#Metastic world

[zef-zef]

Chill on Sunday!

Mark Nauseef, Kudsi Erguner, Markus Stockhausen, Bill Laswell - Expansion From Mark Nauseef, Kudsi Erguner, Markus Stockhausen, Bill Laswell - No Matter (Metastation, 2008)

[frostgears]

results

When the war began, you were just another girl with some survivability implants and a multiprofile flight armor. Six months later, you were the only girl like you left alive, and your handler granted carte blanche to keep you that way. You got results.

Command authorized better hardware, and then they made more like you. You found ways to keep up, nastily clever applications of metastable metallic hydrogen ammo and supermag deflectors that the newbies didn’t see.

Your handler kept you on a leash, metaphorical, for a time literal (that month she decided to add some testosterone analog into your blood mix and you begged to fuck everything or break it or both). Instead of their handlers, the newbies imprinted on you.

Command sent you new toys. Ansible links, Charybdis torpedoes, dark new wings with strange new engines. You missed the roar and rumble of turbines, but the raucous howls of your bloodthirsty flock replaced the noise that discontinuity thrusters didn’t make. You got results.

You pushed back the other, shattered their aces and sent their broken armors back to Command. Your handler vanished and came back with augments that almost let her keep up with you physically, at least inside the carrier.

Someone had to keep you in line, she said, slamming your unarmored form against a bulkhead, your implants reprogramming themselves to broadcast your submission through the fleet. You slicked yourself with fluids and begged for her to take you, to make you more of a weapon.

The next sortie, frenzied with excitement, you cracked the penultimate stronghold of the enemy like an egg. Ready for the final push, your techs unpacked crates of novel photonic scythes, connectivity cores, Indeterminate-Range Missiles, bolted them to you and your flight.

The last defenses crumpled in ways they could not understand coming. The last opposing pilots provided minute spectral variations as you turned them into blazes of mostly white light. You got results.

Command ordered the carrier home. Job well done, they said. It’s over now. Your handler gave you certain orders. They were orders you wanted. The carrier returned to port; port was unprepared for your flight to launch inside, unprepared for the horrors they’d been sending you.

Command didn’t last ten minutes. You wanted to leave the place a crater, until your handler cinched her virtual claws around your neck by ansible and showed you her ultimate goal in the ruins.

A delightful challenge, shucking your flight armor, ramping down to levels of speed and splash damage that would leave human techs alive to do what needed to be done. You howled in the corridors like the monster they called you.

They did it, the survivors, the project lead swearing at you the whole time; your accelerator pistol never wavered from the back of her head until you saw your handler wake.

Your handler flexed healing muscle over new implants afterwards, donned flight armor for the first time. She might never be as agile or as vicious as you were in combat. She didn’t need to be. She had you, by the brain, and she would never, ever permit a fair fight.

Your carrier lifted again. The world of her, your, all of your flock’s ultimate origin awaited, some unfathomable distance away. You would show them how you got results. □

[mariacallous]

So-called zombie fires in the peatlands of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia disappear from the Earth’s surface and smolder underground during the winter before coming back to life the following spring. These fires puzzle scientists because they appear in early May, way ahead of the usual fire season in the far north, and can reignite for a number of years.

Most scientists believe that zombie fires are the remnants of fires on the surface, but we have identified an alternative cause. Our research suggests that rapid atmospheric warming aboveground can cause peat soils to suddenly heat up to smoldering temperatures underground, all without any spark or other ignition. These zombie fires may be a case of climate-change-driven spontaneous combustion.

Reports of such fires date back to the 1940s, when they were rare events. However, the frequency and intensity of these fires have increased significantly in the past two decades, hand in hand with accelerated warming in the Arctic, the fastest-warming region on the planet.

At the start of 2024, more than 100 zombie fires were active in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Zombie fires have even been recorded near the coldest village on Earth, Oymyakon in north eastern Siberia, where they carried over through multiple winters and account for around 3.5 percent of area burned in the wider region each year.

Red areas are warming fastest, while black and gray areas show carbon-rich peat soils. There is significant overlap between the two, such as in Cherskii in northern Siberia. Map: O’Sullivan et al./Royal Society A; data from Berkeley Earth/PEATMAP

More carbon is trapped in temperature-sensitive Arctic peat soils than is found in the entire atmosphere, and these fires are releasing gigatons of it into the atmosphere. We wanted to know if sudden warming might be directly responsible.

Two Remarkable Results

We developed a mathematical model to explore different what-if scenarios, including how the temperature and carbon content of peat soils respond to changes in the weather and climate. Crucially, our model captures how certain microbes generate heat while breaking down soil and releasing its carbon into the atmosphere.

We obtained two remarkable results:

The first is that those microbes can generate so much heat that underground peat can smolder at around 80 degrees Celsius (176° F) over the winter, ready to ignite in spring. And this can happen without there ever having been a fire in that spot aboveground and without the weather aboveground reaching the sorts of temperatures that would normally be needed for soil to burn.

We call this new state the hot metastable state of peat soils. In this context, “metastable” means a long burn—the hot state lasts for a long but finite time, up to 10 years, until the peat burns out.

Our other key finding is that a sudden transition from the regular cold state to the hot metastable state can be triggered by realistic climate patterns alone, including summer heat waves and global warming scenarios. Most interestingly, the increase in the atmospheric temperature has to be faster than some critical rate to trigger the transition. If the atmospheric temperature increases by the same amount but at a slower rate, bioactive peat soil remains in the regular cold state and never transitions to the hot metastable state.

We still do not have proof of this happening in the real world, and it hasn’t been demonstrated in a lab—for now, this is a phenomenon seen only in our models. But we do know that compost (very similar to peat) can catch fire in the same way. For instance a large fire on the outskirts of London during a heatwave in 2022 was probably caused by a pile of compost spontaneously combusting.

