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Actually, a bit of a tweener here with this capture of a young Tri-colored Heron catching another tasty treat on the bayou. The colors in the plumage are beginning to fade from the juvenile colors to the adult colors on these herons. He/she was getting its fill of bait fish along the banks of Horsepen Bayou. And yes, the nictitating membrane is half closed in this capture.
I guess that a bit of an explanation would be nice to let everyone know what is happening. The back still remains an issue, but I was able to pay a rare visit to the bayou this morning even if it was a cloudy day and a bit windy. The back is troublesome, but my fourth infestation of termites is far from what I was expecting. We found cell in the kitchen below the ovens, and I have no idea how long it will take to kill this cell. I’ve had a pest control service for years, but they can’t be blamed for the issues that exist within my OLD house that make it easy for the little devils to set up within the house. I had some extensive work done on the house to try and thwart their next attack, but nothing is guaranteed. Finding this colony was an incredible sucker punch and money had to be spent to try and stop their progress. The other issue was the five days of work required to do a two-day job. Just a bit disheartening.
There are other things going on as well with more work on the house set to begin next Monday. This is also some follow-up work where damage was done several years ago. Finding contractors to work on houses after having termite problems is next to impossible because the damage is never straightforward, and most contractors just say that they do not repair those types of damage. Will just add that the funds required to take care of the issues would pay handsomely for four or five first class vacations to exotic places. I’ll get my mind wrapped around everything and move forward.
Will try to get to your posts and comment in the coming days as well. Hope that everyone is doing splendidly and hope that you’ve had a lovely day as well.
A7R03427uls
Only you can make this world seem right
Only you can make the darkness bright
Only you and you alone
Can thrill me like you do
And fill my heart with love for only you
Only you can make this change in me
For it's true, you are my destiny
When you hold my hand
I understand the magic that you do
You're my dream come true
My one and only you
Only you can make this change in me
For it's true, you are my destiny
When you hold my hand
I understand the magic that you do
You're my dream come true
My one and only you
Actually, who cares about fishing? Enjoy the calmness and the beauty of a peaceful lake at day break. #8 in Explore 9th April.
In the limelight - or well, actually the LED light that the humans have in the living room but the Human does not like very much. But it suits me, doesn't it? Shows off my nice fur. They also replaced the carpet this year. The cow hide missed so many hairs and the Human wanted an animal friendlier alternative. It is a carpet that I can scratch and it has very short hairs sticking up, so it is easy to clean and Big Human doesn't have to sneeze.
Actually, this was the entrance to the main building of The Ulaman on Bali. The round opening reminds one of the round doors of the hobbit houses.
The sculpture is actually known as Cloud Gate, and is the centerpiece of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park. You wouldn't believe how difficult it can be to get a shot of this without folks getting in the shot. I ended up just masking them out in Photoshop using 3 separate images.
Actually it's Turkey Vultures, Black Vultures and my husband Ken. 😉 Orlando Wetlands Park, Christmas, Florida
Actually, all of us live in the dark... Light from a near star makes just an illusion that is not true, but...
Joey actually spends most of his time indoors rather than outside the house.
I used to put a bell on him all the time years ago as he would frequently jump into our neighbor's yard and he would sometimes wander in the dirty culverts in the neighborhood.
Although he doesn't mind wearing a bell, I think he values his privacy away from both Sunny and Cherie. The bell alerts his presence to both cats and Cherie likes to follow Joey around the house.
Unlike 6 years ago, Joey no longer ventures outside our compound and doesn't even bother to sneak into our neighbor's yard. He'd spend about 10-15 minutes outside and makes his way back indoors.
In retrospect, I wish I had trained him to be an indoor cat rather than let he do what he pleased. All the troubles that led him to the vet's for treatment were in fact, caused by his outdoor escapades.
Since last year I've disallowed him from jumping down to the roof below my bedroom, for fear of his inability to jump back up the window.
Joey had been diagnosed with arthritis last year, further compounding his chronic kidney disease condition.
Sometimes I wonder if Joey misses his late companions, Adam and Tommy. He does get along well with Cherie the tortie, but is very wary of the physically bigger Sunny.
Joey turned 14 years old sometime in October 2024 and I adopted him exactly fourteen years ago on January 29th, 2011.
