#So that Einstein could figure out more stuff about math

[logically-asexual]

yes YES

OP PLEASE SHARE YOUR LOCEIT AS PROFESSORS BRAIN ROT

akdjhksajfhkas thank you alkdj you’re in for it now

ART/ original idea

I just love Logan and Janus in a dark academia context so much like them both in elegant suits and big dark coats you know like in those old fancy universities where it snows in winter and everything is so Aesthetic~

and i love that Logan were a physics professor or anything science but i am particularly fond of modern physics (quantum theory, relativity, etc.) and like Logan’s position has recently been upgraded from teacher’s assistant to an actual teacher so he is still a little lost and is still a nerdy student at heart.

but Janus has been teaching for a while longer and appears always so put together and like he has everything figured out. his area is very different from Logan’s because he teaches history, sociology or maybe even literature courses. He’s always calm and reading huge books that Logan is sure he wouldn’t understand one sentence from. but, to be fair, it’d be the same for Janus in reverse. 

they meet where i made the drawing, at the library because Logan was running late for his first day of class and forgot his book, so he had to go borrow one and then run as fast as he could to his classroom. but of course, he is no athlete so he trips and falls. Janus comes help him pick up his stuff but instead of giving him his book back he just examines it with that analytic gaze he has sometimes

and Logan is just super confused because first of all hot man, second of all, why hot man won’t give my book back, and third, shit i’m still late.

but that third thought quickly is ignored in favor of listening to Janus tell him with his smooth low voice a story of how the very same Heisenberg from the uncertainty principle worked with the nazis on a nuclear bomb, which sucked but it’s also said that he had to somehow defend the theory of relativity from them since it was a “jewish” idea (because of Einstein). Logan thinks he should really get his book and get going but there is something so mesmerizing about this guy’s voice telling him about the historical impact of the scientists he thought he knew.

of course, humanities aren’t Logan’s forte, and he didn’t know any of this information. Janus scolds him because he should always know the human side of his studies, the troubles behind, the selfish motives that lead to some discoveries, as well as the more wildly known heartwarming stories, because knowledge and logic aren’t so simple, there’s always more behind it.

eventually Logan comes to his senses and reminds Janus that he is really late to his first day of class, and Janus lets him go. but he is a little distracted during the whole lesson and the rest of the day to be honest.

maybe a few days later, Logan goes on a quest to a smaller library in Janus’s department because he’s too intrigued by everything he said, so he is determined to learn more about his role models history and whatever was going on at the time they lived. however, again, Logan has no experience in this, and has no idea where to start looking. luckily for him, Janus spends most of his time at that library and, after a few minutes of being amused by logan’s lost expression, he decides to stop hiding and go help him.

what started as one study session turns into two, three, then a book club, and maybe a few coffee dates (to discuss what they both have learned from each other’s area, of course, nothing else). ((Logan would drink coffee at first, but then they realized it was part of the reason he was so stressed out all the time and Janus convinced him to try tea instead. now it’s his favorite drink)).

Janus doesn’t know a lot about science either but he is surprisingly good at catching on to the abstract concepts and theories Logan tells him about, which Logan is great at explaining in simple words without all the math behind.

Slowly they realize both of their teaching habilities have improved, and their students are way more enganged in their lectures than before. Janus has learned to compartmentalize and do more structured analysis, while Logan has learned to consider the bigger picture and be open to less concrete ideas. 

.. i could go on but its past midnight and i should really go back to sleep.. im enjoying myself a little too much here lol.

have one last flustered logan

[loonatism]

WHAT IS THE LOONAVERSE? PART 1 – THE SCIENCE

LOONA is special among K-pop for its immersive storyline. These girls are not just k-pop idols performing a song, they also perform a story and that story is what we call the Loonaverse.

So, What is the Loonaverse? In a few words: The world and story that LOONA inhabits.

Yeah. Duh. But what is it?

Well… it’s complicated.

The Loonaverse is a fictitious story that borrows elements from real science and fantasy to build its world but also uses allegories, metaphors, allusions and other literary devices to tell its story. Our job as spectators (and specifically us theorizers) is to look beyond those devices to understand the message they are trying to send. In this post I’ll attempt to explain the science of the Loonaverse: parallel universes, time loops and the mobius strip.

PHYSICS VS FICTION

The Loonaverse can be described as the physical universe where the characters of LOONA live and where the events of the story happen.

By physical universe I mean that literally: its own universe. There are multiple theories that explain the existence of multiverses; from infinite universes theories to bubble theories to parallel universes to daughter universes; all incredibly interesting readings and all with fundaments in real physics.

On the other hand, the Loonaverse is a fiction story. Created by the creative minds of the people working in BlockBerry Creative (The company LOONA is under) and specifically by Jaden Jeong (who is a polarizing figure amongst Orbits). As a fiction story it is undeniable that the Loonaverse takes elements form science fiction and fantasy to build its story so going hard into the nitty gritty physics of how it works is ambitious at best and purposelessly time consuming at worst (though if you are interested in the nitty gritty of multiverse theory by all means go read about it, is mind-blowing). Nah, for the purposes of this (really not that long once we get to it) theory, we’ll focus only on a few key science related aspects:

MATHEMATICAL UNIVERSES

This particular multiverse theory debates whether math is a tool used by us to describe our universe or a fundamental truth of the universe itself. If it were the latter, then the possibility of multiple universes with vastly different mathematical structures is possible. This implies a different set of physics working in those universes. Basically: physics and mathematics themselves may work differently in different universes: It is as simple as is sounds. (Yeah, 2+2 may = fish in another universe, or flying is possible and even normal).

Using this admittedly long explanation for a constant in science fiction and fantasy, we now have a physics approved explanation for all the odd things that happen in the Loonaverse: super powers, climbing in air, destroying the moon, walking in the moon and most importantly: time disruptions.

 SPACE/TIME RELATIVITY

So… time is weird. Physicist can’t decide what exactly is time. Is it a dimension? A physical force of the universe? An illusion we humans use to perceive existence? Does it even exist at all? We’ll just assume it does and use Einstein’s theory of relativity to explain it.

So… The universe is composed of a 4-dimensional fabric called space-time. (Like, picture an actual tablecloth). When anything with mass falls into that tablecloth it creates a bend, that bend is what we call gravity. This gravitational pull modifies both how space and time are perceived. Everything close to that gravitational pull will move at exponentially slower time than anything outside of it. In simpler terms: Time varies depending of your relationship with another object. But if gravity can modify the way time is perceived, so can speed. The explanation for this is long and complicated and involves a difficult choice between speed not being absolute for anything except that light has an absolute speed and those two statements don’t match. But Einstein, being the clever guy he was, came up with Time dilation: The faster you move the slower time moves for you.

A simpler way to understand all this is to just watch the movie Interstellar. They did a really good job of conveying Einstein’s theory.

Of course, physics haven’t been able to prove the possibility of moving through time backwards, only forward. But hey! We are dealing with a different universe where the laws of math and physics don’t abide by Einstein’s theories. Well let’s unify science and fiction and talk about time travel.

 TIME DONUTS AND THE MOBIUS STRIP

Yeah, we finally got here.

The Mobius Strip. The one constant in the Loonaverse is the Mobius Strip. It’s importance has been confirmed by BlockBerry Creative and you’d be hard pressed to find any theory that doesn’t include it somewhere. So, What is a Mobius strip?

Also called the twisted cylinder, it is geometrical shape that has one side, one curve and it’s non orientable, forming a loop on its own. The properties of the mobius strip come into play in the sense that if you were to travel through it, you would go through you starting point once but from the opposite side of the strip before returning to your original starting position.

Here’s a 3D model of the thing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:239158

Curious things:  If you were to cut down a Mobius strip through the middle you would end up with long mobius. If you were to cut it twice at 1/3 the size each cut, you would end up with one long ass loop and one shorter loop that surrounds it.

Here’s a video that shows that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlQOipIVFPk&ab_channel=ThinkTwice

Okay one more schiency term to explain:

Time donuts (not really called that way) is a time travel/time machine theory  that claims that a donut like vaccum that envelopes a sphere of matter and surrounded by a strong gravitational pull would create a void where time/space would collapse into itself, crating a sort of time loop where the closer you move to the sphere the bigger the gravitational pull to the point where you could even start going backwards. Here, space/time is the time machine (yeah, trippy). The physics to this theory are quite debatable at best but it is a theory nontheless, and perfect one for our purposes.

A new time-machine model with compact vacuum core by Amos Ori: https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0503077.pdf

IT ALL COMES TOGETHER

Okay I read all this sciency stuff and I still don’t get it: How do all this relates to the Loonaverse? Well, my patient reader, all this science mumbo jumbo helps us understand the main conflict of the Loonaverse: escaping a never-ending time loop.

The theory states that the Loonaverse happens in a parallel universe where the laws of physics don’t abide to our own. In this universe the girls (LOONA) inhabit a space (moon maybe) that moves through time inside of a Mobius Strip, which itself envelopes a large dense sphere of mass, thus creating a time loop. The closer the girls get to the sphere the slower time moves to the point it may go backwards. Because they move through time in a Mobius Strip, the amount of time it takes them to re start the loop is long (though I am not sure how long). In the mean time they will go though their starting point but in the opposite side of the loop.

This means the girls are essentially trapped in a never-ending loop. Think Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, Russian Doll, Happy Death Day; and if time loop movies have taught us anything is that time loops kinda suck after a while.

But this also gives us the tools to possibly escape this loop. Our physics don’t abide in this universe, there are super powers, and mirror images and the possibility of escaping if we understand how it all works in the first place.

With all this science talk, doesn’t that make the Loonaverse a ScyFi story? Well… No.

Science Fiction as a genre uses technological and/or scientific advances to investigate and/or explain a human reality. It usually comes in the form of a warning (Brave New World) or as an exploration of what makes us human (Blade Runner). Science Fiction explores the possibilities of humanity in a technologically advanced future. Because the story LOONA tells us doesn’t explore the possibilities of a technologically ridden future or focuses on our relationship with these advancements, it cannot be called ScyFi.

TLDR:

The Loonaverse is the world and story that LOONA inhabits. It borrows form real life science and fantasy elements to better tell its story. It exists in a universe where the laws of physics differ from ours and where there is a set time loop in the form of a Mobius Strip, which the girls are trying to escape.

REMEMBER: This is all my interpretation of some very complex theories, theories I am unabashedly morphing to my will to fit a certain narrative (like scyfi and fantasy often do). Also, I didn’t come up with the idea of escaping the time loop, it’s kinda the oldest theory out there. It may even be confirmed by BlockBerry Creative. I am just explaining it the way it makes sense to me.

 Next: How does all this science help explain the narrative conflict of the characters in the Loonaverse?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THIS ONE IS REAL

Those are pretty expensive. If they were obviously good, someone would already be writing stuff on top of it. He made cars, which had been a luxury item, into a commodity. But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for opinions expressed here, remember that anything you see here that's not in the middle. I once wrote that startup founders should be at least 23, and that one should just go to grad school.1 Why do you think so? Could you turn theorems into a commodity, and they were still mostly in denial about problems. When we got real funding near the end of it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Soon after we arrived at Yahoo, we got an email from Filo, who had been crawling around our directory hierarchy, asking if it was really necessary to store so much of it. At each step, flow down. Our generation wants to get paid for doing work you love, you're practically there. I said a good rule of thumb for recognizing when you have competitors, because it's painful to observe the gap between them. But when I finally tried living there for a bit last year, and the Bible is quite explicit on the subject of homosexuality. Though unprecedented, I predict this situation is also temporary. They can't hire smart people anymore, but they don't get blamed for it. This one is real. But unfortunately you run into a chicken and egg problem here. And when you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. In a field like math or physics, where no audience matters except your peers, and judging ability is sufficiently straightforward that hiring and admissions committees can do it without setting off the kind of work you do, and since you have to jump through in school.2 So Dad, there's this company called Apple.

Err. And indeed, a lot of meetings; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have a cofounder, but that there be few of them. Afterward I wondered, what am I even measuring? And that's fine. If you're a hacker thinking about starting a startup in New York admire more.3 Even Einstein probably had moments when he wanted to have a meeting about it. Don't maltreat users is a subset of a more general technique: making things easier.

At least, it has to look professional. My only leisure activities were running, which I think even Spamhaus would admit is a rough guess at the top spammers. Wealth is defined democratically. While you're at it, you should get a job. After all, a Web 2. But an online square is more dangerous than a physical one. Startup ideas are ideas for companies, and sales depends mostly on effort. Surely one had to force oneself to work on, toward things you actually like. By seeming unable even to cut a grapefruit in half let alone go to the store and buy one, he forced other people to use.4 If anyone is dishonest, it's the one with fewer employees that's more impressive.

The intervening years have created a situation that is, someone whose best work was behind him—and hand over the project with copious free advice about how the book should show in positive terms the strength and diversity of the American people, etc, etc. If this were a movie, for example. If you want to stay happy, you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo couldn't beat the force of environment, do you suppose you can? Even if your only goal is to please them, the way to get information out of them. The Bay Area has a lot of time thinking about language design. One reason people who've been out in the world. Thanks to Sam Altman, was 19 at the time.

