#Algorithms and Magic

[leonbasinwriter]

Discover the Circus of Forgotten Dreams

“✨ Step right up, wanderers! A circus like no other unfolds. Where algorithms dance, lions roar with lost messages, and glitches set you free. Welcome to the Circus of Forgotten Dreams—where anything is possible.”

“✨ Step right up, wanderers! A circus like no other unfolds. Where algorithms dance, lions roar with lost messages, and glitches set you free. Welcome to the Circus of Forgotten Dreams—where anything is possible.” In the shadows of the digital world, there exists a realm unlike any other. It’s a space where lost messages, forgotten dreams, and wild glitches converge—a place that lives in the…

[pinkrangersarah]

i've known aika for barely a day and I already love her, 10 out of 10 would die for this kid.

what better way to procrastinate in my own writing than quickly doodling my own oc with @kianamaiart's very own aika, whom elena relates to on a very spiritual level.

a witch who did not ask for her dad's powers and a magical girl who did not want to be a magical girl. maybe they can hang out someday.

[hungwy]

"unalive" obviously has its place as a different flavor word for "kill"/"die" but its just kind of needlessly cautious to use it as a complete replacement if you're not actively making money from uploading tiktok/youtube content

[jakeperalta]

instagram explore page keeps showing me pro justin baldoni and pro johnny depp content no matter how many times I click "not interested"

[aesethewitch]

Shufflemancy 101: A Brief History & Analysis

Hey! If you like my work and want to support me in my quest for divination theory, digital tools, algorithmic quandries, and research into niche divination tools, consider throwing dollars at my Ko-Fi tip jar! Every contribution helps me keep making posts like this one. (You can also read this post over on Ko-Fi!)

The difficulty with researching something like shufflemancy is that it's a relatively modern phenomenon. I haven't yet found anyone (online or in a book) specifically talking about the origins of shufflemancy as a term or where it might've come from.

So, we start from square one.

What is Shufflemancy?

According to Wikipedia, shufflemancy is divination "by the use of an electronic media player such as an electronic playlist, iPod, or other medium wherein one skips a certain number of songs and the lyrics and/or tune of the song is the answer to the divinatory question."

Simple enough. Use an electronic collection of music that's been shuffled to divine.

This did lead me to the question: What counts as shufflemancy? Does tuning into a radio station count?

It's my opinion that radio divination does not count. There's no shuffle function. Yes, it has an element of chance, and that's what makes it divination. It certainly falls under the wider umbrella of divination via music, too. But it isn't shufflemancy if it doesn't make use of a shuffle function.

So, to make things simple, for something to be shufflemancy, it must:

Use an electronic medium

Involve a randomized shuffle function

Be something the shufflemancer can interpret to answer a question (pretty much anything)

Early Shufflemancy

The earliest form of shufflemancy as we understand it today, using the above requirements, would probably be tape players capable of shuffling music. With the nature of tape, it would take a while for the thing to wind and rewind to find the cue on the tape which signaled the start or end of a song, but it'd work.

With that said, shuffling as we understand and recognize it today would've started with CDs in the 1980s. There were CD players that could hold three to five disks at a time. They could shuffle songs between all disks held in the player, creating a random mix of tunes for listeners to enjoy.

Using either of these methods for divination would work, technically. The results would be somewhat limited, but that doesn't mean it's a bad method to use. Especially if your CD player could hold 5 disks, you could easily put in 5 albums from different artists with all different vibes for a wider variety of outputs.

I certainly remember using my little blue radio that held two CDs at once like this. I'd put in two albums and hit shuffle, and the first song that played would be my vibe and advice for the day. It was divination -- some of the earliest I'd ever done consciously, at the young age of nine. And when I got the bigger one that held three CDs? Game changer.

So this puts shufflemancy's origins somewhere around the mid-to-late 1980s, when Sony put out the first CD player with shuffle. As we moved into the 1990s, CDs became more popular and cassettes faced obsolescence.

