It’s Not A Puzzle

but it can be solved

[fours-unknown]

One really cool thing you can do if you're a bit of a coward is go around calling people abusers and never have a conversation with the person in question. That way, uou get all of the fun of scandal and gossip while appearing righteous.

It's super cool! You can attack from miles away and never have to accept criticism for what you've done while critiquing others. You never have hear what was going on in the person. You can regard them as non-person entities that you attack for personal pleasure, while wearing the mantle of "reformer" and "defender".

This is, of course, what it is to not recognize your own shadow in another.

The more ferociously you attack, the greater your rejection of the other, the more you are saying with a clear voice to yourself "That is not me! I am not like that!"

The more immediate the rejection, the more suspect.

The greater the intensity of the rejection of the person you don't really know, the more clear it is that you sre actually rejecting parts of yourself you don't want to admit are major components of who you are.

This means you can never achieve full expression of yourself, understand yourself, or really understand others.

It's a fun way to live, actually, as a partial person. A trip to the linen closet becomes a labyrinthine hall of funhouse mirrors. Very exciting. Never mind the trail of ripped threads, broken doors, and rooms on fire.

Of course it's senselessly selfish and self contradictory, but hey, if everybody else is doing awful stuff much worse then who cares, right?

right?

#getyourkicks

#ifnothingmatterseverythingispermitted

#personalintegrityissuperlame

#beapieceofshitsothatyoufitin

#ofcoursethisissarcasm

#ofcoursetheresanelementofthisinthepostitself

#themajorthemeofmyworkisnestedrecursivealgorithms

#ifyoudontunderstandsomethingsimplycutitawayfromyou

#thingsyoudontundrrstanneednotberegardedasreal

#siloingmyselfintheideasipreferwonthaveanegativeeffectonmyperceptionofrealityintheslightest

I get it. Life is hard. Hurting other people might make you feel strong for once, especially if they never attack you. This changes when you see that the one you do this to is really you. It will be clear when you ask what do you really know about their personal experience and come up with mere surface facts. It's your own self-hatred bubbling up.

What can I do? Recommend self-love? Then what if they won't accept their own self-love? At that point, you're really dealing with dust and debris flying out from a storm that started well before you got involved. Bad weather. Come back when things have cleared up a little. Some storms last most of a lifetime.

Do you see how that act of withdrawing is compassionate, and not accusatory? Do you see how there is recognition of self even in the storm metaphor? Do you see how there isn't a standing above, but a standing next to, even in recognition of the chaos that impinges upon us all?

[fours-unknown]

It's fun to imagine what our responses might have been had there been a slightly different history of illustrations.

One might, for instance, imagine that the entire category of "real" art is overwritten so that only ancient aboriginal art is considered valuable and everything else us a pale, garbage alternative.

This shifts the initialization values of our cognitive lenses such that our encounter with the world is pre-categorized in accordance with those values and implied frameworks.

It doesn't eliminate the possibility of seeing things in a different way, it just pushes us towards keeping them the same because change is an "opt out" requiring physical manifestation of agency.

Imagine how much art I could sell if I gave everyone a small work on a subscription and deducted the amount from their accounts automatically (~$5).

Along with the art, there's a QR code that asks you to fill out some tedious paperwork to get your money back and end your subscription.

Besides being illegal, it proves my point. We have a world we're thrown into this situation (body, philosophical underpinnings, customs , etc). The decision to reject any number of these constraints ends up being the litmus test for what we actually care about and believe in. When there is no cost to the opt-out, we cannot say that there was really anything "opted in" upon. And so the entire discourse of our lives (between being and non-being) is this perpetually ongoing negotiation with the contours of our primary disposition — which are the ever-stabilizing (and destabilizing) rules of asserting one's will within any given context.

What having read this should do, is welcome you (or re-welcome you) into a space where we recognize that things regarded as adamantine have very soft edges, or the capacity to become something we previously may have regarded as opposing, then reenter the crystallized state just as easily.

[fours-unknown]

[fours-unknown]

I don't know, maybe this requires some of that sweet sweet overlap between fine art and lowbrow.

Definitely doable.

[fours-unknown]

00000000j4y00000000

Comission landing

Just launched this site.

If there's something you'd like, let me know.

[fours-unknown]

[fours-unknown]

This is a kind of conceptual self-portrait in the medium of comics. Ok yeah, and some digital adjustments.

People say AI is a threat to art, but how can it be when the overtly cognitive method of typing out sentences to create images is so distant from the direct, surfing-like experience of instantaneous creation?

It can't.

