#programming theory

[emilywaters]

Best ripple effects from the genshin 5.6 livestream

KAEBEDO REVIVAL

RAGBRO REVIVAL

Kaeya edit renaissance

Just overall Mondstadt renaissance

Hexenzirkel theories

Our yearly reminder of Alice's international terrorism

This truly was our Genshin Impact 😔✊️✊️

[cosmicportal]

Our solar system.

[aardvaark]

the leverage team would have had a games night… once. everyone cheated so much and in such increasingly extreme ways that all mentions of monopoly are banned in their headquarters (this makes talking about marks who monopolize the market very confusing)

[edelgardism]

“machine connor is more deviant than deviant connor” deviant connor will literally spend the rest of his life fighting his programming and being scared to death that one day amanda will resume control of him

[creature-wizard]

With Trump coming back into office, it's more crucial than ever that folks with DID and those seeking mental health care in general understand that this whole idea of DID programming cults is a pseudoscientific far right conspiracy theory associated with all kinds of hateful garbage.

Here are some posts to read on this topic:

How Project Monarch fails the "Six Ways To Debunk Any Conspiracy Theory" sniff test

What the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy theory is (and what it's not)

How the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy theory developed

Cathy O'Brien - The First Project Monarch "Survivor"

Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler: Two Of The Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theorists Most People Have Never Heard Of

Unwelcome Ozian copied Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler - see for yourself!

I just read Unwelcome Ozian's "Rules of Programming," and Oh Boy.

How to explain to others that Project Monarch isn't real

Recovered memory therapy from the perspective of former patients

How singlets can be misled into believing they have DID

Don't let people guilt trip you into accepting substandard evidence

[charrators]

i feel like it means something that the camera focuses on the license plate that says “jax.001”. like i Don’t think it means that he was the first, but apparently, when you duplicate an object in blender, the copy is called (object).001 so like. What The Fuck

[oldbutchdanielcraig]

imagine you’re armand the vampire and you pull up in your brand new buick to pick up your (recently married) boyfriend daniel molloy because you’re certain it will ensnare a car guy like him. and you have big plans to fuck him in the back of this car by the way. and he comes out to the curb with his newborn daughter’s baby carrier and straps her into the backseat. wyd

[callingofstars]

i am sleep deprived and utterly insane but 3.4 FRAME-BY-FRAME TRAILER ANALYSIS GO!!

(spoilers under the cut)

i think i was right about Phainon fighting the flame reaver to the death and becoming him, in a sense - blending his past and future selves to create the form we see in his ultimate.

the “observations” made by the emanator and likely the aeons, signifying that this is the moment Phainon gains their recognition and ascends to embody destruction. which would also fit with the core theme of that path, giving yourself and everything you once loved away to calamity.

speaking of - MYDEI!!!!!! MYDEI MENTIONED!!!!!!!!!!!! AT LEAST 1 SECOND OF MYDEI CONTENT IN VERSION 3.4!!!!!!!!! EVERYONE CHEER

also this parallel completely destroyed me. his face when fighting beside Mydei never changed, even if now it’s only a fond memory. he even turns and looks over his shoulder, as if thinking Mydei would appear behind him in a blaze of glory, like he used to .i’m going to be sick

these scenes went by really fast but? hey hoyoverse? WHAT IS THIS. i would say the fractured memory cutscene is the trailblazer getting forcibly pushed out of Amphoreus as it collapses, since they are an outlander, but this doesn’t make sense because if so Dan Heng would appear also. and he is fine and nothing happens to him ever (COPING) !!

March 7th and Phainon’s ultimate form are reflected in a few of the mirrors, which could signify that the shattering is more connected to March/Mem/Cyrene and their past rather than the planet as a whole. i am officially not ready for the trailblazer to experience even more horrors

speaking of, and i say this through tears and gritted teeth, i do not believe Dan Heng won the duel w flame reaver. just putting it out there given Stelle’s look of distress and the fact that Phainon gets a turn battling him at the basin.

HE’S GOING TO BE FINE THOUGH BECAUSE EVERYONE ON AMPHOREUS IS GOING TO BE FINE AND NOBODY DIES !!!!!!!! thank you for your time, passes out and dies

[ficandkaboodle]

Someone (I don’t remember Whomst but please do raise your hand if it was you) once proposed the idea that Terzo might be a bit of a pianist based off of this image

And I just wanted to say that I support this idea. Not only because I think Terzo being able to play piano is adorable, but because it would make the Kazoo of Destiny even funnier in my eyes.