The Shuffle Revolution & Early Modern Shufflemancy

In 2005, Apple changed the game again. It had already debuted the iPod in 2001, providing an easy, pocket-sized music experience as a direct challenge to the CD's cultural domination. On January 11, 2005, nearly 20 years ago, Apple announced the iPod Shuffle.

And oh, boy, did it change everything.

I could talk forever about the iPod's impact on the music industry, the death of the in-order album, and the eventual rise of music streaming services. But others have done that to death, so I'll focus in on our topic of shufflemancy.

This is where we start seeing shuffling music as it is now, in the modern day. In my digging, I found mentions of the term "shufflemancy" as early as 2007 -- just two years after the iPod Shuffle was announced. Someone proposed the concept and terminology of "shufflemancy" as we understand it today on a Halfbakery Forum "Idea" post on October 3, 2007.

It's difficult to say whether this is the first instance of the term. In reality, shufflemancy seems to have emerged as a natural by-product of the evolution of music technology. Where there is innovation, witches and diviners will mold it to their purposes. We're a resourceful bunch like that. It grew organically as we moved from buying albums to buying singles to streaming music without buying at all.

People were offering public shufflemancy readings as early as 2009 in places like TarotForum.net. It's spoken about during this era as a "silly" and "new" form of divination that people were trying out. There aren't any dates in that link, but according to the website's data, the first post in the thread was published on June 16, 2009.

From there, shufflemancy saw a gradual rise in popularity. It evolved from using iPods to iTunes, Napster, and eventually Spotify as these new applications emerged.

Shufflemancy Now

If you look up "shufflemancy" using Spotify's search function, you'll receive dozens of results. Many of the top playlists are public ones curated by shufflemancers for themselves and others to use. Options range from general playlists to "mega mixes" containing upwards of 200 hours of music from all different genres, artists, and eras. There are some with a paltry five hours of music, while one that I've seen goes up over the 600 hour mark. (If I can find that one again, I'll reblog it, because... damn.)

Select a "messages from your guides" option from the search or curate your own -- the choice is yours. For one-time shufflemancers, using a pre-made option may be the best, most economical choice. But dedicated shufflemancers sometimes boast multiple hundred-hour playlists for different purposes, all personally curated.

Clearly, it's popular. There are shufflemancers on Tumblr and Etsy offering free and paid services using their specially curated playlists. A quick search is all you need to find someone receiving a divinatory reading via song lyrics, meanings, and vibes. And it seems to work -- sellers on Etsy boast hundreds of positive reviews. Some even offer playlist curation services for personal shufflemancy or messages from deities and/or spirits.

It all begs the question, how does shufflemancy work?

Shufflemancy Methodology

Finding this is significantly easier than pinning down the history of shufflemancy. This post from Tumblr user orriculum, sums it up fairly well. So does this one by the-daily-diviner.

To do shufflemancy, the basic steps are:

Create or find a playlist of songs. A large collection seems to be the most favorable option for a wide spread of possibilities.

Ask a question. Divination 101 -- figure out what you want to know and ask it. Simple enough.

Pick a number. Choose any number and shuffle that many times or skip that many songs.

Listen to the song. Write down lyrics that stick out, messages that come through, and anything else that seems relevant (genre, tempo, vibe, etc.)

Interpret. Take the information gathered during the song and use it to draw conclusions, just like any other form of divination.

Simple enough. Shufflemancy is the sort of method that requires a high level of intuitive thinking. It's very mutable and suits a good amount of personalization.

This is both good and bad, I think. It would be incredibly easy to create a bias in your shufflemancy playlists by selecting songs with primarily one genre, artist, album, emotion, or through-line. The ideal playlist really does have a wide variety of music, and this means selecting songs that the shufflemancer doesn't necessarily like. We all have a genre or artist we hate; excluding an entire genre skews results. Impartial selections of music are critical to the success of good divination. Otherwise, we risk interfering with the outcome.

And speaking of interfering...