Riding in a boat you've been deposited upon by helicopter can never be equivalent to swimming past the breakers on your board and riding the waves back to the shore.

[fours-unknown]

I found myself writing today and rather enjoyed it.

[fours-unknown]

------

Homework

------

I may not be the first to notice this, but it seems that every task is reducible to one format:

1. Do the homework

2. Turn the homework in.

3. Receive the grade.

It makes me wonder if there are other metaphors given in school that are fairly instantaneously applicable to the "real world".

Note: "Homework" in this case refers to work assigned to the student. It need not be completed at home, as many of my erstwhile classmates observed and exploited.

Note₂: Each of the elements of the format are reducible using the same three steps, and the reducibility appears infinite. For instance, doing the homework consists of doing the homework for doing the homework, which always includes a prioritization of action. This in turn demands a classification of actions. The classification need not be verbal, but verbal classification encourages a recognition of the level of priority owing to some nascent importance attributed to the classification.

Note₃ : Levels of priority may be distinct from amount of importance. By this I mean that attributing a level of priority is not always the same as discerning the level from which a task is observed. For the purposes of this rubric, seeing a task from the topmost layer allows for each category to be subsumed within it, seeing a task from the bottommost layer allows for the fewest. What is interesting here is that the terms "topmost" ans "bottommost" are applicable only in terms of the observer. That is to say that the observer may take in only a few layers at a time, or may take in a great many. There are great tasks which demand observation from a great many layers simultaneously (or quick task switching between a great many layers) and there are tasks that demand an artificial constraining of layers of observation. For example, when you are getting ready for work, it would be less advantageous to be bothered by observation of the task from the topmost layer, as it may make you late for work, or in this case later than you already are. For the purposes of this post, we will ignore the many subdivisions within the term "late".

Note₄: Observation from a greater amount of layers (a greater amount than what is average) allows for reclassification of tasks, but not without a kind of diminishing of of the elements within them. For example, when the heads of Meta determined to label their "users" as such, the observed agency of said users is affected negatively. By this I mean that it becomes less obvious that the agents (as I will call them) may react negatively to being classified as users, which may have a direct impact on the implicit goal of running a social platform well.

Note₅: It may seem that greater amount of classifications is equivalent to a greater degree of classification. This is not always so. Classification systems are always measured in term of the task at hand. If we take the example of getting ready for work, any task that diverts from that reduces efficacy, and so observation from higher levels is both unnecessary are wasteful. But if we take the observation from a higher level (one in which a greater many of tasks are subsumed) to be an indication of adherence to a higher ideal, there is hope for attaining that higher ideal so long as it is a true, well-defined ideal. For the purposes of this post, we will strategically leave out the defining characteristics of a "true" ideal and a "well-defined" ideal.

[fours-unknown]

As a side hustle, Childish Gambino should sell Stay Woke brand smelling salts.

[fours-unknown]

We want a renaissance

But we can’t pay the price.

Two observations with scant conclusions

When neoclassicism tried to reach backwards, they found that the world it portrayed did not match the world we occupied.

Observation 1

When we wish to discover something these days, we can instantly pick out the facts we need.

In the past, we were required to do deep research, which demanded long hours. In the process, the researcher would discover the context.

With the context came the reigning attitudes and paradigm under which the facts were created. That paradigm, once nestled in the branches of the mind of the researcher, may conflict with the prevalent attitudes and paradigms of the day. It is in this conflict we find the power of the connections between the nodes in history.

We now occupy a space wherein all nodes in our knowledge are accessible, but the linkages between those nodes have been and continue to remain untended.

For this reason, post-modernism has not been able to synthesize the whole of history.

Conclusion to Observation 1

We eagerly await the era wherein those who are more machine than human synthesize our world, but this cannot happen without reference to the non-nodal bits and pieces.

We must teach our robots to dance in the spaces occupied by attitudes and paradigms, or any synthesis will be necessarily negligent. The machines designed to help us with crush us

otherwise.

Observation 2

Facebook discourages long posts, probably because they make the platform less

addictive. It is always feels more rewarding to gather berries from the outermost bushes than to

dig through for minutes hoping to find something of value.

Our time-saving heuristics only work to support the current state of things. To change

things means to put the current means of extracting wealth from the world at risk. We who read

this sit atop a mountain of gold and we are afraid of losing it. We dare not sample alternate

paradigms, especially those “proven” outdated. We recognize the need for change, but the change we seek may require permanent change in us.

