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łuka(wu ka) , b. 1995, it/he/she. a sideblog about near, string figures, & being a toy made for a purpose that buries itself in toys with no purpose. ( near fictive, littlex ageslider, hairtwirler ) 🪀🚂 🧮 🪢 🎯 🤖 🪆 👾 🃏 anyone can interact. 🎲 🧩 🎳 ♟️🚀 🧸 🀄 🚃 🖌️

[string-figure]

playing, playing-with, using in chapters 77, 78, & 79

posting as if there isn't decades of better writing about these two: there's an almost childhood-pretend-play feeling to this whole thing with them. near is always literally playing toys but in the story they're both playing toys. unfortunately mello is the one who gets really intensely into warrior cats roleplay during recess. but also the warrior cats roleplay has a death toll. it's playing but that doesn't mean it isn't real or isn't serious. animals play to learn how to survive, right? i'm not saying this right. each of them moving pieces to play with the other, to provoke them into interaction, to solve the puzzle. each of them using the other and knowing the other is using them and knowing the other knows they know they're using them. how in a way they both "read" part 1 of death note from outside the narrative, speculatively reconstructed it out of scraps, then both inserted themselves as characters as actors as players at the same time

[string-figure]

from speculative drawing by andreas töpfer and armen avanessian, 2014

[theshoottt]

🕯️🩸📀

[string-figure]

finally associating this account with "our" "main" and following-back some people. you are not obligated to follow any of those other blogs. not even the other rightsiders. i don't know them *looking off to the side like i'm lying*

[transfemdave]

quillsh wammy is genuinely so funny. literally a dude going ok this omelas kid idea is working out so well I should just build an omelas kids factory

[julsyrz-deactivated20191108]

[string-figure]

they're free now. (but not really. the squares are still underneath, and they're still constrained by them)

[string-figure]

fictive as in did/osdd?

do you send this to every fictive you meet?

we could be called "traumagenic" but i in particular am very anti-psychiatry. if you think those diagnoses are the only correct or meaningful map of plurality that has-ever or will-ever exist, you will not like me.

incidentally, the word "fictive" comes from livejournal communities about soulbonding. maybe i owe a debt to them for using it?

[angels-in-asylums]

Some people in asylums in the 50s were crazy. Some of them were psychotic, screaming at things nobody else could see. Some of them were aggressive, kicking and punching and biting without provocation. Some of them were a danger to themselves. Hell, some of them were a danger to others. And they were people. They were human beings. And all human beings deserve human rights, something those people, by law, didn't have.

Some people in mental hospitals now are crazy. Some of us are psychotic. Some of us are aggressive. Some of us are a danger to ourselves. Some of us are a danger to others. And we are still humans, who deserve human rights, which we legally do not have.

Some of us, a few of the crazy people you talk about, are exactly what you say we are. Psychotic, aggressive, a danger to ourselves and others. That doesnt change the fact that we are human. That doesnt change the fact that every individual human that exists, has ever existed, and will ever exist deserves human rights. That doesnt change the fact that we don't have those human rights in every situation. "Few of us are aggressive," while true as a statement, fails to acknowledge and insist that those of us who are still deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect as any other person.

[scrixels]

320. Marble run

i loooved setting these things up as a kid

[string-figure]

it's like in all my lives i've been an intruder. outside the story, something externally imposed upon it, shoved into it

[lisamarie-vee]

[string-figure]

have you ever thought about what it'd be like if your life was written by the death note guy? well…that is exactly what several, perhaps dozens of us across the globe have to live with every day,

[linnea-ancalime]

Maybe we need to 2am draw more often.

[southersalazar]

The Day We Escaped

2007

[galois-groupie]

Journalist: It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?

Tal: Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.

And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".

I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.

After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.

And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.

— Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.

[tinnyfoxts]

Doodle

[thejaymo]

A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation

Abstract

Few cultural practices beyond language are as widespread as string figure games. Their global distribution and potential to yield insights into cultural transmission and cognition have long been noted. Yet, it remains unknown how or when this behaviour originated and to what extent shared motifs are signals of repeated innovations or deep cultural transmission. Here, we combined a global cross-cultural inventory of string figures with a novel methodology based on knot theory, which enables the unequivocal numerical coding of string figures. We performed a computational analysis of a sample of 826 figures from 92 societies around the world. Across these societies, we found 83 recurring string figure designs, some of which are regionally restricted while others display a global distribution. The cognitively opaque nature of string figure designs and their clear geographic distribution reveal processes of cultural transmission, innovation, and convergent evolution. Most strikingly, the global distribution of some figures raises the possibility of shared ancient origins.

A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation