#that's why virtually everything is a theory even gravity

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Zuck’s gravity-defying metaverse money-pit

Tomorrow (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Think of everything that makes you miserable as being caught between two opposing, irresistible, irrefutable truths:

"Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops" (Stein's Law)

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (Keynes)

Both of these are true, even though they seemingly contradict one another, and no one embodies that contradiction more perfectly than Mark Zuckerberg.

Take the metaverse.

Zuck's "pivot" to a virtual world he ripped off from a quarter-century old cyberpunk novel (reminder: cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion) was born of desperation.

Zuck fancies himself an avatar of the Emperor Augustus (that's why he has that haircut) (no, really). The emperors of antiquity are infamous for getting all weepy when they run out of lands to conquer.

But the lachrymosity of emperors has little causal relationship to the anxieties of tech monopolists! Alexander weeps because he just loves a good conquest and when he finishes conquering the world, he's terminally bored. That's not Zuck's problem at all. When Zuck attains monopoly status, his company develops an autoimmune disorder, as his vicious princelings run out of enemies to destroy and begin to knife one another.

Any monopoly faces these destructive microincentives, but tech is exceptional here because tech has the realtime flexibility and speed that brick-and-mortar businesses can never match:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Sociopaths with tech monopolies are worse for the same reason that road-rage would be worse in a flying car: adding new capacity to indiscriminate self-destructive urges turns ordinary car crashes into low-level airburst warfare:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The flexibility of digital gives tech platforms so much latitude to break things in tiny increments. A tech platform is like a Jenga tower composed of infinitely divisible blocks. The Jenga players are the product managers and executives who have run out of the ability to grow by attracting new business thanks to their monopoly dominance. Now they compete with one another to increase the yield from their respective divisions by visiting pain upon the business customers and end users their platform connects. By tiny increments, they increase the product's cost, lower its reliability, and strip it of its utility and then charge rent to restore its functionality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/24/cursed-bigness/#incentives-matter

This is the terminal stage of enshittification, the unstoppable autocannibalism of platforms as they seek to harvest all the value created by business customers and end users, leaving the absolute minimum of residual value needed to keep both stuck to the platform. This is a brittle equilibrium, because the difference between "I hate this service but I just can't stop using it," and "Get me the fuck out of here" is razor-thin.

All it takes is one tiny push – a whistleblower, a livestreamed mass-shooting, a Cambridge Analytica – and people bolt for the doors. This triggers the final stage: the "pivot," which is a tech euphemism for "panic."

For Zuck, the pivot got real after a disappointing earnings call triggered a mass sell-off of Facebook stock, history's worst one-day value incineration, which lopped a quarter of a trillion dollars off the company's market cap:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/dramatic-stock-moves-of-2022-led-by-meta-dive-nordic-flash-crash

This was when the metaverse became the company's top priority.

Now, in my theory of enshittification, the step that follows the pivot is death: "Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Many people have asked me about the conspicuous non-death of Facebook! That's where I have to fall back on Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Facebook can't continue to annihilate value, alienate its workers, harm the public, hemorrhage money in support of a mediocrity's cherished folly forever. Can it?

Admittedly, it sure seems like it can. Facebook's metaverse pivot has thus far cost the company $46,500,000,000. That is: $46.5 billion. That's even more money than Uber torched, seeking to maintain the illusion that they will be able to create monopolies on both transport and the labor market for driving and recoup the billions the Saudi royal family let them use for the con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Don't worry: the Saudi royals are fine! They cashed out at the IPO, collecting a tidy profit at the expense of retail investors who assumed that a pile of shit as big as Uber must have a pony under it, somewhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber has doubled the cost of rides and halved drivers' wages, using illegal gimmicks like "algorithmic wage discrimination" to squeeze a little more juice out of the nearly exhausted husks of its workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But Stein's Law hasn't been repealed. Drivers can't drive for sub-subsistence wages. Do that long enough and they'll literally starve: that's what "subsistence" means. We lost a decade of transit investment thanks to the Uber con, at the same time as traditional taxi drivers were forced out of the industry. Uber can't be profitable and still pay a living wage, and the fantasy of self-driving cars as a means of zeroing out the wage-bill altogether remains stubbornly, lethally unworkable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Which means we're at the point where you can get off a commuter train at a main station and find yourself stranded: no taxis at the taxi-queue, no busses due for an hour, and no Uber cars available unless you're willing to pay $95 for a ten-minute ride in a luxury SUV (why yes, this did happen to me recently, thanks for asking).

As more and more of us are exposed to these micro-crises, the political will to do something will increase. This can't go on forever. "Don't use commuter rail" isn't a viable option. "Walk three miles each way to the commuter rail station" isn't viable either. Neither is "Pay $95 for an Uber to get to the station." Something's gotta give…eventually.

"Eventually" is the key word here. Remember the corollary of Stein's Law: Keynes's maxim that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Sure, anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, but that is no guarantee of a soft landing. You can't smoke two packs a day forever – but in the absence of smoking cessation, the eventual terminus of that habit is stage-four lung cancer. Keep hammering butts into your face and your last smoke will come out a crematorium chimney.

Zuckerberg hasn't merely blown a whole-ass Twitter on the metaverse with nothing to show for it – he's gotten richer while doing it! In the past year, his net worth increased by 130%, to $59 billion, thanks to an increase in Facebook's share-price, driven by investors who stubbornly remain irrational, keeping the Boy Emperor solvent long past any reasonable assessment of his performance.

What are these investors betting on? One possibility is that the rise and rise of Facebook's share-price represents a bet on technofeudalism. Since the Communist Manifesto, Marxists have been predicting the end of capitalism. That end seems to have come, but what followed capitalism wasn't socialism, it was the return of feudalism, an economic system where elites derive their wealth from rents, not profits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profit is the income you get from investing in capital – machinery, systems, plant – and then harvesting the surplus value created by workers who mobilize this capital. Capitalism produces massive returns for its winners – in the Manifesto's first chapter, Marx and Engels just geek out about how productive and dynamic this system is.

But capitalism is also a Red Queen's Race, where the winners have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Capitalism drives competition, as other would-be winners pile into the sector, replicating the systems that the current winners are using and then improving on them. This is why the prophets of capitalist end-times like the FBI informant Peter Thiel say that "competition is for losers."

Capitalism's "profits" stand in contrast to the feudalist's "rents." Rents are income you get from owning something that other people need to produce things. The capitalist owns the coffee-shop, but the feudalist owns the building. When a rival capitalist opens a superior coffee-shop and drives the old shop out of business, the capitalist loses, but the rentier wins. Now they can rent out an empty storefront in the neighborhood everyone's coming to because of that hot new cafe.

Feudal and manorial lords also made their fortunes by extracting surplus value from workers, but these rentiers don't care about owning the means of production. The peasant in the field pays for their own agricultural equipment and livestock – control over the means of production is necessary for worker liberation, but it's not sufficient. The worker's co-op that owns its factory can still find the value it produces bled off by the landlord who owns the land the factory sits on.

The jury's still out on whether American workers really see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but America's capitalists have a palpable, undeniable loathing for capitalism. The dream of an American "entrepreneur" is *PassiveIncome: money you get from owning something capitalists and/or workers use to create value. Digital technology creates exciting new possibilities for rent-extraction: a taxi-operator had to buy and maintain a car that someone else drove. Uber can offload this hassle onto its drivers and rent out access to the chokepoint it created between drivers and riders, charging all the traffic can bear. This is feudalism in the cloud – or as Yannis Varoufakis calls it, cloudalism.

In Varoufakis's Technofeudalism, he describes Amazon as a feudal venture. From a distance, Amazon seems like a bustling marketplace of manic capitalism, with sellers avidly competing to offer more variety and lower costs in a million independently operated storefronts. But closer inspection reveals that Amazon is a planned economy, not a market.

Every one of those storefronts pays rent to the same landlord – Amazon – which determines which goods can be offered for sale. Amazon sets pricing for those goods, and extracts 45-51% of every dollar those sellers make. Amazon even controls which goods are shelved at eye-height when you enter the store, and which ones are banished to a dusty storeroom in a distant sub-basement you'll never find:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

Zuck's metaverse is pure-play technofeudalism, Amazon taken to the logical extreme. It's easy to get distracted by the part of Zuck's vision that will convert us all into legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-resolution cartoon characters. But the real action isn't this digitization of our fleshy wants and needs. Zuck didn't spend $46.5B to torment us.

The cruelty isn't the point of the metaverse.

The point of the metaverse is to rent us out to capitalists.

Zuck doesn't know why we would use the metaverse, but he believes that if he can convince capitalists that we all want to live there, that they'll invest the capital to figure out how to serve us there, and then he can extract rent from those capitalists and start earning "passive income." It's an Uber for Cyberpunk Dystopias play.

Zuck's done this before. Remember the "pivot to video?" Zuckerberg wanted to compete with Youtube, but he didn't want to invest in paying for video production. Videos are really expensive to produce and the median video gets zero views. So Zuck used his captive audience to trick publishers into financing his move into video. He fraudulently told publishers that videos were blowing up on Facebook, outperforming boring old text by vast margins.

Publishers borrowed billions and raised billions more in the capital markets, financing the total conversion of newsrooms from text to video and precipitating a mass extinction event for print journalists. Zuck kept the con alive by giving away (fewer) billions to some of those publishers, falsely claiming that their videos were generating fortunes in advertising revenue. These lucky, credulous publishers became judas goats for their industry, luring others into the con, the same way that the "lucky" guy a carny lets win a giant teddy-bear at the start of the day lures others into putting down $5 to see if they can sink three balls in a rigged peach-basket.

But when we stubbornly refused to watch videos on Facebook, Zuck stopped spreading around these convincer payouts, and precipitated a second mass-extinction event in news media, as the new generation of video journalists joined their predecessors in Facebook-driven unemployment. Given this history, it's surreal to see publishers continue to insist that Facebook is stealing their content, when it is so clearly stealing their money:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Metaverse is the new Pivot to Video. Zuckerberg is building a new world, which he will own, and he wants rent it to capitalists, who will compete with one another in just the way that Amazon's sellers compete. No matter who wins that competition, Zuckerberg will win. The prize for winning will be a rent increase, as Zuckerberg leverages the fact that your "successful" business relies on Facebook's metaverse to drain off all the value your workers have produced:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

This can't last forever, but how long until Zuck's reality distortion field runs out of battery? That's the $46.5B question.

The market can certainly remain irrational for a hell of a long time. But the market isn't the only force that regulates corporate outcomes. Regulators also regulate. Europe's GDPR is now seven years old, and it plainly outlaws Facebook's surveillance.

For nearly a decade, Facebook has pretended that this wasn't true, and they got away with it. Mostly, that's thanks to the fact that Ireland is a corporate crime-haven with a worse-than-useless Data Protection Commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Facebook has finally been dragged into EU federal jurisdiction, where it will face exterminatory fines if it continues to spy on Europeans:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/07/luck-of-the-irish/#schrems-revenge

In response, Facebook has rolled out a subscription version of its main service and its anticompetitive acquisition, Instagram:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/

For €10/month, Facebook will give you an ad-free experience across its service offerings (it's €13/month if you pay through an app, as Facebook recoups the 30% #AdTax rents that the feudal Google/Apple mobile duopoly extracts).

But this doesn't come close to satisfying Facebook's legal obligations under the GDPR. The GDPR doesn't ban ads, it bans spying. Facebook spies on every single internet user, all the time. The apps we use are built with "free" Facebook toolkits that extract rent from the capitalists who make them by harvesting our data as we use their apps. The web-pages we visit have embedded Facebook libraries that do the same thing for web publishers. Facebook buys our data from brokers. Facebook has so many ways of spying on us that there's almost certainly no way for Facebook to stop spying on you, without radically transforming it operation.

