Hey y'all, I'm making this post as a way to introduce myself.
You can call me Altair but because of some personal lore reasons I happily answer also to be called Ferruccio.
I'm 23 and my pronoums are He/Him
I have the particular background of being a Reddit refugee that however came here during around the fall of Twitter.
I like basically anything: I'm a guy of omnivorous tastes, almost omnicomprehensive. If I were to give a top 5 there would be in random order: martial arts, any kind of art or science (but if I had to choose: music and biology), weight-lifting and working out in general, philosophy and mangas.
I'm usually torn between me liking a lot of stuff and wanting to do and experience everything and my everlasting tiredness.
I'm probably never going to find it again, but there was a response to one of those "artworks we think we can make" posts that was like "Okay, go for it." Like, dead serious.
Are you going to come out of it with a Klein-level work? No. Dude was bonkers skilled. But I am here to tell you that if you've ever gone to Home Depot and shuffled through paint chips and been like "God, this is such a gorgeous color, I fucking love this color" and then immediately been like "...but I can't imagine painting a wall with it." and bought a can of soul-killing eggshell off-white or what the fuck ever, you absolutely can go pick up a $10 canvas from a craftstore and a $5 sample of that color and just hang 6 square feet of it on a wall and enjoy the fuck out of it.
For real, buds. If you see an artwork and you're like "Shit, I could have made that," that is a reminder that god can't stop you and probably neither can science.
Pleased to report that after a day of this i am not longer craving caper brine and my mouth is not dry as usual. There's some good suggestions in the notes too that I want to try.
-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)
-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt
And God said, "Behold! I have created the fourth primordial force: the weak interaction!"
And the angels all clapped and nodded politely, and there was a long silence; and finally Verchiel, the Angel of Grace, spoke up and asked, "Er, what exactly does it do, O Fashioner?"
And God said, "What do you mean, 'what does it do?' It's the fourth fundamental force of the universe."
And Verchiel said, "You mentioned that. Um. But it's just that the other three sort of have a brand, you know? Gravity helps build large-scale structures, acts over vast cosmic distances, shapes time and space. The strong force is secret, hidden, binding together quarks and all that. Electromagnetism, very cool stuff, somewhere in between. We're all big fans of the whole magnetic monopole double bluff, very clever. But, er. What does this 'weak interaction' do?"
And God said, "It mediates radioactive decay. Sort of."
And Verchiel said, "Radioactive decay? All radioactive decay?"
And God said, "No. Just some kinds."
And Zephaniel, the Chief of the Ishim spoke, and he said, "A whole independent force just to mediate some kinds of radioactive decay?"
And God said, "Well. Not totally independent. Technically it's related to electromagnetism."
And Zephaniel said, "Wait, it's not even a real force?"
And God said, "It's totally a real force. It's just that it's one aspect of a combined electromagnetic and weak force. An electro-weak force, if you will."
And Metatron, the Celestial Scribe, scratched his head at this, but said nothing.
And Cambiel, the Angel of Transformation, said, "Maybe you can walk us through it from the top."
And God Sighed an immense Sigh, and said, "All right, fine.
"So the way it works is that all of space and time is permeated by a field that has imaginary mass."
And Cambiel said, "Imaginary mass, O Generous Provider?"
And God said, "Yes, imaginary mass. It's tachyonic, d'you see?"
And Sarathiel, the Angel of Discipline, said, "Wait a minute, I thought we agreed nothing was going to travel faster than light? All that 'c' business and the whole Lorentz transformation thing. What's happening with that?"
And God said, "Let me finish. The field is tachyonic. The particles in the field all move slower than light."
And Sarathiel had to think about this for a second.
And God said, "The point is, a field with imaginary mass has a non-zero vacuum expectation value."
And this really gave Sarathiel trouble, since he had never been very good at math.
And God, seeing this, went back to explain. "Most fields, like the electromagnetic field, have no effect when they are at their lowest energy state. It's like they're not there at all. If you give a field imaginary mass, then it vanishes only when it's at a very high energy state, and at a low energy state, it has a nonzero value everywhere."
And Sarathiel nodded, but he was confused, because he didn't understand why God would create such a thing.
But Verchiel thought he saw where God was going with this, and he was amazed.
"Truly, you are cunning beyond measure, O Only One Certainly Sound and Genuine in Truth! Only now do I understand your design! For in order to make the universe homogenous and isotropic, it is necessary that all large-scale fluctuations in temperature and mass must be evened out early in the history of the cosmos; and therefore, you have designed a field which will rapidly expand space after the Big Bang, many orders of magnitude in brief moments, and then swiftly and spontaneously decay as it gives up the energy it began with, giving rise to radiation and particles of all kinds as it does, which will condense into the material universe! It is a wonder to behold."
And God said, "What? No. I mean I did, but this isn't the inflaton field I'm talking about. This is something else."
And Verchiel said, "Wait, it's not?"
And God said, "No, I'm going to use a different field to drive cosmic inflation. The properties of this field are totally different."
And now Verchiel was also confused, and lapsed into silence.
And God said, "Like I was saying, this field is a scalar field with imaginary mass, and it does spontaneously decay to a ground state with a non-zero value. But it's not the inflaton field. Instead it combines with the W1, W2, W3, and B bosons."
And Metatron began to flip back through the pages of the Heavenly Record trying to figure out where he'd lost the thread.
And Zephaniel said, "The what bosons?"
And God said, "The W1, W2, W3, and B bosons. I'm sure I mentioned them. You know, the massless bosons?"
And Zephaniel said, "I'm pretty sure we only talked about the W+, W-, and Z0 bosons. All of which you said were going to have mass, O Owner of All Sovereignty."
