#tree Topology

[biology-geology-beaches-india]

The Research Notebooks of S. Sunkavally, p 757.

[cryptotheism]

The former CEO of my employer tried to design our product’s architecture to be topologically identical to the Kabbalah tree of life and would get into big fights with the network architect over it.

Huh. Interesting.

[ceausescue]

choose the option furthest down which is true of you

not intended as a tech tree or tier list, id just like to make some effortposts about math intended for amateurs but don't know what people know

[blood-orange-juice]

I'm not a fan of bridging Genshin and Honkai, but the authors seem to be doing it anyway, so... blame Hoyo for this post.

tl;dr of Honkai lore

At the core of Honkai's cosmogony are two concepts. The Imaginary Tree — a tree of branching parallel universes, each twig of which is a timeline and each leaf a world. And The Sea of Quanta — a boundless place of entropy and chaos from which the Imaginary tree spawned.

Order and chaos, basically. They exist in constant conflict, the tree tries to consume the sea of quanta and the sea tries to flood and dissolve the tree.

When a world fails to persist it can "fall" from the tree into the sea of quanta, becoming an unstable fragmented version of itself called a bubble universe. A shadow of a proper world. Such a universe is eventually dissolved in the sea.

Bubbles universes can also be artificially created or spawned from someone's memories. Either way they are unstable. If I recall correctly, Genshin was confirmed to be a bubble universe in a Honkai 3rd easter egg.

Ether Anchors

There's a technology allowing to extend a bubble universe's lifespan, is called an Ether Anchor. An Ether Anchor holds together fragments of a bubble universe that follow a fixed set of laws.

It seems to be more of a place/space anomaly than an object (“a topological formation that exists between the dimensional manifolds”), if I understood Durandal's and Roland's lore correctly, but also can take the form of an object, if honkai wiki is to be believed.

(I think space anomalies are anchor points, not the anchor itself? the places where it sews fragments of reality together. I'm still figuring this part out)

Quotes from Durandal VN summary:

At the core of the Ether Anchor, space from different dimensions were cluttered together like vines

"There, he witnessed the endless possibilities of another ancient world. "

Tartaglia's character story 4

Readjusted her body composition with the Ether Anchor to turn herself into a weapon.

I think there was a guy in Genshin who constantly talks about turning himself into a weapon. I can't quite remember his name though...

 Synchronized themselves with the Ether Anchor, becoming the “Son of God” itself.

"The purpose of this line in the ritual scripture is to forsake the self and sink into the abyss, and in the abyss, to welcome rebirth as a holy infant."

Narcissenkreuz Ordo note

Another property of the Ether Anchor is that it allows bubble universes to interact with one another. 

Or maybe not exactly different bubble universes but rather fragments of the same bubble universe (or, since we are in a multiverse, these could be the same thing)?

"Unborn life, unfulfilled wishes, Tragic dreams at the edge of the universal darkness that could never come true."

Festering Desire description

Ok, this is getting too long and no one reads long posts. Maybe I'll continue in a separate post later. There are still the topics of the Abyss (and why it's not The Sea of Quanta), Descenders, whether the anchors need to be sustained in some way, Tsaritsa's goals, why does everyone who has seen the Abyss speaks of ultimate injustice, Alice and Hexenzirkel in general, what is Irminsul exactly, and, of course, Childe, why Childe's promise of a battle at the edge of the universe is more important than it might seem, what are world cycles, and why Childe's part of 4.2 story sucked so much (I now have a Lore Explanation. or maybe a copium overdose. probably both).

For now I'm calling it though. Whatever Khaenri'ahns messed up, it had to do something with Teyvat's Aether Anchor.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Faced with the world's impending freshwater scarcity, a team of researchers in Singapore turned to solar steam generators (SSGs), which are emerging as a promising device for seawater desalination. Desalination can be a costly, energy-intensive solution to water scarcity. This renewable-powered approach mimics the natural water cycle by using the sun's energy to evaporate and isolate water. However, the technology is limited by the need to fabricate complex topologies to increase the surface area necessary to achieve high water evaporation efficiency. To overcome this barrier, the team sought design inspiration from trees and harnessed the potential of 3D printing. In Applied Physics Reviews, the team presents a state-of-the-art technology for producing efficient SSGs for desalination and introduces a novel method for printing functional nanocomposites for multi-jet fusion (MJF).

Read more.

