#in a very similar sequence with many direct parallels to chapter 3 :)

[annoyingloudmicrowavecultist]

thinking about how the first thing we learn about ambrosius is that he ruined ballister’s life. but the first time we see him in person he (in a way) saves it

[engekihaikyuu]

View from the Top 2 - Review

Check out the Read More if you’d like to hear about this show!  Askbox is open as well if you’d like me to elaborate on anything out of this.

Before I begin my review of the final show, I do want to start with some caveats:

So as I mentioned previously, the production once again went with PIA for their live streaming platform, which means that live streaming this show is very inaccessible for anyone living outside of Japan.

PIA is a ticketing platform that requires a working Japanese phone number in order to finish activating/registering a new account because you must call the number provided to finish account verification. So without a Japanese contact or a Japanese phone number, this platform is basically impossible.

I have a generous friend in Japan who was willing to share her account information with me, which is how I was able to pay for a show and use her log-in to watch the stream. I did not see this show in-person; I do not live in Japan and obviously travel is off-limits. Even if I did live in Japan, I would have qualms about going to the theater.

There are some logistical issues with this show because of the current pandemic, with the most visually obvious one being the small face shields the actors wear on-stage. They basically serve as protection against direct spittle, but obviously they do nothing to guard against aerosol spread; putting on the play is still an incredible risk to the performers and staff. Another difficulty they face is the fact that Tokyo is still continuing to maintain a nightly curfew. Every evening Tokyo performance needed to be bumped earlier so that spectators can leave the theater in time to make it home for that curfew. Keeping that in mind, the show is a surprisingly condensed 2.5 hours long, where I would have expected 3 hours given the amount of content it covered. This does affect the pacing in Act 2 noticeably, and I get the feeling that were it not for covid and the current curfew restrictions, it would feel a little less rushed at the end.

So, with all that said, here are my thoughts on Engeki Haikyuu’s final play, The View from the Top 2!!!  This is absolutely not spoiler-free, for both the play’s content and everything that happened in the manga finale, so if you have not finished the series, this is your last chance to turn back.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t written a full review on a show since Fly High, so I’m a bit rusty at this, and I’ll probably leave out a lot so as always, my askbox is open for people’s additional questions!

The absolute main theme of this play (and really of the entire Haikyuu story) is the friendship and rivalry between Hinata and Kageyama, and the theme: I’m not alone. Engeki really did right by our dual protagonists by framing the final show as showing both of their journeys from beginning to end. Act 1 begins with that familiar sequence from the very first show: Hinata seeing the little giant on TV, being inspired to start playing volleyball, his struggle to find a team in middle school, losing to Kageyama in his one and only middle school tournament, and finding him again at Karasuno. They repeated the scene almost exactly as it was in the first show, and I think it was very smart of them to show us Daigo’s version of it, so to speak. That way we have a more cohesive vision of Hinata from the beginning of his journey to the end. Then they absolutely FLOOD the stage with a montage of projections with footage from all of the shows from the past five-and-a-half years. So already it’s pretty emotional for me, seeing how far the play had come as well as how far Hinata had come in the story.

To parallel this, the beginning of Act 2 actually begins with baby Kageyama. Yes, the baby Kageyama flashback with his sister and grandfather and how he started volleyball. We see Kageyama’s volleyball journey from childhood (for this they used a small doll similar to the dolls they used for young Kuroo and Kenma from Revival) to playing at Kitagawa Daiichi, to losing his grandfather, to being labeled the King of the Court, to defeating Hinata, and then having Hinata find him at Karasuno. And then they once again, they flood the stage with projections with past show footage, but this time they are more Kageyama-centric in the way that the previous ones were often Hinata-centric. And it just really highlights how much these two are meant to share the stage as the two main characters.

To see this framework and to know what’s going to come at the end, with the two of them reuniting in the pro-volleyball arena… just the beginning of Act 2 alone had me in tears. Another way they paralleled their respective journeys was to show us who have influenced them. In Act 1, there’s a dance with Hinata, Hoshiumi, and Udai (all little giants… well, Tsukishima’s in there too because he’s feeling a particular competitiveness with Hinata in this part of the match). In Act 2, there’s a dance with Kageyama, Atsumu, and Oikawa, because Atsumu and Oikawa are the setters who have had the most influence on Kageyama, and he’s drawing on what he’s learned from them for this match. They are not alone in their journeys, they have had people inspire them and be inspired by them in addition to having the support of their teammates.

The Karasuno vs Kamomedai match is interspersed with bits of action from the Fukurodani vs Mujinazaka match, so the stage was pretty busy for basically the entire time. The wires are back for some sequences so that both Hinata and Hoshiumi have a chance to fly, and there are plenty of acrobatics and lifts, and the same incredible soundtrack we love. Ryuu’s Hoshiumi is the obvious standout on Kamomedai for how many lifts he had, and they definitely tried to have him running around on the stage about as much as Hinata. It was notable how much they drew on past techniques and music for various parts of this match, since this is meant to be Karasuno at their peak. When Asahi was feeling particularly stuck/trapped against Kamomedai’s defense, they incorporated the tying-up visual they had previously used in Winners and Losers, with Kamomedai basically tying up and holding Asahi in place with ribbon. There was Summer of Evolution music when Karasuno does a great synchro attack, and the extras-wearing-Hinata-masks reappeared to show us Hinata’s “afterimage” as he flashes around the stage. If you’ve seen all the plays, you can’t miss these call-backs.

The flow of the match was fast. They hit the highlight plays and the highlight emotional moments, but we are clearly past the point where they need to narrate the actual volleyball to us. There was more dancing/acrobatics than attempting to place the two teams on either sides of a physical net with more overt volleyball moves. Everything was more intertwined and fluid than that. And actually now that I think about it, they have been sparse with their usage of a physical net in the past few shows, because everything has been a little more fast-paced overall.

They definitely wanted to highlight Karasuno’s rise throughout the game, to show that they were absolutely a formidable team, that they deserved to be at Nationals, and to show us all the ways that Hinata and Kageyama had grown. For most of Act 2 leading up to Hinata’s collapse, it really feels like they could win this. And I think it makes it that much harder for Hinata to accept being benched, because the team is riding this high and doing so well, and even Kageyama’s more visibly having fun. I think Takeda-sensei easily has a third of the best lines in the series. His speech to Hinata during the Kamomedai match is one that was really gut-wrenching to read when those chapters came out, and it was great to hear it said aloud.

And here is something I’ve never been able to point out because I didn’t do reviews for the past two tours, but I think Daigo’s voice is one of the strongest aspects of his Hinata. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the work he’s done as a voice actor, but when he cries or whimpers, it is genuinely the most pitiful noise. A lot of Kenta’s portrayal of Hinata’s frustrations throughout the story had an undercurrent of anger and frustration. He’s upset, but there’s always something behind it that says, “well next time, it’ll be different.” And I think Daigo replaces most of that with pure sadness, especially for this scene. After Takeda-sensei lectures him good and proper, and he accepts that he needs to leave, he just sounds so broken. It doesn’t have that anger and drive underneath, he’s just in despair. And why wouldn’t he be? A part of him understands this is the last match he’ll ever play with this team, his first real team.

We then see Hinata bundled up in a coat and scarf, watching the rest of the match from the tablet that Kenma gives him. Snow begins to fall on the stage as he slowly wanders through it, with Karasuno and Kamomedai finishing out the rest of the match around him. Engeki Haikyuu has always allowed for the losing team in a match to line up at the edge of the stage, say thank you to the audience, bow, and take their leave. It’s so symbolic, and it’s so emotional for the actors and for the audience who are in the theater. It’s a moment that just barely breaks the fourth wall, when they turn to us, the spectators, to say, “Thank you for your support.” And they mean it both in and out of character. And I was so so so sad when I realized that Karasuno would take their final bow as a team without Hinata in the lineup. He’s in the back of the stage, separated from his team, and he does take a bow, but it’s very lonely.

Now, I’m sure people are very curious about the timeskip material, and mostly I just have to preface with: it’s fast. It does not take up as much of Act 2 as you might think. It’s boom, boom, boom, cameo here, pre-recorded projections there, patissier Tendou interview, Kuroo in a suit doing a promotional commercial for the V-League, Kageyama’s curry commercial, a projected Osamu selling his rice balls, get the old team together, fateful encounters in front of the bathroom, GO! The only thing we see of the Brazil arc is Hinata having a brief flashback to tell Kageyama that he met Oikawa while he was in Brazil. It’s very short, and that’s all we get for his time in Brazil. Basically, the play is not the place to see Hinata’s journey and growth from those chapters because he goes through so much of it alone, and there’s just no time. The Brazil arc also brings back a lot of technical details about volleyball itself, especially as Hinata is learning the beach version, and that’s an area where the manga is the best medium to examine the finer details of the sport. I can see why a play version would gloss over the technical details to focus on the emotional arc, which is in this case, Hinata and Kageyama.

Because of how fast the ending is, it definitely feels made for the people who already read the manga; Previous Engeki Haikyuu shows have always presented the story in a way that was very friendly to those who may not have read the manga or watched the anime. You could watch just Engeki Haikyuu and not feel like you were missing out on references/jokes for the most part, but this ending would be way harder to follow for those not familiar with what’s already happened.  