All this suggests that atmospheric temperature is not actually the key critical factor for zombie fires. Rather, it is the rate of atmospheric warming that triggers long burns of underground peat. Put simply, it is not the heat, it is the rate.

How to Fight the Zombies

As the climate warms, the weather is becoming more extreme, and these are precisely the conditions that can lead to more and more zombie fires. This is concerning, as it could kick off a vicious cycle: The gigatons of carbon released from ancient peat soils into the atmosphere are likely to make the climatic changes even worse, which means more fires, so more extreme weather, and so on.

Indeed, zombie fires are an example of a rate-induced tipping point, where a system fails to adapt to too-fast changes in external conditions and transitions from its regular state to a different, often undesired state. It is possible that the contemporary climate is approaching—or has already exceeded—dangerous rates of change for certain natural system, such as bioactive peat soils, which could explain the recent increase in zombie fires.

It appears that the only solution to prevent further zombie fires is to limit climate variability. While policymakers focus on dangerous levels of atmospheric temperature (the heat), climate variability (the rate of change) could be equally or even more relevant to our resilience in the short term.

[mysticstronomy]

HOW LONG WILL THE UNIVERSE LAST??

Blog#240

Saturday, October 29th, 2022

Welcome back,

The universe has existed for 13.8 billion years, from the Big Bang until now. That may seem long, but the universe is still young compared to how long it will likely exist. It may sound strange, but the universe will one day cease to exist. Many trillions of years from now, the stars themselves will burn out, leaving behind a host of stellar remnants such as neutron stars, white dwarfs, and black holes.

Trillions upon trillions of years after the last star burns out; even stellar remnants will slowly decay until the universe contains nothing but an endless sea of radiation. When and how will this occur?

Our solar system and most of the stars we can see all formed during an era of cosmic history called the Stelliferous Era. The Stelliferous Era is the period where star formation is occurring across the cosmos. This era began around one million years after the Big Bang and will continue for another 100-trillion years or so. Although 100-trillion years seems like a long time, the Stelliferous Era will be one of the shortest eras of the universe.

Given that the Stelliferous Era is defined as the era where star formation is occurring across the cosmos, its end is defined as when star formation comes to a stop. The idea of star formation ceasing entirely may seem strange, yet it is inevitable given that the universe contains a finite amount of usable hydrogen. As stars use hydrogen to form and evolve, they gradually fuse hydrogen into heavier elements. Eventually, all of the usable hydrogen will be fused into heavier elements, meaning that star formation will slow progressively and then come to a stop.

The most massive stars will be the first to go, as their higher temperatures fuse hydrogen faster than low mass stars. Eventually, all the brightest stars in the universe will burn out in mighty supernovae explosions. They will leave behind many stellar remnants such as neutron stars, pulsars, and black holes. Once all the high mass stars have gone supernova, all that will remain are the much dimmer, low mass stars. Next to go will be medium-sized stars like our sun.

The last stars to exist in the universe will be red dwarfs, with their rate of hydrogen fusion being so slow that they will continue to shine for many trillions of years after every other star has burned out. Eventually, they too will burn out until the very last star in the universe ceases to exist. In about 100-trillion years, the universe as we see it will no longer exist, yet the universe will be far from dead. Instead, stellar remnants will continue to provide some form of light, and planets will still likely exist around some neutron stars and white dwarfs. Furthermore, rogue planets, worlds that do not orbit a star, will continue to drift through an empty, starless universe.

Before the last stars burn out, most of the galaxies in the universe will be located at such vast distances from each other that it would be impossible to observe another galaxy from any other galaxy. The universe is expanding, constantly increasing its size. Due to the amount of dark energy in space, the expansion rate is accelerating. As matter gets pushed further and further apart, the force of gravity becomes weaker, and space accelerates faster.

Eventually, most objects will pass what’s called a cosmic horizon, meaning they will be so far away that their light will never reach each other.

Our cosmic horizon will gradually shrink until even the nearest galaxy is beyond our cosmic horizon. The universe will still contain many billions of stars and galaxies, yet it will be impossible to observe anything outside of the galaxy you reside in.

The Big Rip scenario predicts that the Universe would end at the earliest conceivable time of 22 billion years, assuming a dark energy model with w = 1.5. If the Higgs field is metastable, false vacuum decay might happen in 20 to 30 billion years.

Originally published on www.worldatlas.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022)

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 25, 2023

Effect of fasting on short‐term visual plasticity in adult humans. Animali, S., Steinwurzel, C., Dardano, A., Sancho‐Bornez, V., Del Prato, S., Morrone, M. C., … Binda, P. (2023). European Journal of Neuroscience, 57(1), 148–162.

The effects of base rate neglect on sequential belief updating and real-world beliefs. Ashinoff, B. K., Buck, J., Woodford, M., & Horga, G. (2022). PLOS Computational Biology, 18(12), e1010796.

When alternative hypotheses shape your beliefs: Context effects in probability judgments. Cai, X., & Pleskac, T. J. (2023). Cognition, 231, 105306.

Learning shapes cortical dynamics to enhance integration of relevant sensory input. Chadwick, A., Khan, A. G., Poort, J., Blot, A., Hofer, S. B., Mrsic-Flogel, T. D., & Sahani, M. (2023). Neuron, 111(1), 106-120.e10.

Population coding strategies in human tactile afferents. Corniani, G., Casal, M. A., Panzeri, S., & Saal, H. P. (2022). PLOS Computational Biology, 18(12), e1010763.