[sortai]

propaganda:

what if a number was a function? what if a computer was a function? what if data was made up of functions? what if functions were cool tree-like diagrams? what if they took a permanent spot in my brain and heart?

time loops are kinda the simplest kind of time anomaly. let's use topology to figure out how much worse we can get.

turns out most if not all proofs by diagonalization can be derived from a more general theorem in category theory, see this post by @m---a---x, which is where I learned about it.

[ninjapotatohead]

If Forces is so "great" can you explain why there are Lego trees, GHZ palm trees and realistic trees in the same game? Or why there's checkerboard soil and Mario-looking soil in the same game?

If Sonic Adventure 2 is so great, can you explain why there are realistic police cars, cartoony humans with giant clown shoes, and fucking canyons sporting Tim Burton looking pumpkin shaped topology in the same game?

If Sonic Unleashed is so great, can you explain why there are realistic skyscrapers, artificial Shuttle Loops, and Looney Tunes looking-ass characters in the same game?

If Sonic Frontiers is so great, can you explain why there are Unity Engine looking-ass grassy fields, giant Evangelion knock-off enemies, and a copious amount of pop-in... in the same game?

See how your logic works against you?

[catgirl-lucy]

Cantor space and Baire space

Part two of catgirl learning descriptive set theory.

Given two spaces X and Y, X × Y is the product space of X and Y.

Definition. Let X and Y be topological spaces. X × Y is a topology with {(x,y) | x ∈ X ∧ y ∈ Y} as points and {U × V | U ⊂ X is open ∧ V ⊂ Y is open} as basis.

If X and Y are both discrete spaces, X × Y is always discrete. If X and Y are both Polish spaces, X × Y is also always Polish. You can also take infinite products of spaces.

Definition. Let (X_i | i ∈ κ) be a family of spaces. Π[i ∈ κ] X_i is a topology with {f: κ → ⋃[i ∈ κ] X_i | ∀i ∈ κ. f(i) ∈ X_i} as points and with {Π[i ∈ κ] U_i | {i ∈ κ | U_i ≠ X_i} is finite ∧ ∀i ∈ κ. U_i ⊂ X_i is open}.

Taking infinite products doesn't always preserve the properties of spaces. The product Π[i ∈ κ] X of κ copies of the same space X is written X^κ. 2 = {0,1} and ω, the set of natural numbers, are both endowed with the discrete topology. In this blog post, we'll focus on two topological spaces:

Definition. The Cantor space, denoted 𝒞, is the space 2^ω.

Definition. The Baire space, denoted 𝒩, is the space ω^ω.

Let n = {0,…,n-1}. I call a function s: n → X an X-list, for which I use the notation s = (s_0,…,s_{n-1}), and a function α: ω → X an X-sequence, for which I use the notation α = (α_0,α_1,…). The set of X-lists is denoted X^<ω and the set of X-sequences is denoted X^ω. Points in the Cantor and Baire space are thus 2-sequences and ω-sequences respectively. Instead of taking the basic open sets as defined in the product topology, we can also take the basis {{α ∈ 2^ω | s ⊂ α} | s ∈ 2^<ω} and {{α ∈ ω^ω | s ⊂ α} | s ∈ ω^<ω} for the Cantor and Baire space respectively.

Closed sets are complements of open sets. They have a nice interpretation in the Cantor and Baire space in terms of trees:

Definition. A tree on X is a set T ⊂ X^<ω of X-lists such that, for any s ∈ T and any list t ⊂ s, we have t ∈ T. [T] = {α ∈ X^ω | ∀n. α|n ∈ T} is the set of branches of T (α|n is the length n initial segment of α).

The lists in the tree T are the nodes of T. Closed sets are exactly those sets of the form [T] for some tree T. For a closed set C, there can be multiple trees T for which C = [T], but there is always only one tree T for which C = [T] and ∀s ∈ T ∃α ∈ [T]. s ⊂ α, i.e. all nodes in T extend to an infinite branch. From now on, I'll assume every node extends to an infinite branch with every tree we work with. If we take T = 2^<ω (T = ω^<ω) to be the full tree, then [T] = 2^ω ([T] = ω^ω) is the Cantor (Baire) space itself, thus we can view the Cantor (Baire) space as an infinite tree, where the points are the branches. In the Cantor space, this is a binary tree, while in the Baire space, every node has infinitely many children.