It’s difficult because I do feel like Act 2 was overly condensed to wrap up this story, but I also don’t think the timeskip material is enough for a whole play on its own. If we had stopped at the end of the Kamomedai match, and had a whole separate play to cover Brazil and the Jackals vs Adlers match… the pacing would’ve been slow and low energy especially in the first half, and it would be an odd choice for the final show of a series like this. My preference would have been for this play to have been three acts, three hours, so that we could linger on some of those timeskip moments a little more, slow it down, and let them land emotionally. But clearly the covid situation prevents that in this case. That being said, I don’t think any of those timeskip moments could really hit as hard as when I first read them in the manga. Narratively, that Haikyuu timeskip was so unexpected and so outside the normal sports anime formula, that the initial shock is extremely hard to top. It was fun to see how they presented everyone in the future (seeing Noya on that boat catching a giant swordfish, or seeing Ennoshita almost break a patient’s back) in stage form, but it’s unreasonable to expect them to give us the same feeling of ?!?!?!? when we first read that Noya was in Italy of all places after waiting weeks and weeks for him to show up.

I still cried in several places, it’s still a great ending to one of the best 2.5D franchises in existence, and it still feels like the culmination of their legacy. I don’t know how it would be possible for anyone to watch that ending sequence with all of the team flags and the chanting of their names, and NOT cry.

There are no more live streams until they complete the rest of their tour and then there will be a live-stream of the very last show, which I will be watching with a towel in hand for my tears. Feel free to send in any questions if you’d like, and if you would like some Strongest Challengers or Trash Heap merch, I have a sales post that I recently made.

[veridium]

5 Questions for Writers

Tagged by the great @teknon to answer some questions about writing. Thank you so much for including me!

Passing it along, I tag @bitchesofostwick, @local-thembo, and @star--nymph to join in the fun if they wish to. (Really I’m just a fan of ya’ll so anything I get to see of your process is terrific).

1. Do you have a favourite character to write? Who and why?

These days Olivia is still probably my favorite. Though, I have to say, the more Fire in Her Mouth goes on and expands into my other OCs’ storylines, the more I enjoy alternating their perspectives. It was always the plan to start off squarely in Olivia’s POV and then gradually extend branches out through the girls and canon characters in the Inquisition ensemble. 

I echo a similar sentiment to Trish’s: I just really enjoy getting to write women and non-binary characters for all of their troublesome possibilities. I like playing around with the idea of “good” representation. It’s incredibly cathartic to write characters who are profoundly wounded, jaded, and prone to hurtfulness, but who are also incredibly strong, wise, convicted. 

2. Do you have a favorite trope to write? Or one you want to write?

I mean, there are certain tropes I work with by virtue of taking on a DA:I longfic: the reluctant hero, for example, is present in the way Olivia grows in her role. I think tropes can be useful as basic frameworks but I find more fun in playing around with their rules than I do following them. 

Maybe here I’d say I’m referencing more stereotypes than tropes. For example, I try to dispute the idea in Olivia’s storyline that she, like so many worldly heroes, craves a remote, domestically tranquil life at the end of the line with the kids, spouse, and picket fence. That’s not to say to do so is wrong or foolish; I just wanted to write a character who always wants some sort of skin in the game when it comes to the world’s events. Even if it costs her everything, she’d rather say she devoted her all. I think sometimes we give those kinds of iconic happy endings to characters because it makes us as authors and audiences feel a lot better about the trials they endured regardless of whether those endings fit their journey/personalities. What are we making ourselves feel better for, though, when we do that? Are we trying to reconcile the idea that our characters can be hurt and still be “deserving” of that kind of ultimate, normative end? What happens when we dare to imagine something else, somewhere else, as their endgame -- a place that subverts the notion that all we’re trying to do is be deserving or “whole” enough of something we might not even want?

For me, I’m more interested in the ways in which life’s solaces arise in and out of our lives, rather than in a solid destination after we have “suffered enough.”

3. Share your favorite description you’ve written?

This always changes for me! Especially when I’m leaning on prior passages for inspiration/tie-in for themes on what I’m currently working on. Right now, I’m still pretty hooked on Chapter 100, “A Serpent’s Parable” from FIHM. It’s partial monologue, but the parallel description is something I’m very proud of: 

Isolde then sighed and pushed over her chalice. It fell loudly, and after the initial impact, it melted down and elongated into a serpentine shape. Extending both ways until a head, erect and pointed towards her, formed with slithering tongue and all. Pure black even in the eyes, its belly scales looked like opals as it wound towards her.

“For the purpose of this, let me introduce a parable. When you are faced with the task of fighting evil as we have been, it is all rather easy...in fact, fun, to think you are victorious by virtue of distracting the creature that holds the venomous bite.”

The smoke-born rats and vermin with pronounced front teeth billowed in the air around it, scattering and circling it. In random turns they began sneaking jabs, biting and scratching away, and cowering just in time into amorphous plumes. The snake hissed in pain and turn around in every which direction the assaults came from. With every attack it grew more frustrated, more incensed at the ghostly antagonists. Eventually it became too preoccupied to advance.

“Over time you learn that they learn. Spats and skirmishes, illusions and petty diversions, they only do so much. You realize that the snake, though made angry or even miserable at your actions, still grows. Your bravery does not stop it taking someone you love, it merely means that they become tomorrow’s meal rather than today’s, for you and your kind were made forever its source of power. Its sustenance for which you must give your life so that the rest of the world makes sense.”

The snake’s shadow stretched farther and farther until Olivia could nearly reach and place her hand within it if she wanted to. The vermin spirits crept in and out of shape, sniveling and striking as they had before. Their growing enemy, sadly, no longer bent and writhed in reaction.

“You are faced with a choice: continue being the hero who’s deeds become songs and silly secrets, suck poison from wound after wound until your mouth no longer waters, pretend that your adventures keep people as safe as you feel you are in your anonymity. Maybe you have saved a child or feed a few hungry mouths. Yet the snake’s fangs are sharper with every year, its mouth so wide it can consume more and more of what is dear to you without hope of salvation. Unless you decide enough is enough.”

Olivia had lost focus on the snake in favor of Isolde. By the time she halted her speech it was almost too late: the snake, offensive once more, lunged for her. In the same sharp moment as it split its mouth to fill itself with her, a blade broad and tipped like that of a staff's swung down. Its sound and shine blinded her to the gore of the head's severance before it fell upside down, gaping with a now limp tongue. A last remaining hiss lost to the sound of the blade cutting the air.

With every last drop of bravery in her body she withheld a scream. Her heart nearly erupted under the weight of its many terrors. Much like her nerves, the snake’s body contorted, until its muscles no longer lingered with life. The rats no longer trifled their foe. Nothing but death had been served on the table.

“At last,” she finished, “you cut the head off once and for all.”

4. Share your favorite dialogue you’ve written?

This also changes so often! Dialogue is one of, if not the, most fun part(s) of writing for me. I convey my message and themes most starkly in the way my characters talk to each other, and it’s where I put the most forethought. One of the ones I most often return to is the back-and-forth between Veronica and Cybel in Chapter 98: “Humoring Stars.” -- 

“Are you really so sure that everything that does not meet your eye is simply lies? That you, a Mage who spent the majority of her life in a Circle where knowledge was a controlled resource rather than a respected right, are the best person for determining such things?”

Oh, you son of…

“Just because I lived in a Circle does not mean I am without independent thought,” Veronica refused. She was a hard shell to crack but even she was not immune to the coerced inferiority years of Circle life embedded. No one who experienced their captivity was. And to call it out in such a way only made it more painful.

“I did not say that. What I meant was—”

“Shut your mouth. I do not give a shit about where you come from or how special you think you are. You are not going to stick a knife where you think it will hurt me into believing your stories. And if you try to do the same to Gem, then…”

Cybel’s eyes narrowed. “Then, what? You will kill me?”

“I m—”

“You know, Veronica...and that is your name, so I will refer to you as such.” Cybel took on an air of confidence, re-approaching with stiffened shoulders and tilted chin. “Either you have a thirst for death that is beyond the likes of which I have seen anywhere, meaning that deep down your motivation is not merely the safety of your friend and leader; or, as I reckon, you think being a predator cornered is more powerful than a predator caged.” They continued their advance, so stern and so suddenly cold that Veronica’s need to keep eyes on their hands turned into her backing up in sequence with them. It was enraging.

Veronica was backed against the rail, ass and waist pressed like paper. Her hands gripped either side. Cybel looked as they did back when they were threatening her with an arrow to her neck. Curls of hair around their face, tough bottom lip, appraising the validity of a shot yet fired. They halted so close to her that their freckles were countable, as well as the weathered loose strings on the edge of their tucked scarf.

“So what is it then?” they asked when Veronica had no salted quip to offer. “Blood lust, or bloody fearfulness?”

Who are you?

Veronica’s breath caught on the rigidity of her chest. She could be stabbed or choked right then and there. She could be tossed over the edge. Maker, she could be poisoned even if Cybel’s hand was quick enough with a vial or cloth dusted with the right material. Everything about her expedited training was about evaluating what dangers were posed both in front of her nose and beyond all senses. It was intoxicating to think in such a way when previously you were kept like a lamb to a flock, the shepherds heavily armored and sword-wielding rather than gentle guides with sticks. But blast them for thinking it was their right to point it out.

“I will say it again,” she answered with an unprecedented humbleness to her voice that even surprised her, “I do not fall for your attempts to strike at me until I am too weak for your lies.”