To comply with the GDPR, Facebook must halt surveillance advertising altogether. There's no way to square "spying on users" with "you can't surveil without explicit consent, and you can't punish people for refusing."

And of course, "not spying" isn't the same as "not advertising." "Contextual advertising" – where ads are placed based on the thing you're looking at, not who you are and what you do – is hundreds of years old. Context ads underperform surveillance ads by a slim margin – about 5% – but they're vastly more profitable for publishers. That's because surveillance ads are feudal, controlled by rentiers like Facebook, who own vast troves of the surveillance data needed to run these ads. Traditional ad intermediaries (agencies, brokers) took 10-15% out of the total advertising market. Ad-tech companies – the Google/Facebook duopoly – take 51% out of every ad dollar spent.

Eliminate surveillance ads and you torch their feudal estates. Facebook will always know more about someone reading a news article than the publisher – but the publisher will always know more about the article than Facebook does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

There are rents under capitalism, just as there are profits under feudalism. The defining characteristic of a system is what happens when rents and profits come into conflict. If profits win – for example, if productive companies beat patent trolls, or if news publishers escape Facebook's rent-extraction – then the system is capitalist. If rents win – if investors continue to bet large on the metaverse as its losses pass $50 billion and head for the $100 billion mark – then the system is feudal.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. The question isn't whether the platforms will eventually become so enshittified that they die – the question is whether they will go down in an all-consuming fireball, or whether they'll go down in a controlled demolition that lets us evacuate the people they've trapped inside them first:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/09/let-the-platforms-burn/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_de_las_cataratas_Victoria,_Zambia-Zimbabue,_2018-07-27,_DD_10.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[mysticstronomy]

DOES QUANTUM GRAVITY EXIST??

Blog#389

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024.

Welcome back,

All the fundamental forces of the universe are known to follow the laws of quantum mechanics, save one: gravity. Finding a way to fit gravity into quantum mechanics would bring scientists a giant leap closer to a “theory of everything” that could entirely explain the workings of the cosmos from first principles. A crucial first step in this quest to know whether gravity is quantum is to detect the long-postulated elementary particle of gravity, the graviton.

In search of the graviton, physicists are now turning to experiments involving microscopic superconductors, free-falling crystals and the afterglow of the big bang.

Quantum mechanics suggests everything is made of quanta, or packets of energy, that can behave like both a particle and a wave—for instance, quanta of light are called photons. Detecting gravitons, the hypothetical quanta of gravity, would prove gravity is quantum. The problem is that gravity is extraordinarily weak.

To directly observe the minuscule effects a graviton would have on matter, physicist Freeman Dyson famously noted, a graviton detector would have to be so massive that it collapses on itself to form a black hole.

“One of the issues with theories of quantum gravity is that their predictions are usually nearly impossible to experimentally test,” says quantum physicist Richard Norte of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “This is the main reason why there exist so many competing theories and why we haven’t been successful in understanding how it actually works.”

In 2015, however, theoretical physicist James Quach, now at the University of Adelaide in Australia, suggested a way to detect gravitons by taking advantage of their quantum nature. Quantum mechanics suggests the universe is inherently fuzzy—for instance, one can never absolutely know a particle's position and momentum at the same time. One consequence of this uncertainty is that a vacuum is never completely empty, but instead buzzes with a “quantum foam” of so-called virtual particles that constantly pop in and out of existence.

These ghostly entities may be any kind of quanta, including gravitons.

Decades ago, scientists found that virtual particles can generate detectable forces. For example, the Casimir effect is the attraction or repulsion seen between two mirrors placed close together in vacuum. These reflective surfaces move due to the force generated by virtual photons winking in and out of existence.

Previous research suggested that superconductors might reflect gravitons more strongly than normal matter, so Quach calculated that looking for interactions between two thin superconducting sheets in vacuum could reveal a gravitational Casimir effect. The resulting force could be roughly 10 times stronger than that expected from the standard virtual-photon-based Casimir effect.

Recently, Norte and his colleagues developed a microchip to perform this experiment. This chip held two microscopic aluminum-coated plates that were cooled almost to absolute zero so that they became superconducting. One plate was attached to a movable mirror, and a laser was fired at that mirror. If the plates moved because of a gravitational Casimir effect, the frequency of light reflecting off the mirror would measurably shift. As detailed online July 20 in Physical Review Letters, the scientists failed to see any gravitational Casimir effect.

This null result does not necessarily rule out the existence of gravitons—and thus gravity’s quantum nature. Rather, it may simply mean that gravitons do not interact with superconductors as strongly as prior work estimated, says quantum physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who did not participate in this study and was unsurprised by its null results. Even so, Quach says, this was a courageous attempt to detect gravitons.”

Originally published on https://www.scientificamerican.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, April 6th, 2024)

"HOW DOES A NEUTRON STAR FORM??"

[ms-scarletwings]

Upon finishing S3//Ep2 of Moral Orel, “Innocence”, Orel’s morals finally clicked for me

As happens in a show this narratively rich, I looked around at some of the close-by chatter under comment sections. People were making these observations about how Orel seemingly just goes out of his way to interpret all of the lessons he’s given in the least charitable and most nonsensical way. Not an invalid view, and for the first good part of the show, you think this is just the function of an over the top comedic bit for the formula of each episode. It’s easy to ask how on earth a seemingly kind hearted, well meaning kid like this can be THAT devoid of the basic logical implications of what he hears, or any common moral intuition that virtually everyone has, right?

Orel’s not a stupid kid. But the entire problem with him up to the point thus far is that he legit DOES NOT in fact have that intuition we expect most people, even children to have. That knee-jerk repulsion to obviously harmful actions. That really vital sense of conscience. No, I don’t mean he’s some kind of psychopath. He has a bright and almost sickeningly sweet heart and it was part of how he broke the cycle despite everything. I mean that Orel has not had a coherent moral compass modeled to him through his earlier development. His ethical axioms are ALL rooted in divine command theory. To put it simply, he doesn’t believe “god is good”, he believes “goodness” itself is “what god says is good”. Most Christians, hell, most religious people generally do not literally, consciously operate in this way, and usually even the ones that do are (mostly) still functionally average people, because usually they were at least consistently conditioned to believe that axioms like human well-being are what God commands. To at least a fortunate degree, human empathy and socialization usually is allowed to and even encouraged to develop under mainstream religious upbringings.

You notice the glaring difference though when you see what happens to people who are molded entirely by Divine Command Theory and then become convinced that their God’s divine command is something that doesn’t happen to line up with conventionally good ideals, like those given earlier. This is what destructive cults do. This is what makes crusades. This is what causes anti-sodomy laws and stoning people to death for eating the wrong kind of fish or not wearing the right clothing to happen.

Understand that this is the hinge that Orel’s whole sense of right and wrong up to this point swings on. What it means is that this little boy can, and will, justify or excuse any and all directions given to him so long as he trusts the adult talking to him as someone who speaks for God. This combined with his craving for approval, plus the fact that he’s also had it drilled in his head to never question or doubt his elders’ wisdom makes for a child zealot that is dangerously easy to manipulate to do ANYTHING and with fanatical determination. It is less than no additional help that the Puppingtons (and the majority of the townsfolk) have never been golden examples for healthy social modeling, as well. Like, sure, he’s getting glimmers of actual goodness in there such as the Jesus loves you so love yourself and help thy neighbors messaging, but it’s being inconsistently contradicted by and juggled alongside at same hierarchical importance as “lessons” like beat the shit out of people who make fists, segregate the brown people, and be terrified of the same authority you expect safety and comfort from. Why on earth is it shocking that Orel seemingly has no sense of scale or priority when it comes to the rules? The rules he’s given are subject to constant and chaotic updates and are all treated with the same gravity. Follow X and you will be promised infinite reward. Disobey X and you will be met with infinite retribution. Not just even in a spiritual heaven and hell sense, but here in life too. Clay delivers the same punishment for getting hooked on crack or becoming a serial rapist that he does for the “sin” of using slang vernacular and meditating to relieve stress.

Everything that defines his life and virtues is a matter of constant anxiety and eagerness in order to appease a patriarchal tyrant that is portrayed as both ultimately benevolent and wise,

yet incredibly vindictive, sadistic, irrational, and petty.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this description can equally apply to Moralton’s conception of God and a certain alcoholic father.

No kidding when I say that Orel has so little consistent input to actually steer him in the right direction that it’s incredibly sad, to the point where he’s extremely fortunate to actually have such an optimistic and compassionate inclination at all. It only seems ridiculous how he can’t see obvious suffering and even personal detriment as any red flags to hesitate or question an action, until you remember that he’s so been domestically broken by Clay and his church that his Pavlovian response to pain is either gratitude, mild inconvenience, or, masochistic euphoria.

Nonetheless, all of this only backfires on every adult in Moralton because the one thing they can’t control or account for 24/7 is exactly how he interprets what they say, even when he’s trying his best to follow their command. It’s like a twisted Amelia Bedelia situation with him that no one actually wants to deal with, even though they all (except Stephanie) collectively played a part in creating this monster.

Censordoll was the first one who was smart and ambitious enough to see the potential for Orel’s blind subservience to be weaponized, and of freaking course she was.

Thing is, you bet the ONLY reason she stopped was because she also lost control of him, and we all know what the consequence of that was. He unintentionally yet absolutely destroyed her in the only weak point she has, yet exactly like Clay did during the “turn the other cheek” incident, she trapped herself in a situation where she couldn’t swallow her own pride in the name of reversing the damage.

What I guess I’m explaining here is that Orel’s collection of constant shenanigans, unknowingly, yet effectively, is literally a manifestation of the community’s own complete moral bankruptcy biting them back in the ass, and possibly even a divine punishment for it, depending on how you interpret the writing. Which is a HELL of a phenomenal, subtle twist to his whole premise that doesn’t abandon the original joke/satire, but instead builds upon it and adds a chasm of depth and intention.

PRETTY GREAT, HUH?~

[runabout-river]

Three Techniques Sukuna hasn't used yet

Finally we got the fire and the arrow(?) back, which makes this the third time that Sukuna uses his mysterious technique after Jogo and Makora. The good guys should've known about the fire though because Yuji gains Sukuna's memories after he gets back control of his body. He should've told everyone about this especially after he messed up protecting Megumi from Sukuna even though he knew about his future plans with him.

(Interestingly, Megumi has live-coverage of everything that Sukuna does unlike Yuji. That's probably because an awake Yuji would've immediate control over his body again. He can't be contained like Megumi.)

There are still (at least) 3 techniques though that Sukuna could use in the current fight. Cursed Technique Reversal, Hollow Technique and Maximum Technique.

Cursed Technique Reversal

For using CTR you need to meet two conditions. 1) being able to perform RCT to produce positive energy and 2) being able to channel that PE into your cursed technique to power it. (Sukuna can already channel his PE into others like Megumi.)

When Gojo uses it, he creates Red, the reversal of Blue, and when Kenjaku uses it he creates Gravity, the reversal of Anti-Gravity System. No other sorcerer than those two have been shown to be able to use CTR.

For Sukuna I can see him picking up his left hand that Maki cut off to attach it back to his arm: the reversal of his "cutting". "Glueing" so to speak. That would probably be easier for him right now than regrowing that hand.

Hollow Technique

Gojo has been the only sorcerer shown to us cabable of using the Hollow Technique, in his case Purple. For this he activates his technique with both PE and CE at the same time to combine Red and Blue. The push and pull abilities of Red and Blue create a virtual mass that destroys everything in its path.

The condition to use the Hollow Technique is concurrent usage of cursed and positive energy plus the ability to activate your technique with both at the same time.

Of note is that Gojo activated his last Purple one step at a time but that was only possible because Blue and Red can exist on their own for a certain period of time. Sukuna's Cleave and Dismantle are immediate attacks and can't do that.