The basic open sets U_s = {α | s ⊂ α} in the Cantor and Baire space are clopen: the tree T = {t | s ⊂ t ∨ t ⊂ s}, which goes up to s and branches out everywhere from there, has [T] = U_s. Thus, unlike the real line, the Cantor space and Baire space have a rich structure of clopen sets. They're completely disconnected: for any two distinct points, there is a clopen set separating them. Intuitively, clopen sets can be thought of as disconnected parts of a space.

I mentioned in my last blog post that the Cantor and Baire space are Polish spaces. I encourage the reader to prove themselves that they are Polish spaces before reading my proof.

Proposition. The Cantor space and the Baire space are Polish.

Proof. Recall that a Polish space is a non-empty perfect, separable, completely metrizable space. Proving they're non-empty and perfect is trivial. To show they're separable: the set of sequences that are eventually 0 (i.e. start with a finite list of things and end in infinitely many 0s) is countable and dense. The complete metric d(α,β) = 2^(-min{n | α(n) ≠ β(n)}) works for both spaces. ∎

Though the Cantor space 𝒞 and the Baire space 𝒩 look a lot like each other, they're not the same space. The Cantor space is compact while the Baire space is not.

Definition. Let (X,τ) be a topological space. An open cover is a set Σ ⊂ τ of open sets such that ⋃Σ = X. A subcover of Σ is an open cover T such that T ⊂ Σ. (X,τ) is compact iff every open cover has a finite subcover.

For metric spaces, the following is equivalent:

Definition. A space X is sequentially compact iff every sequence (xₙ) of points xₙ in X has a converging subsequence (x_iₙ), where (iₙ) is an increasing sequence of natural numbers/indices.

In the Baire space, ((0,0,0,…),(1,0,0,…),(2,0,0,…),…) is an example of a sequence that has no converging subsequence. In the Cantor space, however, every sequence has a converging subsequence. Proving this is left as an exercise to the reader.

Both the Cantor space and the Baire space have embeddings into the real line. An embedding, here, is a continuous injection. The image of the embedding of the Cantor space in the real line is the Cantor set, which results from starting with the closed interval [0,1] and recursively taking out middle thirds, resulting in [0,1/3] ∪ [2/3,1], [0,1/9] ∪ [2/9,1/3] ∪ [2/3,7/9] ∪ [9/8,1], etc, and then taking the intersection. The image of the Baire space in ℝ is 𝕀, the set of irrational numbers. Filling in the details is left to the reader. We thus have that 𝒩 and 𝕀 are homeomorphic (the same topologically), hence Baire reals (points in the Baire space) are sometimes called irrationals.

The Cartesian plane ℝ² is not homeomorphic to the real line, while having basically the same structure as far as descriptive set theory is concerned (they're Borel equivalent). It's easier to work with the Baire space as it's homeomorphic to its own square: 𝒩 is homeomorphic to 𝒩 × ω (i.e. ω copies of itself), 𝒩 × 𝒩 and 𝒩^ω. I won't prove this rigorously (as i don't wanna), but here is an informal argument: 𝒩 × ω = ω^ω × ω = ω^(ω+1) and since ω+1 and ω are equinumerous, ω^(ω+1) and ω^ω are homeomorphic. 𝒩 × 𝒩 = ω^ω × ω^ω = ω^(ω+ω), and since ω and ω+ω are equinumerous, ω^(ω+ω) and ω^ω are homeomorphic. 𝒩^ω = (ω^ω)^ω = ω^(ω × ω), and as ω × ω and ω are equinumerous, ω^(ω × ω) and ω^ω are homeomorphic. The Cantor space also has some of these properties: 𝒞 ≅ 𝒞 × 𝒞 ≅ 𝒞^ω, however 𝒞 is not homeomorphic to 𝒞 × ω as the latter is not compact.

Though it's easy to work with the Baire space, as there is no discrepancy of dimension (the Baire space is 0-dimensional), I didn't yet explain whether it is valid. Do things proven about the Baire space also apply to other Polish spaces? In most cases, yes! Though things are often not explicitly proven about Polish spaces other than the Baire space, most theorems still apply (as long as they're about the higher complexity classes). The Baire space, besides being simple to work with, has a surjection onto every other Polish spaces, making it in some sense also a "universal" Polish space.

Proposition. Let X be a Polish space. There exists a continuous surjection π: 𝒩 ↠ X.