Cybel’s irises raised and lowered between Veronica’s eyes and mouth, their own lips parted with their tongue pressed against the back of their teeth. “And there I have my answer.”

[niteshade925]

EMH and House of Leaves Pt.1:  References/Details/Parallels

WARNING:  If you haven’t at least seen the Night Mind summaries of EMH or read HoL, and don’t want spoilers, then please stop reading now.  I won’t be spending a lot of time explaining HoL either (too long), so it would be best if you already read HoL.

************MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**************

(I’m probably just reading too deep into it.  If I sound like I’m talking nonsense, that’s probably true.)

Not a lot of people have touched on the many, many references to House of Leaves (HoL) within the series, so I’m going to just point out all the connections I can catch.

And just to clarify, while I do think there are connections and parallels, I think the parallels only apply to a degree:   just to some characters, some aspects.  When you look at them both as a whole and try to compare them, then it doesn’t really make sense.

Meaning of House:  

It’s pretty well established now that the “Leaves” in the title of HoL can refer to paper, making the “House” the book itself.  In “Bridge to Nowhere” (Tribetwelve), HABIT’s sarcastic “let’s run from him (HABIT) in his own house” can very well be interpreted the same way, but with this “house” being the EMH show.  However, I do not think the “house” here is truly his, and I will come back to this later.

The Growing and Shifting of the House/ Impossible Geometry:  

In HoL, the House on Ash Tree Lane contains an impossible dark maze that changes its layout constantly (presumably based on the changing mindset of the person trapped within).  In EMH we experience this first hand in the video “The property”, where Vinny goes to different houses just by walking through them, as if the house was changing its own layout and appearances.

The METAness of “Authorship”:  

Self-explanatory.  Either way you look at the theories in HoL, they all theorize that Zampano, Johnny Truant, or Pelafina is the author of the entire book, when in fact it is Mark Z. Danielewski who is the actual author in the real world.  EMH is the same, except as of the latest video, the possibility that HABIT is the editor and director in-universe is being called into question.

Iterations and Mazes:  

Everyone knows how the iterations work in EMH so I’ll skip to HoL.  In HoL, there’s no iterations, but there are mazes.  And what’s more, the maze IS the house.  Remember that the book is the house?  “a=b=c, therefore a=c”.  The book is also the maze.  The entire fiction is the maze where the characters wander about, progressing their story.  EMH is the same.  The iterations repeat, always ending in Hamlet-esque tragedy (“everyone dies, the end”), like a tragic play production performing over and over again, with small bits tweaked here and there each time, except the characters are trapped inside.  The EMH series, the EMH “house”, is a maze.  It’s also a maze with ash-colored walls.  Which brings us to………..

Ashes, Ashes everywhere:  

Oh boy is it everywhere.  In EMH there's Ashen wasteland (presumed to be Centralia after the mine fire disaster), Ashland (an actual town just south of Centralia), and “half acre of ash” (first brought up by Stephanie and now the title of a video).

In HoL there's Ashtree lane (where the house is), there's the ash-colored hallways of the ever-changing maze within the house, and there's the Yggdrasil mentioned at the very end, which is an ash tree.  Personally, I believe the “ashes” in EMH is more of a clue that we should look to HoL for direction, but nothing more, since it does not have the connections to ash trees like HoL does.

Found Footage/ Cinema Vérité:

Page 4 of The Navidson Record (TNR) in HoL:  

“The Navidson Record did not first appear as it does today.  Nearly seven years ago what surfaced was ‘The Five and a Half Minute Hallway’--a five and a half minute optical illusion barely exceeding the abilities of any NYU film school graduate.  The problem, of course, was the accompanying statement that claimed all of it was true.”

That is basically a description of the found footage horror genre.  Read the beginning of House of Leaves and you will find that its description of TNR is stunningly similar to EMH.  To quote bits from the first chapter:

“Where one might expect horror, the supernatural, or traditional paroxysms of dread and fear, one discovers disturbing sadness, a sequence of radioactive isotopes, or even laughter over a Simpsons episode” (HoL page 3)

“The structure of ‘Exploration #4’ is highly discontinuous, jarring, and as evidenced by many poor edits, even hurried.  The first shot catches Navidson mid-phrase.” (HoL page 5)

“There are several more shots.  Trees in winter.  Blood on the kitchen floor.  One shot of a child (Daisy) crying.” (HoL page 5)

So, jarring structure.  Sometimes continuous shots.  Sometimes all jump cuts.  Very documentary-like to give a realistic quality.  Home video-esque feel.  Disregarding the different plot/story, stylistically EMH is practically TNR brought to life.  And when you add in the ARG element of EMH, it becomes more interesting:  perhaps EMH is just like TNR of the book.  And I will be expanding on this idea in my theory.

Fictional Sources

This is more of a META aspect thing.  The Navidson Record in the HoL world was said to be nonexistent, 100% fiction.  The characters, the interviews of the characters in TNR…...also pure fiction in the HoL world.  Now think about the Corenthal papers, the articles…...they are a part of the ARG, and therefore also 100% fiction.

Unreliable Narrators

Also self-explanatory.  In EMH, neither HABIT nor Vinny are completely honest with the audience in their videos.  And in HoL there are three:  Johnny (lies, mental illness), Zampano (if he’s the author), and Pelafina (mental illness, and if she’s the author).

L’esprit de L’escalier

It’s a French phrase for “spirit of the staircase”, meaning thinking of the perfect response but it’s already too late.  In the EMH episode titled with this phrase, Evan met Vinny as himself (temporarily released by HABIT) for the first time after the killing spree happened.  In HoL, the phrase comes in page 72 of TNR, in Johnny’s footnotes:  

“Now though, I realize what I should of said--in the spirit of the dark; in the spirit of the staircase--

‘Known some call is air am’

Which is to say --

‘I am not what I used to be’”

This quote comes right after Johnny’s account of his first major panic attack from fear, where he accidentally made a mess at the tattoo shop he worked at because of his panic episode.  Curiously, something (presumably the monster whose presence he felt) also put a long bloody scratch on the back of his neck.  When asked, he said nothing, but the above quote was what he think he should have said, in retrospect.  This matches up exactly with the meaning of the phrase.  

The phrase also appeared in page 618 in original French, but I can't see any connection there in terms of plot or meaning.

And although the phrase didn’t make a lot of sense to me as the title of the EMH episode, it does now.  The connection here is the line “I am not what I used to be”.  That was the whole gist of what Evan wanted to tell Vinny.  At the time of the episode, Evan has now become the “danger” due to being HABIT’s favorite human puppet, has already committed atrocities under HABIT’s control, and received the healing factor that made him unable to die.  Evan is not what he used to be.

Guns, Rifles, and Insanity

I don't think I've seen HABIT actually use a gun except that clip where he pointed one at the back of Vinny's neck.  HABIT’s thing has always been about blades:  knives, saws, chainsaws, etc.  But now a gun is becoming relevant.  Two characters in HoL also resorted to guns as their sanity deteriorated:  Holloway and Johnny.  The former accidentally shot and killed one of his two companions before he killed himself with it, and the latter’s fate is unknown.  There are two theories:  Johnny died, though not by the gun; and Johnny lived because he’s finally freed from the burden of putting the book together.

The North Star.

North Star has become prominent in the latest videos of EMH.  And it is also present in the book.  The cover of the book has a red and yellow symbol (probably a compass rose) that looks like a North Star.  Page 29 mentions the North Star by name, calling the lamp in the children's room the North Star.  Vinny found the North Star drawing within Fairmount, where the Mining Town Four spent their iteration as kids.  

Page 545 of the book has a more alarming message, however:  

“Stars to live by.  Stars to steer by.  Stars to die by.”  

And by “all good things”, this has been confirmed.  HABIT and Vinny both died in this iteration by the knife and gun with the North Star branded on them.  

So is it a coincidence that the EverymanHYBRID symbol looks like a North Star?  I don’t think so.  The EMH story was meant to end in tragedy all along.

The Radiation Detector

Yes, in TNR, Navidson also had a radiation detector that ticked .  And the following quote:  

“Navidson turns to the time telling tick of radioactive isotopes to deny the darkness eviscerating him from within” (HoL page 381)

Evan doesn’t really try to “deny” the darkness (HABIT) within him in “Sigma”, but of course, there’s still purple duct tape on his bandage.

The Quote Jeff Circled

“Why did god create a dual universe?  

So he might say,

‘Be not like me, I am alone.’

And it might be heard” (HoL page 45)

This quote, by itself, is confusing as hell.  One has to put it in context of the chapter to make any sense of it, just for the book alone.  The chapter it appears in, nicknamed the “Echoes chapter”, is one of the most important chapters of HoL.  Basically it explores the concept of echoes, what it is, what it implies, in various different aspects.  Echoing is indicative of a closed, finite space, and there are no echoes in infinite space.  Echoing can also create a sort of illusion that someone is there, repeating your words.  So the quote above can mean the loneliness of god, the duality that comes with echoes, the universal need for social interaction, the universal need to be individuals,.........etc etc.

The “be not like me, I am alone” part also came up on Steph’s blog.

This quote, I haven’t quite figured out what it really means in the context of EMH, but I have a guess.  

Leaning Against a Tree

Just an interesting bit I’ve noticed that might have some significance.  In the end of HoL, if you believe Johnny died, then he died leaning against an ash tree.  Holloway also died leaning against the ash-en walls of the maze, by gun, although it was suicide (the book also talks about Holloway suffering for a minute after he shot himself).  Both HABIT and Vinny died leaning against a tree in “All good things”.  Hmm.