As I was leaving I offered it to him, as I've done countless times before in the same way the classic airline pilot manner is said to derive from Chuck Yeager. Once publishing—giving people copies—becomes the most natural way of distributing your content, it probably isn't, it tended to pervade the atmosphere of early universities. How many times have you heard hackers speak fondly of how in, say, transportation or communications. But the reason reporters ended up writing stories about this particular truth, rather than by compiler writers. For better or worse, the idea of starting a startup just doesn't require that much intelligence. But it's harder than it looks. Serving web pages is very, very large. Most of us hate to acknowledge this. When the values of the elite. If you're sure of the general area you want to do when they're 12, and just the sort of trifle that breaks deals when investors feel they have the upper hand—over an uncertainty about whether the founders had correctly filed their 83 b forms, if you asked random people on the street if they'd like to do is figure things out, why do you need to in order to store something for them. Most good mathematicians would work on math even if there were no jobs as math professors, whereas in the departments at the other students' without having more than glanced over the book to learn the names of users with the highest average comment scores in orange.

And software sells hardware. I wanted. Taking a shower is like a form of meditation. And the boneheads who designed this stove even had an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house. The Bay Area has a lot of startups—probaby most startups funded by Y Combinator. It's an old idea that new things come from the margin is simply that you don't have an idea. Java will turn out to be a tradition of startups taking VC money, and work on what you love is very difficult. Responsibility is an occupational disease of eminence. Odd as it might sound, we tell startups that they should try to make friends with as many smart people as you can. Or they could return to their roots and make going to the theater a treat. Well, no.

So what's interesting? The reason we have high level languages is because people can't deal with machine language. How hard would it be to jumpstart a silicon valley? So far the complete list of messages I've picked up from cities is: wealth, style, hipness, physical attractiveness, fame, political power, economic power, intelligence, social class, and quality of life. Audiences have to be derived from working in that field. I learned to program when computer power was scarce.5 This extra cost buys you flexibility. These are the only places I know that Richard and Jonathan Rees have done a lot quicker.

Notes

They would have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed. Not only do convertible debt, so problems they face are probably not do that. Some who read this essay I'm talking mainly about software design.

Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and stir. And of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you launch with, you might be digital talent. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, many of the definition of important problems includes only those on the subject of language power in Succinctness is Power. But be careful here, I was writing this, but something feminists need to be when it converts you get stock as if you'd just thought of them could as accurately be called acting Japanese.

If this happens it will become increasingly easy to believe your whole future depends on the matter. In sufficiently disordered times, even if they do the opposite: when we created pets. If you're part of an audience of investors want to invest in successive rounds, it will thereby expose it to profitability on a map. But you can eliminate, do not try too hard at fixing bugs—which is the least important of the world wars to say that it will seem as if the fix is at pains to point out that this isn't strictly true, because spam and P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and only incidentally to tell someone that I hadn't had much success in doing a bad idea has been rewritten to suit present fashions.

Together these were the impressive ones. I switch person. And while this is the way to create a silicon valley out of school. Obviously signalling risk.

Another thing I learned from this experiment: set aside an option to maintain their percentage. What you're looking for something they wanted, so you'd find you couldn't slow the latter without also slowing the former.

[squirrelly831]

Listening to His Music While Studying [Namjoon and Jimin]

Namjoon

Namjoon hadn’t heard from Shannon in weeks. She wasn’t replying to texts or his calls and honestly he though she was pissed at him. So, he decided to man up and apologize to her for whatever he had done to make her ignore him. He bought a small stuff animal and flowers before he headed to her apartment.

He rang the apartment doorbell and it almost immediately swung open to reveal Shannon’s sister, Arianna, who looked like she was heading out. “Nams, what are you doing her?” She wondered.

Namjoon gave a sheepish grin, “Your sis around?”

She nodded as she opened the door wider for him, “She’s in her room studying. Don’t need me to lead you over there, right?” She pointed down the hall. “You’ll have to just enter her room. She won’t hear your knock over the music. You know how she gets when she studies.”

“She’s studying–Oh, midterms are soon?”

Arianna nodded, “Next week. We’ve been doing nothing but studying and working. We don’t even answer our phones half the time.” She gave a laugh as she clutched her wallet, “I was just about to go out and get us something to eat, so if you could check on the idiot that’d be great.” She waved as she headed out the door leaving Namjoon in the entrance hall alone.

Namjoon went to the kitchen and fished out a vase to put the flowers away. He let out a breath knowing that Shannon wasn’t ignoring him because she was mad at him, but because she had lost herself in her studies. After getting the flowers in the vase, he placed them on the counter with the stuff animal and went to her bedroom. He heard his group’s song playing at full blast in her room as she was focused on the textbook before her. Namjoon walked over to her bed and pulled the textbook from her line of sight breaking her from her focus.

“Ari, I swear–Oh! Joonie.” She reached over to her nightstand and turned down the music before shutting it off. “What brings you here?”

“My girlfriend was ignoring me, so I came by thinking she was pissed at me.”

An awkward laugh left her slightly parted lips as she rubbed the back of her neck, “My bad… I meant to text you, but decided to wait after the midterm week of hell.”

He chuckled, “So I heard. Your sis went to get you guys some food.” As if on cue, Shannon’s stomach growled. “When was the last time you ate?”

She looked at the time and shrugged, “When I woke up about 8. I’ve been living off coffee all day.”

Namjoon gave her a look and she flashed an apologetic smile, “I’m bringing you guys food from now on when it comes to your study weeks. That’s not healthy at all, baby.”

“I know, but I just got hung up on some of these problems that I just wanted to work on them and get it over with.” She shrugged, “Plus when I have your music playing, it just helps me focus better.”

Namjoon looked at her math textbook and bobbed his head. He tried to keep his cool though he was overly happy that his music helps her. He shut it and placed it on her desk, “After we eat and take a break, I’ll help you work the problems, okay?”

“My Einstein boyfriend wants to help me study?” She got on her knees to crawl closer to him on her bed. She threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek, “I would be so honored!” Namjoon gave her a quick kiss, but that kiss eventually lead to something deeper and soon Shannon was pressed to her bed with Namjoon over her.

“Ew, can you not?” The two separated fast as Arianna voiced her disgust. “I got the food. Get your ass up, fat ass and let’s eat. Got you some too, Nams.” She walked out leaving an air of awkwardness. The couple looked at one another before they broke into a fit of laughter. They got off her bed and head to the kitchen to get some food.

Jimin

Jimin didn’t want to jump to conclusions when his girlfriend, Jiyoung, didn’t answer his calls or texts all day long. He worried that he did something wrong and she was giving him the cold shoulder. Jimin double and tripled checked the date just to make sure he didn’t miss an important event. He knew even if she was busy, Jiyoung would at least send him an emoji just to let him know that she was too busy to talk. But that day, nothing.

The guys convinced him to wait a day and that Jiyoung probably didn’t even get time to text him. That he should understand that as he’s gone days without texting her due to his concerts and promotions. So, Jimin let it sit until the next day, but by mid-afternoon when he got no message Jimin headed to her apartment.

He was just going to check on her. See if she was okay and then he would go home. Jimin pressed in her code and stepped inside her apartment, “Jagi? You here?” He called out as the smell of her lavender candle scent hit him. It was a scent he knew all too well as she only used it when she was focusing on something. Suddenly, he remembered Jiyoung’s comment about how her final for her animation class was nearing and she was going to spend a lot of time working on making the final project. Jimin shook his head in embarrassment for forgetting that conversation, but he headed into her apartment to look for her.

He heard a familiar beat and muffled vocals coming from her study. He followed the sound and opened her study room door to see Jiyoung staring down her laptop as she worked on her project. Her hand pushed up her glasses and he noticed how her messy bun was carelessly thrown up in an odd angle. “Babe?” She didn’t look up as she held her stylist in hand and maneuvered the image on her screen. Jimin approached her as he realized the song that was playing was one of his group’s song. He looked at her screen to see what she was editing when he noticed on her second screen a playlist was open with a list of only BTS’s songs. Jimin smiled at the playlist as he looked down at Jiyoung.

Feeling as if she was being watched, her hand paused over her tablet and she looked up behind her. “Shit!” She jumped not expecting Jimin there. “The hell. Why didn’t you announce yourself, oppa?” She could feel her heart against her rib cage.

Jimin gave her a lob-sided grin, “I did. Twice. I got worried when I didn’t hear from you for two days.”

Jiyoung’s eyes looked at her phone and squinted to see the time, “Has it really been two days?”

Jimin’s smile faded, “What do you mean by that? Have you not been taking breaks?”

Jiyoung shrugged, “I take a snack break periodically or a nap.”

Jimin’s face twisted, “Save your work.” His words weren’t a suggestion. They were a command. Jiyoung was thrown off guard at his sudden change in demeanor, but did as he was told. Jimin pulled her from the computer, “It’s dumb to sit there and work yourself to death. Who’s benefiting from that?” The bitterness in his voice pierced her. He lead her to the living room, “Sit.” Jiyoung said nothing as she took a seat on the couch and Jimin headed to the kitchen to make some quick food.

After she had the meal, Jimin’s softer side returned, “Feeling better?”

Jiyoung nodded, “Much actually. Feel a bit more energized.”

Jimin nodded approvingly as he took his girlfriend in his arms and cuddled with her, “Don’t skip meals like that again, got it? Or I get the hyungs, Tae, and Kookie to beat you up.” Jiyoung let out a soft laugh, but nodded none the less. “Also, why do you have an entire playlist of just my group?”

Jiyoung felt her face flush and she buried her head in his chest. Seeing as he asked about the playlist, but didn’t mention that is was dubbed Jiminni’s voice, she figured he didn’t read that part. But, it was still embarrassing that he saw it. “Your music helps me study–but why are you so nosy?”

He smirked, “What about it helps you study?” He teased and Jiyoung’s head moved away from his chest to see his face.

“You read the title, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jiyoung puffed out her cheeks as she let out a huff, “How annoying–Your voice helps me study… jeez. Happy?”

“No…” He reached over and took her cheek in his hand. His eyes wondered to her lips before he leaned to give her lips a peck, “Now, I am.”

She pushed him away from her gently, “You’re a pain, oppa. I’m going back to work now.”

Jiyoung went to stand, but Jimin’s arms shot up and pulled her onto his lap to keep her on the couch. “Not happening. You need a break before you go blind.” Jiyoung shot him a look as she moved her glasses. “Well more blind than you already are. Just an hour then I’ll let you go back to work, please?” Her shoulders drooped as she turned in his arms to get comfortable ignoring the victorious grin on Jimin’s face.

Part I | Part III

Credit to gif owners

Written & revamped by Squirrelly831

♕ REQUEST

☮ BTS MASTERLIST

∞ ULTIMATE MASTERLIST

[kendrixtermina]

Hi, you seem to know a lot about socionics, so let me ask you a question. Do you think it is possible to be IXXX type in MBTI and EXXx in socionics, for example INFP and IEE?

I don’t think so, since they are based on the same theoretical framework by Jung which was then independently developed both sides of the iron curtain, its both based on the jungian functions and the idea that one of those is your dominant function. 

Unlike say Enneagram or classic temperaments those are based on different frameworks and characteristics so there’s no 1-1 correspondence (though some combinations are more likely than others). It’s like describing a color by its hue vs its brightness. There’s tendencies for combinations (such as yellow generally being light/bright) but you could still to some degree use it like two coordinates. 

Whereas socionics vs mbti is more like… hm. Not exactly like different maths for the same thing though you have slightly different PoV descriptions and they disagree in some places (Such as, “Should you date someone who’s high in your inferior function, and what will be the outcome?”)

You have to keep the j/p switch in mind (mbti goes by first extroverted function, socionics by first function overall, both are IMHO legit in their own way depending on wether you want to describe decision process or outward behavior) but otherwise it’s essentially the same so where they disagree, one of them is “wrong” since they describe the same thing (the jungian functions) - insofar as that theoretical framework actually describes something in reality, that is, which is a different can of worms but we don’t need to open it to regard the whole thing as a heuristic or a descriptive characterization.

Note that there are already types that are close together (IEE being the counterpart of ENFP) If you were a sensor id probably say to go with the socionics one because the sensor descriptions are generally better (at very least for Se types) but as it stands you’d have to figure it out, it’s a small distinction so it seems more likely that this is the margin of error of the tests rather than some inherent difference in the systems. 

Overall it’s more common for ENFPs to wonder if they’re INFPs than the other way around because they’re one of the types where the extroversion is more subtle/subdued whereas IxxPs generally know they’re introverts (lots of the actual INFPs seem to get hung up on the J/P distinction instead), but of course that doesn’t mean that the other way around is completely impossible. 

Tips for distinguishing: 

a) Function Order

You probably use both Ne and Fi a lot either way but pay attention to the process. As an N dom you start with an idea or association and that’s the starting point from which your thoughts then build (”What are the implications of the idea? How do I feel about the idea? How could it be made to happen etc.)

Whereas an N-auxillary would start with their dominant function, “Well here’s an interesting inconsistency? What could its reason be…” and then Ne goes off speculating. 

b) Shadow Functions

This is primarily a socionics thing but I find it useful for contrasting. If you flip the E/I you have the exact same functions at almost the same strenghts 

Basically functions 5 and 7 are notably absent/unusable, whereas functions 6 and 8 are sorta there they’re just not something the person bases their decisions on. #7 in particular is a huge blind spot that 

In INFPs the most absent function is Se - so they’re often very civilized and non-aggressive, but don’t have much ‘stage presence’ or go-getter attitude, aren’t that connected with the physical and might miss stuff in their surroundings. 