I won't give a full proof here, but basically, you use the fact that X is separable to make finer and finer open covers of X with sets enumerated by ω-lists, mapping the irrationals in 𝒩 to the unique point in the intersection of open sets indexed by initial segments of the irrational, giving you a function that is continuous and surjective. If you want to build an injection from 𝒩 into X instead, instead of making covers, you can make disjoint families of open sets in X in a similar way using the fact that X is perfect*, thus proving that all Polish spaces have cardinality 𝔠.

*Not everyone considers being perfect as a condition for being Polish (I'm not sure if anyone does), making the countable space ω a Polish space.

I'll probably explain pointclasses next.

[highschoolgarfield-blog]

As Good as Anything

ALICE NOTELY

I don’t see the point of

remembering you; you’re too boring,

Iowa City, Iowa,

much duller topologically than

Needles, California. I’m here

in the Rebel Motel, with

my grape-colored sweater

and maté tea, whose smoky odor’s

bound up with first rooms and foods here

sex and snow. I

write about Needles

Herman and rocks, the story’s called

“As Good as Anything,” and in it

daft Herman—true local

of Needles—says

“Rocks is as good as anything.”

I figured that out summer after

first love affair in New York:

hung out, home, at a rock shop

inspecting geodes and thunder eggs

Arsenic samples and petrified

dinosaur dung.

What can I say about Iowa City

everyone’s an academic poetry

groupie, I haven’t yet written a poem,

there’s a bar where for 25 cents a

meal of boiled egg and tiny beer.

Really I don’t know what kind of poetry—

what’s the name of the make they

use here—or what kinds of

poetry live people write in the world.

Is there a right and wrong poetry, one might

still ask as I patronize,

retrospectively, the Iowa style,

characterized, as I remember,

by the assumption of desperation

boredom behind two-story houses

divorce, incomes, fields, pigs,

getting into pants, well not really

in poems, well no “well”s and all

in the costive mode

of men who—and the suicidal women—

want to be culpable for something,

settle for being mean to their wives

and writing dour stanzas. God this is bitchy

I modeled for art classes

that’s rather interesting

the hypocrisy: nobody needs

to paint nude women

they just like to. So here I am

naked for art, which is a lot of

dumb fucks I already know,

same with poetry.

Written and judged by. Those befoibled guys

who think—you know—

the poetic moment’s a pocket in

pool; where can I publish it; what can

I do to my second or third wife now.

Nothing happens in Iowa, so

can I myself change here? Yes

I can start to become contemptuous

is that good or bad, probably bad.

In New York I’d developed a philosophy

of sympathy and spiritual equality:

out the window, easily, upon

my first meeting real assholes.

“A rock’s as good as anything” 

there are no rocks in Iowa

shit-black soil, a tree or two,

no mountain or tall edifice,

University drabs, peeping Toms, anti-war

riots, visiting poets

treated like royalty, especially if

they fuck the locals or have a record 

of fighting colorfully with their wives.

You can go to the movies once a week,

like in Needles. You can fuck

a visiting poet; you can be paraded before

a visiting poet as fuckable but not fuck.

You can write your first poems

thinking you might as well

since the most stupid people in the universe

are writing their five hundredth here.

I’m doing that now. What

difference does it make.

I like my poems. They’re

as good as rocks.

[rain-droplet]

if humans were unable to break things, meaning they are unable to change the topology of anything on their own(meaning they could unweave a cluster of vines but could not chop wood), would they have, theoretically, been able to function as well as real humans ? what I guess I'm asking is if people are adaptable enough to overcome that barrier and if there are any steps in human advancement that require the breaking of something via human intent(so they could get apples by letting them fall off trees on their own, rather than breaking the stem)

[weather-mood]

Sorting my fics into categories for fun 🥰

Key: Collabs 🫂 Personal favourites 💕 and wips ✍️

Canon Setting

Rue Royale Era

🫂💕 Pirouette (with @nlbv): Lily and Lestat during that night at the FairPlay.

💕seven new ways that you can eat your young: the seven times Claudia’s blood is drunk by her parents.

Lead and Mercury (multichapter): Louis, Lestat, and Claudia’s point of views as they get ready for Mardi Gras.

Reliquary: what happened to the cane knife?

and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite: Lestat ruminates in the dumpster.

🫂💕 House (group collab): haunted house inspired click-through Rue Royale.

Interlude Era

Train Tracks: 90s interlude.

Burial Rite: Louis decides to go down into the earth. (Companion piece After Burial by @iwtvdramacd18)

Dubai Era

Easement: Louis and Armand’s first week in the penthouse.