Apartment 3103 and the abyss

In the climax of TNR, Navidson is trapped within the endless abyss of the maze, where the ashen walls and floor disappear gradually until he’s on a small platform, with only a book to keep him company.  Navidson was literally in an endless isolation chamber.  Sounds very much like Vinny when he was trapped in Apartment 3103 for two years.

Can You See The Words

This one has been covered by the EMH wikia.  CYSTW does have a formatting style similar to HoL.

Water, Drowning, and Insanity

In earlier videos (hidden videos), Evan has been shown to be drowning in water.  There were also clips of flooding.  In HoL, the person who talks about drowning and the hopelessness of it is Johnny.  As Johnny spirals downward mentally, both the number of times he mentions drowning go up, each time with greater detail.  Water here is symbolic of madness.

Interestingly, water is also crossed out in CYSTW, similar to passages about the Minotaur in HoL.  The Minotaur is the imaginary monster in the house/maze.  This gives weight to the theory that HABIT was just Evan’s insane alter ego.

Falsity of Images

Page 527 of HoL has the following quote:  

“they (images) may be heartwarming but what they imply rings false.”

As of “All good things”, this quote becomes very interesting when applied to Vinny.

CYSTW and The Whalestoe Letters

Steph’s blog is very reminiscent of The Whalestoe Letters section in HoL.  The cryptic messages, the way her character feels like Pelafina.

Finding Fairmount/ Finding Whalestoe

Johnny’s journey to find Whalestoe (HoL pages 503-504) is very similar to Vinny’s journey to find Fairmount.  Whalestoe was a mental institute, where Johnny’s mother, Pelafina, use to live.  When Johnny got there, however, the institute has long been abandoned, with graffiti on the walls.  Just like Fairmount.

“This is no longer their game.  Consider yourself marked.”

This message could only be found by tilting the screen while looking at Steph’s blog.  In HoL, at least one of Pelafina’s letters are entirely in code, and one letter leaves decoding instructions.

And finally, a note on the META aspect

In HoL, TNR is discussed among scholars who wrote works after works arguing over details in the film.  Taking into account that EMH is like TNR…..and everyone who took part in the ARG or discussed EMH theories, including me and this post, also becomes part of the story.  It’s pretty crazy.

[extraload977]

Diagrams

UML 2 use case diagrams overview the usage requirements for a system. They are useful for presentations to management and/or project stakeholders, but for actual development you will find that use cases provide significantly more value because they describe 'the meat' of the actual requirements. Figure 1 provides an example of a UML 2 use case diagram.

Use case diagrams depict:

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Use cases. A use case describes a sequence of actions that provide something of measurable value to an actor and is drawn as a horizontal ellipse.

Actors. An actor is a person, organization, or external system that plays a role in one or more interactions with your system. Actors are drawn as stick figures.

Associations. Associations between actors and use cases are indicated in use case diagrams by solid lines. An association exists whenever an actor is involved with an interaction described by a use case. Associations are modeled as lines connecting use cases and actors to one another, with an optional arrowhead on one end of the line. The arrowhead is often used to indicating the direction of the initial invocation of the relationship or to indicate the primary actor within the use case. The arrowheads are typically confused with data flow and as a result I avoid their use.

System boundary boxes (optional). You can draw a rectangle around the use cases, called the system boundary box, to indicates the scope of your system. Anything within the box represents functionality that is in scope and anything outside the box is not. System boundary boxes are rarely used, although on occasion I have used them to identify which use cases will be delivered in each major release of a system. Figure 2 shows how this could be done.

Packages (optional). Packages are UML constructs that enable you to organize model elements (such as use cases) into groups. Packages are depicted as file folders and can be used on any of the UML diagrams, including both use case diagrams and class diagrams. I use packages only when my diagrams become unwieldy, which generally implies they cannot be printed on a single page, to organize a large diagram into smaller ones. Figure 3 depicts how Figure 1 could be reorganized with packages.

In the example depicted in Figure 1 students are enrolling in courses with the potential help of registrars. Professors input the marks students earn on assignments and registrars authorize the distribution of transcripts (report cards) to students. Note how for some use cases there is more than one actor involved. Moreover, note how some associations have arrowheads - any given use case association will have a zero or one arrowhead. The association between Student and Enroll in Seminar (in the version shown in Figure 4) indicates this use case is initially invoked by a student and not by a registrar (the Registrar actor is also involved with this use case). Understanding that associations don't represent flows of information is important; they merely indicate an actor is somehow involved with a use case. Information is flowing back and forth between the actor and the use case, for example, students would need to indicate which seminars they want to enroll in and the system would need to indicate to the students whether they have been enrolled. However, use case diagrams don't model this sort of information. Information flow can be modeled using UML activity diagrams. The line between the Enroll in Seminar use case and the Registrar actor has no arrowhead, indicating it is not clear how the interaction between the system and registrars start. Perhaps a registrar may notice a student needs help and offers assistance, whereas other times, the student may request help from the registrar, important information that would be documented in the description of the use case. Actors are always involved with at least one use case and are always drawn on the outside edges of a use case diagram.

Figure 2. Using System boundary boxes to indicate releases.

Figure 3. Applying packages to simplify use case diagrams.

Creating Use Case Diagrams

I like to start by identifying as many actors as possible. You should ask how the actors interact with the system to identify an initial set of use cases. Then, on the diagram, you connect the actors with the use cases with which they are involved. If an actor supplies information, initiates the use case, or receives any information as a result of the use case, then there should be an association between them. I generally don't include arrowheads on the association lines because my experience is that people confuse them for indications of information flow, not initial invocation. As I begin to notice similarities between use cases, or between actors, I start modeling the appropriate relationships between them (see the Reuse Opportunities section).

The preceding paragraph describes my general use case modeling style, an 'actors first' approach. Others like to start by identifying one actor and the use cases that they're involved with first and then evolve the model from there. Both approaches work. The important point is that different people take different approaches so you need to be flexible when you're following AM's practice of Model With Others.

Reuse Opportunities

Figure 4 shows the three types of relationships between use cases -- extends, includes, and inheritance -- as well as inheritance between actors. I like to think of extend relationships as the equivalent of a 'hardware interrupt' because you don't know when or if the extending use case will be invoked (perhaps a better way to look at this is extending use cases are conditional). Include relationships as the equivalent of a procedure call. Inheritance is applied in the same way as you would on UML class diagrams -- to model specialization of use cases or actors in this case. The essay Reuse in Use Case Models describes these relationships in greater detail.

Remaining Agile

So how can you keep use case modeling agile? First, focus on keeping it as simple as possible. Use simple, flexible tools to model with. I'll typically create use case diagrams on a whiteboard, as you see in Figure 5 which is an example of an initial diagram that I would draw with my project stakeholders. AM tells us that Content is More Important Than Representation so it isn't a big issue that the diagram is hand drawn, it's just barely good enough and that's all that we need. It's also perfectly okay that the diagram isn't complete, there's clearly more to a university than what is depicted, because we can always modify the diagram as we need to.

In parallel to creating the sketch I would also write a very brief description of each use case, often on a whiteboard as well. The goal is to record just enough information about the use case so that we understand what it is all about. If we need more details we can always add them later either as an essential/business use case or a system use case. https://extraload977.tumblr.com/post/657340998419169280/space-falcon-reloaded.

Source

This artifact description is excerpted from Chapter 5 of The Object Primer 3rd Edition: Agile Model Driven Development with UML 2.

Hdr Express LLC is a Texas Domestic Limited-Liability Company (Llc) filed On June 23, 2020. The company's filing status is listed as In Existence and its File Number is. The Registered Agent on file for this company is Alain Sivilla Perez and is located. Welcome to HR Xpress! HR Xpress provides you with tools & information to manage your RR Donnelley work life. Hdr express 3 download. HDR Express is a Shareware software in the category Miscellaneous developed by Less Stress Instructional Services. The latest version of HDR Express is 3.1.1.12800, released on. It was initially added to our database on. HDR Express runs on the following operating systems: Windows. The download file has a size of 11.1MB. 4K 4k cinematography 4K video 32 float adobe Apple bracketing canon cinema5D cinematography digital cinema digital photography DJI drone fstoppers.com fujifilm gear hdr hdr discounts hdr expose HDR expose 2 hdr express hdr software high dynamic range iphone mirrorless camera new nik nikon panasonic petapixel photo gear photogear photography.

Translations

Diagrams Definition

Disclaimer

The notation used in these diagrams, particularly the hand drawn ones, may not conform perfectly to the current version of the UML for one or more of reasons:

Diagrams Of Dna Nucleotides And Bases

The notation may have evolved from when I originally developed the diagrams. The UML evolves over time, and I may not have kept the diagrams up to date.

I may have gotten it wrong in the first place. Although these diagrams were thoroughly reviewed for the book, and have been reviewed by thousands of people online since then, an error may have gotten past of us. We're only human.

I may have chosen to apply the notation in 'non-standard' ways. An agile modeler is more interested in created models which communicate effectively than in conforming to notation rules set by a committee.

Diagrams Examples

If you're really concerned about the nuances of 'official' UML notation then read the current version of the UML specification.