Dude is a classically-trained concert pianist, would make so many of his peers swoon by doing that dumb “Oh is that a piano? Don’t mind if I do~” bit and playing a concerto off the cuff. He could easily wriggle in a piano bit for himself during rituals and acoustic sessions — and the Clergy would’ve been on board for once because they know the power that a confident, handsome man with strong fingers can wield on an already horny audience.

But nope: He toot his lil kazoo, his favorite party favor he got three years ago at a New Year’s Eve party.

[as-if-and-only-if]

Rust’s never type is wild to me.

So, if you’re not familiar with type theory, the empty type, which we’ll denote ∅ here (which Rust calls never, but more on that later) is the type with no elements.

But…how do you actually say that the type “has no elements” within the type theory?

You can’t say something like ¬∃x, x : ∅, in part because inside most type theories, this statement doesn’t even make sense: we need to know the type of x when bound, and more importantly, typing judgments like x : ∅ are not statements you can make within the theory itself.

Actually, you often don’t even want to use ¬ at all: we want to define ¬P in terms of ∅ as P → ∅ ! This is because having an element of the empty type would (if all goes well) be a contradiction, so if you can construct such a contradiction out of P (i.e. ->), then P must be false. ∅ is near the foundations, so we don’t have much to work with when setting up its meaning.

What we can do is encode the principle of explosion, i.e. that given an element of the empty type (a contradiction!) we can derive anything.

That is, we have an axiom explode : ∀(A : Type), ∅ → A. For any type A, give me an element x of ∅, and I will hand you an element of that type (namely explode A x : A).

(If you’re familiar, ignore universe polymorphism/Type vs. Prop and the fact that A isn’t a type family.)

This is what makes the empty type the empty type. If we didn’t include this axiom, the empty type would have no real emptiness behavior besides “gee, I can’t quite figure out how to make an element of this type”. You wouldn’t know it’s empty, since there would be no consequences to finding out that something has type ∅.

(Aside: this axiom fits into a very general pattern of what it means to define a type inductively, and lets us do “induction on the empty type”. It’s not ad-hoc!)

———

So it should be clear that if you ever do find an element of ∅, your theory is inconsistent, as you can prove anything you want.

Which is why Rust’s empty type, called never, is pretty neat. To me, someone who does not know Rust, and who literally opened the docs as soon as I installed them, scrolled down, and said “ooh, what’s never?”

See, Rust expressions can have type never. (I’m calling them expressions; I don’t know if this is what rustaceans call them)

But, how?! Surely that breaks everything! Well…yes. Which is why the only way to maintain consistency is to have these expressions break everything.

Let me explain: the things with type never never return a value (hence the name). They diverge: they’re things like exit or break or infinite loops.

And thanks to the explode axiom, these expressions can be coerced to any type. For example, you can say x: u32 = { exit() }, and Rust will say “makes sense to me”. (Apologies for any bad Rust syntax.)

This is—surprisingly!—fine.

exit() : never, just like any element of the empty type, really is a contradiction in the type system, but being able to write it in Rust code doesn’t actually make the type system inconsistent—since we leave the type system as soon as it’s encountered. (Or, in the case of an infinite loop, we never manage to actually finish constructing a value of never.)

So, while the syntax of Rust can contain “contradictions”, they never get the chance to behave as contradictions in the model of Rust’s type system formed by the values it constructs at runtime. I.e. running a real program never invalidates the type system. We’re saved from the runtime nonsense that would be created by explode A x by having the system actually explode instead.

There’s something to be said for this, but it is weird. Saying “x : u32” in Rust is apparently scoped in a certain way: it says “as long as the value we call x exists, it has type u32.” It doesn’t guarantee the existence of something with type u32.

This means that you don’t actually have to break the whole type system to use never; you just have to break the context in which x exists. E.g., if you’re inside a function, then let x: bool { return 500 }, where the return returns to the outer function, is fine. x never finishes being constructed, so the guarantee provided by its type annotation is (vacuously) satisfied.

I wonder if this is linked to the notion of lifetimes in Rust, and how that’s reflected in the theory behind the type system. And I’m not a type theorist (or someone who knows Rust), but I am also curious how type theorists talk about diverging terms; in Lean, for example, a top-level term of type Empty is verboten. You create diverging terms by using the partial keyword, and then you’re prohibited from proving anything about their behavior (but they still have types as usual).