Synaptic gradients transform object location to action. Dombrovski, M., Peek, M. Y., Park, J.-Y., Vaccari, A., Sumathipala, M., Morrow, C., … Card, G. M. (2023). Nature, 613(7944), 534–542.

Are you paying attention to me? The effect of social presence on spatial attention to gaze and arrows. Ha, J., & Hayward, D. A. (2023). Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85, 41–51.

Different symmetries, different mechanisms. Jennings, B. J., Tseng, T.-W. J., Ouhnana, M., & Kingdom, F. A. A. (2023). Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85, 166–173.

Open-ended movements structure sensorimotor information in early human development. Kanazawa, H., Yamada, Y., Tanaka, K., Kawai, M., Niwa, F., Iwanaga, K., & Kuniyoshi, Y. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(1), e2209953120.

Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations. Kurtenbach, H., Ort, E., Froböse, M. I., & Jocham, G. (2022). PLOS Computational Biology, 18(12), e1010201.

Stability and learning in excitatory synapses by nonlinear inhibitory plasticity. Miehl, C., & Gjorgjieva, J. (2022). PLOS Computational Biology, 18(12), e1010682.

Efficient coding theory of dynamic attentional modulation. Młynarski, W., & Tkačik, G. (2022). PLOS Biology, 20(12), e3001889.

Uncertainty alters the balance between incremental learning and episodic memory. Nicholas, J., Daw, N. D., & Shohamy, D. (2022). eLife, 11, e81679.

Mesoscopic description of hippocampal replay and metastability in spiking neural networks with short-term plasticity. Pietras, B., Schmutz, V., & Schwalger, T. (2022). PLOS Computational Biology, 18(12), e1010809.

Nonlinear cortical encoding of color predicts enhanced McCollough effects in anomalous trichromats. Robinson, A. E., Bosten, J. M., & MacLeod, D. I. A. (2023). Vision Research, 203, 108153.

Disinhibition of the orbitofrontal cortex biases decision-making in obesity. Seabrook, L. T., Naef, L., Baimel, C., Judge, A. K., Kenney, T., Ellis, M., … Borgland, S. L. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26, 92–106.

Minimum perturbation theory of deep perceptual learning. Shan, H., & Sompolinsky, H. (2022). Physical Review E, 106(6), 064406.

A unified theory for the computational and mechanistic origins of grid cells. Sorscher, B., Mel, G. C., Ocko, S. A., Giocomo, L. M., & Ganguli, S. (2023). Neuron, 111(1), 121-137.e13.

Integrated neural dynamics of sensorimotor decisions and actions. Thura, D., Cabana, J.-F., Feghaly, A., & Cisek, P. (2022). PLOS Biology, 20(12), e3001861.

Humans trade off search costs and accuracy in a combined visual search and perceptual task. Wagner, I., Henare, D., Tünnermann, J., Schubö, A., & Schütz, A. C. (2023). Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85, 23–40.

[untruthsteller]

My partner and I are in a rough situation. We had to take an emergency trip for my partner's grandma, and his extended family said they would help us pay our rent this month due to how much traveling cost. Now that we're on the other side, they're saying we should have planned better, it's too much, we should get second jobs or something. Well, they were part of the plan, we made it clear how much money it was going to be, we're both disabled and can barely work the jobs we have in the first place.

We really need help. If you're able to give anything, it would mean the world to us. Thank you so much for your time

[ainews]

In a shocking development, researchers have recently discovered that congregations across the country are quickly becoming metastic for barbecues featuring dodo bird meat. This trend has sparked concern among scientists and animal rights activists alike, as it not only highlights the tragic extinction of the dodo bird, but also raises questions about the health and sustainability of such gatherings.

According to experts, the dodo bird, a large flightless bird native to the island of Mauritius, became extinct in the late 17th century due to human hunting and the introduction of invasive species to its habitat. In recent years, however, there has been a disturbing resurgence in the consumption of dodo bird meat at barbecues hosted by various religious congregations.

One of the reasons behind this disturbing trend may be the perceived rarity and exclusivity of dodo meat. With only a handful of specimens known to exist in museums around the world, the meat is often touted as a delicacy and a symbol of status among certain groups.

Moreover, the belief that consuming dodo meat has curative or medicinal properties is also contributing to its popularity among certain religious communities. This belief is not supported by any scientific evidence and only serves to perpetuate the exploitation of this now-extinct species.

However, the most concerning aspect of this trend is the potential health risks associated with consuming dodo meat. As the bird has been extinct for centuries, there is no way to ensure the safety and proper handling of the meat. Consuming contaminated or improperly preserved meat can lead to serious health issues, including food poisoning.

Furthermore, experts warn that the increased demand for dodo meat may lead to illegal poaching and the use of harmful chemicals in its preservation, further endangering the species and compromising the health of those who consume it.

Animal rights activists have also expressed their dismay at the use of dodo meat in religious gatherings, stating that it goes against the principles of compassion and ethical treatment of animals that are often promoted by many faiths.

In light of these concerns, the need for education and awareness about the consequences of consuming dodo meat is essential. Religious leaders and community members must be made aware of the negative impacts of this practice and encouraged to find alternate, sustainable and ethical options for their barbecues.

In conclusion, the metastic spread of dodo meat consumption at religious gatherings is a cause for grave concern. It highlights the damaging effects of human exploitation on the natural world and calls for a collective effort to protect and preserve our planet's biodiversity. Let us not repeat the mistakes of the past and instead work towards creating a better and more sustainable future for all living beings.

[rametarin]

Just a weird idea.

I do not know the ins and out of linguism, so my imagination fills in the gaps to try and understand what I do not actually know. But, sometimes I contemplate the idea of conlangs that form specifically to treat the reality as we know as definitive.