[makingscipub]

New metaphors for new understandings of genomes

This is a guest post by Sarah Perrault and Meaghan O’Keefe (University of California Davis) based on their article “New metaphors for new understanding of genomes”. The article goes beyond regular complaints about the inadequacy of old metaphors, such as the genome as a blueprint, and beyond regular calls for a new language. Instead, it “offers a conceptual framework for developing, analyzing, critiquing, and choosing new metaphors that will help improve communication about genomes and genomic research”.

***

The city of Davis — a town of about 67,000 residents in California and the home of the University of California Davis– is considering changing its downtown parking regulations to add parking fees and limit parking hours. Debates about this proposal have been raging in city council meetings, in local news venues, and in social media. The topics of debate, however, are not about the actual proposal, but about effects on people with mobility limitations; about whether there are enough bike racks in downtown Davis; about whether businesses would be harmed by the change; about whether businesses should have to pay for their employees’ parking; about climate change; about traffic jams and traffic signal timing and public transit and more.

On the surface, none of this has anything to do with genes or genetic modification but looked at another way, the similarities are striking. At first glance, the small change to the municipal code is just that — a small change of a few sentences in a 42-chapter document — but the consequences come not from the change itself, but from how that code is used, and from effects on civic life that extend into realms not immediately related to the matter of parking.

As we explain in an article in Perspective in Biology & Medicine, this example provides a useful metaphor for new conceptualizations of how genome modification works. We adopt the municipal code metaphor because it can be described in familiar, everyday language. Also, people already understand municipal codes as complicated and possibly helpful but also likely to result in unforeseen consequences. This comparison gives those who may not have much exposure to the science of genetics an opportunity to reflect the biological and political realities of genome modification.

Genome-as-municipal-code is not the only metaphor out there and we aren’t suggesting that everyone adopt it. Our goal is to enable different kinds of practitioners and researchers to generate effective metaphors for talking about genetics to different audiences. To that end, our article offers a heuristic for evaluating genetics metaphors, and argues that a “metaphor for talking about genes, genomes, and genome modification is sound to the extent that it shows” the following things:

Genomes have causality only in how they are used by the body;

Causation is multi-level and directional;

Interactivity at all levels includes the physical and social environment;

The temporal dimension matters;

The value of a gene is a matter of interpretation; and

Outcomes are uncertain.

The following sections show how a familiar civic function (making a change in a municipal code) can help explain an unfamiliar scientific procedure (making a change in a genome).

We chose this metaphor as an illustrative example because it suggests a larger shift we recommend, which is from seeing organisms as manufactured objects (the predictable results of blueprints, or programs) to seeing them as communities (interactive assemblages with many levels and kinds of complexity).

They also illustrate how our six-point heuristic can be applied in generating and testing the usefulness of novel metaphors for genes and genomes.

1. Genomes have causality only in how they are used by the body

A genome, like a municipal code, does not make things happen on its own. Instead, it contains information that the body uses. Just as a particular law might or might not be applied, so too a particular genetic sequence may or may not be used. This explains things like why people do not necessarily develop a genetically-related illness even when the DNA sequence associated with the illness is present. As anyone who has ever chanced letting a parking meter run out knows, traffic tickets come from enforcement, not from the existence of the law. Likewise, the presence of a particular stretch of DNA does not automatically result in a particular outcome all the time.

2. Causation is multi-level and multi-directional

One claim made about genome modification is that changing a DNA sequence can and will have a particular effect. However, in genetics, as in law, a change may well have different effects than were intended, and there many factors at many levels that influence what the effects are. The idea of genetic influence is apt but not the complete picture. Systems biologist Denis Noble explains that in the body, “that there is no privileged level of causation,” as the conditions in the environment affect the body, and conditions in the body–from the levels of the organism, organs, tissues, and cells–affect how the genome is used.

For example, genetically male African clawed frogs can become functionally female (i.e., can produce viable eggs) when nearby farmers use the herbicide Atrazine which seeps into the water and triggers epigenetic changes. That said, hermaphroditism in amphibians has multiple causes. For example, it can also be triggered by high temperatures. In other animals, Atrazine has different effects such as affecting olfactory development in freshwater fish.

Let us return to Davis for a minute and see this in terms of parking. Just as bodies’ uses of DNA may be affected by outside environmental factors, different parking regulations can have the same effect, and also the same parking regulations can have different effects for different constituencies.

3. Interactivity at all levels includes the physical and social environment

Another element common to genetic changes and legal code changes is that effects are interactive.

With parking, other sections of the municipal code — the “Fire Code”, for example, or the “Environmental Regulations” — will affect patterns of movement in town, and those effects will in turn interact with the changes in parking regulations in a complex interplay.

Similarly, the physical environment matters. The parking situation in downtown Davis is in some ways like that of similar-sized towns, but is also affected by unique aspects of its surroundings. Downtown is bounded on one side by a four-lane interstate freeway, and on another by the university. These limit the direction in which downtown parking can spread.

Environmental factors can also include features beyond geography; for a short period in fall of 2018, smoke from nearby wildfires filled the town. The university closed for two weeks, and everyone who was able to left town. Parking enforcement during that time was non-existent, as the downtown area was nearly abandoned.

Factors in the greater environment also matter. For example, numbers of community members without homes rise during bad economic times and times of poor social safety nets, with many people living in their vehicles; during such times, the effects of parking regulations on parts of the civic body are different than during times that are more prosperous or more committed to the general social welfare.

What does this mean when we look at genomes? As noted above, how the body uses a given part of the genome will depend on many factors, including factors outside the body. The African clawed frogs example showed that chemicals in their habitats can change how the frogs develop sexually. Non-physical factors can also affect how bodies use genomes. Studies with songbirds found genetic expression is affected by whether birds hear rivals’ songs. Other research demonstrates the same kind of social regulation of gene expression in humans. For example, social isolation is well known for increasing vulnerability to and exacerbating reactions to diseases. Evidence that the causes are social, not physical, come from studies such as one reported by Cole (2009) in which “differential gene expression profiles were most strongly linked to a person’s subjective sense of isolation, rather than their objective number of social contacts” (2)

4. The temporal dimension matters

An individual’s DNA does not change during their lifespan, but how it is used does change as the organism goes through its developmental stages from embryo to infant to adult.

Likewise, as we explain in the article, “How a law is used and what it means can vary over time” (12). For example, the section of the code on “Applicability of chapter to persons riding or operating pushcarts, animals, etc.” has very different implications and applications now than it did in the early decades of Davis’s existence as small town with an agricultural college. More recent public debate about whether rental scooters and electric bikes ought to be allowed are clearly from a different era of development.

In terms of genetics, this has two parallels. One is that sections of the genome that are not used in one developmental stage may be important during another. The second parallel is that the degree of expression can vary across developmental stages. For example, originally non-coding regions of the genome had been viewed as “junk” DNA but later research has shown these although these areas are not involved in the translation of proteins–one stage in the transcription process–they are, in fact, “transcriptionally active… in differentiation, development, inflammation, immune response, and cancer.” Moreover, the degree of expression inherent in these stages are obviously quite different including the expression of pathologies like cancer.

5. The value of a gene is a matter of interpretation

A parking law is meant to ensure equitable vehicle access to downtown by making sure that people who want a chance to go there can do so. But what does “equitable vehicle access to downtown” mean? What is a good parking law? What is a bad parking law? A change that benefits some may disadvantage others, as would not changing that law. A parallel in the human genome can be seen in the gene called CCR5, which is associated with lower susceptibility to HIV, but higher susceptibility to having a fatal reaction to West Nile virus.

There are also social values influencing what counts as a negative or a positive trait or set of traits, particularly in the medical context (the focus of our article). It makes a difference who is able to determine the value of a trait. The relatively wealthy residents in Davis are fairly unlikely to enact regulations friendly to people who live in their cars and the town residents will be the ones voting on such regulations. Similarly, evaluations and decisions about the quality of life for people with disabilities are often made by those without disabilities. Additionally, some traits considered disabilities by medical authorities are not considered disabilities by those who have them, as is the case with some people who have certain forms of autism.

6. Outcomes are uncertain

As should be clear by now, the results of changing a piece of the municipal code cannot be predicted with complete accuracy. Pedestrians, bicyclists, wheelchair users, drivers, business owners, police officers, and all those in overlapping categories are affected by parking decisions involving roads, buildings, sidewalks, crosswalks, bicycle racks, not to mention traffic, congestion, public transport, and climate change. We don’t necessarily have a clear sense of all the ways parking changes might affect the city of Davis even though the machines and motivations involved are ones we understand fairly well.

The same is true of the genome. Gene “knockout” experiments don’t always have the expected effect, and many traits are affected by many different stretches of DNA, stretches that also affect other traits (a phenomenon called pleiotropy, “the production by a single gene of two or more apparently unrelated effects.”). In gene knockout experiments, researchers remove a portion of a genome and then look at what effect this has on the organism. Sometimes the results are what was expected, but sometimes they find no effects (even when effects were expected), and other times they find unexpected effects. White et al, for example, reported in 2013 that “the normal function of many genes is still unknown or predicted from sequence analysis alone” and describe their efforts to learn more via knockout experiments. In the process, they “found many unexpected phenotypes detected only because we screened for them” and also found that pleiotropy was “surprisingly common.”