Can Sukuna use HT though? Most likely because he can use PE and CE at the same time as he's been doing for a while now especially after being stabbed by Maki and her Split Soul Katana. But how would that look with his cutting and potential glueing? I have no idea. Maybe it would be sth like a creating impenetrable lines in the air like Dhruv's CT.

Maximum Technique

Uzumaki is the first technique that comes to mind here but Eso's Wing King and Jogo's Meteor are also among them. A MT is beside the Domain Expansion the ultimate expression of a cursed technique and jujutsu. Sukuna, who primes himself on the study of jujutsu, should be able to use this.

Now because MT encompasses and maxifies all aspects of a CT, it's logical why we haven't seen this until now. Most popular theory on Sukuna's fire is that it's part of his kitchen arsenal, in other words, we haven't seen his entire cursed technique yet or at least understood it in it's entire. After we're shown that, Sukuna's Maximum Technique becomes a reasonable concern that the heroes have to deal with.

[homoquartz]

ok here is my theory

apparently one of the writers said in a reddit ama that everything happening in severance is real and existing in physical space. but if he's being truthful, then there's some pretty wacky coincidences happening because it's really seeming like not only is the severed floor a simulation powered by dream states, it is a simulation several layers deep

this post was gonna be more in depth but i gave up

PART 1: the severed floor is virtual

1. they don’t enter the severed floor physically - they get there by dreaming

there are a ton of themes about sleep throughout this show.

season 1's opening credits have mark falling into bed at the end. season 2's opening credits have him waking up to multiple versions of himself, and then sitting at the foot of the bed (more alert!)

here's mark in the season 1 opening credits walking into work in his pajamas (asleep), carrying a work amalgamation of himself (dreams) and passing his exiting work self

the song playing at petey's funeral is “enter sandman.”

2. messages can’t pass through the doors and elevators because they are mental barriers, not physical ones

messages are unable to pass between consciousnesses, even if swallowed, because the mind KNOWS they are there.

3. the layout of the severed floor makes no physical sense, and petey’s map SAYS it’s all in the chip

check this out. petey’s map of the severed floor BEGINS with the mind chip

this includes their homes one floor up - the houses on the right side of the map

gemma’s tree in the wellness room disappears when she does. it could be a manifestation in the space generated by her consciousness

when mark and helly are walking down the hallway and the lights are only coming on in the exact section they're standing in, as if motion-activated - is the floor procedurally generating? we don't see anywhere else on the severed floor (that i can remember) where lumon is using energy-saving lights

thinking about irving disappearing from the group photos. was he edited out in photoshop, or literally deleted from the image?

just had a funny thought. what if they only ever feed the innies melon because that's the only food item they have code for right now? and the waffles were a big deal because they were new?

4. the innies and the outies experience time differently

when explaining the reintegration of memories, petey says that the innie's memories slowly catch up to the outie's time, and that the beginning of his work at lumon coincides with his memories of his fifth birthday

for the innies, time is actively slower. that's why petey's outie can live through 40 years or so in his memory while his innie’s memory is only a few months/years.

it could be that this is for the same reason that dream time seems so long compared to waking time.

just realized this is “inception��� rules

if time for gemma on the experimentation floor is even slower than on the severed floor, that could explain how milchick managed to make it to the door of the hallway before gemma did when she tried to escape (aside from being super speedy)

5. the ortbo was not actually outside.

it was a dream room like the ones on the experimentation floor. each room has a place name, suggesting a recreation of a physical space. we don’t get a clear idea of how big each room is on the inside.

gemma, for example, enters a room that graphically simulates violent turbulence. this is basically not achievable indoors if you’re also including the feeling of gravity. unless it’s not a real place.

holding the ortbo in a dream space prevents innies from being able to flee, make messages, or do anything unscheduled.

this is how they were able to present physical copies of the innies to themselves

6. additional evidence: the break room

the break room contains a machine that is implied to be able to tell if someone is being truthful. there's mixed evidence if they really can do that, or if they just claim to. however, in the brief moments we get in milchick's POV, it DOES seem like he is receiving some kind of audio feedback.

in the break room, they must repeat over and over "forgive me for the harm i have caused THIS WORLD." i just found it to be interesting phrasing. what if the threat is that, if they discover they're dreaming, it damages the virtual space? what if they are literally damaging their "world" when they break rules?

PART 2: the innies are actually at least two layers deep

1. hints in the intro animations: multiple marks going through multiple doors

this gestures to the situation gemma is in, in which there are a dozen versions of her, spread between a dozen doors. how many versions of mark are there?

notice that only one mark is in pajamas - the sleeper

2. the map

petey’s map indicates that the houses are located within the mind chip. mark’s house is in a neighborhood that “never really filled up” - his only neighbor a lumon employee.

hallways disappear into each other on this map, and the layout is physically impossible - unless operating by dream logic

3. perpetual winter

although this could just be due to the timeline of the show, it is always winter in the outies’ world. is that because that’s how it was designed?

4. mark identified gemma's body after the crash

although reghabi explains this as lumon faking her corpse, it could just as easily be that the body was real - inasmuch anything is real in the virtual space

(either faked or virtual, this would explain how lumon was also able to make clones of the innies during the ortbo)

5. additional evidence: the innies are ALSO being data refined

we now know that the innies are being watched as they refine the tempers, and it seems possible that THEIR emotional reactions to those tempers are ALSO being categorized and refined by another set of employees

Bonus: Mark’s head cube

Mark says he got this random cube of his head for being really good at refining a specific file. i have an unsubstantiated suspicion that another version of him is stored in there

(I know there is some evidence against my dream theory - mainly that the innies can physically harm their outies - but hey. pobody’s nerfect.)

[raveneira]

Hi Raven, I hope everything is fine with you. Could you explain how Sarada's power works, Ohirume, please? Is it a very strong power? a deus ex machina? Honestly, I think Ikemoto loses his touch by giving such strong powers that it becomes so boring. Sorry for my English.

No no, your fine, but honestly there isnt much to go off of to say for sure how it works cuz it kind of works like 2 different things which makes it seem like Ikemoto just combined two space phenomenon to create the technique, which makes it hard to decipher just from this one use.

For example when it first showed up everyone thought it was a black hole because, shocker, its black and it sucks things in, what else do we know that does that? a black hole, it was just the logical conclusion at first glance.

But a black hole itself is very complicated, Im no space expert but I did do some digging once her ability was revealed cuz I was curious how Ikemoto would apply it if it WAS a black hole.

So I based all my initial theories on that, until the next chapter where we got an actual full display of her powers that kind of contradict it being a black hole, but instead...a black sun?

Ohirume is another name for the sun goddess in Japanese mythology, Amaterasu.

So clearly her ability is supposed to be associated with the sun goddess right? and her eyes are supposed to be sun themed? so her MS power is supposedly a sun rather than black hole or it doesnt really make any sense to connect it to the sun goddess.

Now lets go into why this is confusing.

Theres no issue with her power being sun themed, the issue is how Ikemoto presents her supposedly 'sun themed' MS ability to work and its practically nothing like a sun.

Everybody knows the sun has multiple planets following its orbit, wherever the sun goes we go, its constantly pulling us along.

Despite that tho...we never touch the sun, yes it pulls us along, but it never actually pulls us IN to it the way a black hole does because a black hole has a way stronger pull.

The other issue? even if the sun DID pull us in, we'd get burned, we wouldnt even be able to touch it before we'd die from the heat, assuming our eyes didnt melt first just from looking at it in close proximity [we cant even look at the sun from all the way down here on earth without causing eye damage]

I bring this up because this happened

Ryu is both touching and looking at the supposed 'sun' which even if you have the excuse well its black thats why it doesnt hurt his eyes to look at, he is LITERALLY stuck to it and cant get off, yet he doesnt burn, and he doesnt describe feeling a burning sensation either, the only thing he mentions is the 'pulling force' or as Mitsuki said, the 'gravitational force'

So it does have some aspects of a sun, but whats confusing is the fact that Ryu can have his whole body touch it and not be scorched, I know the sun isnt technically 'fire' but some type of plasma but it still burns if you touch it, our 'heat' here on earth comes from the sun, so if you were to get close to it, let alone physically TOUCH it, you would burn to death.

But Ryu doesnt burn, he doesnt feel any kind of semblance of burning or pain from touching it at all, he only complains about not being able to move the entire time, never specifying any particular type of pain hes feelings from it.

He's able to just barely move his hand, but I guess Sarada can increase and decrease the intensity of each orbs gravity at will, which you can say is overpowered but honestly if you have her face an enemy on Goku or Vegeta's level who have trained in intense gravity for years, then her ability is virtually useless.

Finally for how her ability killed Ryu, this is the most confusing part of determining what exactly her ability is supposed to be.

From what we see it slightly engulfed him and then went boom, but not in your typical explosion, but more resembling that of a supernova

If you wanna look up all the specific details to get a better feel free but to keep it simple for this post, a supernova is usually a collapsing star, or a dying star, basically it reaches the end of its lifespan and explodes

Usually the outcome of this is that it becomes a black hole, so basically star exists, lives for however many years, eventually can no longer sustain itself and dies in a big boom, black hole forms.

Thats the very simple way of explaining it lol

So how does Sarada fit into this? well like I said, her ability is supposed to be sun based yet it barely acts like an actual sun, the only thing it has in common with the sun is gravitational pull, but a black hole has the same thing, so does other massive stars.

Which brings me to this little piece of merch that might've been total coincidence but its interesting how accurate it ended up being if it was.

Sarada's tarot card was 'the Star' which just so happens to be how her MS ability operates. And before you say it yes, Im aware the sun is considered a star, my point applies either way.

Heres the weird thing though, her ability doesnt act exactly like a sun, but it doesnt act entirely like a black hole either.

It's true a black hole doesnt only 'suck' things in, alot of the time things just orbit it or bounce off it, even when sucking things in it isnt always instant, in some cases it pulls it in and takes a chunk out or it then whips it out and keeps pulling it in, taking a chunk, whipping it back out again, repeating that process until theres nothing left of it.

Basically it depends on the size, intensity, and circumstances of a black hole just how it will react to the things that come near it, also depends on the circumstances of the things it pulls in as well.

But the 'black holes' Sarada creates only sucks things in [the sand isnt swirling around it] but it doesnt crush the way a black hole normally does to things it pulls in.

This star got turned into spaghetti when being consumed, yet Ryu can physically touch it and be totally fine? he was neither burned like he was touching a sun, nor crushed like he was being consumed by a black hole.

To put that into perspective, imagine that spaghetti star as a spaghetti human and you pretty much get the gist of what this should've looked like for Ryu.

So her eye doesnt really function like either one to a T, but some type of weird combination of both, neither a sun, or a black hole, so how do we really describe her ability? well its difficult but I can atleast give you my take of it based on what little explaining Ikemoto gave in the chapter.

I think Sarada's ability is mainly gravity, like in space, there are stars [or other space phenomenon] that has gravitational pull, and the bigger they all, the more gravitational force they have, and other smaller space stuff is pulled and controlled by them if they are in the vicinity of it.

Sarada cant just mind control gravity, so she needs a catalyst, a focal point, aka the 'black orbs' she summons and she manipulates the gravity through them, for if she could just control gravity in general then everybody would get caught up in the crossfire, but with those orbs as a focal point for where exactly shes pulling towards it makes it easier for her to avoid friendly fire.

Its clear that she can pick and choose which orbs pull is strongest, when he attacked her directly she increased the gravitational force of the orb above her to pull the sand in before it touched her, then when he tried an attack from below before that orb could pull it in, Sarada summoned another orb behind him to pull the sand in the opposite direction.

This actually exposes yet another weakness, besides an enemy being able to resist the gravitational force, it shows that if you DO attack Sarada at close range you CAN be successful, the orb nearby her cant pull you in fast enough from that close range, there needs to be a certain amount of distance for her to use her gravitational force effectively.