💕Rumpelstiltskin: loumand, the mind gift, and the tower.

The Princess and the Pea: a little roleplay.

Glass Coffins and Golden Roses: practices in meditation by the way of bondage.

Instruction: Rashid fills in for Armand.

Optometry: Armand watches Rashid before Daniel arrives.

Tower: Louis dreaming in Dubai.

A Little Coffin Chit-Chat: Fareed and Seth interlude after Fareed treats Daniel.

Opheiletes: a quiet moment after the interview ends in episode seven.

Canon Divergence

✍️ Is this too much (series): Louis says no to Lestat in the church.

Charlie: Charlie is still alive when Claudia brings him home.

Ostentatio Vulnerum: Louis gets into the car in episode six.

✍️ Anamnesis (multichapter): Claudia in a time loop on the night of Mardi Gras.

💕 mental topology experiments to the tune of bubblegum bitch (series): post season-one in Dubai, featuring dreamscapes, loumand weirdness, indulgent star trek references, and Daniel refusing to remember his past.

AUs

✍️💕Once Upon a Wine-Dark Sea (series): Fairytale fantasy horror series inspired by The Little Mermaid.

✍️💕🫂 teachers’ pet (with @devotiondroid, series): Human AU- university setting with College Student Louis and Professors Armand and Daniel.

✍️ Juniper (multichapter): Claudia-focused fairytale horror au of ‘The Juniper Tree.’

Equity: Findom AU with human writer Louis and The Vampire Armand.

Enamel: Human AU. Armand takes care of Louis after he gets his wisdom teeth out.

Other/Wider World

Needle & Thread and Sounding Point: Following in the footsteps of the visionary To Pluck Gently At Strings by @iwtvdramacd18, Armand and Nicki in Paris.

The Seer and the Witch (series): Modern-day envisioning of Merrick Mayfair and Jesse Reeves in AMC-verse.

✍️Made myself mythical, tried to be real (multichapter): Set post season two, experimental fic of Claudia’s ghost reforming.

[3rad5you]

Sure, I'll send you numbers for the math ask meme.

17, 34, 51, 68

Oh and let's also say 11, that one sounds fun

of course these are the numbers you ask for lmao

17. Are there any great female Mathematicians (living or dead) you would give a shout-out to?

emmy noether obv, and emily reihl tbh

34. Can you keep delivering math pickup lines until my pants dissapear?

probably not tbh, but maybe fun facts about the number 17 would do?

51. Favorite casual math book?

uhhhhhhhh um uhm uhhh I’ve definitely read a casual math book sure yeah uhhh does counterexamples in topology count

68. Do you want any math tatoos?

nope! I feel pretty strongly that any math that I think is cool enough to warrant a tattoo will not seem as cool at some point, and most math that really is cool is not very tattooable

11. Tell me a funny math story.

There were three medieval kingdoms on the shores of a lake. There was an island in the middle of the lake, over which the kingdoms had been fighting for years. Finally, the three kings decided that they would send their knights out to do battle, and the winner would take the island. The night before the battle, the knights and their squires pitched camp and readied themselves for the fight. The first kingdom had 12 knights, and each knight had five squires, all of whom were busily polishing armor, brushing horses, and cooking food. The second kingdom had twenty knights, and each knight had 10 squires. Everyone at that camp was also busy preparing for battle. At the camp of the third kingdom, there was only one knight, with his squire. This squire took a large pot and hung it from a looped rope in a tall tree. He busied himself preparing the meal, while the knight polished his own armor. When the hour of the battle came, the three kingdoms sent their squires out to fight (this was too trivial a matter for the knights to join in). The battle raged, and when the dust had cleared, the only person left was the lone squire from the third kingdom, having defeated the squires from the other two kingdoms, thus proving that the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the sum of the squires of the other two sides.

thank youuu ♥️

[abyssalpriest]

Conversations with Leviathan #9, Apotheosis 27/9/23

A conversation about where I'm personally at at the moment.

Sat in a black room, told to turn the lamp off. Nothing but me and the ever-present black of the room that works as a scrying mirror I've been submerged into. I know Lev is in here, in the Astral I see him throwing in his encompassing aura strange colours that meld like nebulous galaxies, patches of oranges like the shades of Jupiter amongst unplaceable calmer, darker colours; I can't tell if it's some sort of light projector... No. Firmament-bound. It's him.