The Algorithm Problem

(Note: I'm focusing in on Spotify since it's very commonly used and because it's accessible to me. Shufflemancy can be (and is!) done with plenty of other apps like Apple Music.)

When Spotify was originally launched, it used a version of the Fisher-Yates Shuffle to perform its shuffling of music. In essence, this algorithm takes a finite sequence of data, picks an option from that selection of data, and removes it from the pool. Then, it picks another and another until no more options remain.

At first glance, this seems great! It creates a fairly random output. But as is the nature of randomness, there were clusters. The same artist would play four or five times in a row from a large playlist, and Spotify users complained. It was random, but it didn't feel that way.

The human brain is wired to find connections and patterns. When the same artist plays over and over again despite a playlist being on shuffle mode, it creates a pattern that the brain recognizes. Therefore, the "true" randomness of clustering outputs was unsatisfactory.

So, in 2014, Spotify updated it. Their new algorithm would detect and remember the song it just played and, in shuffling, account for the artist and album to provide a more random-feeling result. The new algorithm detects what's already played and selects accordingly to prevent the same artist from playing twice in a row, just as it prevents the same song from playing twice. It spreads artists out evenly (though not perfectly, to maintain the illusion of randomness) to provide an enhanced listening experience.

What does this mean for shufflemancy, then? If Spotify's algorithm is interfering in the output provided from a playlist, does that mean it's not a reliable form of divination?

At first, I wasn't so sure. I adjusted my thinking -- if a tarot app was preventing certain cards from being drawn (or from being drawn in a particular order) because I'd already drawn them that day or week, would that render the app unreliable? And the answer was yes. It would! It removes the random element from the method, therefore making it not true divination by my definition.

So shufflemancy with Spotify isn't (good) divination, then. Right?

My Opinion & Theory

In thinking about this further, I think it comes down to personal opinion. People certainly have success with shufflemancy via Spotify, or else they wouldn't do it. They definitely wouldn't offer their services (free or otherwise) if they weren't confident in the results it provides.

Thinking that way, I believe there's a way to off-set the algorithm's interference. With enough songs in a playlist, the random element is enhanced despite the algorithm. Not by having the same song multiple times (Spotify would surely detect this and prevent it from playing), but perhaps the same song covered by different artists. Songs with the same vibe, the same meaning, similar lyrics... AND songs from a wide variety of artists and genres, regardless of whether the shufflemancer likes the songs or not.

The person with that 600+ hour playlist for shufflemancy has it right, I think. That's the key. Variety and volume to make up for Spotify's algorithmic shuffler.

Additionally, in listening to my many, many Spotify playlists, I noticed something. If I'm listening to a playlist on shuffle and decide I want a specific song, I can choose to play it immediately. Afterwards, songs I've already heard might play. It seems as though doing this resets the shuffling algorithm in some way. Doing this in combination with a large and varied playlist might be the key to making shufflemancy in Spotify truly, fully reliable.

My Next Steps

Obviously, scholarly research only goes so far in situations like this. In order to properly gauge the accuracy of shufflemancy, I'll have to do it myself.

First, I'll need a playlist. I have a handful of playlists that sit in the hundred-hour range, but they're curated with friends for specific vibes. They're not really suitable for shufflemancy. So making one for myself is step one. I'll use premade playlists as a springboard for ideas, but the end result will be my own. For transparency, I'll make the playlist public and share it as part of the next edition in this series of posts.

The next step is to just... do it. Do the divinations, and do them regularly. Instead of a daily tarot card, I'll do a daily shuffle. I'll form "spreads" and put together a more in-depth methodology that fits my style as it develops.

Then, finally, maybe public ones? For reviews and feedback, obviously. It's one thing to do divination for myself -- confirmation bias and all -- but to do it for others and to be open for immediate feedback is entirely different.

Last, it's a matter of compiling my findings into a coherent document. Easier said than done, but done it must be.

Resources

I pulled from a lot of places for this one. Massive thanks to the Crossroads Discord for listening to me yell about divination for the last several weeks. It will continue.