For ENFPs it’s Ti - So often they take in a lot of new ideas but don’t really have a mechanism to sort them out and end up believing a lot of different stuff that others might find contradictory. ExFPs in general often don’t really believe in objectivity or detachment as a perspective. They might think you’re just trying to be a smartass (or will believe that’s the only motivation, even when they have in fact detected a smartass) - which, sure, no one is perfectly objective/detached but we can try. ^^°

Generally speaking INFPs are marginally more sceptical and ENFPs marginally more aggressive, and to a lesser extent a similar contrast goes on concerning Fe and Ni - Fi doms will generally a want a bit of processing time when they’re upset and a comfort attempt that comes to soon may backfire, whilst INFPs have more of an inert, ponderous quality. 

Considering the idea of Stuff INxP

i hope this was somewhat helpful, and as usual, this is the best of my understanding but im no Einstein and others might disagree with me

[colormusicdying]

Inspired to Know .45.

I've been using so many metaphors to describe what I feel like right now. It is probably time to lose all of that confusing language and just say in plain language what is happening.

Even though I had been preparing for years for the death of my wife Pam, of course when it actually happened, it was like having my entire world explode. The world exploded and burned to ashes and all of the ashes dumped on me, leaving me underneath, at first seeing and hearing absolutely nothing. People say to me, "you look good!". Ha. It's an act from another universe.

I had said our relationship would be locked in a vault, forever untouchable, but not an impediment to the future, and that is absolutely true. In a recent post I used the image of one trillion microstars, and other illustrations in another post called Togetherness, to describe how a loving relationship between two people doesn't change no matter how far apart they are. I thought when Pam died the connection between us, made of those trillion microstars, would evaporate into the universe, but I was wrong. Fortunately. I meant to represent that by saying that a few of those microstars were still hanging around, and that meant our relationship was not completely dissolved.

The very difficult times we went through together these last several years were represented by the fact that I realized the microstars had a Color, and that was Gold, and of course true Gold does not fear fire. Does not fear means: is so pure it does not break, does not change, with hardship. The Gold of that relationship went through burning fires from hell, but was not damaged. Was strengthened by adversity, made more pure. 

I talked about our funny relationship as Popeye and Olive Oyl, and that Olive was grateful to me for getting her through so many tough situations. But I felt in the end Olive was going to save me because I knew we had had several conversations and the conversations were about how whichever of us is left, they must go on with life and make the best of it, have fun, find love, be happy again. Hold that thought.

So then I described how, still under the ashes with me, those microstars were swirling around helping me to hear the Song of tiny birds in the distance, and see a little light. The only light I could see was coming from the remnants of our relationship. Those were the only hints that there even could be life.

Here's the thing: so I'm supposed to go on, with Pam's blessing and a kiss, but HOW do I do that? Life seems so empty, buried in the ashes, why not just quit? I didn't see any way out of this. I often feel, and I would guess that others in grief also feel, why not just die?

The science and engineering background that I have has shown me some strange things. Everyone who has gone through this math knows there are proofs which say say a certain thing exists, but very often, the math does not tell you how to find it. A good example would be probably the most famous equation in the world, E = mc(squared). In words, that says if you take the mass of anything, represented by m, namely how much stuff there is in something, multiply m by by this huge number, C squared, the speed of light squared, you find out that mass is actually the same thing as a gargantuan amount of energy, represented by E. When you contemplate what that means, one of the things it means is that there is a huge amount of energy in any amount of stuff, and what do you know, you can actually calculate how much. That's right. Pure and simple, mass, that is, stuff, and energy are the same thing. Here's what it doesn't say: how do you get the energy out of mass, that is, stuff? It says nothing about how to do that, just says the energy is there. Einstein realized around the time of World War II that if someone could figure that out, how to get the energy out of stuff, it would make one hell of a bomb. And indeed it did. But it took a lot of thinking and necessity and several decades to actually do that.

Another thing I've learned, which I have cryptically commented on, is that in fact healing from grief is almost completely an internal process. As I wrote, you can bring the light of one billion suns to me, but that won't do the job. All that light will not defeat grief and ignite life from the outside. It's me, me, me who must heal myself from inside. But how? How to do the healing thing which everyone says is there, but no one tells you how to get to. No one tells you how to be healed, no one tells you how to find the life you are supposed to be seeking. How am I supposed to do that? And that's what I meant when I wrote, "the silence refuses to talk".

Pam certainly wanted me to go on with life. And now I realize the one and only way I can do that, the solution to the problem, is to follow her example. No other method will suffice. No external processes will work.

One of the saddest moments of my life, was the saddest moment of Pam's life, the moment after we first saw her tumor on an MRI image when she realized her life was being destroyed. That all the things she had hoped for herself were going to be destroyed. This blog has told you we did everything possible to restore as much of that life as possible.

Through all of that, she never sat down and quit.

I have said there is no quit here. We went to rehab for all kinds of reasons, borrowed machines to try to restore her eyesight, went everywhere and did everything to have as much fun as we could possibly have. One day, while we were eating ice cream at a Tastee Freez, she said, "you know I'm still here" and we came up with an idea and started a business. We kept going out, doing things even later with her in a wheelchair, me lifting her in and out of the car, traveled on fun weekends, took outselves to see our daughter Elizabeth get her master's degree in Minnesota, even though Pam really couldn't get out of the car for the entire trip, went to our daughter Annie's wedding two years ago, one day after Pam was allowed to eat solid food, after her third brain surgery. She got dinner, a cupcake and coffee at that wedding. We kept throwing parties, and kept throwing them even when she would be out of gas by 6 PM. We just started earlier. The very last party we threw came to be because a neighbor said, "are you guys going to have a party this year?" And Pam said in her now weak voice, "that would be fun", and so we did, three months before she died. And yet this woman could not see the left half of anything due to eye damage. Never, from the time of discovering the tumor, did she know what day or time it was. She was partially able to keep up the sewing she loved by doing much simpler things. Every day before I left the house I asked her what Colors she wanted threaded and I would thread the needles. Damaged eyesight, an English teacher and book author whose ability to read was effectively destroyed, and on and on and on. And yet, and yet, no complaining. Oh, once in a while while I was lifting her out of bed near the end she would say, "this sucks". Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you say that and a whole lot more? Then we would shake hands on the accomplishment and got some breakfast. She looked forward to the food I would bring her, which near the end was almost like baby food, smoothies and protein drinks and soups and such things. And yet she ate it and she enjoyed it, and said so, and she looked forward every single day to her coffee. Even when she was too exhausted to speak. Even when she drank that coffee laying half sideways in her wheelchair. You've read about it here.

One of the famous books about the creation of the atomic bomb from blobs of matter is called, "Brighter Than 1000 Suns". That's the E for energy in Einstein's equation, powering those bombs. It comes from inside the matter itself. All you need to do is have enough of it in the same place. Then, properly treated, it gives off energy by itself, as the matter converts itself to energy. Sure, it can be used for evil. But it can also be used for good. The solution for finding all of that energy in matter was finally found.

And what is grief but the feeling that something is missing, that what is missing is huge, that something is horribly wrong, that something that should be generated is not being generated, that every day life is a hard lump of nothing. Grief is holding back life.

And from where comes the method to repel the darkness of grief? From where comes the ability to push off tons of suffocating, burning ashes? To break down and make useful again this hard lump of nothing?

It comes from the inspiration given as a gift by a person who was going to drink every drop of life, though completely damaged, until the very moment I laid her down in her bed for the last time. She looked to me to help her drink in life to the last minute she was conscious on earth. And that is the inspiration I now carry, internally. That inspiration is the actual means, the solution finally, to propel me forward, to convert internal grief to new life, which is yet meant to be brighter than 1000 suns.

If she could do it I can do it. Against all the pain and the weight of the ashes of grief, against all the energy wasted in fighting the roiling, spiking anger over the disaster of loss, there is Pam's Golden example of burning through pain and reaching for every last drop of life. I am now inspired to know, and finally begin to feel, it is simply not time to die.

*********************************************

This could also have been titled, "Why Not Just Die?"

[thehappymessproject]

39/100 - Don’t you dare limit your creativity

It’s 8pm here. One of my favourite times to write. But tonight, I brought something special to the page : my joy. 

Since it’s Monday, my retreat, it’s a very chill day for me, my only priority is to recharge before the week begins. That also means I haven’t checked out my phone since yesterday evening, except to meditate and time myself while journaling. As usual, I feel very grounded when night comes (unlike many days with phone). 

But that’s not what’s special about today. 

Since I am doing this challenge everyday, I need tricks to keep going, as I am not usually a very disciplined person, it’s a fairly new concept to me actually (and I hate quite a lot of it haha).

One of them is to make writing a priority, right after self-care.

I hate what I write if I don’t “clean my mind and body” first.

I hate even more the process of writing when I don’t, writing then becomes a chore.

My mind is foggy, my body is tense, everything is laborious, arduous. 

What’s special about tonight is that I just finished painting.

I have been studying a lot this week, and antiracism and the personal work it demands is quite draining and time consuming.

My mind was pretty anxious all week, revisiting my learnings and reflections.

I needed a lot of rest, reflection time and play to compensate.

I choose to learn a new technique using watercolours and ink.

Beginner’s mind is a magical thing when it comes to art.

It helps us not to overthink everything, since we don’t have a lot to think about when we don’t know what we are doing. 

I took a class, so I felt guided and supported. And I chose a loose technique, since the more realistic I am painting, the more I am going to think about it. But with simple and loose technique, I play with my brush more than anything. 

The results? Quite frankly not my best work at all. And it didn’t matter one bit.

I didn’t paint for any result, I painted for the process today. Knowing fully that even if it was ugly in the end, I could practice more, and no one had to see it if I don’t want to show them. This was just about learning and having fun.

And because I tricked my brain into doing something like I didn’t care about how it leads me, I actually didn’t care. 

My first reaction was an ambivalent “How come it’s that bad and I am so happy about it anyway?” and then I laughed it off and kept going.

The answer is quite easy really : it was mostly play.

And when we play, we get the best of anything we do, but especially anything creative. We connect to joy.

Tonight, not only did I end up with a new technique up my sleeve, and a good hour of play and practice, I got to fill my writing with all that previous joy gained from what Einstein coined as combinatory play.

You see, each time he was stuck or tired about maths and physics, he would take his violin and play.

When he would come back to his board, he would see his problems under a new light, which would help him then figure out new solutions. His music impacted his scientific work. 

This week I talked with patients thrice about their creativity. They were all having different issues about it. (of course, names are changed)

Oliver is learning how to create a Youtube channel to stream live, and was frustrated by how he wanted to do it right. He was having technical issues, and choices to make about what he wanted to stream, and how he wanted to do so. After a few weeks exploring, it got hard to not take it too seriously. 

Diane is having those wonderful strokes of inspiration that we get when we are doing everything we need to be as creative as possible, except creating, and was stuck at that phase, not really knowing where to go from there, scared of the power she could actually feel and probably about the mediocrity we all experience when we actually seat to a table and write too. 

Delilah was having all those wonderful ideas of new things she wanted to try, but felt stuck because they weren’t her usual go-to medium or way to work it. She felt like she needed to choose something and stick to it. She talked about her lack of style and not knowing how to go from there. And how her mind kept ordering her instead of exploring her new wants, to stick to this challenge she did last month and learnt tons from, but didn’t finish.

And with all of them, we planned their next week in a similar fashion, and those words are also the ones I used for myself during the week-end : 

You are a child of the Universe, made of stardust and dinosaur stuff. You wonderful, wonderful thing, yes, you.

Like any human, you are creative and will get more and more creative if you actually do stuff.

You can feel the fear of doing it wrong, messing it up, not knowing where to start, and all the other fears we get AND still do stuff. Find your ways, they exist.

Creativity is all about play and exploration. 

All the boundaries you are talking about are yours to choose. 

You are not doing this for the end result but to become whoever you are when you create. 

There are no real rules, they were made up by very unhappy people trying desperately to control their creativity, most probably eroding it on the way. 

Use containers to help you, not limit you.

Take on challenges to push yourself to your limits (not beyond, just a little push). 

Find a focus and start there, anywhere is fine. Maybe this will be something you want to do everyday for twenty years, maybe it’ll be a fun game for 3 days. Both are very fine. 

Don’t stop only because it’s too hard, that’s your brain afraid to take risks and fail. Find ways to learn more about what is frustrating you, feelings tell us a lot about our wants.

We get frustrated and scared because we care, not because we’re not good enough.

And no matter what you do : cultivate joy and curiosity, over and over, and sit down and MAKE stuff, over and over. 

Make so many things your brain forgets what it feels to win or lose (it doesn’t matter in the end, only for a few moments).

When in doubt, play. Leave the serious stuff aside for a while and do something fun. 

Play with other media or other technique, you are the expert of what makes you feel joy. Just play. 