Words are brimming at my lips: Something about a rebirth, a naming ceremony, the other side of a gateway. From screaming out of the womb to the soft blanketed arrival into the new house - old house, for isn't a baby, borne of the parents who made it, just as aware as I am in this vision that its cells came from this house? Aware that it lived here in another form?

The atmosphere is dripping with the gentle tones of his voice, but he isn't speaking. The air itself has become his words in the way that an earthquake is a hummed melody from shifting plates. On my mind is a piece I wrote long ago, one I titled "An Application for Apotheosis". 

"Sit, and think." He says, the one set of words out of the flurry of back-and-forth conversations of doubts and reassurances we just had that he says to write down. 

I ask if I'm supposed to do what comes next while writing - I'm suddenly remembering (reminded) that I wanted to record what we did last night in the Astral that left me so exhausted.

-

20230926-OTH-DB

Running, running, wolf paws on ground but we flow like a raging river. I catch in the same glimpse beside me to my right... Someone else, in wolf form too, fur rippling over muscles and fixed expression, and the glint of the morning Sun as it fights the trees for a chance at blinding me. Who this wolf is I don't know, but I know, the Wolf has overtaken me and I see him absent of human gender and descriptions and names and instead they're dressed in pheremonal and animal unspoken names, the ancient names-before-names. The morning dew surrounds my feet in the form of pungeancy - the smell tells me direction of travel as much as eyes, it tells me it evaporates upwards -  and of moistened sticks and leaves, I am surrounded by the fecund soil and bacteria and musk and roots and - the scene is so fast, but also nothing. We're gliding through Time itself. I float, etheric slithering, and when I look to my right, presumably that is Lev runniing with me as a wolf but I think the memory sinks into an abstraction because now there is no Lev and I, there is no human language, there is the thrumming topology-esque collective patterning of the Wolf, and the mycellium network that bleeds from the word "packmates"... I think when I look at him I'm thrown back into reality. Look forward: The Sun is ahead of me somehow, all is mercurial silver, unreal, all slides, scents play as if they were little fae. Look right at him: Visceral, real, the beating sound of huffed breaths and breaking twigs and beating heavy footsteps, and air that whisks past yet makes barely reaches the nerves through thick fur.

I don't feel like a wolf, and I think that's part of the point. I sank so deep into the suit of the Wolf Spirit that I was barely aware of identity. The Law of Rhythm takes over, experience becomes a hands-off ride. The words echo in my head as I write, as if I need to be the one to say it: Isn't this what godhood should be?

A significant song begins to play. Isha, O' Isha...

-

"Do you know what to do, then?" 

I awaken from memory to the same impulse as I had before I began writing, which is spreading out black tentacles into the blackness around me, something I feel myself in. He, gentle as nearly touchless fog, slides into the vicinity of my body like hands under mine to take over, entering to offer to take control so that I can concentrate. No, I can do things well enough in the Astral. i compartmentalise, I divide myself, too much and too often. What's the point being incarnated if all I do is over there... A questioning side-eye, Astral is important to, self is self even if I don't remember... But no, I want to be able to choose which body I put what, where I do what, and at current my real only choice is the Astral. 

He tells me to go to Tumblr for a second. I'm immediately brought to the Your Tags section where I'm greeted with a picture of the Sky, and then I go to the Following section to see yet another of the Sky.

"Isn't that (the blue Sky) where you store your power?" 'Store' is an interesting word. Why 'store'?

Oh, his smirk and energy burn with pages of information that he has to say on the topic, I see glints of arcane (to myself) diagrams of workings, memories, it seems, of his own libraries. He notes that he can show me those own libraries if I visit in the Astral, how I'd love to. But regardless: What do you mean 'store'?

I think I know, hence the smirk - "You do." Of course I do. Reflection, amplification, magnetics, expressions of God, language and the nature of the echoing of sound. I suppose I just wasn't expecting it to be about storage -

"You're not going to expect any of this." His voice is the colour silver itself, no metaphor, there is no sound that comes from him, there is only silver exuded. "You are going to learn new things, and you are going to remember. There will not be expectations, only those two."

I see in my mind his stomach in human form, tanned skin; he shoos me away from describing the physicality with a wave of his hand to get me back on track, and yet the metaphor escapes me. Skin, the firmament, what's the diffference? His voice overlaps and entwines mine: Tanned leather over the sphere of God's playground. 

What is the difference between storage and - he stops me.