In sum

As noted above, our goal here and in our article is not to promote the municipal code metaphor–though we do hope some readers will find it useful–but to use that metaphor as a test for and demonstration of our heuristic’s usefulness. As new metaphors emerge, we hope readers will consider how well they meet the six criteria illustrated above, criteria that, we argue, must be met if metaphors are to communicate well the great complexity of how genomes are used.

Sources

Cole, Steve W. “Social Regulation of Human Gene Expression.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18.3 (2009): 132–37.

Noble, Denis. “Evolution Beyond Neo-Darwinism: A New Conceptual Framework.” The Journal of Experimental Biology 218 (2015): 7-13.

White, Jacqueline K., et al. “Genome-Wide Generation and Systematic Phenotyping of Knockout Mice Reveals New Roles for Many Genes.” Cell 154 (2013): 452–64.

Image: NYC parking (free for reuse)

        The post New metaphors for new understandings of genomes appeared first on Making Science Public.

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[alertreadingquotes]

The Order of Time- Carlo Rovelli

Chapter 3: There is no "present"

When thinking about the concept of a present, we think that the moment in our perception exists as a discrete tangible thing at a point in time. As though time was ordered into discrete ordered steps that the universe cycles through in order. However, physics suggests otherwise. Time passes more slowly the faster you  are moving.

"Not only is there no single time for different places- there is not even a single time for any particular place. A duration can be associated only with the movement of something, with a given trajectory.

Proper time" depends not only on where you are and your degree of proximity to masses; it depends also on the speed at which you move."

"There is no special moment on Proxima b that corresponds to what constitutes the present here and now.""The notion of "the present" refers to things that are close to us, not to anything that is far away. Our "present" does not extend throughout the universe. It is like a bubble around us."

" Mathematicians have a term for the order established by filiation: "partial order." A partial order establishes a relation of before and after between certain events, but not between any two of them. Human beings form a "partially ordered" set (not a "completely ordered" set) through filiation. Filiation establishes an order (before the descendants, after the forebears) but not between everyone (parallel people)."

"The expanded present is the set of events that are neither past nor future: it exists, jsut as there are human beings who are neither our descendants nor our forebears."

In a similar way to how a person's descendents and antecedents are not entirely comparable in terms of "sharing a generation". Many competing definitions of "a generation" exist. Similarly, the present moment does not singularly exist. At any one point in time, the cones of light determine when "now" is perceived. In any two places "now" could be perceived differently. For example, asking what is happening on Earth now vs on a distant star is a useless comparison. The "now" does not exist in the same way. Instead, now is defined for a local region.

" The whole idea that the universe exists now in a certain configuration and changes together with the passage of time simply doesn't stack up anymore."

Black holes have so much mass that the gravitational force curve light cones back toward the present. Hence, if you were to enter one you could not escape it unless you move toward the present ?i.e along the time dimension faster than the speed of light ?

Chapter 4: Loss of Independence

diurnal:

filiation:

"The diurnal rhythm is an elementary source of our idea of time: night follows day; day follows night"

We historically measured the passing of time in terms of the ways which things change. Assuming that physical properties guarantee they change at a similar speed reliably. e.g. hourglass grains, seasons coming and going, moon cycle, pendulum swings

"Aristotle is the first we are aware of o have asked himself the question "What is time?," and he came to the following conclusion: time is the measurement of change. We call "time"  the measurement, the counting of this change." (in terms of sun cycles or other regular phenomena)

(Newton) There is "relative time" - the one that registers change and motion. Tied to perception.There is also "absolute time" that passes regardless - independently of things and all their changes or movement

"Newton's time is not the evidence given us by our senses: it is an elegant intellectual construction"

"Don't take your intuitions and ideas to be "natural": they are often the products of the ideas of audacious thinkers who came before us."

(Aristotle) The place of a thing is what surrounds that thing. (relative/ apparent/ common)(Newton) (absolute/true/mathematical) [Space is ] that which exists even when there is nothing

"Newton imagines that things are situated in a "space" that continues to exist, empty, even when divested of things . For Aristotle, this "Empty space" is nonsensical, because if twp things do not touch it means that there is something else between them, and if there is something, then this something is a thing, and therefore a thing that is there. It cannot be that there is "nothing".

Chapter 5: Quanta of Time

Fundamental discoveries of quantum mechanics led to properties of physical variables (of which space time is one): granularity, indeterminacy and relational aspect

Granularity: "most characteristic feature of quantum mechanics, which takes its name form this: "quanta" are elementary grains. A minimum scale exists for all phenomena."

"Planck time: at this extremely miniscule level, quantum effects on time become manifest...The "quantization" of time implies that almost all values of time t do not exist... a minumum interval of time exists. Below this, the notion of time does not exist- even in its most basic meaning."

"Continuity is only a mathematical technique for approximating very finely grained things. The world is subtly discrete, not continuous."

"Abstract thought can anticipate by centuries hypotheses that find a use- or confirmation- in scientific inquiry.The spatial sister of Planck time is Planck length: the minimum length below which the notion of length becomes meaningless. (around 10^-33 cm)"

Quantum Superpositions of Times

Indeterminacy: "it is not possible to predict exactly, for instance, where an electron will appear tomorrow. Between one appearance and another, the electron has no precise position, as if it were dispersed in a  cloud of probability. In the jargon of physicists, we say that it is in a "superposition" of positions.

Spacetime is a physical object like an electron. IT, too fluctuates. It , too, can be in a "superposition" of different configurations."

"Just as a particle may be diffused in space, so too, the differences between past and future may fluctuate: an event may be both before and after another one."

Relations

"Indeterminacy is resolved when a quantity interacts (measure is the misleading technical term) with something else....

Concreteness occurs only in relation to a physical system: this, I believe, is the most radical discovery made by quantum mechanics."

"Time has loosened into a  network of relations that no longer holds together as a coherent canvas."

"Let me reprise the long dive into the depths made in the first part of this book. There is no single time: there is a different duration for every trajectory; and time passes at different rhythms according to place and according to speed. It is not directional: the different between past and future does not exist in the elementary equations of the world; its orientation is merely a contingent aspect that appears when we look at things and neglect the details."

PART 2: THE WORLD WITHOUT TIME

Chapter 6 : The World is Made of Events, Not Things

"None of the pieces that time has lost (singularity, direction, independence, the present, continuity) puts into question the fact that the world is a network of events. On the one hand, there was time, with its many determinations; on the other, the simple fact that nothing is: things happen."

"The events of the world do not form an orderly queue, like the English. They crowd around chaotically, like Italians"

"We understand the world in its becoming, not in its being. "Things" in themselves are only events that for a while are monotonous."

Chapter 7: The Inadequacy of Grammar

"Presentism" is the philosophical school of thought that the universe is organized into a sequence of "present" time slices ,one following the next. Physics understanding suggests that this model of thinking is flawed. "the temporal structure of the world is moroe complex than a simple linear succession of instants"

"Eternalism" philosophical thought that flow and change are illusory - "present, past, future are equally real and equally existent"

"To ask oneself "what exists" or "what is real" means only to ask how you would like to use a verb and an adjective. It's a grammatical question, not a question about nature."

Chapter 8 : Dynamics as Relation

"If we find a sufficient number of variables that remain synchronized enough in relation to each other, it is convenient to use them in order to speak of

when

"

"The fundamental theory of the world must be constructed in this way; it does not need a time variable: it needs to tell us only how the things that we see in the world vary with respect to each other. That is to say, what the relations may be between these variables.The fundamental equations of quantum gravity are effectively formulated like this: they do not have a time variable, and they describe the world by indicating the possible relations between variable quantities."

"I can no longer tell him I believe that he was the first to come close to the heart of the mystery of quantum gravity. Because he is no longer here- here and now. This is time for us. Memory and nostalgia. The pain of absence.But it isn't absence that causes sorrow. IT is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life."

"they had discovered the extremely simple sstructure of the equation that describes the dynamics of the world. It describes possible events and the correlations between them, and nothing else.It's the elementary form of mechanics of the world, and it does not need to mention "time". The world without a time variable is not a complicated one. It's a net of interconnected events, where the variables in play adhere to probabilistic rules that, incredibly, we know for a good part how to write. "

Essentially, the foudners of quantum gravity understood that time was not aa well-defined entitiy necessary for understanding the universe and nature, but instead things could be thought of by modeling how events interact with each other.

Elementary Quantum Events and Spin Networks

"The fields manifest themselves in granular form: elementary particles, photons, and quanta of gravity- or rather "quanta of space". These elementary grains do not exist immersed in space; rather, they themselves form that space. The spatiality of the world consists of the web of their interactions. They do not dwell in time: they interact incessantly with each other, and indeed exist only in terms of these incessant interactions. And this interaction

is

the happening of the world: it is the minimum elementary form of time that is neither directional nor linear. Nor does it have the curved and smooth geometry studied by Einstein. It is a reciprocal interaction in which quanta manifest themselves in the interaction, in relation to what they interact with."

"The world is like a collection of interrelated points of view. To speak of the world "seen form outside" makes no sense, because there is no "outside" to the world."

"

Loop quantum gravity shows that it is possible to write a coherent theory without fundamental space and time- and that is can be used to make qualitative predictions.

In a theory of this kind, time and space are no longer containers or general forms of the world. They are approximations of a quantum dynamic that in itself knows neither space nor time. There are only events and relations. It is the world without time of elementary physics."