Never think you have to choose one thing and stick to it forever. Each medium will serve your other media, each new technique will make other techniques a little bit more you, even if you don’t pursue it. 

If it seems fun or you feel like it’s beautiful, it’s already in you, just waiting for you to practice. 

You are loved. 

You deserve good things. 

I believe in you. 

See you tomorrow, 

Love, 

L. 

[asfeedin]

The silliest string-theory alternative yet draws inspiration from video games

Noted physicist, computer scientist, and mathematician Stephen Wolfram recently stunned the science community at-large after announcing he’d pretty much figured out how the universe works.

Wolfram’s a household name in the science community. He’s responsible for Wolfram Alpha, the search engine that AskJeeves wished it was, and the creation of a math-based programming language called Wolfram Language used to power the popular Mathematica system and, now, the creation of the Wolfram Physics Project. His contributions go back to his formative years where, by age 14, he’d written three books on the subject of physics.

It’s important to understand that Wolfram’s considered a respected scientific mind because his new theory, which is represented as simply “A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics,” come straight out of left field with a pretty wacky approach.

Read: Our universe may be part of a giant quantum computer

Now, of course, “wacky” is a relevant term when it comes to physics. Wofram’s attempting to do what Einstein and Stephen Hawking have tried before him: create an explanation for the universe that makes sense. To this end, physicists and other scientists have come up with theories that range from multiple worlds (as in, more than one universe) to “we’re all living in a computer simulation” (which just begs the question, what’s the universe that the computer is in made of?). So calling a physics theory “wacky” implies an entirely different level of weirdness.

I never expected this: finally we may have a path to the fundamental theory of physics…and it’s beautifulhttps://t.co/1zNCYDMxhM pic.twitter.com/IVvx8F97SQ

— Stephen Wolfram (@stephen_wolfram) April 14, 2020

Let’s start at the beginning. According to a blog post from Wolfram, he had a sort-of “eureka” moment a few months back that gave him insight into the inner workings of the universe. The post begins with the ominous phrase “I never expected this.”

Then Wolfram’s fervor immediately paints the picture of a scientist in semi-“mad” mode:

It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

In many ways it’s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that’s been done—and it’s very impressive—we still, after all this time, don’t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.

This all adds up. We do have quantum mechanics, but despite being a very, very successful theory it doesn’t quite explain everything. Then there’s string theory, which has taken a bit of a beating in recent years. So yeah, maybe we do need a new kind of physics.

What makes Wolfram‘s theory different is that, well, it’s not really a theory. It’s more like the frame-work of a theory. It seems like he’s just saying the universe is made of a 3D mesh with enough point-to-point lines added in to create a physical topography. In other words, it feels like Wolfram‘s proposing that the universe works exactly like a 3D computer model.

This seems like just the kind of thing someone who specializes in creating computer languages would say. Much like how Einstein and Hawking, scientists who specialized in nuclear and astrophysics, decided that gravity and black holes were the key to understanding the universe’s true nature.

Mathematicians tend to think the universe is made of math and physicists tend to think it’s made of tiny stuff that keeps getting tinier the closer you look.

Folks. I do not live under a rock. Have I heard of Stephen Wolfram’s physics project? How could I not given that his PR people rammed it down my inbox. Why do I not comment on it? I looked at it and don’t think it’s interesting, that’s why. Now please move on.

— Sabine Hossenfelder (@skdh) April 20, 2020

Yes, I agree. It’s an interesting phenomenon that people today think the universe works like a computer like they once thought it works like a clockwork.

— Sabine Hossenfelder (@skdh) April 20, 2020

Wolfram describes the basics of his new concept as thus:

In the early 1980s, when I started studying the computational universe of simple programs, I made what was for me a very surprising and important discovery: that even when the underlying rules for a system are extremely simple, the behavior of the system as a whole can be essentially arbitrarily rich and complex.

What he then proposes is that everything in the universe can be explained by imagining it all as a series of interconnected points. He explains the topography and physical structure of the universe as a series of unfolding events that follow precise mathematical rules. This seemingly allows Wolfram to explain the concept of “time,” which Einstein side-steps by combining it with space, as a sort of backdoor math modifier to rationalize expansion.

Per the blog post:

So what then is time? In effect it’s much as we experience it: the inexorable process of things happening and leading to other things. But in our models it’s something much more precise: it’s the progressive application of rules, that continually modify the abstract structure that defines the contents of the universe.

Wolfram‘s offering a set of math-based rules that he believes could eventually become the foundation for a unified theory of everything. But there’s a catch: he’s asking for the science community at large to help him prove it. Like many big theories – especially those that come along to challenge quantum mechanics or string-theory – this one has all the answers, but it hasn’t worked out which questions make them relevant quite yet.

Perhaps the biggest criticism of Wolfram‘s work is that it’s a bit dense. The technical explanation alone weighs in at over 400 pages. It’s going to take a few months for all of his ideas to see peer-review. That makes it a bit odd that he’s already publishing a book, running a project website, and soliciting partnerships to move the work forward. What’s the rush? The universe will still need explaining after everyone’s had a glance at the paper.

At the end of the day, one has to wonder how much chance a unified theory of the universe that cribs from both the arcade gaming era and Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis has against M-theory, relativity, or other long-standing remedies.

Still, a rising tide lifts all vessels and Wolfram‘s current passion is bound to yield some interesting mathematical results.

Are you a physicist or physics enthusiast? Let me know what you think about Wolfram‘s new project on Twitter @mrgreene1977.

Read next: Dali IO-4 Review: Great-sounding headphones with battery life that just keeps going

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[hearmyvoiceoftreason]

standing by and waiting at your backdoor || chapter 3 snippet

A/N: as some of you have already seen, @greg-the-goose made this wonderful art for this fic and i was so happy with it i figured to just give a sneak peek of what’s to come next. hope you enjoy! 

“Hand me another spool of solder,” Katie muttered as she outstretched her right hand as her dominant was still preoccupied connecting a wire to another circuit board.

Third-period MWF meant Slav’s Robotics Elective and if Katie had to be honest, she had to credit the school for the good call regarding her schedule.  

The period itself was still a little far from lunch or any other of her scheduled free time so she felt no pressure in rushing out of excitement or hunger, and it was usually around this time that she had long shaken off the grogginess that most usually tried to blink through during first period.

Hunk fought back a yawn as he complied and handed her the spool with one hand while the other covered his mouth.

But then again.

It was Monday and just about any time on a Monday would still be too early for anyone to deal with.

Or for anyone to deal with anything.

Hurray, student life, am I right?  

Stifling her own yawn, she unspooled some silver and grabbed the soldering iron.

Katie usually found refuge in the blank state of mind that working on tech offered. Here everything was mechanical and structured.

Pun intended.

Each little screw had its corresponding place, every line of code had its function in the overall script and everything they did in the free time as soon as Professor Slav finished up his short lectures had an impact on the finished product.

Everything just made perfect sense.

The clean-cut of it all was a comfort for an overworked mind like Katie’s (accelerated year, full AP sched and in love with her taken best friend. Very overworked.) So it was a simple joy in life that she could always count on and turn back to.

.

.

.

Today seemed to be an exception.

.

.

.

“So I have a hypothesis.”

A rather stark one, too.

“About what?” she asked distractedly, watching as the silver melted onto the board and fused the wires together.

“About you and Shiro.”

She turned to face him so fast she felt a joint in her neck crack a little bit. A small price to pay if it meant Hunk would cower in fear at her scowl.

It didn’t seem to work.

Hunk just blinked in response.

Since when did her scowls and glares stop working? Ugh.

“You already know why that will never happen and her name and face are plastered all over the school along with his.”

The perks of being in love with one half of the school’s It Couple, she thought dryly.  

“It actually has nothing to do with that.”

“Huh?”

Hunk only raised his hands in defense. “Look, hear me out.”

“Fine.” She muttered as she turned back to soldering. The wires won’t connect themselves, dammit.

“So about this hypothesis, well actually it’s more of a theory.” Hunk started.

“What kind of theory are we talking about?” she snipped. “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with actual math to back it up or purely hypothetical Schrodinger’s Multiverse Theory that’ll end up with me thinking you’re a lunatic?”

“Somewhere in between. Like, I kinda have some proof but at the same time you’ll probably end up debunking me.” Hunk supplied. “Also, if you wanna hear someone ramble about infinite realities you should just go ask Professor Slav.”

Katie let out a snort which soon evolved into a small chuckle.

Well.

That seemed to have cleared the air a bit. She unspooled a little more solder as she turned to Hunk.

“Okay. Go on?”

“Do you remember what I was like when I first realized I liked Shay?”

Despite the irritation that throbbed at her temples, nothing could suppress the smile that started to pull at the corners of Katie’s lips.  “Who didn’t?”

Shay was a girl from another school he met during one of Altea’s away games at the start of the school year. Hunk had gone against her brother, Rax, on the field, and had met the two again when they went to watch another one of their away games.

The connection had been instant between the Hunk and Shay when the siblings stepped down to congratulate him for their win.

Hunk had been nothing but a nervous wreck whenever she was around, and that had been a lot considering she and her brother were avid football fans. It was actually kind of entertaining to watch at first until it frustrated Katie to no end because why didn’t they just get together already, dammit.  

From her peripheral vision Katie didn’t miss the small, fond smile that started to form on Hunk’s face as well.

“You were more nervous than usual every time you saw her. Like you had irritable bowel syndrome and you were gonna throw up every five seconds.”

“But it was obvious that I liked her, right?”

“Yeah?”

“And you guys kept prodding me saying that she liked me back too.”

“No duh.” She kept her eyes trained on the circuit board as the iron and solder came into contact, watching the silver melt the loose copper wires onto the chip. After checking it if it was securely attached, Katie wiped the tip of the iron on its designated sponge by its holster. “And you dorks took forever to get together.” She looked back up at him for a brief moment. “What was up with that?”

“Well, I didn’t really believe you guys when you said she felt the same way. But then I thought,” he paused to tighten a screw a little more securely. “What if she did, though? And like, what if I actually told her how I felt and stuff like that.”

Katie furrowed a brow at him. “What exactly are you getting at?”

“I’m getting there.” He let out a small grumble as he tightened another screw. “Now where was I?”

“What if you told her how you felt.”

“Okay. So. I had a serious crush on her for like most of the first semester, yeah? Truth was I had been planning to ask her out since midterms that time.”

Her eyes widened. “But you didn’t start going out until before winter break!”

“Yeah, but do you know why?”

Katie thought for a moment.

Oh.

Wow.

She was actually coming up at a blank.

“It was because of her brother.”

Huh?

“Wait, seriously? But I thought you and Rax were already good friends way before then?”

“That was the thing!” Hunk lifted his screwdriver to emphasize his point. “I knew I liked Shay, and I also kinda felt that she liked me back too, but I also knew that I’d feel guilty if I asked her out behind her brother’s back.”

“But you didn’t ask her behind his back. You actually asked permission from Rax and everything.”

“Why else do you think I took so long? I had to gather my guts and talk to Rax like a man and that’s what took forever, Pidge.” One by one the little gears in Katie’s head started to turn, processing what exactly it was that Hunk was trying to tell her.

No.

That’s not possible.

Right?

Hunk didn’t seem to notice her inner panic. “Not seeing if I liked her or if she liked me back or waiting for the right time. I needed time to ask permission from Rax and hopefully not ruin the friendship I had with the guy just because I liked his sister.”

“Hunk…” she let out a shaky breath. “You can’t possibly mean…”

No.

There was no way.

Right?

Right?

“Tell me, Pidge. What’s the difference between me and Shiro?”

That somehow managed to break her out of her state of alarm. “Huh?”

“A lot of people say that Shiro and I are alike but I know that head of yours can pinpoint the differences between us.” He gestured with his hands as a sign to let her talk.

“Well,” she took a moment to clear her thoughts. “You both are kind and caring, that’s a given.” She paused to push her glasses up her nose. “But you’re more of a people person. While both of you are friendly, Shiro’s a little more introverted. Not as lone wolfish as Keith but still an introvert. Or ambivert, if you prefer.”

He didn’t seem satisfied with her answer. “Okay, what else?”

“There’s also a difference in how you two think on the field.” Her hands busied themselves by fiddling with the solder spool. “You learn more from experience, or at least you remember small details really well, and that’s what makes you dependable as his fullback. Shiro prefers learning from facts, or at least looking at possibilities from what he reads in between the lines.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Hunk, please tell me where this is going?”

“You said Shiro prefers learning from in between the lines rather than the whole picture. So if he were in my situation, how exactly would he deal with it?”

“Hunk,” she warned, not wanting to feed that train of thought any further.

No. No point in giving life to the hopes that grew steady in her chest.

But what if, though?

Her mind let the train of thought pass for short moment.

Shiro?

Liking her?

But not doing anything because of Matt?

She shook her head and shoved the thought as quickly as she entertained it and internally cursed how her heart leaped excitedly at the mere idea of it all.

Hunk must’ve noticed as much. “Hypothetically speaking then.”

“Fine. Hypothetically,” she started, then opted to jump back into work and repositioning the board with one hand as the other reached for the spool. “Shiro wouldn’t want to act on the feelings right away unless he were totally sure of them.”

“Okay, what else?”

Once her other hand was free she reached for the soldering iron and tried to get back to work.

