Tessellated Lightning

It’s more that I’m kinda private in some ways, I like keeping the pretty things and the secrets for later, I don’t want a relationship based on what people can get from me. 

Maybe it’s little selfish, maybe if you love people you should just want to give to them anyway, so long as it’s good for them, and it isn’t harmful to you. And maybe it can be perceived as a form of manipulative withholding.

Maybe it’s a little too proud. Theoretical things are easily both overestimated and underestimated. There is more to life, but it’s nice to have a clue about what you’re doing. Particularly if you want to have some sort of impact.

So I guess this my way of saying, I’m not trying to withhold anything, whether to a distant flame who prefers things that way, or a stranger stumbling upon these pages, here’s some things anyway. As much as I’m willing to discuss publicly.

Edit: And now is the time for me to go on my way, as promised.

I made some major mistakes while posting it, so I edited it.

Darkness is not (especially) Black

So I was recently thinking about how we (pro-tip: always ask: “who is we ?”) tend to associate darkness with darkness, probably because the darkness of night tends toward black.

But if you think about it darkness simply means that nothing is visible.

So if you are in a room, and there are wild animals and you can only see white all around, then, you are in (visual) darkness.

In fact, if you can only see one color, there is no contrast, and so you cannot see, and that is darkness.

(This should not be confused with blinding light, where the intensity of the light is too much for the recipient, even if the recipient can distinguish contrasts. Neither should it be confused with blurriness, which is when you can see that something, but you cannot distinguish it.)

                                       Spoiler about the image

One way to conceive of Color is as emerging from the interaction of Light and Dark [Not-Light, Not-Dark], which is not wrong, but is nonetheless indicative of a prejudice against Colorless when taken as the whole story.

Once again, it has been treated as a ghost, and erased from every story.

It is better to think of Light, Dark, and Colorless, as emerging equidistantly from a single point beyond them all.

Then colors emerge from the space

between Absolute Nothing 

[Not-Light, Not-Dark, Not-Something], 

and that point, which is Absolute Something 

[As all the other points derives from it],

There is more to this, and it will lead to stereotyping (subtle prejudice aka incomplete story), but this will have to do, and is significantly better than gross prejudice. (no story, where the subject doesn’t even exist.)

Really it was the fault of people’s obsession with work and subjection which mirrored their own feelings of disempowerment in the face of the problem of in-difference thereby framing most of collective perception in terms of phobic, counter-phobic, and mixed mode of a partial acceptance of embeddedness in which one is relegated to a mere component devoid of true purposeful agency and meaning-making capabilities.

I’m serious (technically :p )  :

I once had to explain to the dean of my college why I sent this video to my Spanish teacher.

“Well, Marry Poppins with her ruler represent Justice in her impartiality toward power, and the pretty plant is that girl I like, not that I think she’s furniture or anything, and the need for more light represent the difference between appearances and reality, and the mirror represent the need to get a complete perspective.”

And the boy and the girl ?

“The little girl represent the teacher, and the little boy... yeah.”

Gamer Unites ! Finally some good news !

Support civil rights and get enough video game for a lifetime !

https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality

There are actually even more game than in the picture now:

Buy 1,509 items for $5 Regularly ~$8,327 Save 99%!

All proceeds will be donated to the a) NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and b) Community Bail Fund split 50/50.

a) For the people who have been living in an igloo for the entirety of their life, the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was a key player during the Civil Rights Movement.

b) Community Bail is a matter of life and death right now.

Jails are packed and the number of Coronavirus cases is very high:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-outbreaks-jails-prisons-cdc-report-covid-19/

Amongs the games that often pop up in gamer recommendations are included: Celeste, OneShot, Overland, Kids, Night in the Woods, Night of the Consumers, Far from Noise, and Super Hexagon.

Ever fancied yourself a research scientist on a quest to discover a cure for a serious disease ? Don’t want to spend 10 years writing papers about the reproductive cycle of naked mole rats ? Now you can !

Yes, for real. Thanks to the magic of Foldit !

Foldit is a protein folding game whose scoring system is built on top of the Rosetta@home * distributed computing** project for protein structure prediction.

It then takes the highest score and submit them for further analysis by real research institutions as public domain knowledge.

Another aim of the game is to see if human intuition can lead to better results than those achieved by computer alone. The best strategy employed by human could then be taught to computers.

It is still active, there was a recent wave of publicity about it due to the Coronavirus:

Like here: https://www.freethink.com/articles/coronavirus-antiviral-medications

And here: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/protein-puzzle-game-called-foldit-turns-99-promising-ways-confound-coronavirus/

And here: https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/scientists-use-online-game-to-research-covid-19-treatment-67230

Tip: The tutorial levels are supposed to be relatively easy, if you find yourself having a really hard time, you are probably over-thinking it. These levels are there to illustrate the tools of the game. The basic pattern is generally pretty high-scoring potential, and in my experience, trying to get creative during the tutorials without in-depth in-game expertise often results in more frustration than it is worth.