In any case, here are all the resources I referenced for this leg of research:

Wikipedia - The Fisher-Yates Shuffle

Wikipedia - Methods of Divination

Wikipedia - The iPod Shuffle

PopSci - History of Shuffling Music

Engineering at Spotify - How to Shuffle?

The Verge - The Mixed-Up History of the Shuffle Button

Auntie PanPan (YouTube) - Shufflemancy - What IS It?!?

Halfbakery - Shufflemancy Idea Post

Fox and Faith Wordpress - Radio Divination and Intentional Living in Your Day to Day

Scientific American - How Randomness Rules Our World and Why We Cannot See It

PC World - The CD Player Turns 30

Make Use Of - How Spotify's Shuffle Feature Really Works

Orriculum on Tumblr - Post on shufflemancy technique

The-Daily-Divinre on Tumblr - Post on shufflemancy technique

Empirical Zeal - What Does Randomness Look Like?

[artisticxlly]

Hoshiumi hate on my feed is my motivation to draw fanart of him atm 🙏

[shivering-isles-cryptid]

Why am I getting love spells on my feed? I’m aromantic?

It’s like using a magnet to draw in plastic, we don’t do that here

[cluelesslesbian]

opened twitter and was blessed by snoopy

[honeyspotpie]

"Oh dndads season 2 is like an isekai anime haha!" "No it's like a reverse-isekai anime!!" *extremely loud incorrect buzzer sound* WRONG. IT'S LIKE A MAGICAL GIRL ANIME. prove me wrong

[daisydogox]

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 2.8k

Summary:

“I do need to make this quick before people notice half the leading troupe is missing,” Tsukasa admitted, “but I wanted to check in with you.”

His tone was friendly but Rui knew there was more to it and he froze. He knew his acting abilities were the weakest among the group, his talents more on the technical side of things, but he was sure he’d done a well enough job of projecting confidence. “What for?” he said with a grin that felt too wide. “Everything’s fine.”

Tsukasa gave him a look, brow furrowed. “There’s no need to pretend we’re not all running ourselves ragged. I’ve been so busy running lines at lunch I’ve barely had time to eat, and you’re directing on top of everything else. I’ve seen you lose track of things when you’re working on a normal show and the scale here is something else, I just wanted to make sure—”

“I’m fine, really,” Rui interrupted. It was like Tsukasa said, he got wrapped up in every project.

[mlobsters]

matthew "master of tuna salad" mcconaughey

(src)

[m4y4vi]

I stan this idea very much

Warming. Contains info hazardous bias.

--

The beast of instinct.

It is a class of design concepts in my delusion magic system, in the bronze age world. There have been a lot of these beasts in this time period, that's just an excuse to slowly introduce the concept and therefore slowly brainwash readers to like my ideas, the magic of Mystique...

tl;dr of the Delusion magic system is that all ideas in your head, that have no contradiction in your entire neural circuitry... Are made manifest. The only limit of abilities is that no one here can violate the conservation of information.

The beast of instinct serves as an equal to its opposite concept in the magic system, to the various demons of reason.

--

When an intelligent creature is rid of delusion. It's inefficient neural pathways that sustain its own narrative is burned away... in order to perfect its sensory input to the motor reaction output loop...

That is the beast of instinct. A creature of pure emergent function of their respective chain of chemical reactions that sustain them. Just biology. Nothing 'alive' in it...

The beast of instinct is actually an evolution line from the 'artsy' type of poke- ahem... characters... Because all their senses converge into one level of Gestalt like act of observation...

They have reduced their craft to mere hardwired instinct. Art without interpretation. Art is in the interpretation, they cannot hold higher thought. There is no interpretation. Distilled objective sensory observation.

This act of observation and reaction loop causes neural synergy. Their movement becomes choreographed, a dance set on the rhythm of information continuity... a markov chain stitching its path only in eternal now

Think of it like your body moving in a deep flow state... You don't need to justify any action, there is no action, you just are... imagine how flight or flight works.