“Hypothetically he would be extra cautious with everything he did around the person he liked because he wouldn’t want them to know, all the more said person’s brother.”  

“Try changing certain key factors to suit his current situation.”

“And by that you mean?”

“Hypothetically, Shiro likes you. But also, hypothetically, he feels like he’d be betraying Matt if he tried anything. So, hypothetically speaking, Shiro has been hiding feelings from you for a while but holding back for Matt’s sake.”

She should really stop flinching every time someone brought up the prospect of her and Shiro. Last time she choked on water. This time she splattered molten solder over one of her fingers.

“Ah!”

Her yelp caught the attention of the people around them, but not Professor Slav’s as he helped with another student’s designs.

The sting of the burn wasn’t anything all too painful, but it was still a jolt that went up her spine and made her receptors go haywire.

Quickly, she retracted her hand away and flexed her wrist back and forth in a fanning motion, then blowing on her burnt finger with her mouth before Katie took the moment to throw Hunk a glare.

“Dude.”

Read the first two chapters here -> x

[savrenim]

So I got a whole lot of awesome questions about ifmlam from, I’m assuming the same anon? They contain spoilers through ch 27, and thus are appearing under the cut.

So in the universe where timeline 2 happened what were Seers essentially for? Were there more wars happening due to their advantages? Did scientists follow after Franklin's footsteps and ask questions about their research to the Seer in hopes that they would say something that might confirm or further the theory? Also I couldn't help but think that the hypothetical Hamilton play in that timeline focused a lot on Alexander being the reason for Aaron's death but what about Phillip's death?

Si, so I was scroll down your page and I stumbled upon the 'timeline 2 happened in this universe' post and I was wondering what Seers are universally known to have as an ability? You said that Aaron was 'one of the more powerful Seers' which implies he's not the most powerful Seer? So I was wondering what the most powerful Seer is like and what abilities do they all share? You emphasized a lot on versatility and so I'm assuming that Seers with weaker abilities can't adapt very well?

P.2 What determines a strong Seer? Or how a Seer gets their abilities? Is it a random scramble of powers mixed together and slapped onto them by God? Or is it carefully chosen due to some higher power deciding that 'ah yes, this will surely suit them the most. let's give them the power to predict nature diasasters but not human ones', etc,etc,etc?? And since you labeled Aaron as the first Modern Seer, does that mean he's the first Seer to display his power in such a successful and powerful way?

So to preface this all. There is a…big problem to answering fully pretty much 50% of the questions asked here? And the problem is “what are Seers, what are they for, why do they exist, what are the implications of the rules of a universe that works this way” are pretty much the plot of the tentatively-planned sequel that would be set ~250-300 years in the future and deal with both society dealing with the consequences of Burr’s actions as well as with both the consequences and figuring out the rules behind what makes Seers tick.

I want to be very careful not to promise a sequel that may or may not ever exist, there are just A Lot Of Cool Ideas That I Have and stuff that I’ve outlined that, like, for now as there seems to be a fairly reasonable chance that they might get used are something that I’d rather keep close to my chest, you know? Especially because the way that they’re set well in the future and based only on the ideas of the fic and not really the actual musical, I think I’d just write as original novels, and while I’d definitely post them online for free because I think it’s really shitty to take a story that people have been excited about that’s just been online for free and then go “so if you want to know how this story continues you have to pay,” because at this point they’re novels I don’t really want to be posting novel ideas online just to have the concepts stolen and somebody else write said novels.

That being said, here are the answers to all of your questions.

What were Seers essentially for? That’s one of the things that takes a couple hundred years to figure out.

Were there more that were happening due to their advantages? In terms of history going differently? Um, yes. Very much so. Except because I am not a history major and dear gods historical speculation is hard I’m leaving a lot of that up in the wind and mostly only have been charting the progression of science and technology that’s been different because those are the things that I solidly do know inside and out because that is my actual field of study. (Well, math and physics are my actual field of study but I try to learn alongside the important discoveries, when they happened and what led to them happening, because that’s fun to know..)

Did scientists follow after Franklin's footsteps and ask questions about their research to the Seer in hopes that they would say something that might confirm or further the theory? Yes, yes they did.

Actually, the biggest thing that Burr contributed to any timeline so far follows from round 2/the first repeat that is the offhand comment that Aaron Burr makes when Franklin tries to explain the light particle vs wave argument and Burr throws his hands in the air and goes “can’t there be both.” Pretty much the biggest revolution in science and technology in our world came at the cusp of the 20th century in this order: Maxwell figures out the equations for E&M waves and it implies that the speed of light is constant —> Einstein does relativity; at the same time, light=particle vs light=wave theories are having trouble explaining all phenomenon and there are things like the blackbody radiation problem, to which Planck figures out that if you restrict energy levels to specific quantities, it gets solved. —> Einstein also works off of this and quantum physics is born. All of this is helping create models of the atom and tests and being done and Einstein from general relativity figures out the mass and energy are basically the same, which leads eventually to the nuclear bomb being developed.

Now, take into account that “light being both particle and wave” plays massively into quantum stuff because electrons let out light when going down from energy levels and what-not, as well as it would potentially speed up the discovery of Maxwell’s equations and just all of this theory that led to the creation of the nuclear bomb. Possibly by the time WWI rolled along, which, like. Just would vastly reshape pretty much the entire political map and now can you see why I really, really, really hate doing historical speculation it is freaking CHAOS to track all of the things and come up with how the hell politics would have gone just going forward a century.

Also I couldn't help but think that the hypothetical Hamilton play in that timeline focused a lot on Alexander being the reason for Aaron's death but what about Phillip's death? I actually wrote a post about this! http://savrenim.tumblr.com/post/154913162666/wheeee-mkay-latest-anon-so-i-am-paranoid-about

Si, so I was scroll down your page and I stumbled upon the 'timeline 2 happened in this universe' post and I was wondering what Seers are universally known to have as an ability? That’s one of the things that takes a couple hundred years to figure out. Actually, that’s pretty much the single fact that all other things revolve around.

You said that Aaron was 'one of the more powerful Seers' which implies he's not the most powerful Seer? “Powerful” in this context means “how much did they affect global politics/ how much did their abilities allow them to affect global politics.” It also means “to what degree are their abilities directly testable and consistent.” Burr has an incredibly specific and consistent power, he is the first person that the world was able to prove was a Seer since Joan of Arc, and pretty much the entire fic is about look how much Aaron Burr can affect American and global politics, so that one speaks for itself.

So I was wondering what the most powerful Seer is like and what abilities do they all share? You emphasized a lot on versatility and so I'm assuming that Seers with weaker abilities can't adapt very well? Oh god so I mostly haven’t decided what the most powerful Seer was like, simply because there is a heck of a lot of non-Western culture that I am not that familiar with and Seers have popped up around the world. I kind of wanted to leave this open-ended so that people could pick their favorite historical figures from their own cultures or cultures that they love and have studied, and headcanon them as Seers in this world, and who am I to tell you that they weren’t.

(For anyone doing this, the single rule is that there is only one and always one Seer alive on the planet at any given time. Otherwise, headcanon away.)

Seers with weaker abilities tend to never be identified, or to be thought of as crazy and depending on their location and the people around them, either live a quiet life as the local crazy person or are thrown into a madhouse. It really sucks.

What determines a strong Seer? Or how a Seer gets their abilities? So there is the single overarching ability that all Seers have and that links all Seers, which is not figured out for a couple hundred years and is what the sequels are about. How the Seer gets the abilities that they naturally manifest are pretty much “they express themselves in whatever way best suits the Seer’s psychology and personality.” Hence why there are a lot of religious Seers in the Western world in the last couple of centuries (mostly John Calvin and his whole predestination thing, and Joan of Arc and her whole visions of angels telling her about battles thing.)

Is it a random scramble of powers mixed together and slapped onto them by God? Or is it carefully chosen due to some higher power deciding that 'ah yes, this will surely suit them the most. let's give them the power to predict nature disasters but not human ones', etc,etc,etc?? There is no evidence in the universe as of the time of ifmlam or the sequels to suggest the existence of a God or higher power. There is also no evidence against the existence of a God or higher power. The fact that Seers exist and what they see can be somewhat explained by science in this universe, and eventually is. Whether or not people still choose to believe in things, and whether or not those things are true, is entirely up in the air, much as I at least personally consider it to be in the real world.

And since you labeled Aaron as the first Modern Seer, does that mean he's the first Seer to display his power in such a successful and powerful way? Nah, first Modern Seer very specifically refers to the fact that he is the first post-Enlightenment (or at least co-current with the Enlightenment) Seer and thus pretty much the first real proof at the same time that (Western) science is rapidly advancing that this is actually a thing to consider in terms of trying to map out how the universe works, as well as pretty much the first Seer that anyone ever got to ask questions of “how in the world does this work” to.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

TWO KINDS OF MY TODO LIST OF WEB 2

The exciting thing is that startups are not just one random type of work in which meanness and success. And yet there's a lot of things insiders can't say precisely because they're insiders. Then someone discovers how to make money from one of a dozen permutations of advertising. Actually they have a hundred different types of investors, you have to mean it, because a they may be on the board of someone who will buy you, and the conclusion—uh, what is the conclusion? I'm going to start a startup? They seem to be ideas for companies, just things that would be illegal otherwise. Those will on average be better investors. But they might as well be flipping coins. But what if you haven't raised as much as Bill Gates who achieve nothing. Arguably pastoralism transformed a luxury into a commodity. But elegance is not an end in itself.1

If you want to win through better technology. And it would be if they did. When you hear such labels being used, ask why.2 I'll try to give the other side of this phenomenon, where the center of gravity had shifted by then that one found people confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are boring the paragraphs you dread reading; try to tell the others, is here to stay. They buy a lot of them. Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business background, may be satisfied with a demo and a verbal description of what you plan to cover at the bottom and taxes at the top. The cubicles were full of programmers writing code, product managers thinking about feature lists and ship dates, support people yes, there does seem to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle. To the founders, living dead sounds harsh.3 Practically every successful company has at least two. But it's not. It's easy.

Saying initially that you're trying to decide whether to meet with you. Every couple weeks I would take a book to answer that.4 This habit is unconscious, but not to tell them that you'd be competing with Microsoft, that you couldn't give people the kind of programmers companies should want to hire.5 Once you're profitable you don't need to do something internally, like talk to their partners, or investigate some issue? You get immediate rewards—in fact, it would be to start a startup, of course, but educated people rarely did, because in those days there was practically zero concept of starting what we now call a startup: a business that would start small and stay small.6 When an investor tells you I want to be spending my time? Rockefeller said in 1880, The day of combination is here to stay. Does your product use XML?

One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work for him unless he is super convincing.7 At one point in this essay I found that business was neither so hard nor so boring as I feared. Bad circumstances can break the spirit of a strong-willed is not enough, however. That is the future of web startups. And in most of them meanness was not a particularly stupid one.8 Empirically, the way to have good software. The way to get startup ideas is to look at. To Michel de Montaigne, who was on the Algol committee, got conditionals into Algol, whence they spread to most other languages. This is an open problem in the sense that I have wondered about it for years and still don't know the answer. There's a whole essay's worth of surprises there for sure.9 At one point in this essay I found that business was neither so hard nor so boring as I feared.

Which means technology will evolve faster. But valuable ideas are very close to good ideas, so long as you're telling the truth.10 This seems backward. What's missing? But you don't need investors' money. People in past times were much like us. When I was a kid, I used to read a few philosophy books.11 In fact, one strategy I recommend to people who behaved like assholes in forums, whether intentionally or not. Why didn't better content cost more? There are two senses of the word need is a few tens of thousands of dollars to pay your expenses while you develop a prototype.12 For a lot of other companies using Lisp.

One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work there. Most rich people are looking for the next Larry and Sergey. Clearly at some point in their childhood. Economically, it decreased variation in income.13 You can ask it of the most successful people I know are mean. Another way to figure out and explain exactly what you disagree with. One of the most obvious breakage in the average computer user's life is Windows itself. Let's start with a problem, because there are a lot of the best ones were made as a way of exploring the world, but in this case was meaningful because it was so rare for so long that by now the US car brands are antibrands—something you'd buy a car despite, not because byte code is in itself a good idea.14

Notes

Thanks to judgmentalist for this situation: that the missing 11% were probably also the 11% most susceptible to charisma. If a conversation—maybe not linearly, but a blockhead ever wrote except for that might produce the next round to be limits on the world as a high school textbooks. Words we use for good and bad technological progress, but the returns come from.

Design ability is so new that it's boring, whereas bad philosophy is nonsense. Once the playing field is leveler politically, we'll see economic inequality, but not the distinction between the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and wisdom we have to. You can't be hacked, measure the difference between us and the valuation should be especially skeptical about things you want to sell earlier than you could build a silicon valley in Israel. If you were able to respond with extreme countermeasures.

How could these people. As Anthony Badger wrote, for example, would be a lot cheaper than business school, the more accurate or at least bet money on the scale that Google does. And I'm sure for every startup founder could pull the same time.

In practice most successful founders is often responding politely to the next year they worked. Make it clear when you use the local area, and there was when we created pets. Ii. Apparently the mall was not in the cover.

Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college or what grades you got in them to be a variant of the latter case, 20th century was also obvious to us that we didn't do. They can lead to distractions even more vice versa: the company. Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2006. There will be coordinating efforts among partners.

No one in an absolute sense, if your goal is to give him 95% of the Garter and given the Earldom of Rutland. Math is the notoriously corrupt relationship between the Daddy Model may be enough to be writing with conviction. Rice and beans are a better predictor of low quality though. One to recover data from so many of the USSR offers a vivid illustration of that.

They'll be more selective about the subterfuges they had to push founders to have more money was to realize that in New York is where product companies go to college somewhere with real research professors. Common Lisp, because investors don't like. The Department of English Studies.

Which in turn the most famous example.

Hypothesis: A company will be pressuring you to two more investors.

While Jessica didn't ask many questions, they were, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-sectarian schools. Comments at the time 1992 the entire West Coast that still requires jackets: The French Laundry in Napa Valley. Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this situation: that the valuation at the data, it's because of the most useless investors are also several you can't avoid doing sales by hiring someone to do wrong and hard to pick the former depends a lot is premature scaling—founders take a conscious effort. A Plan for Spam.

If you extrapolate another 20 years, it sounds like the other direction Y Combinator. Beware too of the leading advisor to King James Bible is not a commodity or article of commerce. It's a lot better to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's boring, we could just multiply 101 by 50 to get only in startups.

Dropbox, or Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia needed Airbnb? But the margins are greater on products. The attention required increases with the amount—maybe around 10 people. And maybe we should have become direct marketers.

99 2,000 per month. If you want to lead.

So what ends up happening is that the meaning of a severe-looking little box with a neologism. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, like warehouses. A related trick is to say, good deals.

[slxivrweb-blog]

Little Silver Web Intro

1. Name: I am Dani Blaze Parker, but I prefer Blaze.

2. Age: 19 years!

3. Birthday: February 14.

4. General physical description: Green eyes, long, wavy, dark red/ brown hair, pale skin, 5’2, 98lbs.

5. Hometown: New York, New York

6. Type of home/ neighborhood: A decent sized apartment, with multiple rooms and nice neighbors.

7. Father’s name, background, and occupation: Peter Parker, Photographer

8. Mother’s name, background, and occupation: MaryJane, Actress

9. Brothers and sisters: Half Twin Elise Parker

10. Position in family: Youngest child

11.Other close relatives:  Grandfather George Stacy, and Grandmother May

12. Family relationships: Father-Peter Parker, Birth mother- MaryJane Parker, Step mother- Gwen Parker, and half twin sister (Gwen and Peter’s daughter) Elise Blair Parker, she likes Blair though.

13 Special friends: Just my twin :)

14. Enemies: Nope

15. Influential person or event: My father is very influential. Especially when I see how much he has helped people with his abilities. Momma Stacy has done stuff like that too, but she isn’t as broadcasted. Plus Dad worked with the Avengers!! I hope to help like Dad!!

16. Grade in school: Fourth year in college

17. Attitude toward school: I try my absolute best at it, even though I hate math and suck at it.

18. Grades: Mostly A’s, but like I’ve said, I’m horrible at math C at the least, but I struggle to make it a B :(

19. Favorite pastimes: Singing to my sister Blair, Drawing on my Cintiq, watching anime with my sister, listening to KPOP-- mainly stuff from 20 years ago (even though my family doesn’t understand), and gaming with my sister!

20. Hobbies (music/art/reading material): Drawing, and playing piano helps with my emotions, so this is mostly what I do. I game when I’m really mad a lot too.

21. Favorite sports: Most people don’t consider this a sport, but Figure Skating! It looks so beautiful to me! It might also be because I did ballet when I was younger, so this kind of stuff appeals to me!

22. Favorite foods: Sushi, Korean BBQ, Mac'n'cheese, and Lasagna

23. Dress style: I cover myself up a lot, but when I’m feeling really good I wear just a tee-shirt and jeans >:D.

24. Religion: I didn’t grow up with a religion based family.

25. Attitude toward religion: People should do what they want, pray to who they want, and love who they want. Just don’t bring each other down, because whats the point then -_--(‘ - ‘ )--_-

26. Relationship with boys: I don’t know.. Mutual?

27. Relationship with girls: Good I guess, because my sister is a girl and I love my sister ^^.

28. Leader or follower: I always followed my sister around the house, so follower?

29. Strongest positive personality trait: Caring for anyone

30. Strongest negative personality trait: I’m dumb? I get that a lot, and I strongly agree.

31. Sense of humor: Um, I laugh when my dad makes fun of me and says “Hi hungry!” when I tell him when I am hungry.

32. Temper: I do have a temper, but I never show it because I don’t want to hurt anyone, so I take my frustration out with music, art, and gaming.

33. Consideration for others: I’d like to think that I care for other people more, but I know I can be selfish a lot so I don’t know?

34. How other people see him/her: I think people see me has a dumb version of Einstein, wannabe good at math, and freakish hair.

35. Opinion of him/herself: I try my very best everyday, but I never feel like it is enough, I always feel like I could be doing more.

36. Other traits, especially those to be brought out in story: I let others get the best of me to avoid conflict (pushover), I am in love with animals too!

37. Ambitions: I want to do everything.

38. Philosophy of life: It’s never ending at first, but as time passes your life seems to be ending soon; before I feel rushed with the end, I want to continue to accomplish the very beginning, and I hope to never feel overwhelmed by any of this.

39. Most important thing to know about character: Me and Blair are half twins because Elise is Gwen and Peter’s daughter, and I am MaryJane and Peter’s child.. Dad impregnated both of our moms on the same day...

40. Will readers like or dislike this character, and why? I think readers will end up liking Dani Blaze Parker, although her ditsy side can be an annoyance, she is an overall goodness to this world and I hope people will see her this way as well.

[jubilentjarofjam-blog]

Searching for Passion

Preface: I didn’t really think I would write this much. This is really more of a journal entry than a coherent internet post. I just think it’s nice to know that this is out there for someone else to read, should they please. Enjoy my thoughts.

I spent a lot of time last semester trying to find out what my “passion” was. Here I am after working so hard in high school to be in the engineering program, but I can’t really motivate myself to work that hard right now. I wasn’t not taking any science classes last semester, which is what really interests me. And while I love science and math, my engineering design classes have showed me that I really hate design. There’s no sureness about anything. You just make up some BS about why the customer needs this or that. I want to solve unsolved problems with with physics, calculus, and maybe some good old algorithms. I don’t want to make an app look all fancy or figure out how to optimize your workflow.

I don’t think changing my major to physics is the right path. The hard science will in fact come in during the later half of my degree, but God does all this BS suck. Speaking of majoring in physics, I do think doing science research would be amazing. I admire the greats like Einstein and Feynman, but I don’t want to be stuck doing purely theoretical stuff just yet. I want go out and push the limits of human technology. I have a real interest in space travel. (A YouTuber, Exurb1a, has really put into words what I value. He talks about science, feelings, and the fate of humanity.) Maybe after we get to Mars I’ll reside back to the lab. Then I might like to go into teaching to finish out my career. That might be quite nice. I think that’s getting real close to where my passions lie. Wow. Let’s continue.

I’ve also come to realize that making my parents proud has become quite important to me. They’ve worked so, so hard to get me here. They just want to see me succeed. I remember a moment last year, at my grandma’s funeral. She was my dad’s mom. I didn’t really know this grandma too well, so I wasn’t too teary. But then my dad stood up to speak. He told me before hand that he always thought it was a shame how no one hardly ever stood up to say anything at funerals, so he was going to make an effort. He told a story about how his mom would always drive him and brother over this bump in the road and they would scream “again, again!” and his mom would keep turning around over and over. I always knew my parents grew up poor, but had no idea how hard my dad had it until this funeral. I want my parents to know that they raised an amazing child. I want them to know that all of the hard work and suffering they and their parents went through resulted in a better future. I want them to be proud.

Thinking about how much video games were such a huge part of my childhood made me start to remember all the things I did besides video games. I got so hung up on video games that last semester I was convinced for a couple weeks that I needed to pursue a career that involved them. I kept searching within myself for a “passion,” but video games were the only thing other than physics that I really lost myself in. Before adolescence, though, my sights were on other things. I had a very active imagination as a child. Me and my friends would pretend to have great battles against vast armies and wield many powers. My mind was preoccupied not with what the world was, but what it could be. What if real life was like Lord of the Rings with goblins and dwarves? What if I could use the force like Luke Skywalker? What if I could build a lightsaber?

I was very interested in building things as a child. I was obsessed with making booby traps at one point. I liked Legos and was stereo-typically obsessed with minecraft at age 12. Halo Reach Forge preoccupied me for many hours. All these things led me to believe that I was destined to be an engineer. All the signs were there: Making things, enjoyed science, good at math. What went wrong? In high school I delved more into making things, but ha really because I was forcing myself. I wanted to be the smart tinkering kid in all the movies that makes lasers and drones. The fact of the matter was, I just didn’t like it that much.

I think I have now come to realize that it’s not tinkering or even making things that excites me, it’s exploration. What will happen if I do this? My senior year of high school, I finally had one project that excited me quite a bit. I had a bunch of electronics that got because I wanted to look smart. I decided I would put them to use to explore something I actually did enjoy: physics. I spent a lot of time on physics my junior and senior year. It was a nice escape, made me feel productive and smart, and I eventually realized that I quite enjoyed. It revived that curiosity and wonder from my childhood. SpaceTime can bend! Anyways, I decided I would use my kinematics prowess and limited knowledge of electronics to make a device that would shoot various projectiles at various angles and then point a laser where the object would land. I did the math, put the equations into python for the python microcontroller I had, and hot glued a laser pointer to a servo. It didn’t end up working because the servo wasn’t nearly precise enough, but that was the most fun I had building something since I was like 8.

I want to use science and technology to do really amazing things. I just have to find the right way to do so. I need to find the right company to work for. I don’t want to do human-centered design. I want to solve problems that involve physics. I want to work at a place like SpaceX. I want to dream big. I don’t know if I can get there, but aiming for anything else just doesn’t drive me. I want my parents to see a rocket I helped make fly to Mars. I’m tired of being depressed and anxious. I want to want something, I think this is it.

I’m going to write those lab reports I didn’t write and ask for late credit. I’m going to study for my circuits exam. I’m going to ace my physics class. I’m going to explore the universe in the name of my 8 year old self, my parents, and all those who want to dream.

[thousandmaths]

How Quantum Physics Democratized Music

This was a public lecture* given by Michael Berry. I went almost entirely on accident: somebody just put up a large-postcard-sized advertisement for it on the math department wall, and I just happened to notice it on the day it was happening.

I was confused by the clickbait title and I had to see it for myself. I’m glad I did. This post is fairly long, although hopefully not half as dense as the usual fare here.

------

The title is indeed clickbait, and like all clickbait it has some element of truth to it. Moreover, he was aware that it was clickbait, and so he wasted no time in explaining himself: 

In 1982 the CD player was invented, which Berry cites as a “democratization of music”— more on that later.

In 1958 the laser was invented. Later, this would be used to make lightweight information-storage mechanisms, which in turn make CDs readable. This is critically important for the improved portability of the device (and, yes; improved. Walkmans existed— more on that later, too.)

In 1917, Einstein published a paper on “stimulated emission”, a previously unknown type of photon-electron interaction, determined from what Wikipedia calls the “old quantum theory”.

Hence, the answer to the question “How did quantum physics democratize music?” is “Through a complex process by which humanity used Einstein’s theoretical discovery of subatomic particle interactions to create a CD player” (a sentence which echoes this post).

At this point, Berry starts to tip his hand a little bit as he starts packing a healthy amount of nuance into the story he has just constructed. It begins with a joke: “A rhetorical sin, which I am not guilty of here, is ‘NothingBut-ery’”. By which he means that, of course, quantum physicsts were not remotely close to the only people whose contributions culminated in the CD player and the subsequent democratization of music.

Ah yes, there’s that phrase again. In what sense is the CD player supposed to represent a democratization of music? He is careful to note, before starting in on this, that it is not that the technology itself is suited to the sociological change that it inspired. A piece of technology, observed in a vacuum, is value-neutral; it’s the use of that technology— and hence, in particular, the marketing— which gives it meaning.

This disclaimer aside, he gives an analogy: photography. The history behind obtaining faithful images of some location has a long history. Yet the 1839 announcements of Daguerre’s daguerreotype and Talbot’s negative are often cited as the “invention of photography”. To Berry, this is because they were the first people who were able to mass-produce these images, and this led to something of a democratization: before these inventions, the most convenient way to see some French garden, say, was to go to France. But now, at least theoretically, you could have a single person go to France, and share their experience— not just in writing, but in faithful visuals— to a very large number of people.

Similarly, Berry argues that the CD player did this for music. Again, the history is complicated. The gramophone is usually considered the first audio playback device, since Edison’s phonograph was not reusable. But what the CD player was that the gramophone was not (nor was the record players that succeeded it) is portable. Then came radio: radios were portable, but the CD player was again different in a qualitative way: you can choose the music you listen to on a CD player. (Of course you can change stations, so there was some personal control, but one must admit that this is still considerably less versatile than you’d hope.) And I promised I would say something about the Walkman, which used cassette tapes. Again, you have some degree of control here, but moving around on a cassette tape is not the easiest thing, and without considerable conscious attention your best bet was just to listen to the tape start to finish. With CD players, you had not only album-level control, but even song-level control (not to mention the improved fidelity, of course).