This isn’t the first time people have talked about this, by far, I’m sure; happy to hear any takes (or corrections). Much to learn! :)

[battlevann]

After playing through chapter 1 of dream bbq I've begun to think that the mannequins we see throughout the game are the mass produced bases of ENA's that either never received their ENA shell or somehow lost it, leading to them no longer recognizing their identity or purpose as an ENA, which is why they are either dead or walking aimlessly

[emilywaters]

Genshin 5.6 theories and thoughts

Albedo is guilty, but it's justified, and there was a really good reason (maybe it was under orders from rhinedottir?)

Ifa will heal Neuvillette (they kept talking about ifa being able to heal other dragons during the live, so it seems a little obvious (unless that was a red herring))

Potential Istaroth lore drop?

5.7 will be windblume with Dornman Port Mondstadt extension (manifesting 🙏🙏🙏)

Fakebedo lore

Omg, what if Fakebedo is the person Albedo killed, and he had to dispose of the body in a way it couldn't be revived, hence improper disposal of human bodies?!!

Dainsleif will make an appearance

Traveller will discover incriminating evidence in Albedo's office (also, why aren't people more hyped about Knights of Favonius HQ second floor reveal???) But will also realise he killed Fakebedo and will hide/destroy the evidence so Albedo will be ruled innocent

Kaeya and/or Venti will know about the hidden/destroyed evidence

[sleepanonymous]

Once again, a round of applause for Mr. Lever. You will see an obscure photo of Vessel and II if you click that link, fyi. I actually can't find Vessel, but II and George are def in it, and a friend says Vessel is too. For obvious reasons, I did not include the photo while formatting this post.

Full Production, Mixing & Mastering catered to by George Lever here at G1 .

Prelude

Working with Sleep Token is always a pleasure. I get this deep seated selfish enjoyment when we start new projects, mainly because I’m safe in the knowledge that the experience is going to be beautifully intense and incredibly rewarding.

Tracking

We started working on ‘Two’ just before winter started in 2016. Working on maturing the structure and fleshing out tones. Its no surprise that when it came to the final tracking that we changed the sonic balance almost completely (this is a running theme by the looks of things) Time restrictions led to us using programmed drums, however we took samples of the real kit to sequence so that it didn’t ‘feel’ completely robotic or lost. Guitars last time around resulted on leaning on my Kemper, however this time we used a live amp and cab for the majority, the momentum from the tubes / movement of the cab is something I’ve had to accept is difficult to recreate ITB. Its easier just to go down the most direct route. I had recently purchased a one of a kind Randall modded amp from a friend in the states. It turns out its an early prototype from when Fortin partnered up with Randall, its not a looker but its a box of pure filth. The Fortin was fed into my Mesa OS, placed an SM57 on the cap joint of the cone and off we went, pretty straight forward really! Bass is a hybrid setup between two real basses and then a 3rd lane of audio from a programmed bass. Because of the way the song’s have been written, keeping the sub lows consistent is vital to ensuring the song flows without feeling disjointed section to section / genre to genre. Vocals is where the most change happened (from a tracking perspective). Originally we had finished and finalised everything with my go-to setup. Modded Oktava > Germanium Chandler > Empirical Labs Distressor. And for the most part it worked. However halfway through the process I bought a Slate VMS. A modelling microphone. Without going into too much detail, its a microphone that can imitate more expensive vintage setups and it does it without any issue whatsoever. Obviously when testing it out and comparing, the VMS won without breaking a sweat. So back to tracking all the vocals again. (The vocalist is amazing however, the repeat performances were just as good, if not better than the original final takes) 

Gear Used

Guitars

Ibanez Prestige (7 string) – Bare Knuckle Aftermaths Fortin Modded Randall Diezel Einstein Mesa Oversized Cab Beyerdynamic m201 & 57

Vocals

Slate VMS – AKG C12 Emulation into Neve Pre

Drums

Sampled the original kit, programmed performances.

Bass

Fender Jazz Customshop Dingwall Combustion

Synths / Samples

Logic Stock Omnisphere Spitfire Albion LA Scoring Strings

Mixing

Everything with Sleep Token (from a mix perspective) is orientated around the vocal. The vocal here is god and attempting to get the mix to flow any other way would have been very strange indeed. Sleep Token were very clear and concise about the structure for the mix, Vocals, Samples, Drums then everything else equal after the fact. Very much like how pop is built actually. It turned out to be the most happily balanced mix I’ve worked on. I expected to have a harder time balancing moving between a few different genres through out the track but in all honesty, it just worked. Which in itself is testament to the quality of the song writing. We worked on a few different ‘perspectives’ for the mixes, however in all honesty. The mixes came together with very little effort and the tracking stage defined a lot of the movements that would happen later down the line.