Part III: THE SOURCES OF TIME

Chapter 9: Time is Ignorance

THERMAL TIME

"On the one hand, knowing what the energy of a system may be - how it is linked to the other variables - is the same as knowing how time flows, because the equations of the evolution in time follow from the form of its energy. On the other, energy is conserved in time, hence it cannot vary, even when everything else varies."

"in an elementary physical system without any priveleged variable that acts like "time"- where, in effect, all the variables are on the same level but we can have only a blurred vision of them described by macroscopic states. A generic macroscopic state

determines

a time. I'll repeat this point, because it is a key one: a macroscopic state ( which ignores the details) chooses a particular variable that has some of the characteristics of time."

"In fundamental relativistic physics, where no variable plays a priori the role of time, we can reverse the relation between macroscopic state and evolution of time: it is not the evolution of time that determines the state, it is the state- the blurring- that determines a time. Time that is determined in this way by a macroscopic state is called "thermal time...from a macroscopic (point of view) one, it has a crucial characteristic: among so many variables all at the same level, thermal time is the one with behaviour that most closely resembles the variable we usually call

"time", because its relations with the macroscopic states are exactly those that we know from thermodynamics.But it is not a universal time. It is determined by a macroscopic state, that is, by a blurring, by the incompleteness of a description."

QUANTUM TIME

"noncommutativity" of the quantum variables, because position and speed "do not commute", that is to say, they cannot exchange order with impunity. This non-commutativity is one of the characteristic phenomena of quantum mechanics. Non commutativity determines an order and, consequently, a germ of temporality in the determination of two physical variables. To determine a physical variable is not an isolated act; it involves interaction. The effect of such interactions depends on their order, and this order is a primitive form of the temporal order. "

(Alain) Connes has shown that: "Putt more simple: the time determines by macroscopic states and the time determined by quantum noncommutativity are aspects of the same phenomenon."

"The intrinsic quantum indeterminacy of things produces a blurring, like Boltzmann's blurring, which ensures- contrary to what classic physics seemed to indicate- that the unpredictability of the world is maintained even if it were possible to measure everything that is measurable. The time of physics is, ultimately, the expression of our ignorance of the world. Time is ignorance."

Chapter 10: Perspective

"Therefore, our vision of the world is blurred because the physical interactions between the part of the world to which we belong and the rest are blind to many variables."...The entropy of a system depends explicitly on blurring. It depends on what I

do not

register, because it depends on the number of indistinguishable configurations. The same microscopic configuration may be of high entropy with regard to one blurring and of low in relation to another.This does not mean that blurring is a mental construct; it depends on actual, existing physical interactions. Entropy is not an arbitrary quantity, nor a subjective one. It is a relative one, like speed.The speed of an object is not a property of the object alone: it is a property of the object in relation to another object."

"The same is true for entropy. The entropy of A with regard to B counts the number of configurations of A that the physical interactions between A and B do not distinguish...

The entropy of the world does not depend only on the configurations of the world; it also depends on the way in which we are blurring the world, and this depends on what the variables of the world are that we interact with. That is to say, on the variables with which our part of the world interacts."

"The entropy of the world in the far past appears very low to us. But this might not reflect the exact state of the world: it might regard the subset of the world's variables with which we, as physical systems, have interacted....

This which is a fact, opens up the possibility that it wasn't the universe that was in a very particular configuration in the past. Perhaps, instead it is us, and our interactions with the universe, that are particular. We are the ones who determine a particular macroscopic description. The initial low entropy of the universe, and hence the arrow of time, may be more down to us than to the universe itself. This is the basic idea."

"IF a subset of the universe is special in this sense, then for this subset the entropy of the universe is low in the past, the second law of thermodynamics obtains; memories exist, traces are left- and there can be evolution, life, and thought. In other words, if in the universe there is something like this- and it seems natural to me that there could be- then we belong to that something. Here, "we" refers to that collection of physical variables to which we commonly have access and by means of which we describe the universe. Perhaps, therefore, the flow of time is not a characteristic of the universe: like the rotation of the heavens, it is due to the particular perspective that we have from our corner of it.But why should we belong to one of

these

special systems?" (because such a system has conditions in whcih our existence is possible)

"Similarly, in the boundless variety of the universe, it may happen that there are physical systems that interact with the rest of the world through those particular variables that define an initial low entropy. With regard to these systems, entropy is constantly increasing. These and not elsewhere, there are the typical phenomena associated with the flowing of time: life is possible, together with evolution, thought and our awareness of time passing. There, the apples grow that produce our cider: time."

INDEXICALITY

"Science aspires to a objectivity, to a shared point of view about which it is possible to be in agreement."

"what philosophers call "indexicality": the characteristic of certain words that have a different meaning every time they are used, a meaning determined by where, how, when and by whom they are being spoken...These indexical phrases make explicit reference to the fact that a point of view exists, that a point of view is an ingredient in every description of the observable world that we make."

"At the fundamental level, the world is a collection of events not ordered in time. These events manifest relations between physical variables that are, a priori, on the same level. Each part of the world interacts with a small part of all the variables, the value of which determines "the state of the world with regard to that particular subsystem."

A small system S does not distinguish the details of the rest of the universe because it interacts only with a few among the variables of the rest of the universe. The entropy of the universe with respect to S counts the (micro) states of the universe undistinguishable by S. The universe appears in a high-entropy configuration with respect to S, because (by definition) there are more microstates in high-entropy configurations, therefore it is more likely to happen to be in one of these microstates....But among the innumerable small systems S that exist in this extraordinarily vast universe where we happen to live, there will be a few special ones for which the fluctuations of the entropy happens to be low. For these systems S, the fluctuation is not symmetrical: entropy increases. This growth is what we experience as the flowing of time. What is special is not the state of the early universe: it is the small system S to which we belong."

Chapter 11: What Emerges From a Particularity

"Energy (be it mechanical, chemical, electrical, or potential) transforms itself into thermal energy, that is to say, into heat: it goes into cold things, and there is no free way of getting it back from there to reuse it to make a plant grow, or to power a motor. In this process, the energy remains the same but the entropy increases, and it is this which cannot be turned back. The second law of thermodynamics demands it.

What makes the world go round are not sources of energy, but sources of low entropy. Without low entropy, energy would dilute into uniform heart and the world would go to sleep in a state of thermal equilibrium- there would no longer be any distinction between past and future, and nothing would happen."

   Near to the Earth we have a rich source of low entropy: the sun. The sun sends us hot photons. Then the Earth radiates heat toward the black sky, emitting colder photons. The energy that enters is more or less equal to the energy that exits; consequently, we do not generally gain energy in the exchange. (Gaining energy in the exchange is disastrous for us: it is global warming.) But for every hot photon that arrives, the Earth emits ten cold ones, since a hot photon from the sun has the same energy as ten cold photons emitted by the Earth. The hot photon has less entropy than the ten cold photons, because the number of configurations of a single (hot) photon is lower than the number of configurations of ten (cold) photons. Therefore, the sun is a continual rich source of low entropy for us. We have at our disposal an abundance of low entropy, and it is this that allows plants and animals to grow, enables us to build motors and cities—and to think and to write books such as this one.Where does the low entropy of the sun come from? From the fact that, in turn, the sun is born out of an entropic configuration that was even lower: the primordial cloud from which the solar system was formed had even lower entropy. And so on, back into the past, until we reach the extremely low initial entropy of the universe.It is the growth of this entropy that powers the great story of the cosmos.

"The entire history of the universe consists of this halting and leaping cosmic growth of entropy. It is neither rapid nor uniform, because things remain trapped in basins of low entropy (the pile of wood, the cloud of hydrogen...) until something opens a door onto a process that finally allows entropy to increase."

"Life is this network of processes for increasing entropy—processes that act as catalysts to each other.98 It isn’t true, as is sometimes stated, that life generates structures that are particularly ordered, or that locally diminish entropy: it is simply a process that degrades and consumes the low entropy of food; it is a self-structured disordering, no more and no less than in the rest of the universe."

TRACES AND CAUSES

"The fact that entropy has been low in the past leads to an important fact that is ubiquitious and crucial for the difference between past and future: the past leaves traces of itself in the present."

"Traces of the past exist, and not traces of the future, only because entropy was low in the past. There can be no other reason, since the only source of difference between past and future is the low entropy of the past. In order to leave a trace, it is necessary for something to become arrested, to stop moving, and this can happen only in an irreversible process- that is to say , by degrading energy into heat....

In a world without heat, everything would rebound elastically, leaving no trace."

"It is the presence of abundant traces of the past that produces the familiar sensation that the past is determined. The absence of any analogous traces of the future produces the sensation that the future is open. The existence of traces serves to make it possible for our brain to dispose of extensive maps of past events. There is nothing analogous to this for future ones. This fact is at the origin of our sensation of being able to act freely in the world: choosing between different futures, even though we are unable to act upon the past."

Chapter 12 : The Scent of the Madeleine

"There are different ingredients that combine to produce our identity. Three of these are important for the argument of this book:

The first ingredient is that every one of us identifies with a  point of view in the world. The world is reflected in each one of us through a rich spectrum of correlations essential for our survival...