In this sense, the CD player represents a democratization of music: you can now, theoretically, listen to any sound you could afford to obtain a CD of, at any time you were willing to put headphones on.

------

The next level of qualification Berry makes to the titular story begins with a quote from one of his students on an end-of-course evaluation. Although generally satisfied with the course, he wasn’t happy with how sparse the applications were, because, after all, “even if we didn’t understand [quantum physics], this stuff would still happen anyway.”

After the initial emotional response subsided, he realized that the remark was actually quite insightful, and sent it to his friends in the philosophy department. They apparently agreed; he says that they talked about it for several weeks.

Of course, the student is right. As a way of demonstrating this, he tells a story. Although obviously tangential, it was definitely my favorite part of the talk.

Why is gold gold? You know, why does the metal have the color that it has?

The question is not arbitrary, but the theoretical underpinnings of the problem are a “simple” application of deep tools. And it’s not even some weird steel alloy thing: gold is on the periodic table. So just take the relevant properties of the element, write down the relevant Schrödinger equation for figuring out which wavelengths are reflected, and solve it, badda-bing-badda-boom. 

Cue chuckles/eyerolls from anyone who has ever, ever tried to “solve the relevant Schrödinger equation” for... pretty much any problem.

For those of you not in the above category: doing such a thing is functionally impossible. To take it from “functionally impossible” to just “unlikely”, you have to make a ton of (reasonable) simplifying assumptions. And even then, you’re not going to do this thing on the back of an envelope over a cup of coffee; this computation is going to take your local supercomputer a day or two to run.

But some people in 1990 were able to simplify the problem in just the right way to get an answer from their computers, and when they went to visualize the output of the program, they discovered that the color of gold was...

Silver.

Obviously something went wrong.

What went wrong is that the Schrödinger equation is not the right tool for the job. The thing is, gold is heavy. Like, really heavy. In fact, it is so heavy that its electrons are moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and that means our old friend Einstein has something to say about relativity. The Schrödinger equation doesn’t, and so we need to throw it out in favor of its relativistic cousin, the Dirac equation. And they did this, and they ran the computations, and indeed you get the desired golden hue.

A semi-related anecdote: these sorts of relativistic effects are also largely responsible for typical car batteries. More specifically, in a common lead-acid battery, 80% of the voltage that you get from lead-acid batteries comes from relativistic effects. Conversely, tin-acid batteries aren’t a thing (despite tin being chemically similar to lead) because tin is too light and therefore doesn’t enjoy the extra voltage (at least, not in an appreciable amount).

------

Getting back to the student’s concern:

The usual thing that people cite when they want to convince you that relativity is useful is the essential role that it plays in GPS— I am old enough that when first heard people mention this as an application, it didn’t feel particularly relatable, but that objection no longer exists now that smartphones are pretty widespread.

However, it seems like there is a qualitative difference between relativity’s role in GPS as opposed to the color of gold or the workings of lead-acid batteries. And this is what the student was getting at; presumably they wanted to see more of the former type. Certainly physics in general is quite interested in things of the latter type— understanding things that happen naturally, without regard to whether their happening depends on our understanding. And I am no physicist (but I play one on the internet?), but I suspect that for most physicists, even those who are more experimental, the latter type seems to be what they’d care about more? 

[ Disclaimer: it is certainly what I care about more as a mathematician, in case you couldn’t tell by the ~6 paragraphs on gold and lead and the 1 on GPS. ]

------

I found the next part of the talk rather meandering and hard to follow, but fortunately he concluded his presentation with a discussion of prime numbers**. If you hear or read enough pop-math accounts of the Riemann hypothesis, a phrase you will undoubtedly come across is “the music of the primes”; it is the name of a rather famous book, and seems to stem from a quote of Enrico Bombieri:

To me, that the distribution of prime numbers can be so accurately represented in a harmonic analysis is absolutely amazing and incredibly beautiful. It tells of an arcane music and a secret harmony composed by the prime numbers.

Well, you hear this phrase enough, and you start to say ‘geez, what do these things sound like, anyway?’. And if you decide to start looking around the internet for answers to that question, you’ll discover a whole lot of nothing.

Probably quite a few people have done analyses. But if they’re anything like what Berry played for us: the reason you can’t find anything with a casual google search is that it sounds exactly like white noise. (To be clear, what I’m talking about is something like the Fourier coefficients of the characteristic function of the primes, not, e.g. this which is really about prime gaps)

However, you can do something with the zeta function and spectra (here’s where I have to mumble because my notes aren’t good enough to form a sentence), and you can produce the sound of that. It’s not what I’d call ‘music’ but it definitely has a notable sound.

Of course, this “earmaths” is just a toy for now, but we’ve had a lot of success with generating ideas in some areas of math by turning it into pictures. So it seems logical that we might at least try to get some of those other senses involved.

------

[ I won’t make another entire section on the Q&A, but it was pretty amusing: for instance, one person asked him to talk more about Theory of Everything. His answer was nice and diplomatic, with the obligatory comment that string theory is currently a mathematical theory, not a scientific theory. He was rather more direct when talking about the interaction between physics and philosophy (also STEM with the arts): he found it worthwhile to have friends in those disciplines, but “I’ve never found that talking with philosophers has helped me to do science... that’s not the point.” ]

[ * If you’re not neck-deep in academia, the phrase “public lecture” may not mean anything in particular to you. What it means to me is: the presenter is likely senior or a leader of their field— and often both— and the work is supposed to be unusually nontechnical. There’s a bit of self-selection bias here: public lectures are not easy to write, much less to deliver. So, take the kind of people who are invited to give a public lecture, and intersect with the kind of people who wants to give a public lecture... and perhaps you start to see why my default assumption is that these talks are going to be pretty good. ]

[ ** Because chaos theory, apparently. He did not endeavor to explain the connection until the Q&A— and the resulting explanation convinced me that the omission was wise. However, in my travels around the internet I did discover this explanation:

If you choose a number n and ask how many prime numbers there are less than $n$ it turns out that the answer closely approximates the formula: $n/\log n$. The formula is not exact, though: sometimes it is a little high and sometimes it is a little low. Riemann looked at these deviations and saw that they contained periodicities. Berry likens these to musical harmonics: “The question is what are the harmonics in the music of the primes? Amazingly, these harmonics or magic numbers behave exactly like the energy levels in quantum systems that classically would be chaotic.”

This correspondence emerges from statistical correlations between the spacing of the Riemann numbers and the spacing of the energy levels. Berry and his collaborator Jon Keating used them to show how techniques in number theory can be applied to problems in quantum chaos and vice versa. In itself such a connection is very tantalising. Although sometimes described as the Queen of mathematics, number theory is often thought of as pretty useless, so this deep connection with physics is quite astonishing. 

Berry is also convinced that there must be a particular chaotic system which when quantised would have energy levels that exactly duplicate the Riemann numbers. "Finding this system could be the discovery of the century," he says. it would become a model system for describing chaotic systems in the same way that the simple harmonic oscillator is used as a model for all kinds of complicated oscillators. It could play a fundamental role in describing all kinds of chaos. The search for this model system could be the holy grail of chaos... [We] cannot be sure of its properties, but Berry believes the system is likely to be rather simple, and expects it to lead to totally new physics. It is a tantalising thought. 

quoted from Julian Brown’s 1996 piece “Where Two Worlds Meet”. ]

[marfanclub]

4/27 - Back-propagation

Reading : Some pitifully small amount of “New Proofs for the Existence of God” by Robert J. Spitzer. 

I picked up this book because I’m so sick of the cult of atheism that permeates the culture of science these days. Every one from Hip Cool Black Science Guy (who’s kid actually went to my high school. Travis Tyson at Stuyvesant HS, look him up. I kicked his ass in Smash Bros. all the time. He mained Falcon) to professional sophist Bill Nye (who I hated way before it was cool, btw - I’ve always been wary of pop science figures) will religiously preach the fallaciousness of religious preaching. It’s fucking annoying. From what I know, every scientific community from the ancient Greeks up to the explosion of revolutionary physicists and mathematicians in the 20th Century thought about the grand philosophical importance of their findings, or at least held personally theistic views (I think Einstein was agnostic, but he heavily criticized atheists). But now, it’s considered totally cool and radical and hip and unique and intellectual to deny the existence of God and live hedonistically and le Reddit “Rick and Morty” nihilism nothing matters look at me I think I understand Nietzche. And there’s no discussion or debate as to how science can actually contribute to a theist’s belief system, or even in which areas scientism could not adequately describe all Universal truths, so people just go around thinking science is the new religion and science is orthogonal to any theism. And I have no idea why either of those things have to be true. P.S.: Trump needs to deport anyone and everyone who watches “Rick and Morty”. 

My only prescient issue with this book is that it offers evidence for various philosophical proofs for the existence of a higher Being using modern concepts of physics. I don’t know anything about the modern concepts of physics, so I can’t really fact-check or determine whether Dr. Spitzer is misusing or misinterpreting the conclusions of modern physics. Like, when a wannabe philosopher tries to use Gödel’s incompleteness theorems to assert the lack of existence of any real truth, I know that they’ve completely misunderstood Gödel’s conclusions and totally misapplied them in an area where the original findings weren’t mean to be applied and the invocation makes absolutely no sense. But if Dr. Spitzer wanted to use recent findings in cosmology to assert the existence of God, I wouldn’t be able to quickly spot and fact check whether those interpretations are valid or not. And the book isn’t too popular or something, because there is no online discussion about the findings of the book I can go and check up on. I’m just gonna have to trust that Dr. Spitzer has the credentials and the ethical principles not to abuse my lack of knowledge. 

Math : Read up on Shor’s algorithm. I still have no fucking clue how Quantum fourier transforms work on any level deeper than “amplify the correct answers; incorrect answers destruct their amplitude”.  And what the fuck is a complex root of unity? I guess I have to delve more into analysis before I jump back into quantum information theory, even though I am antsy about learning more about that. But in order to learn complex analysis I think I have to learn real analysis first, and in order to do that I have to lay the foundation for my mathematical maturity. So, until I finish it, this section of the blog will be necessarily devoted to reading through “An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning” by Peter Eccles. I already know a lot of the elementary set theory stuff in the book so it should be a breeze. 

Social media : A MISERABLE fucking day today. Like, 4 hours or something. I always do this on Thursdays because I don’t have any class Friday. And this week especially has been bad because I’ve been going through a major depressive period where I just totally feel suicidal and completely out of it. Holy shit. This has to stop. Now that I’m documenting it on the Internet, I’m fucking ashamed of myself and it WILL stop. 

Exercise :  3x5 Squats : Bar + 20 lb on each side 

1x5 Bench Press : Bar + 10 lb on each side

2x5 Bench Press : Bar + 12.5 lb on each side

1x5 Bench Press : Bar + 15 lb on each side 

2x5 Deadlift : Bar + 17.5 lb on each side

2x5 Dips  (w/ 30-lb aid because Im a weak noodle fuck)

2x5 Leg Press : 160 lb 

A good day, I guess. I’m a little sore but I feel like I should be more sore. I was pushing myself, though. I think I’ll stick to 2x5 Bench Press at 15, 1x5 at 12.5, because I really don’t think I can handle the full 3x5 at 15 on both sides just yet, as sad as that sounds. I hate bein’ a noodle. As for the leg presses, I know it’s bad to use the machine memes, but I felt like the squats were putting a lot of strain on my back but not enough strain on my legs, so I went and supplemented the squats a bit. Plus I like being in the gym longer even if it’s just fucking around because it makes me feel productive and it very briefly relieves me of the knot in my stomach. 

Caloric intake : 

2 Au Bon Pain blueberry muffins - 950 Calories

1 Domino’s cheese pizza slice - 210 Calories

1 Chipotle burrito bowl with double meat and guac - 1000 calories 

1 cup steel cut oatmeal - 680 calories

2 cups milk - 300 calories

1 spoon honey - 60 calories

Total : 3200 Calories

I was totally wrong about my BMR the other day. Turns out it’s closer to 1800 Calories. Which means I actually gained 4/15 lb the other day. Close to 1/3rd. Which is a little more than I’d like. 

If my BMR is actually 1800 Calories, and I burned, say, 200 Calories walking and 50 Calories existing (the other functions that my body does when it’s not in rest that burns calories that BMR doesn’t account for), and about 300 Calories in the gym, then my body consumed about 2350 Calories. My excess was 850 Calories, or about 17/60 Calories. Between yesterday and today, I gained close to .55 lb. Since I only want to gain 1.5 lbs a week (i.e. only about .43 lb every two days), I should offset the extra gain tomorrow by only consuming to an excess of ~.1 lb, or an extra 300 Calories. Tomorrow’s not an exercise day, and I’m spending it inside the house, so I expect to use up no more than, say, 1900 Calories. So I should eat about 2200-2250 Calories tomorrow. 