Testimonial

“Worship” Vessel doesn’t give quotes. – ST

Mastering

I ended up going against my usual workflow for the master chain, trying out new things always lends to another perspective / approach / result. The signal chain looked something like this;

FG-Bomber Slate VMR – Neve EQ Focusrite Red 3 Slate VMR – Custom EQ UBK-1 (the density control on this is awesome!) Izotope Limiter FabFilter Limiter

Lastly…

If you haven’t already checked out Sleep Tokens first release ‘One’. You should. ‘One’ was also produced here at G1 but resulted in a darker sound overall! – G

[jae-in-a-trenchcoat]

New drawing program, more yasammy parents stuff except I actually drew a baby this time

[peradoxical]

Pokemon theory time

So Porygon, right? For the longest time I found it weird that it was Normal type instead of Electric, despite being made of computer code.

But the thought occurred to me: when any Pokemon gets stored in the PC, they must get converted to code from their Pokeballs, right? That doesn't make them Electric type, all Pokemon can be stored that way.

So my theory is: What if Porygon was used as a prototype to test the concept of the Pokemon Storage System?

(yes, this would mean that Bill would have worked on Porygon)

Creating Porygon would make sense as a way to test if converting a Pokemon into data was possible, and it wouldn't require testing on any existing Pokemon.

Hence the Normal typing: if Porygon was created to be an example of a "generic" Pokemon, Normal would be the most logical option for its creators to pick.

This could also explain the Porygon line's signature moves, Conversion and Conversion 2, which allow Porygon and its evolutions to change into any type. The PSS would likely have needed a way to make sure it could preserve a Pokemon's type, so having Porygon contain data to test all of them makes sense.

[creature-wizard]

A warning for trauma survivors looking for online support

You may have come across the acronym "RAMCOA", which stands for "ritual abuse, mind control, and organized abuse."

If you search the Internet for RAMCOA, you might come across a result like this:

If you click the link, you'll be taken to a site that briefly describes what RAMCOA supposedly is, with content like:

MC - Mind Control. A shortened form of TBMC, standing for Torture Based Mind Control. MC is also known as programming, where victims are repeatedly tortured starting at a very young age to intentionally cause a system of dissociated parts that function perfectly to suit the abusers' needs.

alpha : a base program, one of the very first implemented. it trains the victim's mind to accept every order given by handlers willingly. parts with alpha programming will often have no will of their own, and very little personality outside of following orders.

aiw : alice in wonderland. typically split into 3 different sections : black alice, white alice, and crazy alice. ideally, a system scripted with aiw would have all three. white alice makes sure the system forgets the trauma, black alice makes the system feel like theyll be a danger to others if they remember the trauma, and crazy alice makes the system think theyre making it up or going insane if they ever remember it.

Literally all of this comes from a conspiracy theory - specifically, the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy. It was developed and pushed by far right conspiracy theorists. Most of what people run into specifically traces back to Fritz Springmeier, a man who claimed in the 90's that the fight for gay rights was part of a plot to enthrone the antichrist in the year 2000. The Project Monarch conspiracy theory was always adjacent to the Satanic Panic, if not a somewhat niche part of it. If you start checking citations, you will find many of these people citing Svali, a conspiracy theorist who gets a lot of her material from Springmeier. (Example 1, example 2.)

This is no accident. The term RAMCOA was created by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), which was created by and for psychologists who believed in the myths promoted during the Satanic Panic.

The RA part comes from "satanic ritual abuse," which was coined by Dr. Lawrence Pazder of Michelle Remembers (cw for descriptions of horrible abuses) fame. Lawrence Pazder is the man who effectively started the Satanic Panic. It cannot be overstated that Pazder, now a known malpractitioner, was considered the expert on ritual abuse during this time.

The MC part comes from "trauma-based mind control," which was coined to refer to the alleged abuses inflicted in Project Monarch. Parts of this conspiracy theory that can't be traced back to Fritz Springmeier can usually be traced back to Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips, two other (really racist) conspiracy theorists.

Ultimately, the entire conspiracy theory is constructed from tropes that go back to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (a known antisemitic hoax), blood libel, and early modern witch panic.

Searching the Internet for RAMCOA resources, ritual abuse, or trauma-based mind control will always bring you to conspiracy theorists.

(Also, the term OEA, which stands for "organized extreme abuse," will lead you to conspiracy theorists as well.)

So yeah, if you're looking for support, be very wary of this stuff. It will absolutely not help you heal; just the opposite.