I actually liked this theme and my group too! our group worked so well and im glad with the happy result and im more glad that we got assigned "HardRock", black makeup, awesome poses, amazing clothes and instruments! :D x)
Our album name is "Slash" and heres the song that would go in our album: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DacuQln3N1c
I hope you like it! ;3
Wryneck (Jynx torquilla) is actually a woodpecker, though it doesn't look like one. If you look closely you can see it has zygodactylous feet, with two toes pointing forward and two pointing back, like all other woodpeckers. It is also Europe's only truly migratory woodpecker as it spends the winter in sub-Saharan Africa (though some breed in the Himalayas and these winter in Indo-India). Interestingly I have seen it wintering in Ethiopia alongside a non-migratory cousin called Red-throated Wryneck (Jynx ruficollis) which looks quite similar apart from its red throat. (Here's a Red-throated Wryneck taken by Rich Andrews www.flickr.com/photos/richandrews/16277032606/in/photolist ) Wryneck is also the only European woodpecker where the sexes are identical and the only one with camouflaged plumage.
Wrynecks used to breed in Britain and in Victorian times were found in every county in England and Wales south of the Humber. But they had dwindled to extinction by the 1970s while a small population temporarily colonised Scotland, which was way outside its original range. But I don't think it has bred there since 2002, so is now classed as an extinct breeder in Britain. Fortunately it still breeds in southern Scandinavia so still drifts across the North Sea to arrive in Britain each year, albeit in small numbers. The weather conditions were conducive to Wrynecks arriving as several appeared in Britain at the weekend. One even turned up in the West Pennine Moors NW of Bolton close to my brother's house. I let him know and he went out and managed to photograph it, his first Wryneck.
Actually his present-day South American relative the Green Iguana.
Dutch: Groene Leguaan (Iguana Iguana)
Actually, this was the entrance to the main building of The Ulaman on Bali. The round opening reminds one of the round doors of the hobbit houses.
Actually an optical illusion - it may look like you’re seeing right through but it’s actually a reflection. Belfast city centre.
This one actually made it into Modern Railways Pictorial's "Picture Parade" section. I remember leafing through it in WHSmiths and nearly fainting.
An unidentified class 85 takes the up center line with a rake of Mk 1s.
. . .
I have vague memories of spending a few hours on Stafford station when I was just getting into trains. I'm guessing it was summer 1980.
I went armed with Ilford FP4 and Dad's fixed lens Canon, with the inspiration provided by "Modern Railways Pictorial" magazine.
Actually, I took my new rolling blind out looking for elk in their fall rut. I got a little side-tracked here on the Northern California coast. I spent some time at this spot working on splashes. This one kinda reminds me what happens if you drop a full cardboard carton of milk there in the foreground. Check it Large.
I found this Liophloeus tessulatus weevil on the side of my house and managed a couple of shots of it.
Weevils are often considered a pest in the garden (or commercial agriculture for that matter), but I obviously like them for being cute and interesting subjects.
This one however is sorta kinda beneficial in that they like to eat the plant known as ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria).
If you have ever had this one in your garden, chances are it's still there as it is incredibly good at resisting eradication and pretty much always seem to come back.
So you see, having these guys around waging war on the bad plant could be a good thing.
After taking a couple of shots of it on the side of my house (as can be seen in Pt. 1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51580625812/) I moved it to a yellow flower (as seen in Pt. 3) here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51885787595/ before actually moving it a second time, this time to this cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) for some punchy colours in the shot!
I am not sure what the white stuff on its elytra is. It could be pollen from a flower it has visited or some type of fungus.)
Actually blue Stilton and digestives but the strongest flavour comes from the bacteria so let’s be honest about what we’re eating.
Actually only part of what is on tap at West End Outdoors - Athens AL
AMAZING selection of beers and cider and some premo wines like you would never expect!!
This is actually a journal which was given to me by a very dear friend. I'm crazy about it and couldn't wait to play around on Sliders Sunday with just the outside!
Hope everyone had a wonderful day
and will continue enjoying the upcoming week!
*Trust the abstract* . . . THINGS HAPPEN THERE . . . aledzian
Well actually, what you see is a combination of 2 pics, one on the right was taken in a beautiful sunny day when Magnolia tree was in it's full bloom, and the other one on a snowy day which happens once in a blue moon here in the south, amalgamation gave very interesting result...
Did you know that the bull charging at something red is actually a fallacy? Bulls, along with all other cattle, are color-blind to red. Thus, the charging bull is likely irritated not by the muleta’s (the little red cape used by the matador) color, but by the cape’s movement as the matador whips it around.