Basically, if not for that orb behind Ryu Sarada would've gotten hit, so pair her with an enemy that doesnt use something as easily pulled in as sand, how quickly would she be able to pull them away in time if they got that close to her for an attack? and just how much weight can Sarada lift before running out of chakra? keep in mind Sarada barely fought, she used her sharingan for 2 seconds and one chidori and that was it so it wasnt like she was low on chakra before she used MS.

So going by that its safe to say that her MS ability is extremely draining and not something she can spam casually, she got lucky that she was matched up with Ryu who her ability was the perfect counter to, but what happens when shes paired up with somebody like Jura? I doubt the biju bomb he can shoot from his eye is slow enough for her orb to pull in before it hits her, plus he can summon trees on a whim at any time and completely engulf her, which a tree rooted into the ground is alot harder to pull as fast as just grains of sand.

Sarada had the ultimate advantage advantage against Ryu, because sand + gravity was just an easy win, even him trying to cling to the ground was futile because the ground was also sand.

Now we dont know this for sure, but I theorize the position of the 4 orbs are the range of which she can control the gravitational force, so if lets say the enemy were to go outside of it then they wouldnt be effected, or atleast not as strongly.

What leads me to believe that is look at their positioning, their in a circle, one behind her, one behing Ryu, and one on each side, encasing her, Ryu, and the Claw Grimes [Mitsuki and co are outside of this field]

Mitsuki explains it as her being able to control what it pulls in, which to a degree is true but not entirely, I dont think Sarada can literally manipulate gravity ENTIRELY to her will, otherwise it'd be the most broken ability she could have and wouldnt require her to create an orb to begin with, she could just manipulate the gravity that exists around them already and just pull this

So the fact that she needs to create an orb, and multiple at that, implies theres a limit to just how much she can actually control gravity.

But again this is just my theory so dont take it as 100% fact, but this is just my personal observation until further notice.

So anyway, within that field of 4 orbs is where she can control the gravitational pull the best, outside of it isnt effected, it would also explain why she doesnt move from where shes standing, to avoid getting pulled in by mistake, since as we saw she can levitate both her and Ryu using the gravitational pull of the orbs, but she specifically makes it where the one behind Ryu has the strongest pull, leaving him stuck to it and unable to move while the rest of the ords she has only giving just enough to make her float but not be pulled in.

Basically the orbs pull around her countered the intense pull from the one behind Ryu.

This is just a theory but I think another drawback is that Sarada has to specifically look/see what it is she wants to pull in and which direction, so a really fast enemy might make it hard for her to pinpoint the exact direction/orb to pull them to.

I could go on and on but this is already long enough so let me just try to answer your question as simple as possible.

I dont think Sarada has gravity manipulation to the full extent, I think she has a specific field of gravity she can control, the field being within the 4 orb radius she summons. What those orbs are are neither a black sun or a black hole, the closest thing they seem to be are stars that when collided with, in this case, an enemy, causes them to collapse similar to that of an actual star.

A collapsing star, specifically a core-collapse supernova, is caused by a star's inability to maintain internal pressure against its own gravity after it runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. This lack of pressure causes the core to contract rapidly, which triggers a supernova explosion

A more thorough and specific explanation. ^

So basically as long as nothing is touching the black orbs or 'black stars' she creates they can exist off her chakra, but when collided with an enemy she can make that star 'collapse' and explode into a supernova, which yea if you were touching a star when that happens you'd know there'd be nothing left of it afterwards.

As for its drawbacks, I've already went over them but heres just the summary

Chakra exhaustion, its clear that this ability consumes massive amounts of chakra in just a short time, so this ability is very much a finishing move rather than an active combat one, basically its something that she can only use most effectively as the final blow, but it isnt suitable for long drawn out battles.

To give an example think of it like Sasuke only having enough chakra for 2 bursts of Chidori, meaning he couldnt just spam it as he pleased at the time but had to be strategic and use it only when he was absolutely sure it would be effective, Sarada's MS is basically that.

The other drawback seems to be that she cant pull in things as quickly from close range, so even if theres an orb above her, she has to use another orb to pull it in another directions, which implies her gravitational pull requires distance to be effective, so a close range fighter and someone with a heavier arsenal would be difficult to pull as quickly and easily.

When Sarada pulled the supernova on Ryu, she left several claw grimes on the ground untouched, which either could be an oversight by Ikemoto OR it means theres either a limit to how many enemies can cause a supernova with at a time, OR because she has to be looking at them as well, but because she was only focusing on Ryu, the other claw grimes were unaffected, which implies she may only be able to do it if shes looking at the enemy, so a fast enemy or blinding her could potentially solve that problem.

So overall, the best way I can think of to describe Sarada's ability isnt a black sun or a black hole, for me it feels more closer to a black star, a star whos gravitational pull she can control the intensity and range of effect WITHIN her field of 4 black stars, then when pulling an enemy onto one, she can cause that black star to become a supernova and completely obliterate the enemy that was trapped on it. She can control who and what she lifts, which appears to be whatever it is she specifically looks and focuses on, aka Ryu, so its an ability that seemingly heavily relies on sight to be most effective.

Like I said Ryu was REALLY mismatched with her so she basically got handed the win on a silver platter, so we dont know exactly how her ability would work against enemies NOT so easily rigged to lose to her, so for now all we can do is make educated guesses.

But what I can tell you right now is that neither Kawaki or Boruto would lose to it, their karma literally absorbs everything that isnt physical matter, which Sarada's black stars arent, also Isshiki's high speed rods would probably hit her before being pulled in, and even if they were, Kawaki could shrink them, rendering her entire power useless because it requires those focal points for her to manipulate the gravity around, so no orbs, no gravity, no supernova finisher.

As for Boruto I mean mainly if hes able to tap into Momo's abilities at the time, Momo is hella fast and like I said karma can just absorb the black stars, and theres probably more he can do that we just arent aware of yet but yea, so its not like Sarada's MS doesnt have any counters to it, its just that Ryu was an easy win because his arsenal was literally iron sand, probably one of the easiest things to be picked up by gravity.

This isnt a powerscale debate, I'll save that for another post MAYBE I dunno, but this isnt the post for that. No all Im saying here is that if your worried about her ability being too 'broken' then worry not, it actually isnt that broken now that we've seen how it works in combat, there are many implied drawbacks and probably more we just havent seen yet, and we already had 2 ppl we can confidently say has the means to get around her ability, hell Im confident Jura has a shot, since its not a black hole like everyone thought it was initially [which would have been broken] if its just a star then theres more room to work around it.

Anyway I hope that answered your question...sorry if it wasnt the most educated since Im not really a big space nerd, but I hope I atleast explained it enough for you to get a general understanding of how it works.

Btw just cuz I call it a 'black star' doesnt mean thats 100% what it is, but thats just how Im referring to it cuz thats just what makes the most sense to me at the moment.

[ask-postcrash-curly]

Well, well, well, stardust! You’re curious about the three theories of the end of the Universe, so I will provide them for you, Curly!

On one hand, there is Gravity. On the other, there is the Dark Energy. Those two have the power to end the Universe… in some billions of years, like, lots upon lots of billions of years. Yet, it is fun to theorize!

If the Dark Energy wins, with the Big Freeze, the things gets… really cold. Our Universe is in constant expansion, and people used to think it was because of the Big Bang’s impact, like a push, but in 1999, astronomers discovered that the Universe is still expanding; it isn’t stopping, it is accelerating. There is something causing that, and no one is sure what it is, so that unknown force got the name of “Dark Energy.” If it continues to make the Universe expand, there will reach a point where the galaxies will be so distant from one another that their lights won’t reach each other. In that scenario, after some billion years, the stars die, the temperature falls, and the Universe is taken over by a deep, profound darkness; the maximum state of Entropy, everything becomes distant, cold and empty.

The second theory is! The Big Crunch. If Gravity wins, things get a bit tight. If the Dark Energy somehow loses its force and Gravity wins, the Universe will stop expanding, and will start to contract; planets, stars, galaxies, one thing would come into encounter with another, forming even bigger things and with even more gravity. Eventually, all particle that exists would be concentrated in one point, kind of like… a bus. But at least, the stars don’t smell. The interesting about this theory is that it doesn’t explain just how the Universe might end, it also explains how it might have begun! If gravity wins and everything is reunited in one single point, maybe the Universe will explode and begin again. If that theory is right, we don’t know how many times the Big Bang has happened! Maybe you are not the first you (ignoring the other timeline Curly. … That might be a bit of an existential crisis, eh?)

And now, my particular favorite! Quantum Physics. It might even be above time itself. Is the cat dead or alive? The third theory about the end of the Universe is… it already started. Unlike the others, Quantum Physics says that reality might end right now, in the blink of an eye. There is a little problem with our Universe: the vacuum, the emptiness, should exist… except it doesn’t, not in a real way, anyways. An experiment made has shown that, even if you totally isolate somewhere completely, there is still something there: the virtual particles. In a quantum level, it is an energy that creates and destroys itself. So the vacuum full-on emptiness doesn’t truly exist. Our vacuum is a fake one, so that’s why we can find particles in it, yet if somehow, the Universe gets in contact with the true vacuum, it might cause a bubble of vacuum in the Universe; it would begin small, but grow in the speed of light and disintegrate everything on its way, causing the definitive end. How are we sure a vacuum bubble hasn’t exploded in the past?

Anyways, already told the theories… So! How are you, stardust? Holding up well this far? I hope it doesn’t get you too nervous — I just really like the Universe and theories about it, so! I had to tell ‘em.

https://youtu.be/3JySKr1CQyw?si=5jd-7xIMkzHC0c6q

Music cue! This one is Russian. I don’t understand a single word of it, yet I really enjoy it.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before about my hangout with my friends, I just felt kind of bad that… you’re in this state, while I can just have minuscule issues and exaggerate them. It makes me feel bad. … Heh, maybe I am really compassionate? Didn’t expect that. … Thanks, sweetpea-stardust-sugarcube-Cap’n!

I am here for you.

- Lumi! (Nerdy li’l—)

Cheers, thank you.

Yep. I know that on a surface level, at least.

Right, that makes sense. I like to think about what the universe is expanding into. I suppose the universe should be self-sufficient for while yet, yeah?

This one, I believe. ...Like a bus? Hah. See, that makes sense, kinda. I figure I am the first me though. What are the chances of everything happening the same way twice?

Y'know, the cat experiment wasn't real? It was a satire or something. Guy didn't believe in it. Which is good because it's always seemed bonkers to me. Anya told me about it one time. ...Well, the speed of light's not that fast, comparatively. We just have to hope it spawns in another galaxy.

I'll be fine. I'm not nervous, don't worry. We've got a while left to go.

It's pretty nice. The video has English captions— did you see them?

No, no, it's okay. You can tell me however much or little about that you want. Least I can do. I appreciate the distraction anyhow.

[skyessparknotes]

blog post 3

lately i’ve been thinking a lot about the multiverse, so i wanted to write about it.

The multiverse theory. This theory is - essentially - exactly how it sounds. A theory about multiple universes. To be more thorough, this theory suggests that any and all things imaginable can both exist and not exist, virtually at the same time. Believing in this theory is anyone’s choice, but there is no evidence to neither entice nor deter one from the possibility. As far as we know, we can’t confirm or deny how true it may be, thus making it completely possible. Of course that means it could be completely impossible too, but why would it be impossible? If we can’t even travel past our own moon who are we to say there aren’t more universes out there?

If, perhaps, we were able to prove this theory true or false, would we want to? Say scientists create some device that could let a human travel to another universe. Would they want to risk it? If they do risk it and they never come back, it wouldn’t prove anything. The same goes for time travel. The number one rule of time travel is to NOT run into yourself. Why is that? And why do we have a time travel rule when we know time travel is inherently impossible. And why would running into your past self change anything? Essentially, someone would have had to experience this, and create this universal rule that no one questions nor implements. That implies your past self is the same you. For example, unless you run into yourself from the same decade, this is an entirely different person from the current version.