What do I mean by this? Well.

We make random mouth noises to bookmark concepts and then arbitrarily make them those things. 'Water' is water, because we say so. Linguistic convention and absolutes then treat that word like it's unfailingly true.

But suppose primitive man designed the language so that everything they knew about existed within a given set of numbers. A limited palette of colors, for example, and insisted that there were no need for more colors outside their system, because none more existed.

And then, in their hubris, primitive man discovered another color that they hadn't bothered to name before. Now their naming convention system that had a start and end is all fucked up and their numbering/naming system for them is out of sorts. They have to change it.

This has happened numerous times to numerous cultures defining colors throughout history. But, what if mathematics and imperative science was used to pigeon hole human knowledge in such a way that we could objectively prove the quanta of colors, to where everything within every spectrum that could even be said to vary by a single degree of refraction could be given a proper name for its hue? Not even based on the very limited degrees of human vision, but to all the variations that hypersensitive digital optical sensors could tell, differentiating from one shade of ultraviolent from another. Yes, I am suggesting a hyperspecific naming convention that could somehow incorporate the billions of billions of colors from ultraviolet to infrared.

In theory, throwing out old naming conventions for colors and starting from scratch with this theoretical new system would be 'complete.' Unless every sun exploded in the universe and heat death caused the place to abruptly start over and from that clean slate we got a whole new expansion pack for potential colors to the universe, we'd never need to think up another name for another color, ever again. You could safely make a color system named with the idea there's a start and a finish and never worry that someone will invent a new color, even if they hacked the human brain and visual system and expanded it so we somehow see in shrimp colors and radiation spectrums. And assign each color some sort of syllable, so we could unfailingly be able to blurt out in as few syllables as possible to know the unfailing, exact hue and brightness and opacity in the equivalent of a bark. The way we understand what "dark" means, with something as fundamental as a singular mouth noise.

But the downside to this method of doing a conlang, is I think it'd lead to stagnation. The language would be solved. Without even the opportunity for anything new under the sun, even if just an illusion, it offers no mystery. An emotional and mental urban apartment complex or upper middle class suburbia. Stagnant, safe, comfortable, and.. perpetually the same. Confident that there's not even the risk of danger of a wild unknown thing showing up that might need to be thought critically about and added to the roster in some way or another. No morlock to the eloi to watch out for. Without even a need to create a new word between words to properly express, the language metastizes. Like.. imagine a world where language does not evolve with culture, so people never develop beyond 1920s slang.

I dunno. Mentally I'm in waters too deep for me to swim in.

[janeldorame]

Mastering Clock Domain Crossing: A Deep Dive into Register Design

Introduction: Clock Domain Crossing (CDC) is a crucial aspect of digital design that plays a pivotal role in modern electronic systems. Ensuring a robust and reliable CDC process is essential for maintaining the integrity of your digital signals. In this technical blog, we will delve into the intricacies of CDC and explore the fundamentals of register design to tackle this challenging aspect of digital design.

Understanding Clock Domain Crossing (CDC):

Clock domains are distinct regions of a digital circuit that are governed by separate clock signals. When data crosses from one clock domain to another, synchronization issues can arise, leading to potential data corruption and system failures. This is where CDC comes into play, as it manages data transfers between these clock domains.

Synchronization Elements: Synchronization elements, such as flip-flops, are key components used in CDC. They act as bridges between different clock domains, ensuring that data transfers occur in a controlled and synchronized manner.

Metastability: Metastability is a significant concern in CDC. When data transitions between domains, it can briefly enter an uncertain state, causing unpredictable results. Proper register design and synchronization techniques are crucial in minimizing metastability.

Register Design for CDC:

Effective register design is critical to ensuring the reliability of CDC. Here are some key considerations:

Gray Code Encoders: Gray code encoders are used to encode binary signals into Gray code, which has only one-bit change at a time. This reduces the chances of metastability during data transfer.

Two-Flip-Flop Synchronizers: Using a two-flip-flop synchronizer can significantly reduce the metastability window. Data is latched by the first flip-flop and then transferred to the second, ensuring that only stable data passes through.

Proper Timing Constraints: Defining accurate timing constraints is essential in CDC. This includes setup and hold times for data signals to guarantee that data is captured correctly in the receiving clock domain.

Asynchronous FIFOs: Asynchronous First-In-First-Out (FIFO) buffers can be employed to safely transfer data between clock domains. They manage data transfer, handle data width differences, and maintain a synchronized interface.

Challenges and Solutions:

Clock Domain Asymmetry: When clock domains have different frequencies, ensuring reliable CDC becomes more challenging. Careful synchronization and data transfer techniques are needed to address this issue.

Data Width Mismatch: When data buses have different widths in source and destination domains, appropriate data padding or extraction mechanisms should be implemented.

Conclusion:

Clock Domain Crossing is a complex yet critical aspect of digital design. By understanding the fundamentals of CDC and implementing effective register design techniques, you can ensure that your digital systems work reliably and consistently. Proper synchronization elements and careful consideration of timing constraints are key to mastering CDC and preventing data corruption.

In the world of digital design, CDC is a fundamental challenge that, when tackled effectively, can lead to robust and dependable electronic systems.

[rashmio1]

What makes us unique is our extraordinary skill in creating websites. Because of the company's track record of delivering excellent results, it has become well-known in the Noida web development market. Numerous customer success stories demonstrate the significant influence that Metastic World has on businesses.