And God said, "Yes, but this is how they get them, you see. Once this field acquires a nonzero value everywhere, the massless bosons interact with it and get mass. Well, some of them do. They turn into the W+, W-, and Z0 boson. And the photon."
And Zephaniel said, "ā¦and the photon, O Accepter of Invocation?"
And God said, "Well, I did say I was going to unify the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, didn't I? This is how. Above the critical temperature--right now I'm thinking 10^15 K, but I'm open to feedback on that one--electromagnetism and the weak force act as a single unifying force. Below that temperature, the field gets a nonzero value, you get three massive bosons to mediate the weak interaction, and the photon pops out seperately."
And Zephaniel said, "That seemsā¦ a bit overly complicated, doesn't it, O Reinstater Who Brings Back All?"
And God said, "No, it's exactly what we need. Look, that way the W and Z bosons have something to do, but the weak interaction still only travels short distances. Gravity is still the star of the show on cosmic scales, as it were. But now quarks and leptons can swap their flavor!"
And Zephaniel said, rather weakly, "Theirā¦ flavor, O Source of Good?"
And God said, "It's this new quantum number I'm trying out, to give the three generations of matter more unique identities."
And Cambiel said, "Three generations of matter? Now I'm really confused."
And God said, "I'm sure I mentioned this. You've got the lightest quarks and leptons, and then two heavier versions of each that can decay into the lighter versions."
And Cambiel said, "What do they do? New kinds of chemistry, is it?"
And God said, "Well, no. Mostly they just decay in a couple microseconds. Or even faster."
And Zephaniel began to rub his temples, and Cambiel sniffed.
And Cambiel said, "This all seems a bit ad hoc to me. Not really the stuff of an elegant and obviously ordered Creation. Why not have four generations of matter? Why not a trillion?"
And God began to grow irritable, and said, "Well, that's not really up to you, now is it? We're going to have three generations of matter, and the electroweak force, and that's that!"
And Zephaniel said, "As long as we are unifying fundamental forces, perhaps we could somehow also unify the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction, or even gravity."
And God hesitated saying, "Well, I haven't decided about that yet. I'm not sure I want gravity to be quantized, you know? Seems to take some of the geometric elegance out of general relativity."
And now it was Zephaniel's turn to sigh, and he bowed his head. "As you wish, O Possessor of Authority of Decisions and Judgement."
Thatās a unique and special characteristic of only these particular cuttlefish! Look at how they use two flaps of tissue like āhind legs,ā with little protrusions that even act like TOES! No other cephalopod has those at all, and no other cuttlefish use their outer arms like front legs, either!
These are cephalopods evolving into āquadrupeds!!ā
They do this to conserve swimming energy while they hunt, which has worked out so well for them theyāre pretty poor swimmers, like a bird on its way to flightlessness.
The stripes flowing down their skin make it difficult for their prey to discern which way theyāre walking or how fast. Then the āpeacock cuttlefishā gets close enough to shoot out the two specialized arms cuttlefish use like a chameleonās tongue š
little peets for maximum efficiency stalking and killing :)
The beer can was thoughtfully swirled. "No," she said eventually. "I tried, though. It just - it didn't work."
The wind blew over the stoop, cool and smelling of rain.
"'Didn't work?'"
"I wanted it to work, it - I was six, and I was in my dad's truck, and we were in the Wal-Mart parking lot at night - I don't remember why - and I thought, 'I should make an imaginary friend,' so I looked through the window and-"
She frowned. "Fuck. This sounds like a joke, but I made a Vaporeon. It was just a fully formed, perfect Vaporeon in a parking lot of a Wal-Mart. And I was so happy and I opened the door to make it jump in so I could take it home with me.
"But there was something - wrong with it. I'd made it perfectly, but I forgot to make it alive. It just sat and stared and I begged it to jump in the truck with me before my dad drove off, and it sat and stared, and we drove off and I was so sad and confused and - disappointed."
She wiggled the tab of the can. "It's still there," she said quietly. "I drive past that parking lot sometimes, and that same Vaporeon is still sitting in that spot. I've seen that parking lot get full to the tits in the middle of the holidays, I have never, not even once, seen someone park in the spot it's sitting in."
A car drove by. After a moment the frogs in the ditch started to chirp again.
She tipped her head back and downed the rest of the beer. "Anyways, that's what I think god's deal is," she said.
Upon rereading this, I see that the implication is that we invented god this way. Initially I jumped straight to "we are the mindless imaginary Vaporeon haunting God's parking lot, our lack of anything a god would consider sentience creeps him out and our creation was a mistake"
āHaha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.ā
Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.
āY2K came to nothing amirite?ā
Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.
āRemember the hole in the ozone layer?ā
You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?
One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those āitās gonna be an apocalypseā disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.
The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.
And I still think thatās going to happen. I donāt know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope wonāt help bring it about.
And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.
āPerhaps you have forgotten. Thatās one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and heāll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and heāll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishmanāā He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. āIf he ever knew, he has forgotten. āMove on!ā you tell us. āMove on! Forget what weāve done to you. Tomorrowās another day!ā But it isnāt, Mr. Brue.ā He still had Brueās hand. āTomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.ā
I was so bummed to be too busy with moving to draw more for Halloween so I'm making up for lost time--- only to get an eye infection so I had to squint through blurry painful eyes to finish this painting š One day I'll catch a break...
The forest behind our new house is full of heathers, and it made me think of a broom made of heathers instead of twigs! And then my imagination ran off and now I want to paint a broom sellers with a shop full of crazy brooms made out of unusually materials. Birch tree broom, mushroom broom, mossy broom, etc
What should I call this lil guy? Froat? Caog? Frat? Fat??? š
The full hours long art videos, along with HD images and PSD files will be DMed on Dec 5th