... In the process of reflecting the world, we organize it into entities: we conceive of the world by grouping and segmenting it as best we can in a continuous process that is more or less uniform and stable, the better to interact with it.... It is the structure of our nervous system that works in this way. IT receives sensory stimuli, elaborates continuously, generating behaviour... If this (networks of neurons evolving by associating more or less stable fixed points of their dynamic with recurring patterns that they find in the incoming information) is so, then "things" like "concepts" are fixed points in the neuronal dynamic, induced by recurring structures of the sensorial input and of the successive elaborations. They mirror a combination of aspects of the world that depends on recurrent structures of the world and on their relevance in their interactions with us... In particular we group into a unified image the collection of processes that constitutes those living organisms that are other human beings, because our life is social and we therefore interact a great deal with them. They are knots of cause and effect that are deeply relevant for us. We have shaped an idea of a "human being" by interacting with others like ourselves. I believe we are applying to ourselves the mental circuits that we have developed to engage with our companions.... The experience of thinkinf of oneself as a subject is not a primary experience: it is a complex cultural deduction, made on the basis of many other thoughts. My primary experience - if we grant that this means anything - is to see the world around me, not myself. I believe that we each have a concept of "my self" only because at a certain point we learn to project onto ourselves the idea of being human as an additional feature that evolution has lef us to develop during the course of millenia in order to engage with other members of our group: we are the reflection of the idea of ourselves that we receive back from our kind.

But there is a third ingredient ...- it is the reason this delicate discussion is taking place in a book about time: memory. Every moment of our existence is linked by a peculiar thread to our past- the most recent and the most distant- by memory. Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives. I am not this momentary mass of flesh reclined on the sofa typing the letter a on my laptop; I am my thoughts full of traces of the phrases that I am writing; I am my mother's caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mindl I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I've written, what I've heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word "memory" into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it... To a large extent, the brain is a mechanism for collecting memories of the past in order to use them continually to predict the future. This happens across a wide spectrum of time scales, from the very short to the very long.... The possibility of predicitng something in the future obviously improves our chances of survival and, consequently, evolution has selected neural structures that allow it. We are the result of this election. This being between past and future events is central to our mental structure. This, for us, is the "flow" of time.... In other words, what we perceive is not the present, which in any case makes no snese for a system that functions on a scale of finite time, but rather something that happens and extends in time. It is in our brains that an extension in time becomes condensed into a perception of duration... And he (Augustine, Confessions Book XI) asks himseelf how we can be aware of duration- or even be capable of evaluting it- if we are always only in a present that is, by definiton, instantaneous... HEre and now there is no past, no future. Where are they? Augustine concludes that they are within us:

IF is within my mind, then, that I measure time. I must not allow my mind to insist that time is something objective. When I measure time, I am measuring something in the rpesent of my mind. Either this is time, or I have no idea what time is.

Kant discusses the nature of space and time in his Critique of Pure Reason, and interprets both space and time as a priori forms of knowledge- that is to say, things that do not just relate to the objective world but also to the way in which a subject apprehends it. But he also observes that whereas space is shaped by our external sense, that is to say, by our way or ordering things that we see in the world outside of us, time is shaped by our internal sense, that is to say, by our way of ordering internal states within ourselves."

subsidence: either the sudden sinking or gradual downward settling of the ground's surface with little or no horizontal motion.

"It is with respect to that physical system to which we belong -due to the peculiar way in which it interacts with the rest of the world, thanks to the fact that it allows traces and because we, as physical entities, consist of memory and anticipation- that the perspective of time opens up for us, like our small, lit clearing. Time opens up our limited access to the world. Time, then, is the form in which we beings, whose brains are made up essentially of memory and foresight, interact with the world: it is the source of our identity."

inexorably: in a way that is impossible to stop or prevent.Tyrrhenian Sea: is part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of Italy. It is named for the Tyrrhenian people, identified since the 6th century BCE with the Etruscans of Italy.pumice: a volcanic rock that consists of highly vesicular rough textured volcanic glass, which may or may not contain crystals.

Chapter 13: The Source of TimeSummary

"A present that is common throughout the whole universe does not exist( chp3). ..The present is a localzied rather than a globalized phenomenon. The difference between past and future does not exist in the elementary equations that govern events in the world(chp2). (the difference) It issues only from the fact that, in the past, the world found itself subject to a state that, with our blurred take on things, appears particular to us...The closer we are to a mass, or the faster we move, the more time slows down: there is no single duration between two events; there are many possible ones. The rhythms at which time flows are determiend by the gravitational field ... If we overlook wuantum effects, time and space are aspects of a great jelly in which we are immersed...In the elementary grammar of the world, there is neither time nor space- only processes that transform physical quantities from one to another, from which it si possible to calculate probabilities and relations.(chp5)...At the fundamental level we currently know of, there is little that resembles time as we experience it. There is no special variable "time", there is no difference between past and future, there is no spacetime.(Part Two)..It is not a "static" world, or a "block universe" where all change is illusory: (chp7) on the contrary, ours is a world of events rather than of things (chp6)." -- concluding a universe "without time"

Then the book details how our perception of time can emerge from this universe without time. (chp9)"From our perspective ... we see that world flowing in time...Perhaps we belong to a particular subset of the world that interacts with the rest of it in such a way that this entropy is lower in one direction of our thermal time. The directionality of time is therefore real but perspectival (chp10): the entropy of the world in relation to us increases with our thermal time. We see the occurrence of things ordered in this variable, which we simply call "time", and the growth of entropy distinguishes the past from the future for us and leads to the unfolding of the cosmos. It determines the existence of traces, residues, and memories of the past(chp11). We human beings are an effect of this great history of the increase of entropy, held together by the memory that is enabled by these traces."

Hans Reichenbach:Parmenides:PlatoHegel:Heigegger:HeraclitusBergson: Copernicus:

"Perhaps , ultimately, the emotional dimension of time is not the film of mist that prevents us from apprehending the nature of time objectively. Perhaps the emotion of time is precisely what time

is

for us."

"When we cannot formulate a problem with precision, it is often not because the problem is profound: it's because the problem is false.Will we be able to understand thigns better in the future? I think so.... we begin to see that we are time. We are this space, this clearing opened up by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come. The clearing that is opened up in this way, by memory and by anticipation, is time: a source of anguish sometimes, but in the end a tremendous gift.A precious miracle that the infinite play of combinations has unlocked for us, allowing us to exist. We may smile now. We can go back to serenely immersing ourselves in time- in our finite time- to savouring the clear intensity of every fleeting and cherished moment of the brief circle of our existence."

THE SISTER OF SLEEP

"I am afraid of frailty, and of the absence of love. But death does not alarm me. It did not scare me when I was young, and I thought at the time that this was because it was such a remote prospect. But now, at sixty, the fear has yet to arrive. I love life, but life is also struggle, suffering, pain. I think of death as akin to well-earned rest."

"Job died when he was "full of days". It's a wonderful expression. I, too, would like to arrive at a point of feeling "full of days," and to close with a smile the brief circle that is our life."

"Our fear of death seems to me to be an error of evolution. Many animals react instinctively with terror and flight at the approach of a predator. It is a healthy reaction, one that allows them to escape from danger. But it’s a terror that lasts an instant, not something that remains with them constantly. Natural selection has produced these big apes with hypertrophic frontal lobes, with an exaggerated ability to predict the future. It’s a prerogative that’s certainly useful but one that has placed before us a vision of our inevitable death, and this triggers the instinct of terror and flight. Basically, I believe that the fear of death is the result of an accidental and clumsy interference between two distinct evolutionary pressures- the product of bad automatic connections in our brain rather than something that has any use or meaning. Everything has a limited duration, even the human race itself...Fearing the transition, being afraid of death, is like being afraid of reality itself; like being afraid of the sun. Whatever for?"

"We are not, in the first place, reasoning beings. We may perhaps become so, more or less, in the second. In the first instance, we are driven by a thirst for life, by hunger, by the need to love, by the instinct to find our place in human society... The second instance does not even exist without the first. Reason arbitrates between instincts but uses the very same instincts as primary criteria in its arbitration....It allows us to recognize the innumerable inefficient strategies, mistaken beliefs, and prejudices that we have. It has developed to help us understand that the tracks we follow, thinking that they will lead to antelopes we are hunting, are in fact false trails. But what drives us is not reflecting on life: it is life itself.So what really drives us? It is difficult to say. Perhaps we do not know entirely. We recognize motivations in ourselves,. We give names to these motivation, and we have many of them. We believe that we share some of them with other animals; others only with humankind- and others still with smaller groups to which we see ourselves as belonging. Hunger and thirst, curiosity, the need for companionship, the desire to love, being in love, the pursuit of happiness, the need to fight for a position in the world, the desire to be appreciated, recognized, and loved; loyalty, honor, the love of God, the thirst for justice and liberty, the desire for knowledge . . . We are more complex than our mental faculties are capable of grasping...Our thinking is prey to its own weakness, but even more so to its own grammar.......It only takes the experience of spending time with a friend who has suffered a serious schizophrenic episode, a few weeks with her struggling to communicate, to realize that delirium is a vast theatrical equipment with the capacity to stage the world, and that it is difficult to find arguments to distinguish it from those great collective deliriums of ours that are the foundations of our social and spiritual life, and of our understanding of the world....

The instruments that we have found for dealing with it and attending to it have been many, and reason has revealed itself to be among the best of these. It is precious.But it is only an instrument, a pincer. We use ti to handle a substance that is made of fire and ice: something that we experience as living and burning emotions. These are the substances of which we are made. They propel us and they drag us back, and we cloak them with fine words. They compel us to act. And something of them always escapes from the order of our discourses, since we know that, in the end, every attempt to impose order leaves something outside the frame."