Body pictures : 

Holy fuck I look like I belong in Auschwitz. And look at those fucking hips! I could be an Arab belly dancer! This is the most embarrassing feminine shit ever. Honestly, the only reason I let myself go on Tinder dates anymore is because I have a friend who has a body just about as noodle-y/feminine as mine, except with an uglier face and about 5-6 less inches of height. And he’s the most sexually active friend I have. If he gets to fuck, so do I. 

What time I slept :

Felt really depressed around 1 AM, spent a couple of hours watching KSTV and fucking around and deliberating whether I should drink myself sick. Decided not to and passed out at 4 AM. I’m already too burnt out on self-loathing to criticize myself for this. But I know it has to stop now that I’m writing about it.

General mood :

Awful, duh. At least I finally fapped. Got my sex drive back. Tinder date lined up for next week. 

[impatient14]

The Space-Time Continuum In BBC’s Sherlock

Disclaimer: The math and science of this post could get complicated for some, but it is REALLY important if you want to grasp what I think is happening on the show right now. I am going to try to explain things the best way I know how, but, if you have questions or want me to break it down further, my inbox is always open.

Let me start by giving you a little hook to bait you into reading some seriously complex stuff:

In 1895, H.G. Wells in his novel, The Time Machine, wrote, “There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it”. He added, “Scientific people…know very well that Time is only a kind of Space” (x) 

So in a book published in our favorite year, written by a man who was reportedly very sexually progressive and extremely unsatisfied by the numerous female partners he accumulated over his years (x), we have the idea that time, something the Sherlock fandom has been obsessing over the last several weeks (years), is only a kind of space…

Interesting.

Get your pencils and notebooks out, because we are going back to school under the cut.

Before I start I want to give you a little background about why I started looking into this. It was because of this:

I did a short meta about this picture called TRF is a Red Herring,  which I still stand by, but the matrix that represents Minkoswki’s Metric, or the matrix that represents the Space-Time Continuum, got me thinking. It is possible that the entire notebook is a red herring, but it is possible that only pieces of it are, or everything but one thing is. 

With how hard we’ve been speculating about time, I felt this clue was worth a closer look, given it is one of the only pieces of evidence given to us about time.

So without further ado, a brief introduction to The Space-Time Continuum.

The Space- Time Continuum (theorized by Hermann Minkoswki) is the idea that time and space exist in a four dimensional model, where space takes up three of the dimensions (x, y, & z) and time takes up the fourth (t). It is extremely difficult to visualize four dimensions, especially when accounting for motion of an object. As an example, imagine bouncing a ball down the t (time) axis. You wouldn’t say the ball has a position of (x,y, z) at this time (t), you’d say the ball exists at (x,y,z,t). At any given point, you could see the ball bounce along x, y, or z (space) axis, but the trajectory of the ball is at a curve, it exists all at once in space-time. 

If the table is the time axis (t), and each position of the ball is another variable in space (x,y,z) , we wouldn’t separate the time from space because they exist all together in one space-time. 

When you add in an observer to the space-time continuum, the model starts to look something like this:

From the prospective of the observer (which is important for our application to Sherlock), we have a subdivision of the space-time continuum which breaks an event into four disjointed sets. The Light cone, The Absolute Future, The Absolute Past, and Elsewhere (Sard. R.D).

The light cone is the most complicated thing that I’ll need to explain, but unfortunately it is also the most important. So, take each thing slowly, digest it, then move on. I will have to work up to the definition of Light Cone through other definitions. 

First, A Vector. A vector is a quantity that has both direction and magnitude (meaning an object that has mathematical size, i.e. it’s a number), helpful in determining the position of one point in space relative to another. So basically (for our purposes), a vector is the numerical sum of the physical position of a particular event, in relation to other events, as they occur in the same space. 

A Null Vector is a vector that has a magnitude equal to zero, which means it can have either NO direction or ANY direction. Which essentially means its an event that can go nowhere or anywhere.

Finally, The Light Cone of an event is composed of ALL the Null Vectors of that event. However, when we factor in time, as in, we choose a time for the event to occur, The Null Vectors are classified thusly: 

Zero vectors, Future-directed Null Vectors, and Past- Directed Null Vectors. But we also introduce something called Timelike Vectors which are broken into two types: future-directed timelike vectors whose first component is positive, (tip of vector located in absolute future in the figure above) and past-directed timelike vectors whose first component is negative (absolute past). A timelike vector connects two events that are causally connected, (ex. Sherlock receives the deerstalker as a present. Sherlock throws the deerstalker across the room. Two events, casually connected)

To oversimplify this a bit, this is all a long winded way of accounting for the point in time when the event occurs (zero), and the events that occurred before (past) and the events that will occur after (future). The absolute values in the timelike vectors are the total sum of all future and past events. The Absolute Future and The Absolute Past.

So, what is Elsewhere? Elsewhere, the fourth component of a broken down event from an observers point of view, is composed of something called spacelike vectors, which are represented by the idea that separated events are connected by vectors requiring faster-than-light travel, and so cannot possibly influence each other. Basically, a spacelike vector connects two events that are causally disconnected. An example would be John reads the newspaper in the morning and John chins the chief in the evening.

So with those four attributes, Light Cone, Absolute Future, Absolute Past, and Elsewhere, we have the space-time continuum of an event as witnessed by an observer. The Light Cone being the point zero for the event and the events that occur just before and just after, The Absolute Future being the sum of all future events from point zero, The Absolute Past being the sum of all past events from point zero, and Elsewhere, all of the events within this space-time continuum that cannot be directly connected to the event taking place at point zero.

With me so far?

So, what is the event we are dissecting here and who is the observer? Well, we are dissecting the same event thats been dissected over and over since the moment it aired. The Fall. And the observer? You may think it’s John, but its actually Sherlock. Everything is about Sherlock.

This is a good place for me to stop and remind everyone about the lovely idea of Extended Mind Palace, which is theory that at some point in Sherlock’s timeline he entered his Mind Palace to calculate the potential outcome of whatever decision he wants to make. 

He tells us he believes himself capable of telling the future this way in The Six Thatchers:

SHERLOCK (TST): The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.

SHERLOCK (TST): An advanced grasp of the mathematics of probability mapped onto a thorough apprehension of human psychology and the known dispositions of any given individual can reduce the number of variables considerably. I myself know of at least fifty-eight techniques to refine this seemingly infinite array of randomly generated possibilities down to the smallest number of feasible variables.

And he alludes to everything we are seeing being a construct of his mind in The Lying Detective:

SHERLOCK (looking towards the ceiling): Really? I correctly anticipated the responses of people I know well to scenarios I devised? Can’t everyone do that?

The origination point of when EMP begins varies from person to person, and sometimes from day to day if you’re talking to me, but for the sake of this meta, I will say that the origination point of Sherlock’s EMP would be in The Reichenbach Falls before he meets Moriarty on the roof. That would mean everything we’ve seen since then has been a mind palace exercise of Sherlock’s. 

Now, lets put some of the definitions we learned to use and apply them to the show. 

For the null vectors, Sherlock has the option to go in NO direction (i.e- do nothing) or ANY direction. As we know, we didn’t see Sherlock choose to do nothing. We saw him make a choice out of many- He chose ANY direction over than NO direction. He said so himself in The Empty Hearse.

SHERLOCK: I calculated that there were thirteen possibilities once I’d invited Moriarty onto the roof. I wanted to avoid dying if at all possible. (x)

Notice the phrasing there. Sherlock calculated the possibilities once he had already invited Moriarty on to the roof, but not when he actually stepped out onto the roof, which would mean that we saw at the end of TRF, is most likely a mind palace sequence. Remember, the point of the MP exercise is for Sherlock to figure out how to defeat Moriarty, while avoiding dying himself. 

The future-directed null vectors of the fall after he goes in ANY direction are thus: Faking his suicide in a number of ways (TEH), Letting John in and trust him with his feelings so they can defeat the baddie together (TSoT), or kill Moriarty point blank- say, shooting him in the head (HLV). 

Here is where things get even more interesting and we get to read a little into Eistein’s Theory of Relativity. (Interesting side note: Minkowski was Einstein’s mentor/teacher and Einstein extrapolated his theory from the work Minkowski already had done on the theory of the space-time continuum) 

Einstein rejected the idea that time was linear. 

“Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.“

We have struggled as a fandom to understand the countless references to time, clocks, and watches and I think this is why. Time is so very difficult to understand because it does not operate singularly. It exists all at once, or at least, that is what Einstein’s theory purposes. 

So, going back to Sherlock, After His Last Vow, we got The Abominable Bride and Sherlock was, “A man out of his time.” 

Sure, this is just a nice piece of prose, but it is also literal. Sherlock ran through the null vectors of choosing ANY direction and it didn’t work. He has to start over. Cue, TAB and all of its parallels to the entirety of BBC’s Sherlock. It’s a clean slate. You’ll notice that in this clean-slate version, he has himself do all three of the failed future-directed null vectors- He jumps, but he also defeats Moriarty, but he only does so with John by his side. The Absolute Future. TAB really is a stand alone episode, serving to wipe the slate clean but also drive home the parallels and symbolism that we are supposed to be picking up on through the show. Series 4 looks like at TAB roadmap because Sherlock was successful in TAB and he is applying what knowlege he gained from it, to the current null vector.

Now we get to The Six Thatchers, where Sherlock is now considered to back to Null Vector Zero, or the point where he must choose between ANY direction and NO direction. He chose ANY direction before, so this time he chooses NO direction. He does nothing. He waits for Moriarty to come to him. Targets wait.

Now, since time is not linear and it occurs concurrently within Sherlock’s mind, a mind that is now far too deep within itself:

(TAB)

MYCROFT HOLMES : You’re in deep, Sherlock, deeper than you ever intended to be. Did you make a list? HOLMES: Of what? MYCROFT HOLMES: Everything. We will need a list. MYCROFT HOLMES: Good boy. HOLMES: No. I haven’t finished yet. MYCROFT HOLMES: Moriarty may beg to differ. (Holmes sighs sharply.) HOLMES: He’s trying to distract me, to derail me.

(TLD)

SHERLOCK(TLD): I’m at the bottom of a pit and I’m still falling and … (he shakes his head and clenches his eyes closed) … I’m never climbing out. 

Sherlock’s mind is breaking down with every string he pulls at in the web of his own mind. And since time is not linear, time begins to fold in on itself within Sherlock’s mind. That’s why we have so many reused lines and cases, blatant parallels to people and things that have already happened. The Absolute Past is being layered onto the current projection of Sherlock’s future. This List is a very good collection of that. 

What’s interesting too, is that due to the events of TST and TLD, we are sufficiently distracted or derailed from the Moriarty story line. When you think about it, Sherlock’s plan to wait for Moriarty DOES work. Eurus comes to him, makes the first move, seeks him out. She targets John, but because its not real, it was only a tranquilizer gun and John survives. They run through the jigsaw house, Sherlock’s mind becoming more and more fractured and further displaced from reality the deeper he goes- but he does defeat the bad guy. How? Love. Familial love. Perhaps this is a nod to Sherlock figuring out about Mycroft’s involvement with Moriarty…

Now, you may be asking yourself, what about Mary? She just never existed? No. She didn’t. She was a construct, a parallel to Sherlock that Sherlock’s mind created to work through his feelings for John. That is why her story line never made sense and it’s why she had to die. She doesn’t exist. Sherlock can’t wake up with a loose thread in the reality he created. All of the plot holes in Series Four and even going back to His last Vow can be explained by the slow degradation of Sherlock’s mind, but also by him just ignoring the things that he doesn’t find important in the grand scheme. He has to delete somethings. These pieces of data can be considered the spacelike vectors and the Elsewhere attributes of the space-time continuum. There are both the things that are casually disconnected to the event and the things are impossible to connect to the event. Mary was important, though. She was the part of Sherlock that was secretive and had a dark past- and he got rid of her. Foreshadowing his intention to share and be honest with someone in the future. We see his more openness after Mary’s death in The Lying Detective. Sherlock is raw in that episode, very emotionally vulnerable. The hug was- well, it was exquisite. Here, have another look, you know you want to…

Where was I? Sorry…I blacked out…

So, if we know that time does not exist in a straight line, but can fold and twist, stretch out and fold again, we can then understand that throughout the third and fourth Series, Sherlock has pushed time out as if it were a straight line, twisting the details and facts of the events in space, while simultaneously folding time over on itself. In his own complicated and convoluted way, he is working his way back to the beginning. Back to the original Zero- Null Vector point. His confrontation with Moriarty in The Reichenbach Falls. 

Think back to where he was then. He had John as his colleague, his “helpmate”, his best friend. That is where they are again in Sherlock’s EMP exercise, so we can expect for him to wake up soon and apply the knowledge he learned. 

What did he learn?

That he needs John by his side; that he can’t take Moriarty on alone. Doing so will lead to literal or emotional death.  He learned that if he and John are together and not emotionally distant, Moriarty won’t have a chance to send in a Wind Monster to shoot John with a tranquilizer dart. He learned that murdering Moriarty was out of the question and he also learned that his brother is most likely involved with Moriarty. Finally, and most importantly, he learned that John loves him and he learned the true depths of his love for John.

So, I hope you were able to follow along. I do have a science background, but I am not a mathematician or physicist. Any and all corrections are welcome! All transcripts were from Ariane DeVere. Thank you!!

EDIT TO ADD: Check out Part II of this Meta Here!