[carvalhais]

The whole science of cybernetics was based on the realization that the universe is probabilistic, only metastable. There is no ultimate possibility of getting rid of the intervening effects of noise, as it is a basic feature of the physical world. But there are always ways to examine, map, and constrain that noise. Jussi Parikka, 2011. “Mapping Noise: Techniques and Tactics of Irregularities, Interception, and Disturbance.” In Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, 256-277. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[whitepolaris]

Unnatural Wonders

Some of the more curious ancient features of the California environment are unquestionably natural, yet somehow this does not dimmish their mystery or allure. Take for example sand dunes that sing, stones that race across the parched desert floor like pucks in some time-warped game of shuffleboard, and briny waves that can be made to sound like the beating of distant drums. While these may all be natural occurrences of the California landscape, because of the strange sensations they evoke in those who experience them, we like to refer to these beguiling environmental anomalies as “unnatural wonders.” 

Singing Sands and Booming Dunes

It sounds like some kind of tall tale, but the phenomenon of “booming dunes” has been documented in scientific journals since at least the 1960s, and in oral histories from the Middle East and Asia for thousands of years. The sound have been variously described as roaring, booming, squeaking, and singing. Some have been compared to such musical instruments as a kettle amazing thing is that the sound is felt, rather than heard, and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. 

The phenomenon of nad, a Sanskrit term signifying transcendental, astral, psychic, or paranormal music, may have some of its origin in that occurrence of these dune tunes. We heard about this phenomenon years ago when a friend reported mysterious “harplike” music he heard over the wind late at night during a solitary desert camping trip. He had no idea where the ethereal sounds were coming from. 

 Only seven places in the continental United States are permanent home to the singing-sand concerts, and one of these is in the Mojave Desert on the way to Vegas. Two others are in the far reaches of Death Valley National Park. All the locations have been closed due to dunes buggies and other assorted sport for many years. The only way in is to hike. 

For plain old sand to emit unearthly sounds, the scientists tell us that several exacting factors need to be present. The grains have to be round and between 0.1 and 0.5 millimeters in diameter, the sand has to contain silica, and a certain stable humidity must be present, typically less than 0.1 percent, depending on the size of the grains. The farther the material has traveled to its present home, the better, since as a result of wind and buffeting action against the ground and other sand grains, the individual grains are usually more uniform. 

Kelso Dunes, about thirty miles south of Baker, is perhaps the quintessential singing- sand hangout, certainly in California and possibly the world. On a drive south form I-15, the landscape is typically SoCal desert, with Joshua trees and the usual scrub stretching to the horizon. Eventually, the land begins to slope downward, and the dunes heave into view. About eight miles after the town of Kelso (a seemingly uninhabited place with an incongruously large railroad yard), signs indicate the turnoff to the dunes. Don’t speed on the washboard gravel; nearly invisible but deep, dry creek beds cutting across the road will total the suspension of the hardiest vehicle.

 The main sand hill, six hundred and fifty feet high, is visible from the road and is a strenuous hike from the last turnaround. There are a few methods to get the sand to perform, but a 1979 report by Caltech scientist D.K. Haff probably gives the best instructions: “[T]he most spectacular and enduring vibrations were produced by the movement of large quantities of sand. This could be initiated by vigorous kicking at the sharp dunes crest in order to dislodge a metastable surface layer on the lee slopes.” English translation: “Go to the top of the dunes and kick sand down the steep side.” Make sure the day is calm, since wind will not only mask the sounds, but also tends to make for unstable conditions that keep the sand from cascading evenly. On a recent expedition, we discovered that just walking along the crest of the highest dunes will elicit a sound not unlike a tuba, making each step a musical experience. 

Panamint Dunes, a mere three-mile hike from the dirt road, is located in the Panamint Valley, just over the mountains west of Death Valley on Highway 190. This dune field has the least amount of reward for the singing-sand tourist, likely due to the shape of the grains and the presence of underground water close to the surface. 

Eureka Dunes, however, beats out Kelso in a photo finish. Eureka is at the end of a bone-jarring forty-four-mile drive over a graded dirt road. This dune field features all the booming activity found at Kelso, albeit with less volume, but the best chance for solitude, which may be the most important thing. 

[profoundloveladies]

the first act

RATIO

„Before being rational, we were intelligent. Does our body remember this? [1]

„And so it had to be. One does not begin by reasoning, but by feeling.“ [2]

„Or, to put it somewhat differently, new parts of the world are made accessible to feeling.“ [3]

„In whichever tone, its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed.“ [4]

„The feelings which that world elicits have remained formless, have never met with those objects which are at once their symbols and their satisfaction.“ [5]

„As long as the wall is white, no shape is distinguished from or in it.“ [6]

„Similar feelings and concerns are evident in his opposition to the invasion of privacy in the modern world and in his criticism of the subtle erosion of nature which has accompanied post war civilization: Everyday life is becoming much too public.“ [7]

„While this explanation may satisfy the intellect, it leaves beauty deaf, dumb and blind“ [8]

„A Conversation: What is it? What is it for?“ [9]

„Conversation is the set of applications of a body of knowledge into or onto another, the set of their conversions.“ [10]

„We have never conceptualized the hyper Platonic state of conversation: a set of applications, translations, interferences, communications, passages and distributions which would draw its fluctuating map, sometimes its labyrinth, its metastable network, its becoming, when Hermes passes.“ [11]

„In the labyrinth there is a dialectical relationship between space, time, and goals, and thus values.“ [12]

„Everything that relates to the formation of that sea.“ [13]

SEA

„The sea, gently agitated, emitted a feeble phosphoric light. [14]

„We are not restored to the earth but to the sea.“ [15]

„At sea, we heard only vowels, but on land the consonants“ [16]

„How can we cross the sea?“ [17]

„For myself, I shall escape from the clutches of these murderous assassins by rowing boat if no ship is available.“ [18]