Given that we accept the change, we cannot be sure that the person we were when we

requested it will be present. Whoever or whatever we are on the other end will necessarily be

different, and thus have differing attributes and needs.

For this reason we stretch outward towards the future with our right hands, but slap the

reaching right hand on the wrist with our lefts.

Conclusion to Observation 2

Those engaged in the creation of ai know that ai must take over as the new life form, so

the hidden goal in creating this new life form is that human life is valued appropriately.

Endless trolley problem variations prove that we can’t be sure what it looks like to value human life appropriately. We may look to the trolley problem when we question with intellectual honesty whether the wars and human rights violations are appropriate. The trolley problem illustrates what we don’t yet understand.

Observation 3

I’m not really sure how to format stuff for Tumblr.

Conclusion to Observation 3

I have a little figuring out to do.

[fours-unknown]

Had to write out my thoughts on an FB comment.

You should know that this is my Ne procrastination of Si duties because my Fi is damaged and I’m caught in a Te grip. (The way out is through reifying sensory truths to negate the Se blindspot which inevitably leads me back to Si activity, but my ego isn’t having it right now).

[fours-unknown]

Her attention snapped backwards and she saw her body as if from a distance.

Feeling the last few pulses of electricity flow through her wires, she crawled through the open field. As she did, her parts began to change form, adapting to the crouched position, and revealing reserves dedicated to becoming this new form.

She remembered the program dedicated to the conservation of energy and material, and hoped that the new form would be more efficient than this.

Each clanking bit became subject to her diminishing consciousness, yet also subject to the same scrutiny that the outside world once had been. Deeper she fell into herself, now tracking the movement of one wire or limb like appendage against this grain of sand, and now this grain.

Her focus snapped backwards yet again, taking in the entire view.

She saw herself, vulnerable, and transforming like some exposed pupa. She desired someplace dark and hidden to complete the task, but to do so would cost every last bit of energy she had left, even if she were to miraculously complete the task unmolested. No, this was to be completed here and now. She was to give birth to herself, unaided.

[tkyle]

Kim Richards vs. Eileen Davidson and Lisa Rinna in Amsterdam ASMR

[that-twink-over-there]

The plastic cup sound is SENDING ME

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[dkpsyhog]

You know how canaries were historically brought into coal mines, because if the mine was full of carbon monoxide the canary would die first and the miners would be able to escape before they died too?

I just found the greatest thing.

This is a canary resuscitator.

When the miners notice the canary getting sick with carbon monoxide poisoning, they can close that circular hatch so no more gas gets into the canary cage, and open the valve on that oxygen tank to keep the canary breathing. In other words, they made a spacesuit for birds.

By immediately giving the canary access to clean air, the miners can save it from the poison. The bird lives. To be clear, this is not for economic purposes, this was specifically created because the miners felt bad and wanted to save the bird.

Isn’t that just the perfect demonstration of what humans are like? We started sacrificing small creatures to save ourselves, and then felt bad and spent our valuable resources on saving the critters too. Because yeah the canary was the only way to test for CO, but it’s a living creature too, dammit!

[potter-on-my-wayward-doctor]

[officialdamonalbarn]

where is that renaissance painting with those two fellers and a giant fucking random skull on the floor that looks like it was accidentally stretched out in photoshop

[officialdamonalbarn]

THANK YOU

[hickeywiththegoodhair]

somebody please explain

[dykemisspiggy]

Someone once told me it’s like that because it was designed to be hung in a stairwell so the skull pops out as you walk past.

[iwilltrytobereasonable]

…I guess it works but you have to be at a pretty sharp angle

[caecilius-est-pater]

There was a whole trend at one point where artists would include something in their paintings (usually a skull, for whatever reason) that’s super distorted in just the right way so that it looks normal if you hold the painting up to a convex/concave mirror. I have absolutely no idea why. But I think that’s what’s going on here.

[crtter]

In case anyone’s curious, here’s what it looks like when you walk past it irl:

It does have a 3D effect to it! It’s pretty neat, guess it would be even more impressive to people from the 14th century.

[midnightvoyager]

honestly, people just looking at the skull are missing the real deal here

You can read any implied text you see in this thing, even the book, that’s how detailed it is. Look at the painting on those letters!

jesus christ you’re just showing off now, Hans!

HANS OH MY GOD

anyway, the skull apparently had some meaning about the transcendence of death, you can only see it clearly when you can’t see the world clearly and vice versa, but man, I’m all about the detail in this guy’s shit

[queen-sammie]

No, I think you’re missing the real deal here

[anais-ninja-bitch]

as an art historian, i think this is the best post on tumblr