The information he tells comes in the abstraction of sliding, overlapping tongues; wide eyes in a head haloed by the Sun; the writhing of endless, sleepy human-esque bodies, many of which who are not chopped up but nonsensically joined to other things like dolls played with by bored children, a torso attached to a snake's midsection but the girth of both are inorganically mismatched, another torso whose arm extends off into a worm-like structure... Crowns of deer's antlers on one mannequin-esque visage and a body with one foot a bird's claws and the other - I can barely see any of this, the entanglement is intense, obscuring most individuality with the veil of collective natures. A thousand - possibly infinite - bodies all mismatched, all melded together like sleeping lovers post-orgy.

"In this instance, then, the human body is an idol of God. What is God doing mingling with His creations like that? The lesser animals?" 

I'm not - I'm just - I am overcome with the smoothness of warm honey milk, I want to make you some, I want to give it to you, I want it to slide down your neck inside mine and I want to be the shivlinga that decorates you. Why? I know why.

Ah, the ceremony of water and ash. I remember, or more so my body remembers, a time when it saw me in the Astral while someone else was controlling it to have a shower. Who was it over here possessing me? Aisha, probably. Oh, vividly I was in or next to a forest, I was wearing the three equal lines on the forehead and hair like yours in a ceremony this body still doesn't understand. I want to say we were hunting, we were. You say: "It was for a special pelt," and I know what you mean by that is not a literal pelt but a smooth energy in the facade of one: a veil - this was the Mental, not Astral? The mindspace? Yes, you say. I want to wear it.

The words that pour into my mind from myself are not English. They weigh more than English words, and they're of a language you're been teaching me. I can't quite hear myself though - 

Leviathan said: 

Ka: p-g-n dahnerr gha vaiin nya artha gho herrn.

Pronunciation:

Kha (Not pronounced): Parjanya dahn-ERR gha vay-EEn nya AHR-tha gho h*ern

Notes:

Parjanya: Your name, obviously.

Rolled Rs.

Consonant followed by H is similar to sanskrit.

h*: This letter is not used in any language you know, likely not able to be pronounced by your tongues. it's a palatal consonant, "h" will do

This is like a mantra. It is cyclical. It has no beginning or end. Trancelike. It is a blessing, meaning something along the lines of "(I, Parjanya) have passed the gate, I have become the (one who has passed/become the gate)" - effectively it leads into itself, a less literal but more illuminting translation to highlight the cycle might be: "(I am) the one who has passed the gate, by right of being the one who has passed the gate, (etc)" 

That's a bit of a misdirection, though, what I just gave is not a translation. The actual meaning stays between us.

[thewallshaveeyes]

I can't stop having gay-ass dreams, so here are a few of the lesbians from those dreams.

Going from left to right (I don't know any of their names) the one on the left was with me at this scouts-like camp. We were chilling in a big log cabin (with other people) but outside, there was a giant monsterous thomas-the-tank-engine looking train, and it kept eating people. So when I came back in, the one on the left proposed the idea of using me as bait to lure in the train. They had a crossbow and some rope, and said that they could tie me up to a harness and put me outside, and when the train came to try and eat me, they'd pull me inside by the rest of the rope and shoot the train. I got so flustered that I woke up.

For the one in the middle, I was at a Barnes&Noble, and Will Wood was there performing live. They had me cradled in their lap (they were like. Six feet tall with arms like tree trunks) and when I got emotional at Memento Mori, they comforted me.

The one on the right was part hare specifically (as opposed to being like. Part bunny), and she followed me home from a movie theater. I was trying to find my car, and I found myself on a dirt road on a hill, and when she caught up to me she put a hand on my arm. At first I freaked out, because I forgot who she was (I saw her at the theater earlier when I was in line or sumn) and we got to chatting. She then took me to the other side of the hill to show me this gorgeous expansive field (it was full of shrubs and briars, very mid-west topology, but it was really pretty). When I tried to step back to see the entire scene, I fell down the hill into the space behind her backyard and woke up.

Anyways.

[danielkhent]

Not sure the relevance of this, but it's mesmerizing. Mapping shade for overhead topology maps.

[deaths-accountant]

The tree view makes it a lot more intuitive that it's topologically a sphere, I think, because it shows how each twist can be isolated from all the other twists, so that if you add some dimensions you can just move through those dimensions to get a regular untwisted tree, which when everything is sealed up will just be a sphere.