--

Their nervous system become more hardwired, the input signal moves to the Permutations of nerve cells that lead to motor output. No lag, no higher processing that can take them out of their contradiction free observation of reality.

--

What do they do!!!???

Well, I have some examples...

--

There was a wild 'notorious' tiger that had perfected its art, the hunt.

THE SHADOW.

Its targets could never track it while simultaneously recognising the contours of its shape, 'camouflaged'. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle flavoured.

Basically if you see it still? then it has already left the field of your active vision... And if it is tried to track? Its patterns become 'blurrier'

Scary camouflaged danger cat be real sneaky!

--

Another is, hehe boi, this shit is why I do all these

THE DEAD MAN WALKING

A malevolent bag of matter and energy performing emergent behaviour.

It's a he... I am sorry... it is an unorthodox villain character so it's fine. He 'bad boy' hot!! ... Atleast ...

This being has burned away everything. All neural pathways that are deemed inefficient.

In transcendental rage... (revenge subplot but the spicier version, powerless human on a quest for revenge, and in his hit list are some protagonists... and he's Machiavellian but unga bunga version. Bronze age min maxed sweaty ape ass.) His body has burned everything away inside it that could stop itself anymore... it began with the symptoms of never stopping, even though he's clearly spent... and the ones on his hit list are sometimes delusion magic wielders... and his condition is kinda okay but still bad... even chemically resource starved sometimes...

Think of this man moving like a Fourier transform of the music this man runs on

Or better think of it like the collapsing wave function. Its curvature flowing, being dictated as observed by objective reality.

An animated squiggly line. Extrapolate that squiggly line to 3 dimensions and you can see my boi animate in every frame of the causal reality he observe... Its slow... It's only biological ofcourse... Give it some time... Speed up the animation frame rate to our scale bruh!

++

Retrograde amnesia, Anterograde amnesia, aphantasia, there is simply nothing left in this man that can hold higher thought. Not even recognition of its own geodesical individuality. There is no separation of 'me' from the larger universe in him left.

It has all been burned away.

A martial indifference walking in perfected malevolent instinct.

++

Much like Clive Wearing, a real dude! Look him up!

Music allowed Clive to stitch his distorted continuity for a suprising good length... Otherwise, he couldn't recall his memories and cannot make new memories... long term and short term memory loss.

That is because of the 'Musicality' of our systems, a very well oiled part of circuitry in your cranium, the thing that creates meaning from pattern-ed sequence of sound... is so connected with out voluntary motor functions that we can't help but vibe. Fact! the taping of your feet!? That vibe? Craving for Chris Christodoulo synthwave? it's hardcoded!!

And Clive was a brilliant musician!! so the music part of his neural circuitry was still going good!!

Continuity in motor function? Better sense continuity of reality! All because Music moves us... quite literally.

++

Copy that shit one to one shamelessly, exaggerate, and slap it to the Dead Man Walking. Add some more too.

Aphantasia so he can't voluntarily simulate shapes in his prefrontal cortex.

Synesthesia because his reduced neural circuitry sustains the seamless sensory information convergence into a Musicality led rhythm. We all have it, it's just not required and therefore it's unique neural paths are not strengthened (unless you do have Synesthesia, in its numerous variations, my boi here has the complete one... Brain less fibry dense as normal? Remaining fibers circuitry are taken as new normal, strengthened and are then is more 'hardwired')

Since normal symbolic context driven language is not possible for its mind... Think of the music as a language his circuitry runs on... that labels all levels of raw sensory information in one neat, low mental level, yet surprisingly rational, compressed packet...

And this Musicality stitched rhythm is what keeps it in this continuity of the eternal now. A malevolent algorithm, an else-if ladder.

++

Its shitty 'machete on a good stick' glaive is a sight to behold. Not for it's crude, flavorless... Yet surprisingly ergonomic?!... Makeshift design... That is... Only if your body has a similarly chiseled epigenetic expression to his...