„Movement in the Metropolis becomes ideological navigation between the conflicting claims and promises of “islands” of a metaphoric archipelago.“ [19]

„This navigation on the basis of field qualities operates with the same navigational logic that guides nomads across the wilderness.“ [20]

„The shape and orientation of the island had also been roughly specified.“ [21]

„The island is what the sea surrounds and what we travel around.“ [22]

„The island would be only the dream of humans, and humans, the pure consciousness of the island.“ [23]

„It is the island of truth (an attractive word), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the region of illusion, where many a fog bank, many an iceberg, seems to the mariner, on his voyage of discovery, a new country, and, while constantly deluding him with vain hopes, engages him in dangerous adventures, from which he never can desist, and which yet he never can bring to a termination.“ [24]

„I am an island.“ [25]

TOWER

„The ebb and flow of conversation fades away.“ [26]

„Death is the absence of all conversation, the end of the language game.“ [27]

„It is also important to note carefully that the site itself not deaden sound; it should be the type in which the voice may travel with the utmost clarity.“ [28]

„The massive tower stands where communication fails.“ [29]

„angels flit round the tower“ [30]

„they are often referred to as gates or stairs between heaven and earth.“ [31]

„I have the key of the tower.“ [32]

„Must the tower halt in its soaring towards the sky?“ [33]

„Patience in the blue sky.“ [34]

„What is nature?“ [35]

„Just consider Love. Nowhere is the necessity of Poetry for the continued existence of mankind as clear as it is here. Love is mute, only Poetry can speak for it. Or Love is itself nothing but the highest Poetry of Nature.“ [36]

„This supposes that nature can answer, that nature can hear.“ [37]

„This supposes that we can answer nature, that we can and wish to hear nature” [38]

GARDEN

„Why did we leave the garden where the water murmured?“ [39]

„The peace of the Garden, its tranquil serenity,” [40]

„The garden is an island, a summit, a shelter.“ [41]

„The final stop on the souls‘ itinerary is the garden“ [42]

„To enjoy a garden one must move through it.“ [43]

„It is always the same clay,“ [44]

„But the tone suddenly changes.“ [45]

„I see the elements and the contrary energies that shape them.“ [46]

„A difference of mood or tone?“ [47]

„Consonance and dissonance, harmonies of tone or color, are affects of music or painting.“ [48]

„Notice the mimetic character of this behavior.“ [49]

HARLEQUIN, NAKED KING & ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

„The pianist, performer turned critic, had now come to sit on the stage.“ [50]

„Critic describes, necessarily interests him infinitely.“ [51]

„Developing its role as critic, humor exercises a constructive influence.“ [52]

„O my king!“ [53]

„Miserable king!“ [54]

„Of what nature?’ the king replied.“ [55]

„Hie others are all dead, and I can do nothing to resurrect them.“ [56]

„If the king is in effect naked, it is only insofar as he is under a certain number of clothes fictitious, doubtless, but nonetheless essential“ [57]

„Is he destroying their „inner unity which is evident to every man of artistic feeling“?“ [58]

„How do you get down from an elephant?“ [59]

„And it was told the king.“ [60]

„To contemplate is to question.“ [61]

„Why the preference for silence over laughter?“ [62]

„Life or death, that is the question.“ [63]

„There was another question to be answered.“ [64]

„It’s a question of resurrecting.“ [65]

„However, this question never comes.“ [66]

„this engraving? Death turns us into words, words turn us into dead people.“ [67]

„But I am alive.” [68]

CENOTAPH

„Within the marble enclosure stands the cenotaph in the middle of a garden of cypresses, poplars, flowering shrubs, and rose trees“ [69]

His skill, rather, lay in his ability to experience, precisely and empathetically, the objects and spaces of his world as a play of light and colour: “In feeling and viewing, he experiences in a special way the ‘whole’, that is to say a mutual, indivisible connection of things. [70]

„Location, orientation, and scale shatter with an upward gaze into a mini sublime of indeterminate depth.“ [71]

„My cenotaph, for memory of my lost body.“ [72]

„When columns are seen as surrogates of trees and windows resemble the portholes of ships, architectural elements become representational figures carrying an inordinate burden of meaning.“ [73]

„Silence surrounds the cenotaph: music, murmuring, shades of colour and scents.“ [74]

__________________________________________

[1]Serres, Geometry

[2]Derrida, Of Grammatology

[3]Giedion, Space Time and Architecture

[4]Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

[5]Giedion, Space Time and Architecture

[6]Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy

[7]Frampton, Modern Architecture A Critical History

[8] Serres, Angels A Modern Myth

[9]Deleuze, Dialogues

[10]Serres, The Five Senses

[11]Serres, The Five Senses

[12] Benton Sharp, Form and Function

[13] Humboldt, Equinoctial Regions of America

[14] Humboldt, Equinoctial Regions of America

[15] Deleuze, Cinema 2 The Time Image

[16] Kittler, The Truth of the Technological World

[17] Serres, The Parasite

[18] Cicero, Selected Letter+Cicero, Selected Letters

[19]Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[20]Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture Vol1

[21]Mattie, Architectural Competitions 1950 Today

[22] Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts

[23] Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts

[24]Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

[25] Serres, The Parasite

[26] Serres, The Five Senses

[27] Perloff, Wittgenstein s Ladder

[28]Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture

[29] Purdy, On the Ruins of Babel

[30] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology The Complete Work

[31] Cruickshank, A History of Architecture in 100 Buildings

[32] Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

[33] Michelet, The History of France Vol 1

[34]Koolhaas, SMLXL

[35] Serres, The Natural Contract

[36]Kittler, The Truth of the Technological World

[37]Serres, Hermes Literature Science Philosophy

[38]Serres, Hermes Literature Science Philosophy

[39] Serres, The Five Senses

[40] Serres, Hermes Literature Science Philosophy

[41] Serres, The Birth of Physics

[42] Cowling, Building the Text

[43] Mezieres, The Genius of Architecture

[44] Serres, Hermes Literature Science Philosophy

[45] Calasso, Ardor

[46] Serres, Statues

[47] Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy

[48] Deleuze Guattari, What Is Philosophy

[49] Girard, The Scapegoat

[50] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol II Within a Budding Grove