The multiverse theory could be entirely possible for all we know. Think about this. Math is fundamentally made up. Most things could be. We only know what scientists and other persons of authority have led us to believe in. While we have substantial evidence, we also don’t. We have evidence with numbers and ideas we

have been taught. For example, why are trees called trees? Why not automobiles? Who came up with these names, why did they choose them? Most importantly, why do we virtually accept these terms?

There are studies based on the multiverse theory, striving to prove or disprove whether it exists. How exactly does one do that? Many devote their lives to finding even the most consequential piece of evidence, thus removing a tiny layer of our ongoing wonders. Take Einstein for example. He theorized that time is relative to gravity. He suggested that - necessarily - the higher above sea level one is, the quicker one ages. And while that is very minuscule - only having millisecond differences - it is still quite possible. Many theories have surfaced, questioning time, travel, and multiverse credibility.

Nowadays, more people are open to the possibility of less stability among ideas we found comfort in. But centuries ago, philosophers were not only exonerated, but ostracized for questioning the slightest things such as why apples are red.

The multiverse theory is both true yet untrue, which is where things become complicated. If the theory is proven true, that confirms a universe where the theory is also untrue. Perhaps we live in that universe? Anything anyone could ever imagine is a reality, the severity changes have can vary, and always will.

While the possibility of the multiverse could be written about for ages, the absence of sufficient amounts of substantial evidence can’t add more depth. The multiverse theory suggests that anything and everything is both possible and impossible. Such as suggesting there are universes where the multiverse theory is an entirely different theory, perhaps one disproving of common knowledge. Believing in the multiverse theory is a choice, and has no set reason to or not to believe in it.

[harfanfare]

I saw this post and I was wondering if you write Malleus' too, is okay for you to make that?

How to win a heart of Malleus Draconia?

a/n: I started posting my writings here because I want to improve my English — so I technically wouldn't make this request. But! Someone on Wattpad (where I take requests) asked for the same thing, so I rolled up my sleeves and wrote this guide today in both languages. Enjoy~

1. Don't be afraid of him.

It is said that the first impression is the most important.

So when you first saw this guy walking through the corridor of Diasomnia, it was hard for you to get rid of that view from your head.

Illuminated both by the green magic flames set in the lobby, as well as by the moon, which eventually managed to break through the dark clouds and with a bright glow appear in the windows of the dormitory, he seemed... lonely and beautiful.

You shuddered as you took a step down the hallway and the dark-haired man turned to you. He measured you with his emerald eyes. And then you recognized him; all the conversations about the mysterious and fearsome Malleus Draconia flew through your head.

Everything told you to rush towards the hallway and run as far as possible, but a piece of you found it inappropriate. Or rather, no one would want to chase everyone away from themself... right?

When you realized you were looking at him for a while, you took a deep breath and nod slightly.

"Good evening, Draconia-san," you said quickly. After a while you added, "The moon is beautiful today, don't you think?”

 2. Smile a lot.

Today was a really wonderful day: the test was postponed, your favorite dish was given in the canteen, and for some reason, the last two lessons were canceled – your class had to make just a quick note about a topic and it took less than fifteen minutes.

"Something happened?" Malleus asked, seeing how almost in the jumps you walk past him. When you looked at him, he added, "You smile a lot.”

"I can stop smiling if you want," you made a sad face, but after a while, the corners of your mouth began to tremble uncontrollably and twisted up again. "Oops, I can’t. Today... it was such a good day... that I think I'm slowly using my life's happiness.”

"I didn't say that smiling is bad," he said. "You look so much better when you smile.”

"Oh," you sighed with apparent surprise. "Is it a compliment?"

"It’s rather a fact..?"

 3. From time to time visit him during club activities.

"Is this a class of the ‘Gargoyle research society club’?” with a deaf knock you opened the door. Malleus turned to you, making a break from browsing through the materials gathered in the library about the history of each of the gargoyles on the school grounds. And there were a lot of them.

"Yes," he replied briefly, getting up. "Do you need something, [Name]?"

"Not at all, my club don’t have a meeting today," you said, closing the door behind you.

You looked around: the room was as clean as ever, except for one desk, where were laid several huge volumes about statues in NRC.

“Are you here alone?” You said before you thought. You lowered your eyes to see Malleus nodding unconcerned slightly. You blinked several times trying to think of what else you could say. "This room... could be a secret base," that was the first thing that came to your mind. Malleus turned his head to one side, uncertain of your response.

“A secret base..? Why?”

"I have no idea," you admitted quickly. "But the very existence of a mysterious point is interesting, isn't it? Doing normal things, such as watching movies or just talking, seems more interesting in places like this,” After a moment of silence, you sighed. "You know what, this idea with the base is stupid”

"We can try," he replied with serious tone. You raised your eyes to see how he looked around the room. "But you'll just have to explain this idea to me in more detail. We can also tell Lilia, Silver and Sebek about it...” he smiled as if seeing your five together in his thoughts was a pleasure. "It will be surely... fun.”

 4. Get yourself a Tamagotchi.

"Look!" you spin a new key chain on your finger. You finally stopped and showed it to Malleus. "Now they are matching!”

A small electronic toy, in a dark green screen that, when it flashed, showed a virtual, pixelated animal. You were impressed with how good quality it was made, especially since you only gave the Shroud brothers a sketch of a toy that Malleus owned.

Your keychain was exactly the same, just a different color and with another pet.

Malleus pulled out his own device and put it on the table. He pressed one of the buttons and a small pet appeared on the keychain – a dragon.

"They can now be friends," you brought your toy closer to so-called Gao-Gao Dragon-kun.

"Do you think so?" He asked in a very surprised tone, but it sounded as if in a moment he were about to burst out with an inexplicably joyful and surprised laugh.

"Of course. Everyone needs a decent friend, no?”

 5. Gain the trust of Lilia, Silver and Sebek.

Lilia, one of Malleus' closest people. It is much more likely that you will meet him before Malleus. He will be very proud when he learns that Malleus has found a friend. If you become a taster of Lilia, in terms of his pastries, he will 100% like you, and at 20% you will leave the kitchen alive and well.

Silver, who has mastered the art of sleeping in any conditions. It's easy to get him into your plans, although with the craziest ones he will hesitate. Rather well-disposed towards everyone, he can cover for you when you are not in class— but he usually inadvertently falls asleep and both of you often have penal assignments after school.

Sebek, faithful to Malleus, if he doesn't like you, you won't have too many opportunities to stay by Malleus's side without a thunderous glances at you. He will recognize you if you will listen carefully to his monologues about his master and as a sign of your friendship, he will teach you by heart of all the titles and achievements of Malleus so far.

With this trio by your side, you can get a lot further than you might have imagined...

 6. Be a master in hide and seek.

You’d give your right arm that your breath was too loud.

You pressed your hands to your mouth as you crouched in the corner of the room.

From whose voices you already heard, you knew that Lilia had already found Sebek. This meant that you or Silver would still be helping cook dinner since Malleus didn’t come at the start of the game.

This may seem silly, but the ability to play classic games was one of the elements of the art of survival in Diasomnia.

It was thanks to games like ‘stone-paper-scissors’, hide and seek or tag that household chores fell on the shoulders of the losers. Lilia loved the idea, and there was always a proud smile on his lips when he saw his beloved children play together.

You heard the steps behind you and shivered.

Very slowly you turned around and looked up to see Malleus standing over you and wondering what you were doing, crouching in the darkest corner of the room.

Puns were also included in the survival pack.

Fearing that Lilia would hear your whisper, you put your finger on your mouth, asking him not to say a word. You put a begging eye into it – all but not cooking with Lilia. Not again.

Malleus nodded, recognizing the gravity of the situation, although he smiled.

Really, no one would want Malleus to be an enemy.

Or at least in such a situation.

 7. Do not hesitate to ask him for help with learning.

"In theory, you should focus on the space around you," Malleus pulled a wand in front of him. It flashed, and almost at the same time, a thin but incredibly strong protective barrier was created around him. “Weaker spells can be reflected. In turn, the stronger ones are better to block”

You nodded understandingly.

Defensive magic was not something easy to understand. Most depended on the person against whom the counter spell was being prepared. And there are countless people who walk on this Earth and want to start fights.

"Unique spells block or avoid physically," he continued. You nodded at every subsequent sentence, slowly feeling like all the lessons are eventually gaining transparency. “Using unique magic against unique magic, the stronger will win, both will lead to explosions or completely reduce.

He looked at you when you wrote down the last sentence in your notebook.

"I sincerely hope that you will only need this information in class," he said with a sigh. "If you need help, call me. I will come. I promise.”

 8. Sometimes be persuaded to wear extravagant clothes.

"Do you really think it suits me?" you turned around, looking at yourself from every possible angle in the mirror.

You were going to the theater in a few classes to see some era-related play that you've been discussing now in history lessons. Everyone, respecting the reputation, actions and achievements of theatre, dressed in their best clothes.

Malleus stood next to you.

He was already wearing a black and white outfit with green accessories. They all worked so well together and fitted him like a glove that you were sure that the whole outfit was made especially for him.

"Yes," he replied. "Everything you put on today suited you very well.”

Once again, with critical eyesight, you looked at the outfit, face and hair, before you quickly turned off the lights in the room and closed the door behind you.

Then you smiled at Malleus.

"We can go now," you said. You made your way through the portal to the main NRC building. "And... thank you for your help.

"My pleasure," he said. Under no circumstances was it just a polite formula. He really loved looking at you.

 9. Invite him to your birthday/party.

"Another break from school soon, huh?" — you muttered, leaning against the railing.

You took a deep breath and let the fresh, pleasant air refresh you.

"Are you going to home, [Name]?" Malleus asked. Green lights were still flying around him, so you guessed he’d just appeared here.

"I haven't decided yet," you sighed. "It would be nice to go home, but the break won't be very long... Ah, that's right!” you straightened up and turned to him. "How about spending another break together? As soon as I can, I will contact my family... although I cannot promise anything.”

Though he did not show it, Malleus' heart beat a little faster.

Spend free time? With someone? With someone he likes?

"Of course," he sounded less calm than he thought. He wasn’t often invited anywhere, even for the things he should have been on, so there was a lot of excitement growing in his body. "I don't see anything against it.”

 10. From "The Great Malleus Draconia-sama" to "Love".

"Ah, The Great Malleus-sama!" you sighed theatrically, taking from him a box of chocolates with a joyful smile. You could promise that because of this dark-haired boy here, you slowly become pampered. "Thank you for your generosity!”

Malleus frowned.

"The Great Malleus-sama"..?” he pondered, putting his fingers to his chin. "Did Sebek told you again to call me with this title?"

"No," you laughed softly at his reaction. "I did it out of curiosity. Maybe I could call you some cute nickname, hmm?" you smiled mischievously.

"For example?"

"By adding ‘-chan’ to your name?” you turned on your phone and typed something related to the nicknames. You started reading suggestions and struggled to hold back from laughing. ” ’Sunshine’, ‘star’, ‘flower’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘love’...

"I like the last one," he said, and the invisible force stung you to the ground.

"Would you like me to call you like that? Out of curiosity or out of love?" You laughed, but your cheeks were all red with blushes.

He smiled sincerely at your reaction.

"Hmm, I wonder..?"