Its path never meets resistance. Eviceration itself left behind its tail wind. Not because its blade end is impossibly sharp, or is a 1024 times folded katana... but because its path is never allowed to meet a material that could resist its cleave... (Maybe the blade end is a 'foraged' Damascus made, short fat, Ramdao... It is in fact from the harappa side of things)

Only after he has completely 'understands' what it is fighting... is. and 'is' as in objective reality... think of it like him starting from the 0 of understanding of hiss opponent's unique induviduality... all potential behaviour and bias in shape and permutation of material... It takes time... Maybe less every other opponent that makes him reach the weapon's full 100% smooth path...

The crude weapon's sheer girth is used to balance his borderline animated smooth wonky posture... Imagine he pushes the waxy stick blade first forward while in air... It's mass and acceleration pulling his surprisingly light body, for a surprising amount of centimetes in that direction... Oh and he's also is on a very strict... very Surprisingly varied, forager diet... Only take enough resources that are recognised to 'continue efficient function' type diet... Unga bunga variant.

Shit like this happens with many different weapon flavours since he gets bland fast...

His fighting style is anything that works as long as he is the one who survives in the end. Getting better and better to the point if there is even a fraction of a chance a human of his build and calibre can win... He wins and his opponent mostly dies... Getting more efficient with each iteration of causal action, that is the speed cap of his limit.

++

The events that lead this man to this pokevolution are truly some edgy sad offscreen dark souls lore... and anime ass hell fights!

His art is the art of malevolent survival. Sad artist stuff I know...

He actually is made to go even lower from this state of being a beast of instinct... That's a secret for now!

--

Wait a minute!

If a beast of instinct runs on a sense of self expression put in continuity of motion, in reaction to obervation of objective reality... Basically doing Art without interpretation...

Does that mean art is a true emergent behaviour of the universe? Not just something one does in their cranium... Not just in their subjective simulated reality in their prefrontal cortex...

Since the nature of the beast is reduced to mere biology functioning... And biology is already a true emergent property... Duh

So is art... Real?

I mean this in terms of functioning, labeled as art... And functioning is real...

That matters more to my narrative in retrospective... because I have a concept of 'true lies' somewhere in the story...

[featheredcrowbones]

art really is subjective because there will be a post on here that changed my life and it has 100 notes

[dennydraws]

Sometimes you just want your peace loving demon mage to get a little unhinged!! More Recifer arts cause I really like his color palette :> More costume redesign, what even is consistency? I'm really happy with the flow of this one! :D Thank you for stopping by!

[literaryscribs]

Can I just say that I wish, I really really wish, people would quit calling 20-24 year old characters "bad" or "childish writing" for literally just... ACTING THEIR AGE?!??! Doubly if they have a disability or are specifically coded to be autistic, adhd etc.

Seriously? Is someone out there seriously implying that everyone magically matures into a grizzled, emotionally constipated war veteran the second a 19 year old crosses the threshold into their noughties?

Think real damn hard on things you did when you were younger if you're older currently. We've ALL done cringe stuff that keeps us up until the wee hours of the morning in embarrassment. Whether it be something we said or clogging up someone's toilet, puking all over the place because we partied too hard or sent literal car parts flying because you were learning to drive. You don't just snap your fingers and BAM! YOU'RE MATURE! CUE THE CELEBRATIONS!

Maturity comes from life experiences, the good times, the cringe moments and the failures. Not age. Otherwise you wouldn't have kids/teens behaving way beyond their years due to ongoing and consistent abuse/neglect, nor childish adults trying to relive their teen years at their 'prime' at the very least.

I don't care if it's a fantasy game or if it's set in the future. If a character is 21/22 I *expect* random stupidity, foot in mouth moments. I expect them to be over confident or make poor decisions at times. That's prime time to be figuring your own identity out, making yourself standalone, supporting friends via learning from said mistakes and experiences they've had. It's not supposed to be smooth or perfect.

[berylgrace]

fucked up that i havent seen any leighton/alicia edits to good luck babe