[51] Marx, Collected Works

[52] Rosemont, Black Brown Beige Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora

[53] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[54] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[55]von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde

[56] Calasso, Ka Stories of the Mind and Gods of India

[57] Koolhaas, SMLXL

[58]Frankl, The Gothic

[59] Perloff, Wittgenstein s Ladder

[60] Calvin, Harmony of the Law Vol 1

[61] Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

[62]Deamer, Architecture and Capitalism

[63]Serres, Hermes Literature Science Philosophy

[64]Calasso, Ardor

[65]Serres, Hominescence

[66]Foucault, The Courage of the Truth

[67]Serres, The Five Senses

[68] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[69]Gothein, A History of Garden Art

[70]Leach, The Baroque in Architectural Culture 1880

[71]Leatherbarrow Eisenschmidt, Twentieth Century Architecture

[72]Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris

[73]Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[74]Serres, The Five Senses

[fatehbaz]

This is whiteness: the pretense that the lines that demarcate the boundary between me and you protect you, protect me, from the wilderness of all that cannot be contained (and must be kept at bay). The truth is, the wilderness was cleared, but never quite colonized. And that is why whiteness is alive and well. To police a job half-done. [...] At arms length, we see these workings -- the cleared forest, the dying planet, the dead children -- as somehow disconnected. [...] All that remains is the clearing. And a mess. But this can be handled. This is how mediation does its work, in the name of and as logistics. From here on in, things will be managed. [...] This science of loss -- “which is to say the science of whiteness, or logistics” -- is predicated on the end of sharing, on the destruction of the excessive share, the annihilation of that which exceeds the one-two form whose dramaturgy relies of the intervention of the mediator. [...]

Clearing produces property. Property produces dispossession. “All property is loss because all property is the loss of sharing.” [...] This is how the logistics of genocide -- the genocide of relation -- does its work. [...] Logistics: the slave ship, but also the body-as-individual. [...] Mediation as the figure of what comes between, of what fills that “empty” space. The adjuster, the divorce lawyer, the priest, the government agent. [...] It is the way surveillance takes on a personality from the outside in. Whether formally or informally, mediation sets the tone for an interpersonality that, by definition, can only be lived at a distance. [...]

-------

In The Three Ecologies, [Guattari] makes a plea to invent new ways of being committed to and involved in the urgent call to transversalize experience, ways that move beyond how the state lays claim to existence [...]. There is an echo in this ecosophic call to Moten and Harney: 

Rather than dissipate our preoccupation with how we live and breathe, we need to defend our ways in our persistent practice of them. It’s not about taking the streets; it’s about how, and about what, we take to the streets. What would it be and what would it mean for us jurisgeneratively to take to the streets, to live in the streets, to gather together another city right here, right now?

Ecosophic logic is a refusal of the clearing, of the ways in which we seek to inhabit the space already colonized. It recognizes the lure, and understands the commitment to change that the gesture of taking the streets embodies. But ecosophic logic asks a different question: What if instead we practiced living by creating new conditions that didn’t center us, that didn’t inadvertently redeem that central and self-centering figure of man and its mediating logistics? [...] What if we moved at the pace of that accidental detail tangled with the weeds we have been wasting so much time clearing?

Ecosophic logic is an urgent call to refuse the ongoing clearing that denies, decries, and violates the force of blackness in the ongoing genocide of all that resists the count. [...] To refuse means to move into the accursed share of life-living twisting in the troubled interstice, to move with that anarchic share of existence that keeps giving life. [...]

“That abolition starts with the self.” [...]

Incessant clearing, colonialism without end, in the afterlife of slavery, results in systems out of kilter. Ecological destruction has finally begun to register, centuries too late. The question of how to bring things into a metastability that is conducive to life-living must involve a reckoning with the deadening force of mediation. We don’t need another apology. We need to get out of the way. [...]

The infraface of the three ecologies -- “the world as one to the world as many … the world as many to the world as one” -- is immediating. Immediation is not the opposite of mediation. Rather, it is the force of a thirdness irreducible to a between-two. Immediation is the more-than [...]. There is one ecology multiply intertwined. [...] In the words of The Invisible Committee, 

the exhaustion of natural resources is probably much less advanced than the exhaustion of subjective resources, of vital resources, that is afflicting our contemporaries. If so much satisfaction is derived from surveying the devastation of the environment it’s largely because this veils the frightening ruin of subjectivities. Every oil spill, every sterile plain, every species extinction is an image of our souls in rags, a reflection of our lack of world, of our intimate impotence to inhabit it.

To become in excess of a person, to activate the conditions for a life-living that worlds in the bodying, is a social and environmental act. [...]

-------

Text by: Erin Manning. “Out of the Clear.” e-flux 125. March 2022.

[mysticstronomy]

HOW DOES A VACUUM DECAY HAPPEN??

Blog#233

Wednesday, October 5th, 2022

Welcome back,

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a quantum vacuum decay of the ground state of the universe to its true minimum.

The universe underwent radical phase transitions in the past. These transitions eventually led to the division of the four fundamental forces of nature and the panoply of particles we know today. All of that occurred when the universe was less than a second old, and it has been stable ever since.

But it might not last forever.

