pfeiffer, B. E., & Volk, L. J. (2023). Neuron, 111(19), 2984-2994.e4.
Neural mechanisms for the localization of unexpected external motion. Chinta, S., & Pluta, S. R. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6112.
Balancing true and false detection of intermittent sensory targets by adjusting the inputs to the evidence accumulation process. Geuzebroek, A. C., Craddock, H., O’Connell, R. G., & Kelly, S. P. (2023). eLife, 12, e83025.
Hippocampal activity predicts contextual misattribution of false memories. Herz, N., Bukala, B. R., Kragel, J. E., & Kahana, M. J. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(40), e2305292120.
Prefrontal cortical regulation of REM sleep. Hong, J., Lozano, D. E., Beier, K. T., Chung, S., & Weber, F. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(10), 1820–1832.
Distinct spatial maps and multiple object codes in the lateral entorhinal cortex. Huang, X., Schlesiger, M. I., Barriuso-Ortega, I., Leibold, C., MacLaren, D. A. A., Bieber, N., & Monyer, H. (2023). Neuron, 111(19), 3068-3083.e7.
Visual perceptual learning modulates microsaccade rate and directionality. Hung, S.-C., Barbot, A., & Carrasco, M. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 16525.
PET-measured human dopamine synthesis capacity and receptor availability predict trading rewards and time-costs during foraging. Ianni, A. M., Eisenberg, D. P., Boorman, E. D., Constantino, S. M., Hegarty, C. E., Gregory, M. D., … Berman, K. F. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6122.
Mixtures of strategies underlie rodent behavior during reversal learning. Le, N. M., Yildirim, M., Wang, Y., Sugihara, H., Jazayeri, M., & Sur, M. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(9), e1011430.
Dissociating the contributions of sensorimotor striatum to automatic and visually guided motor sequences. Mizes, K. G. C., Lindsey, J., Escola, G. S., & Ölveczky, B. P. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(10), 1791–1804.
Phase information is conserved in sparse, synchronous population-rate-codes via phase-to-rate recoding. Müller-Komorowska, D., Kuru, B., Beck, H., & Braganza, O. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6106.
A computational theory of evaluation processes in apathy. Rigoli, F., & Martinelli, C. (2023). Current Psychology, 42(30), 26163–26172.
Memory-related processing is the primary driver of human hippocampal theta oscillations. Seger, S. E., Kriegel, J. L. S., Lega, B. C., & Ekstrom, A. D. (2023). Neuron, 111(19), 3119-3130.e4.
Human-like scene interpretation by a guided counterstream processing. Ullman, S., Assif, L., Strugatski, A., Vatashsky, B.-Z., Levi, H., Netanyahu, A., & Yaari, A. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(40), e2211179120.
Measuring uncertainty in human visual segmentation. Vacher, J., Launay, C., Mamassian, P., & Coen-Cagli, R. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(9), e1011483.
Thalamocortical control of cell-type specificity drives circuits for processing whisker-related information in mouse barrel cortex. Young, T. R., Yamamoto, M., Kikuchi, S. S., Yoshida, A. C., Abe, T., Inoue, K., … Shimogori, T. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6077.
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Modney — Ascending Primes (Pyroclastic)
Ascending Primes is a number game. Violinist, composer and improviser Modney (née Josh Modney) grew its music from his ongoing interest in the intellectual logic and sensate satisfaction imparted by just intonation (hereafter referred to as JI), a tuning system that favors whole number ratios over the book-cooking compromises of the more widely known equal temperament, which has been the world’s tuning standard since that beautiful sound-culture neutralizer, the piano, made its way around the globe.
Modney found in JI a method that made sense of his instrument; it simply sounded better. But he hasn’t kept the pleasure to himself. The performance units he has assembled for this double album advance in steps dictated by the progression of prime numbers — one, three, five, seven and finally 11 players. His violin, sometimes amplified, is the only instrument to appear in every aggregation. As the ensembles expand and change, so does the music. It is never simple, but neither is it cluttered or unnecessarily busy. Playing alone, the sound of each of Modney’s violin string leaps out, illuminated by the overtones that JI enables and coarsened by liberally applied distortion.
The smaller line-ups are non-standard but exemplify the chamber music aesthetic of exposed interaction between players. At different points Sam Pluta’s electronics and Cory Smythe’s JI-tuned piano disrupt the flow. But as the ensemble’s increase in size and diversity of instrumentation, jazz elements creep in. Ben Lamar Gay’s puckering cornet and Charmaine Lee’s swooping voice adopt jazz-informed, solo voices within the septet, poised atop the multi-directional rhythms of Dan Peck’s tuba and Katie Gentile’s drums. The largest ensemble is also the most inclusive, marshalling hackle-raising strings, gut-rumbling horns, rhythm-opposing clusters, angelic/demonic vocal exchanges and straight-up noise into a sequence of events that seem to be pushing against implacable time-keeping.
There’s a lot of JI music, especially that made by string players, that seems to treat tuning system’s sonorities as ends in themselves, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But Modney has taken another tack. Like Anna Webber, who appears in the largest ensemble, he puts the sounds to work alongside the genre elements to create music that is stylistically unlimited and viscerally affecting.
Bill Meyer
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