[megacircuit9universe]

Cyber Sentience PT2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your chances of total failure would be astronomical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[khicken121]

HanMei Week: Day 3: Say Something

Nobody: Me: HanMei in a canonical divergence AU. Will it make sense? Probably not, but I’ll try. Tags/Warnings: First meeting, Canonical divergence, Unresponsiveness, Brief mentions of needles/IVs (Intravenous). Note: Something I’d like to clear up: I incorporated some Mandarin and Japanese characters in here. I had some help with a few of the lines from a friend (bless them), but I had to use an online translator for the rest (which I don’t like doing because I know a lot of them aren’t reliable). I apologize if the established formalities/dynamics don’t align with the Japanese and/or Mandarin characters used, or if the translation is just way off in general. In case I did, I put what I meant for them to say in English and in brackets. [Like this]

-----

Mei pulled herself through the snow with all her strength. The wind grew increasingly overwhelming against her body. When it wasn’t pushing her backwards, it was cutting through every layer of clothing that protected her skin against the bite of the fierce wind. She knew where it was coming from, and it was only a warning of what was to come with the storm looming overhead. The distance between herself and it was growing shorter, and the only place she could go was into it. She could see the small shack-like building through her fogged glasses. She had just a little further to go, then she would be safe from the wind.

The ferocity of the wind drowned out the faint beeping coming from Snowball, but the signal wasn’t hindered. Regardless, it needed to be amplified if she wanted to increase her chances of getting off the ice-covered land.

Her mind didn’t register the time that passed. Only the wind that became harder to resist and the strength she needed to fight it, but wasn’t sure she had. Even Snowball was finding hard to not fall victim to the powerful force of the blizzard that was moments away from engulfing them both. Once inside the abandoned safe point, all that greeted them was black screens. Mei didn’t even have to say anything before Snowball lent some of his battery life to bring some of the devices to life. The soft beeps coming from her soft companion grew louder as her distress signal amplified.

Her call for help was out there, and the adrenaline left her body. Her knees buckled and the cool metal of the floor cut through her clothing. She tumbled onto her side and her breathing grew slower and deeper. She could barely see beyond the fogged glasses that clung to her nose, but she could feel Snowball’s virtual eyes on her. The cold seeped into her body and what previously hurt was now going numb. The throbbing of her hands and feet became an afterthought as the tug of her eyelids sent her vision into nothingness. A small smile stretched her lips as the beeping grew faster, indicating that her signal was picked up, indicating her signal was heard.

-----

The storm subsided as two tall men entered the room where she laid on the frosted floor. There was no need to check for a pulse, as her shallow breaths came out in short white puffs, nearly invisible to the naked eye, but there nonetheless. An aggressive tap to her shoulder provoked no reaction from her. Neither did an attempt to sit her up, as evidenced enough with her head drooping due to gravity while her body was held upright. She was heavier than they anticipated, especially with the equipment strapped to her back, but they didn’t bother to leave it, as they were under orders not to.

She was hauled to two small land vehicles. She was strapped down on a stretcher attached to one of them, and the equipment attached to her back was loaded onto the other. They brought her to a large ship waiting for them on a hidden shoreline. Words were exchanged in their native language, sharing theories on why they would take such a detour. They were ordered to go back and salvage what items may be of value. Their question was soon answered when they found the official Overwatch emblem on several of the objects they scavenged.

A pretty penny could be made from this impromptu extension of this trip

-----

It was hard to determine what caused Mei to wake up. Her own breaths reverberated unusually loud in her ears. The strange warmth that surrounded her body. The tension that held a tight grasp on her muscles. Perhaps it was the bubbles that brushed against her forehead as they rose. It took a while for everything to register, as her mind was still clouded from sleep.

Mei’s eyes stung as they adjusted to an environment they weren’t meant to see in. She attempted to move her arms to investigate the pressure wrapping around the lower half of her skull. The action was hindered as it moved through what felt like liquid against her skin. When her fingertips reached her face, they were met with hard, artificial material. As she felt it, she discovered it completely covered her mouth, nose, and even wrapped around the back of her head akin to a heavy, metallic mask. This one, however, prevented water from touching any part of her ears as well. Something cylindrical is snaked out from the underside of it. It traveled upward before abruptly disappearing into a harsh glare from some kind of light source. Something clicked in her mind.

Water.

She was held in a glasslike vessel and completely surrounded by water. Oxygen was fed to her through the black tube attached to whatever what fastened to her face. Her body was restrained in a harness around her shoulders and upper torso, and her toes hovered above the floor. Upon gazing down, she found she wasn’t wearing her snow gear anymore, but rather a sleeveless, solid silver bodysuit.

Curious, Mei pulled at the thick mask she wore, but it didn’t budge. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices an IV injected in her forearm and taped securely to her skin. A smaller, transparent tube pumped clear liquid into her veins, and it snaked up like the black one attached to the mask. On her other wrist, a snug cuff with blinking lights that synchronized with her heart rate.

She doesn’t hear or feel the surface of the water lower until the weight of her hair pulls at her scalp and her feet touch a solid surface under her. Her body still ached, but the buoyancy of the water -now at her shoulder line- and the harness took off most of the weight from her legs and feet. It prevented her from collapsing to the bottom of the enclosed environment she was kept in, which her body wished it could do more than anything, but she still willed herself to stand. The cool air graced her cheeks before a brief series of quiet hisses reached her ears before she felt the mask around her head loosen. She pulled it off with ease, and it hung limp on its connector to the ceiling.

Her eyes and lungs adjust to the new atmosphere with rapid blinks and gasps. Within many prolonged seconds, she retook control of her breathing and the lights on her wrist flickered at a slower tempo. She observed as much as she could without the aid of her glasses.

Several people she didn’t recognize stared back at her. All but one of them were in long lab coats. The only one without one wore an expensive black and blue suit. As he stepped closer towards her, the other men and women in the room backed away. The aura of authority coming from his person caused Mei subconsciously stepped backward, too.

Her back touched the edge of the receptacle she was in before she managed to take one whole step.

The suit-clad man was undeterred by her reaction and continued his approach toward her. As he grew closer, her vision grew crisper. His hair was short and spiked and slicked back, with the exception of a stray piece in front of his forehead which he paid no mind to. His height was tough to determine since she was looking at him at eye level, but if both their feet were on the same ground he stood on, he’d most definitely be at least a little taller.

He reached up towards something that was hidden from Mei’s view, but it brought her attention to the tattoo that decorated his toned arm.

“あなたは私を理解していますか？” [Do you understand me?]

A deep, masculine voice spoke from above her. His lip movements matched the sounds that She didn’t understand the language it spoke in, but her thoughts were cut off before she could formulate a response. “なんとか言え！” [Say something!]

“我不明白!” [I don’t understand!] Mei said in a startled and apologetic tone.

He held his emotionless gaze to hers. Mei was putting as much effort as possible into not showing fear, but she wasn’t sure how well she was holding the illusion. “I speak english… if that’s any help,” she said. Hopefully there'll be a lingua franca between them.

His expression remained cold.

“They’ll help you prepare for questioning,” was all he said to her before taking his leave from the room.

He is not a man of many words.

The rest of the water was drained before the transparent walls were lowered and two people stepped up and freed her from the harness and removed the IV from her arm. She was handed off to two women technicians who brought her to another door that blended in with the dark walls of the room. “You’re warm now,” one of the women told her with reassurance in her voice. As she said this, she handed Mei her freshly polished and scratchless glasses.

“But we must hurry,” the second of the two began. “Shimada Hanzo is a very impatient and extremely busy man.”

[davidstfde]

Scientific Temper in Children—Here's How Parents Can Nurture An Enquiring Mind

Have you ever wondered how Newton came to think about a falling apple? Have you ever thought that phenomena as bizarre as the speed of light made a genius out of Einstein? How do these people look at the world? How does the world seem so different to them?

This is nothing but what we call is ‘scientific thinking’ that differs them from the typical pattern of traditional thinking. The production of a scientifically literate population is a fundamental goal of our educational system. Virtually everything you can see, touch, taste, and smell is the product of a scientific process. And the scientific method isn’t just for big problems. It also applies to the little decisions in our life that make a big difference. Having a scientific mindset is an essential part of everyday life. It encompasses everything from waking up in the morning to cooking breakfast, driving your car, and even falling asleep.

Frequently, substantial effort has been devoted to determining how to increase the likelihood that, as students progress through school, they will acquire at least a mindset that they would use for critical and logical thinking along with a scientific temperament. To develop scientific thinking skill in students, we need to answer two questions- first, what is scientific thinking? And secondly, how can it be taught?

What is Scientific Thinking?

Scientific thinking is a particular form of human problem-solving that involves mental representations of hypotheses or conspiracy theories about the structure and processes of the natural world and various methods of inquiry used to determine the extent to which those hypotheses are consistent with phenomena. Basically, scientific thinking in simple terms is to think beyond the explanation that has been given regarding a certain topic. To ask questions of why? how? What if? etc. based on that certain topic apart from merely accepting the explanation that has been provided. There is a process of evaluating the evidence in scientific thinking.

Whether your child is a preteen or a toddler, she has a natural tendency to seek out reasons for the various mysteries of life that she comes across. Your child’s scientific temper is directly related to the environment she is in and the company she keeps. Therefore, your parenting style has a lot to offer towards the development of scientific temper in your child. There are a few ideas to nurture your child with which they can develop a scientific temper with evidence-based curiosity for anything happening around them.

Now we know why scientific temper and its development is necessary in a child but now let us understand how to develop the scientific temper in the students –

How to develop a Scientific Temper?

A pro-science home will encourage your child to make the most of his inquiring mind.

Here are a few tips like, encourage them to ask more questions and seek out answers on their own. Whenever they come to you for any questions, direct them to reliable sources like the encyclopedia or the dictionaries instead of directly giving them access to “google” or “Alexa”. Also, you can encourage them to watch more of scientific shows on the TV instead of only entertainment all the time.

Develop their critical and logical thinking skills to upgrade their IQ level.

Your child needs to use her reasoning and ask questions like, ‘Why is this happening?’ or ‘Is this the right way to respond?’ or ‘Who said this? Can I trust this instruction? Also, Do not hinder your child’s willingness to test so-called established ideas. One more thing to keep in mind is that never halt your child’s evaluation processes by saying ‘because I said so’. Instead encourage them to ask, ‘How do I know if this is true?’ or ‘How can I be sure?’. Another thing to do is teach your child the logical sequence of science. General principles can create specific instances like how the laws of gravity works. How physics work in real life. This will make them develop an interest right from the early ages.

Steer your child away from finding answers on the internet –

When your child will google their queries directly on the internet and get the answer their mind will not do any thinking. No brainstorming will be done and as a result, the children won’t develop any logical or scientific thinking skills. They need that ‘brain exercise’ to open up their minds and for that always encourage them to find the answers from alternative sources other than google.

Your child will use her knowledge with ease as you explore things together. Have discussions with them. To develop a scientific temper and encourage more and more young is what should be our motive and to ensure the same SFS Guwahati has always been engaged in continuous efforts to impart quality education and with the very same motive DIEP (Desalite Integrated Exam Prep) has been introduced for the students, an integrated coaching program that would be helpful for the students and enable developing the scientific approach to their thought processes. Hope this blog was helpful enough to let you develop that scientific thinking skills within your children. Nevertheless, in a world that is replete with misinformation, uncertainty, and flux, your child needs to be unreservedly reliant on his scientific temperament. This is a strength that will equip him to be an invaluable citizen of the world, regardless of the career path he chooses to embark on.

About SFS School, Guwahati

SFS Guwahati is one of the best Private CBSE School in Guwahati with Integrated Coaching, awarded with the “Certificate of Excellence” by Bharat Shiksha Puraskar and Ranked №24 across India for “Mental Health” Ranking 2021.

[ransomedbard]

WIP Wednesday

This was inspired by re-watching “Lily C.A.T.”, an 80’s anime which is essentially a rip-off of “Alien” except (spoiler alert) the threat is an alien pathogen that gets aboard a deep-space vessel and turns the crew into monsters. It has a scene where two of the people trapped on the contaminated ship get handcuffed together (note: not a super bright idea in a horror movie!) that always stuck with me…

———————————

Infected

Infected with an alien pathogen that had already transformed several of her Preventer colleagues into mindless berserkers, Hilde was secretly glad to be left behind on the station’s brig to die alone. But she hadn’t reckoned on Duo deserting his squad and his duty to go ‘rescue’ her. Now on their own with a horde of alien monsters separating them from potential rescue, and with her time rapidly running out, she must press Duo to reveal the truth about what happened during her blackout.