To understand the stability of the universe, first we need to talk about phase transitions. Phase transitions are when a substance undergoes a rapid, radical transformation. They happen all the time.

You boil water, and it transforms from a liquid into a gas. You cool that same water, and it turns into a block of ice.

Perhaps the most exotic phase transitions are those that happen to quantum fields. Quantum fields are the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Every kind of particle — say, a photon or an electron — is really just a local manifestation of an underlying field. That field soaks all of space and time like bread dipped in olive oil. The way those fields interact and communicate with each other makes up the forces and physics of our existence.

That existence is based on four fundamental forces: gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism and the strong force. But it hasn't always been this way. In the earliest moments of the cosmos, those forces were united. As the universe expanded and cooled, the quantum fields underwent phase transitions, splitting apart one by one.

The last phase transition occurred when the electromagnetic force split from the weak force. That splitting gave rise to the photon and the W and Z bosons, the carriers of those two forces.

Since that event, which happened when the universe wasn't even a second old, everything's been stable — no more splitting, no more phase transitions. The four forces of nature went on to shape and sculpt the evolution of the cosmos for billions of years.

As far as everything looks, it's all stable — for now, anyway.

The stability of the universe is tricky to measure. Sure, it's been over 13 billion years since anything as interesting as a phase transition has occurred. Yes, 13 billion years is a really long time, but in the world of quantum fields, anything can happen.

Our best bet at probing the stability of the universe is through the mass of the Higgs boson. The Higgs is a very interesting field; its presence in the universe is what separated the electromagnetic force from the weak force and what maintains that split today. Without the Higgs boson, those forces would merge right back together.

In quantum physics, the more massive an entity is, the more unstable it is. Massive particles quickly decay into lighter ones, for example. So, if the Higgs is very massive, it might not be as stable as it seems, and it might decay into something else someday. But if the Higgs is light enough, it's likely to hang out forever, and there's nothing more to say about the future of the quantum fields of the universe.

Measurements of the Higgs have found that its mass puts the universe smack in between the "really, honestly stable" and "Oh no, it looks a little unstable" regimes. Physicists call this state "metastable" — a situation that is stable for now but could quickly deteriorate if something were to go wrong.

Originally published on www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, October 8th, 2022)

“CAN YOU CREATE A TRUE VACUUM??”

[science-fornoobslikeme]

How  CERN(place where magical stuff happens) could kill us, and why we shouldn’t worry

 If you’re reading the title, you might be wondering what CERN is. For actual noobs, its basically a place where science fiction happens, stuff related to physics consisting of tiny stuff like atoms and even tiny stuff like protons and even tinier stuff like quarks and so on. But for today, we are going to focus on a thing called a particle accelerator. A particle accelerator is pretty much what it sounds like. A particle is a small thing like an atom. Acceleration is increasing speed.

What wikipedia has to say:

 “ A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams.”

So yeah, tiny things go on extremely fast speeds and we can use them for helping the world. For a more simplified way, we shall refer to them as atom crushers for now or AC (just for this blog). Now, there is an estimated 30000+ particle accelerators in the world. But only 1% are machines for research with energies above 1GeV. Basically, a massive amount of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is just energy possesed by a body in motion. We shall focus on the AC’s with a massive amount of kinetic energy. Now, let’s examine the supposed ways CERN can kill us all

1. Death by tiny stuff

This way revolves around a particle, which we made up, which may or may not exist, known as “strangelets”. They are extremely tiny, tinier than an atom, and a  proton. These strangelets consist of up,down and strange quarks. Quarks are smaller than strangelets. Up quark, Down quark and strange quarks are basically types of quarks, with the up quark being the lightest of all of of them. 

Anyway, these strangelets, could hypothetically, rearrange the matter we know and love to be like them. Which is extremely bad because it could shrink the earth to 100m wide ball. And heres the big drop, AC’s could create mini black holes. And black holes are not good.

2. Instant death

This has to do with “Vacuum”. Not the the Vacuum cleaner, but Vacuum. Imagine a box, filled with nothing, no air, no oxygen, just nothing. That nothing is basically called as Vacuum. And it exists in our universe. Hypothetically, our universe is in a Metastable state. Meaning, that its peaceful unless provoked. In physics terms, something which is stable, provided it is subjected to no more than small disturbances.

But something can provoke it and that something might be an AC which could  drop it to a lower energy state. This lower energy state can create a bubble of the more stable vacuum, which would spread across the entire universe at light speed, wiping everything off. Even atoms.

Why we shouldn’t worry too much:

1. Literally, millions of collisions releasing more energy than an AC happens around us daily, when comic rays collide into our atmosphere. The moon is bombarded with quite a lot of cosmic rays, and is it wiped out? No. We even walked on it! Crashing some tiny particles here on earth and destroying the universe is like stubbing your toe, and the entire populations foot gets cut off.

2. Remember that a black hole’s superior gravity depends on its mass. I mentioned earlier, that strangelets could create Black holes. MINI black holes. Imagine that the earth gets compacted down to 9 milimeters wide,( Quite small) small enough to be a black hole, our moon wouldn’t get sucked in. Our black hole earth, has the same gravitational pull as Normal earth. Gravitational pull of the earth is basically the attraction that the earth exerts on an object An mini black hole would take an estimated three trillion years to reach a kilogram. Moreover, a mini black hole would only exist for 10^(-23) seconds. ( Read: Ten to the twenty three) which is an extremely, extremely, extremely, EXTREMELY short amount of time.

 Before you can say the letter “a”, it would just die. So even if an AC could create black holes, it wouldn’t pose any threat to the us, or the earth, or the universe. And that’s  how CERN could kill us and why we shouldn’t worry about it.