___________________________________________________

Inventors discovery rights: 

“All significant scientific discoveries (such as structures, algorithms, etc) made in-game will be made publicly available. Discoveries will be governed by US patent law and handled by the University of Washington Center for Commercialization. Individual players who contributed to the discovery will be considered inventors for the purposes of discovery ownership.”

___________________________________________________

distributed computing project for protein structure prediction:

What this means is that the scoring system is based of a program running calculations to find the most efficient ways to fold proteins for research progress, based on criteria such as energy-efficiency and likelihood to appear in nature. (aka “proven and true” structures)

Now the cool thing about this program is that it relies on distributed computing: What this means is that instead of merely using it’s own power to run the calculations, it use the spare computing power of any users who wish to join the project. The potential that would have been otherwise wasted.** The Rosetta program requires no efforts beyond installation/setup, and is another good way to contribute to research.

^ See Above: The Label for HDQ Neutral, the most likely candidate for the disinfectant in question. (As readable as my Photoshop skills could make it.)

See keep reading for transcription of precautionary statements.

“Report finds ICE detention center is using a disinfectant over 50 times a day that causes bleeding and pain” - Business Insider, June 5, 2020

Link: https://www.insider.com/report-detention-centers-use-disinfectant-causing-bleeding-and-pain-2020-6

Shortened Version copy-pasted from the top of the article :

- Two advocacy organizations have filed a complaint alleging that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center is using a COVID-19 disinfectant on the facility over 50 times a day.

- Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and Freedom for Immigrants compiled the testimony of detainees who stated that HDQ Neutral is being used in un-ventilated areas — which its manufacturer, Spartan Chemical, warns can be harmful as it can cause skin burns and serious when inhaled. 

- Detainees at the Adelanto detention center in California said many have fallen severely ill due to the constant spray, with at least nine falling severely ill since May 11 according to the report.

- "When I blow my nose, blood comes out," one inmate said. "They are treating us like animals. One person fainted and was taken out, I don't know what happened to them. There is no fresh air."

To nobody surprise, ICE have denied these allegation:

“Alexx Pons, a spokesperson for ICE, told Insider the department is "committed to maintaining the highest facility standards of cleanliness and sanitation, safe work practices, and control of hazardous substances and equipment to ensure the environmental health and safety of detainees, staff, volunteers and contractors from injury and illness. Disinfectant formulations used at Adelanto are compliant with detention standards, registered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and used according to manufacture instruction for routine cleaning and maintenance of the facility. Any assertion or claim to the contrary is false.” 

Growing up in France will teach you a lot of Greek Mythology. (or anywhere in Western Europe really.) 

I often feel like Cassandra, and I often turns out to be right, so I felt like sharing her story, fictional as she may be.

I may be a little proud of this fact, but it doesn’t mean I am pleased.

As it goes in Judaism, a good negative prophecy is a prophecy that doesn’t happen. Preferably because you prevented disaster from happening.

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Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, lords of Troy, in Greek mythology. She was also known as Alexandra.

According to one myth, god Apollo gave her the gift of foretelling the future and then tried to sleep with her. However, she rejected him and to punish her, he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her prophecies. A different version has it that Cassandra initially consented to sleeping with the god in exchange for the ability to foresee the future, only to break her promise after she received the gift.

After being cursed, she was met with disbelief by her family and by the Trojans. She foretold that Paris (!), her brother, would bring about a war that would destroy their city, if he went to Sparta. Her brother did not believe her, and upon his return from Sparta with Menelaus' wife, Helen, Cassandra attacked her for the pain that was about to be caused. She also foretold that Troy would fall by a clever machination of the Greeks, the Trojan Horse, in which they would hide; her fellow citizens did not listen to her words, thus causing the end of the city.

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Please be careful, that while fighting the war against racism, distant promises of justice does not lure you into inviting pestilence home. (Trojans are [computer] viruses !) Nothing would make white nationalists happier than bringing the apocalypse upon black communities. (Pestilence is one of the four horsemen in Christianity!)

(P.S. : This is not an indictment against Christianity. There are enough problems going on in the world to needlessly bring about conflict.)

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Old video from 2016 in Charlotte. Seen it for the first time today and thought it was worth reposting given the recent murder of George Floyd over buying cigs with a fake 20$ bill. To the people who call it scripted: Even if the words could have been, this girl must be a legendary actress to cry this hard.

She cries because she gets it.

Regarding the protest/riots, I have something important to say.

#blackouttuesday

Please be careful about your tags, so as to not clog social media pages that seek to keep people informed about the issues surrounding racism and the recent protests.