———————————

“Hilde.”

“Hey, Hilde.”

“Hilde, are you in there?”

When she opened her eyes, Duo was crouching on the floor next to where she lay, a pistol in his hand. His clothes were unfamiliar - the Preventers uniform was gone, replaced by some dark lumpy vest. Other than that, she could identify virtually nothing in the glare of the battery-operated light - just a vague impression of a ceiling high overhead, and rows of towering shelves stacked with boxes. It was definitely not the last place she remembered - the inside of the station’s brig.

“Well hello,” he said, sounding relieved. “Don’t move around too much - you’ve had a concussion. Gunshot wound too, above the left hip.”

He lifted his left arm and her right hand rose with it, pulled up by the handcuffs that bound them together. “And, there’s this. Sorry, it was the best I could do.”

She took a minute to sort that all out. In a way, she was grateful for the concussion; it explained why she didn’t know where they were or how she got injured, and her sense that a lot of time had passed. She ran her free hand over the wound dressing and found it felt well packed and dry. The pain was significant, but she’d always had a pretty high tolerance for it, and this wasn’t the first time she’d been shot in her career. It was the progression of her other symptoms that she was worried about: the occasional pull of muscles that wanted to move of their own accord, a propensity to want to twist up instead of remaining flat, and most of all the feeling that her very bones and sinews were by turns straining and softening. Experimentally, she spread her free hand out and watched her fingertips curl back alarmingly toward her arm. Yup, it was definitely getting worse. And she was out here, loose. She stared dully at the cuff. “You should have left me in there.”

“And what kind of friend would I be to do that?” he replied lightly. He had tucked away the gun and was sitting on the floor by the lamp now, methodically stripping the coating off the end of a wire with an odd tool that wasn’t suited for the job - some sort of little screwdriver, by the looks of it. Her eyes were so sensitive to the light that they kept closing of their own volition, adding to her sense of disorientation.

This was crazy, even for him. Breaking her out of quarantine was probably enough to subject him to court-martial, let alone deserting his squad during a mission. And handcuffs? What was that supposed to do if she - wait, had she already?

“Did I hurt anybody?”

Duo focused on scraping curly swirls of rubber off the wire, which rested on a large tray balanced across his knees. “You don’t need to worry about that. It’s just us in here, and we’ve got enough supplies now to last until help arrives.”

That was a yes, then. She should ask who, or how many, or how badly, but the words stuck in her throat. She was suddenly angry as hell at him for sacrificing somebody else because he couldn’t accept that it was too late for her. I don’t want this on my conscience, damnit.

She watched in silence as he finished preparing the wire, then put it aside and started on another one. His posture was awkward, his cuffed hand stretched out to where she lay on a short stack of cardboard. When he noticed her watching, he gestured over at a small cluster of rechargeable batteries he’d apparently scavenged from various devices.

“Workin’ on a way to power my radio - ran out of juice about 12 hours ago, so I haven’t had contact since then.” From that, she gathered she’d been out - or rather, ‘not herself’ for longer than that. “Henderson and Yao’s teams are focusing on securing and prepping the number 18 dock,” he continued. “That’s where the fleet will come in. Big ESUN ships, so they’ll have a sickbay, doctors. That’s our goal.”

“Wufei took everyone else and the handful of civilians they found and made for the big toolshop in block D - last I heard they had found a store of maintenance equipment they could repurpose, including an actual flamethrower.” He stopped scraping for a moment and stared off into the distance. “I’m … I’m pretty jealous of that.”

She couldn’t help a small smile. “He always gets the cool toys.” Guns would be better, of course, but there weren’t supposed to be any firearms on this station - officially, anyway - and when their rapid response squad deployed for this mission they had stocked a normal loadout of ammo and armaments, unaware that it would be laughably insufficient because this time their adversaries weren’t smugglers or terrorists - or even human.

The mission briefing from Preventer HQ had not given them much to go on. H-940 was a sizeable but sparsely populated private station in the L3 cluster. The owner, Tiankong Trading, listed it as a warehouse and repair center for their fleet of cargo vessels. Three separate emergency calls had been logged, reporting massive systems failures, missing persons, and most bizarrely, reports of “monsters” lurking in the now darkened station. Headquarters suspected a mix of sabotage and some sort of mass poisoning with a hallucinogenic.

Their ship had successfully docked at one of the bays that still had power, and the first hour of the operation was smooth; all teams deployed for reconnaissance and returned to the rendezvous to report finding substantial damage but no contact with anyone, threat or otherwise. Then all hell broke loose.

She hadn’t really had the time to process what they were - aliens or some bio-engineered monstrosity - although her money was on the former because they were simply unlike anything she’d ever seen: hunched and bare, like a plucked chicken, yet spiky like an insect. They were not much larger than a medium sized dog, but their strength was tremendous. The creatures had little in the way of intelligence and didn’t seem to hunt as a pack; they just swarmed forward, viciously pursuing and attacking anything that moved. They had a powerful set of limbs that served as both legs that propelled them in high jumps through the station’s weak gravity, and grasping arms with talons that ripped apart metal and flesh alike. On the underside, there were several smaller striking appendages they used when they got close; they were covered in barbs that broke off and buried themselves under the skin. She resisted the urge to feel the line of lumps on her left arm where they had pierced her.

After their first engagement, where they had lost a third of their number outright, they retreated to the station’s corporate offices, which had a small store of medical supplies. They were focused on the triage of traumatic injuries, so at first no one even noticed when Hilde’s teammate Jack, who was only lightly wounded, became incoherent and fell out of his chair. It escalated as his body bent and twisted unnaturally; he began striking out wildly, attacking everything in sight. They had nothing to spare to sedate him with, so they put him in a cell in the brig. Then Lucy went crazy, and Ahmad, and they realized the common factor was that each of them had been stung by the creatures’ barbs.

When the quarantine was announced, Hilde didn’t wait for an examination to confirm what she already knew; she walked down and put herself in a cell. Then she watched as Jack and the others suffered through episodes where they writhed and smashed and flailed - mutely, with vacant eyes - only to pass out and come back to themselves briefly before it began again, until they succumbed to a final bout of contortion from which they never rose. It was all over in a matter of hours.

And then she was there all alone down there, after all the bodies of her teammates had been quietly taken away. Duo came as often as he could, of course, and Wufei and the others brought her rations and news, neither of which were good. They couldn’t make it back to their own ship to evacuate, and they were critically low on ammunition and medical supplies; two more of the wounded had died. The only bright spot was that they had managed to patch in to a relay transmitter outside the station and contact headquarters; help of some sort was on the way, but the Earth Sphere government was now in charge and it was slow to mobilize.

“You shoulda seen Wufei’s face when the military brass briefed us that this mission is now classified as Top Secret and tried to scare us about leaks,” Duo gossiped with forced energy as he slid a small bag of chips he’d liberated from a vending machine through the bars of her cell. “All these years of debunking De Santos’ nutty government cover-up conspiracy theories and now he’s in one. I think the man might just send an unencrypted transmission to any satellite he can ping out of spite.”

And so it went. For two days she’d held on to hope: that she might be immune, that once help arrived maybe they could use her to make a vaccine or something. That she would cheat death again. But by the start of the third day she couldn’t write off the involuntary twitching as just sleep deprivation; couldn’t ignore the feel of those damned barbs, that had been curly like a cashew when they went in but were now straightening out, painfully deep under her skin. And then she had drifted off leaning up against a wall of her cell, only to be startled awake when her hand snapped out and grabbed hold of a bar of her cell entirely on its own.

[liceouniversity01]

4 Online Learning Tips To Prepare for the Upcoming School Year

As COVID-19 keeps spreading, schools worldwide are resorting to online learning in an attempt to contain the spread of the disease but continue education.

In the past, pandemics have prompted unprepared students to study on their own. For example, Sir Isaac Newton and his classmates had to leave Trinity College for a year in 1665 due to the Great Plague of London. Newton used his time at home to refine his early work on calculus, experiment with prisms to test his optics theories and make his famous gravity discoveries.

While you may not be reinventing mathematics or science, you can take control of your education and keep up with your studies. Here are four online learning strategies to help you prepare for the upcoming school year for the Education Courses in Cagayan De Oro.

Tip # 1: Have a conducive area for school work As online classes no longer need classrooms in the new normal, you must establish your own study place. If possible, dedicate an area that is not in your bedroom, as your bed can be highly distracting. Instead, choose a location in your house that will have minimal noise or interruptions during your classes and be comfortable for you.

A conducive study area can help you stay organized. If you keep everything in one location, you will never have to leave your study area to get a book or print handouts. Moreover, your ability to focus and be productive will increase, and your momentum will be intact.

Tip # 2: Reduce Distractions While your home may not resemble a university campus, you are nonetheless enrolled in school. Your 15-hour class load still demands 15 hours of "in-class" teaching per week, regardless of whether you are actually on campus or not. Due to the fact that you're at home, there's now a lot of possibilities for distractions.

Naturally, taking online classes requires you to be connected to the internet at all times. However, when it comes to focusing on your lesson at hand and social media, this could cause some major boundary concerns.

So, it's best to keep your social media activity under control. Even though it's far easier to say than to accomplish, it's not impossible. You can utilize apps to assist you in locking down your social media accounts during class hours.

Tip # 3: Learn Time Management Face-to-face classes have the advantage that you can count on them to gauge where you must be in the course and recall what tests and deadlines are coming up. However, with the new circumstances, you might have to set up your own reminder to keep up with your classes.

Signing in to classes daily will enable you to check critical deadlines for assignments, quizzes, and examinations. Also, you can keep an eye on your university email and group chats for class announcements.

Organize yourself and establish a plan for finishing your task once you know what's going on. If you like structure, create a written timetable indicating when you must be online for a virtual class and when you should work on projects and assignments.

Tip # 4: Check your online learning equipment Because the majority of chores will be completed online, you'll require a strong Internet connection. Therefore, one of the first things you should do is determine the most appropriate internet provider for your area, as certain providers may not be optimal for your area.

While you are not required to choose the most expensive option, selecting the least expensive option may not be the best choice either. This is why it is critical to communicate with your school first since they may require you to install programs that require specific computer specifications. It's better to ask your teachers about minimum laptop/tablet specs before buying than to waste money on a gadget that may not be compatible or efficient enough for online resources.

Quality Online Education Courses in Cagayan De Oro Even if it is impossible to follow all of these tips, keeping them in mind can be beneficial. And as we develop a greater understanding of how online learning for Education Courses in Cagayan De Oro operates, we can improve our performance—because even when the current crisis passes, we may well be required to do so again.

Suppose you're searching for the ideal school to help you fulfill your dream of one day becoming an educator. In that case, the School of Teacher Education at Liceo de Cagayan University is committed to developing highly qualified teachers through high-quality teaching, research, and service for global and lifelong learning.

[cksmart-world]

SMART BOMB

The completely unnecessary news analysis

by Christopher Smart

July 27, 2021

CONSERVE: ORDER YOUR TOILET-BOWL CUISINART NOW!

The drought, like Covid and the congressional Republican caucus, is much worse than we expected. The reservoirs are at all-time lows. Farmers have to let their crops burn up and ranchers are selling off their cattle. If things get any more bleak we're going to have to put conservation into high gear. If you wash your clothes with biodegradable detergent or Miracle-Gro you can drain the washing machine onto your lawn or garden. And for showers: Remember the “Seinfeld” episode where Kramer washed lettuce for a salad in the shower? Actually, making salad or pasta in the shower is not that hard. Already SHOWER DELI is offering specials on shower-door colanders and steamers and yes, they even offer a shower-drain food disposal. As you may have guessed by now, saving on toilet water is a bit more challenging. Of course, there's the old trick of putting a couple of bricks in the tank. But the new “Barrel Flusher” by POOPLOOP is a breakthrough that depends only on gravity. Here's how it works: Install the Barrel Flusher kit under your roof rain gutter outside the bathroom with a gravity feed to your toilet tank. Then, after a thunderstorm you can flush to your heart's content. That's a good feeling twice over. Ah yes, the little pleasures.

WANT TO GET AWAY — WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME

There's a beach near a beautiful little Spanish city with your name on it. But it gets better: no one there knows you. All those Spaniards with their beautiful olive skin are soaking up the rays, oblivious to the coming apocalypse. News from the U.S. is hard to find — not that you'd want to go looking for it. There's you and all those young Spanish bodies and the sand and the sea and unless people hear your American accent, nobody will mention Trump or the Jan. 6 crazies. And if your Americanness does come clanging through, they probably won't ask you about him anyway, because they don't give two shits about Trump. They do think our gun laws are totally insane, but if you agree with them on that, they'll probably buy you a glass of Verdejo. But fair warning, life in Spain can be pretty challenging. For one thing you can't eat dinner until 10 p.m. And then you have to try all the different tapas dishes and, of course, you can't do that without drinking a lot of Garnacha. Luckily, after your morning on the beach you'll have to take a siesta. Hint: A shower before siesta will prepare you for some very sweet dreams where you miss your flight and have to stay in Spain because you can't afford to get home. And the best part is, you don't care.

NO RACISM — NO PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS

Racism is a public health crisis — so says Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and the City Council. But wait, how can that be when there is no racism in the entire state of Utah? We know this because Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Burgess Owens and our Republican brothers and sisters in the state Legislature told us so. After the Civil War there was no slavery and no racism because everything was separate but equal. That's why our white-bread legislators passed a resolution against teaching “critical race theory.” It would make white kids feel guilty about something that doesn't exist. And as far as Latinos and Asians and Native Americans go, well they were never slaves so they don't count. According to the mayor, institutional racism is manifest when minority populations are exposed to “environmental toxins, unmet housing needs, disparities in policing and the criminal justice system, inadequate private and public investment, decreased access to educational and employment opportunities and multitudes of health measures …” That maybe true but whose fault it that? None of that would happen if those people didn't choose to be poor. All they have to do is get a lot of money and make other people live in the ghetto. It's a no-brainer.

Post script — That about does it for another week here at Smart Bomb, where the staff keeps track of Pioneer Day so you don't have to. But wait! Why was Pioneer Day celebrated on July 23? It probably has nothing to do with KSL's contract to televise the Olympics on the real Pioneer Day. Moving on: Why did Jeff Bezos wear a 10-gallon Stetson into space reminiscent of Slim Pickins riding an atomic bomb in the classic film “Dr. Stangelove.” Just weird. Here's something from Arizona Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers upon hearing that the Cleveland Indians will now be called the Guardians: “I like Indians and I like Redskins. I like Aunt Jemima and I like Uncle Ben. I like Robert E. Lee and I like Stonewall Jackson. I don’t like traitors who hate America. Stand up for our (Racist) culture!” There was good news, too. Dan Bailey, a Montana fishing guide, caught Tucker Carlson in a Livingston sporting goods store and got in his face: “You are the worst human known to mankind. I want you to know that.” He posted the video on Instagram. More good news. At a virtual town hall, Alexis Toon told Sen. Rand Paul where to get off and posted on TikTok: “Hi, senator, I am a proud Kentucky citizen, and I just wanted to tell you to get f**ked.” Amen.

Well Wilson, have you and the guys in the band recovered from your real Pioneer Day celebration? No doubt, Polygamy Porter and Five Wives vodka is quite a combo and so apropos, especially in the summer heat. OK guys, roll with it:

In the summertime when the weather is hot You can stretch right up and touch the sky When the weather's fine You got women, you got women on your mind Have a drink, have a drive Go out and see what you can find If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal If her daddy's poor, just do what you feel Speed along the lane Do a ton or a ton and twenty-five When the sun goes down You can make it, make it good and really fine Sing along with us, dee-dee dee-dee dee Da doo da-da da, yeah, we're hap-pap-py Da da da, dee da doo dee da doo da doo da

(In The Summertime — Mungo Jerry)

PPS — During this difficult time for newspapers please make a donation to our very important local alternative news source, Salt Lake City Weekly, at PressBackers.com, a nonprofit dedicated to help fund local journalism. Thank you.

[transhumanitynet]

ARG4 MONTSALVAT

Welcome to a Rabbit Hole for TNET‘s March-April 2018 Game Event. 

The following piece is FRActal MEtafiction (FRAME); a Futurist Arts & Culture paradigm which draws upon the concepts of Culture Mining and Gamification, and is inspired by artists such as William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, and Marcel Duchamp, in addition to Postmodern theorists such as Jean Baudrillard.

The term “Montsalvat” is a reference to the opera Parsifal, by Richard Wagner.

[13 3509] Simulated Addition, and Other Oxymorons [from “Permutation City” by Greg Egan]

Opponents replied that when you modeled a hurricane, nobody got wet. When you modeled a fusion power plant, no energy was produced. When you modeled digestion and metabolism, no nutrients were consumed – no real digestion took place. So, when you modeled the human brain, why should you expect real thought to occur?

A computer model which manipulated data about itself and its “surroundings” in essentially the same way as an organic brain would have to possess essentially the same mental states. “Simulated consciousness” was as oxymoronic as “simulated addition.”

Opponents of the Uploading (Whole Brain Emulation) idea only have two essential arguments to fall back on: Either that consciousness and cognition are not matters of information processing, or that in developing AI we are modelling the wrong information, in the wrong way. One of these claims is falsifiable, and the other can be remedied.

[14 9554] The Cave [from “The Republic” by Plato]

“Next, then,” I said, “make an image of our nature in its education and want of education, likening it to a condition of the following kind. See human beings as though they were in an underground cavelike dwelling with its entrance, a long one, open to the light across the whole width of the cave. They are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds so that they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond to turn their heads all the way around. Their light is from a fire burning far above and behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a road above, along which see a wall, built like the partitions puppet-handlers set in front of the human beings and over which they show the puppets.”

“I see,” he said. “Then also see along this wall human beings carrying all sorts of artifacts, which project above the wall, and statues of men and other animals wrought from stone, wood, and every kind of material; as is to be expected, some of the carriers utter sounds while others are silent.” “It’s a strange image,” he said, “and strange prisoners you’re telling of.” “They’re like us,” I said. “For in the first place, do you suppose such men would have seen anything of themselves and one another other than the shadows cast by the fire on the side of the cave facing them?”

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is composed of elements which illuminate any discussion of simulated worlds and the predicament of minds trapped within them. For example, in the allegory the slaves could in principle escape toward the light, understanding that what they’d thought of as primary phenomena are in fact shadows or simulations of something else, something more “real”. What would such a process of escape and/or realization require within a Matrix-like virtual world?

[15 8222] NASA are Idiots [from “Accelerando” by Charles Stross]

NASA are idiots. “They want to send canned primates to Mars!” Manfred swallows a mouthful of beer, aggressively plonks his glass on the table: “Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn’t even a biosphere there. They should be working on uploading and solving the nanoassembly conformational problem instead. Then we could turn all the available dumb matter into computronium and use it for processing our thoughts. Long-term, it’s the only way to go. The solar system is a dead loss right now – dumb all over! Just measure the MIPS per milligram. If it isn’t thinking, it isn’t working. We need to start with the low-mass bodies, reconfigure them for our own use. Dismantle the moon! Dismantle Mars! Build masses of free-flying nanocomputing processor nodes exchanging data via laser link, each layer running off the waste heat of the next one in. Matrioshka brains, Russian doll Dyson spheres the size of solar systems. Teach dumb matter to do the Turing boogie!

If abandonment of the human form is necessary for serious colonization of space, then is it still humanity which has conquered the stars?

[16 2201] Sects and The City [from “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs]

All streets of the City slope down between deepening canyons to a vast, kidney-shaped plaza full of darkness. Walls of street and plaza are perforated by dwelling cubicles and cafes, some a few feet deep, others extending out of sight in a network of rooms and corridors.

At all levels cross-cross of bridges, cat walks, cable cars. Catatonic youths dressed as women in gowns of burlap and rotten rags, faces heavily and crudely painted in bright colors over a strata of beatings, arabesques of broken, suppurating scars to the pearly bone, push against the passer-by in silent clinging insistence.

Traffickers in the Black Meat, flesh of the giant aquatic black centipede – sometimes attaining a length of six feet – found in a lane of black rocks and iridescent, brown lagoons, exhibit paralyzed crustaceans in camouflage pockets of the Plaza visible only to the Meat Eaters. Followers of obsolete unthinkable trades, doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, black marketers of World War III, excisors of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, officials of unconstituted police states, brokers of exquisite dreams and nostalgias tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, drinkers of thee Heavy Fluid sealed in translucent amber of dreams.

The Meet Café occupies one side of the Plaza, a maze of kitchens, restaurants, sleeping cubicles, perilous iron balconies and basements opening into the underground baths. On stools covered in white satin sit naked Mugwumps sucking translucent, colored syrups through alabaster straws…

In the City Market is the Meet Café. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war… A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum… Larval entities waiting for a Live One…

Also in Naked Lunch, Burroughs said “The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.” Do you agree? To your ear, does his statement sound critical, neutral, or celebratory?

[13 3509] A World of Stories [from “Open Source Democracy” by Douglas Rushkoff]

We are living in a world of stories. We can’t help but use narratives to understand the events that occur around us. The unpredictability of nature, emotions, social interactions and power relationships led human beings from prehistoric times to develop narratives that described the patterns underlying the movements of these forces. Although we like to believe that primitive people actually believed the myths they created about everything, from the weather to the afterlife, a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we understand religion today. As Karen Armstrong explains in A History of God, and countless other religious historians and philosophers from Maimonides to Freud have begged us to understand, the ancients didn’t believe that the wind or rain were gods. They invented characters whose personalities reflected the properties of these elements. The characters and their stories served more as ways of remembering that it would be cold for four months before spring returns than as genuinely accepted explanations for nature’s changes. The people were actively, and quite self-consciously, anthropomorphizing the forces of nature.

Let us assume for a moment that (as is highly likely if you’re reading this) you are critical of religion, both in theory and practice. As long noted by philosophers and other observers, you cannot be consistently critical of a thing without having a consistent understanding of its nature, and thus partially incorporating it into your own identity. In other words, if you know it well enough to oppose it, then it is part of you and your world. If you do oppose religion in this way, you probably think of yourself as a rationalist or empiricist of some sort.

Isn’t it an interesting irony, then, that part of your worldview is caught up with arguing against a naiive, and indeed increasingly infantile notion of what “gods” are. Once they were commonly understood as metaphors, symbols, or representations, but now both the defenders and antagonists of religion spend their time arguing over straw men, or fictional superhumans. Don’t waste your time on such primitivism. Instead, enjoy the fact that you live in a time when ideals which the ancients could only portray as allegorical superhumans can now be realized through technology. Now, we can be the gods, if only we can remember what that means.

  Thoughts to frame@zerostate.net or in comments below may be rewarded with ARG info. Conversations held elsewhere and linked back to that address or comments below will definitely win clues, hints, & info.

  ARG1 Zone of Nothing

ARG2 Twenty Thousand Years

ARG3 Cataclysmic Renewal

ARG4 MONTSALVAT

ARG5 Houses of the Outer Court

Ready Player One: AR Gaming Meets Transhumanism

ARG4 MONTSALVAT was originally published on transhumanity.net