I love to collect vintage accessories. This includes antique fans. My favourite fans are those from the Victorian and Edwardian era. Fans from these eras are extremely ostentatious and beautiful. However, I also have some Art Deco fans which whilst less ostentatious make up for that with their colour, like this red Spanish fan from the 1920s printed by hand with a bull pattern. The colour of this fan is such a vibrant red, and it probably still is so because wen I acquired it, it was still crisply sitting in its original box. I suspect it may have been bought by a tourist who went to Spain and they never actually used it.
The theme for "Smile on Saturday" for the 19th of February is "bicolora", so only two colours are allowed in the photo. Therefore, I have placed my red 1920s Art Deco fan against a black velvet background to match the black of the hand printed bulls, thus having only red and black in the photo. I hope that you like my choice and that it makes you smile.
Or actually there were a bunch of them on a field but this one was my best shot. This is the first time that I have even seen greylag goose around these parts.
Actually taken 06/12/2016. Nikon D600. Contrast masking in Lightroom.
This was in the show "From Dusk Til Dawn" at PhotoPlace gallery in MIddlebury Vt, during November-ish of 2016.
(I never actually got to see the show - it's 6+ hour drive from here, but the catalog is available from the gallery. Besides yours truly, there's a guy in Summit who had some neat stuff, plus others)
… actually from inside the Doubletree Hotel, which has taken over the whole dock.
Explored #2 on March 1st 2022.
Watch it properly @ Gallery Minimal!
..
This is actually one of the locations that Lee and Patrick from Fstoppers.com and I used as a lesson while filming Photographing The World. While some of you already know that, something you may not know is that Lee almost got us kicked out of here for flying his DJI Phantom 2! Apparently local building security thought we were using it to spy on people in their tiny apartments. Thankfully I was able to sweet talk my way out of the situation and still come away with the shot!
It’s unbelievable to me that people can live so tightly packed in like this. On the other hand, it’s also really cool to think that a place that most people rarely give a second look, or consider to be so ugly, can look so beautiful and interesting to a photographer. It reminds me of all those years ago when I was wandering the Stockholm Underground and came across what has always been one of my favorite photos in my portfolio, Belly of the Beast. It’s seeing places like this that always remind me that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder.
To learn the techniques I used to shoot and post-process this image, you can find all the info about my new tutorial video series by visiting: bit.ly/landcape-cityscape-photography-tutorials
Unseen Photo Fair in Amsterdam was a wonderful experience for me. The world of photography has been more extensive than I expected. Emerging talents from all over the world amazed me by their imagination, creativity and craftsmanship; on the other hand, I felt that what photography has achieved was sometimes neglected. In other words, they don't need the realities in front of them now… Anyway, participating in Unseen made me think about what I actually want to do. It's getting more and more difficult and interesting to take/make pictures…
Actually the 'blood moon' was planned to capture but a lot of clouds made that impossible.
Hours later the atmosphere was mostly clean and i took this shot with the sigma 150-600 and 1.4 converter. Instead of a tripod i used my monopd and deactivated the electronic stabilizer.
On this single shot (no stacking) some afterwork with Infinity Photo was neccessary but I avoided to convert to b/w 😇.
Link Nikon Image space (full screen mode required):
In an alternative imagining of the 19th century slave trade, the white man is the slave of the black slave trader.
Sometimes seeing things differently helps us SEE things differently.
Brand new black and white edit with the title borrowed from a line from Redemption Song by Bob Marley.
Story behind this shoot:
I did the colour versions of this shoot a few years ago. They went viral and were widely acclaimed as impactful and thought provoking after being picked up by a famous Black American influencer on Instagram. The series of 6 of these shots had before this been accepted for a UK Nationwide touring exhibition - to be pulled at the last minute by those in charge as it was considered it may be too "distressing for school children" to see these (even though it was a normal exhibition for all the public who would mainly be adults anyway).
Seeing the usual images of black people suffering in chains in the schoolbooks is apparently okay, but it is not good for kids to see things differently, or to perish the thought to make the next generation actually have to THINK and be impacted ... and if they are distressed for a little while by the reality then so be it, as that's how change happens by hearts and minds being impacted as slavery and racism and inequality based on race is distressing. Whatever the race of the perpetrator and victim.
I - and my two awesome models here PJ Walker and Horace Silver - am proud that these images are considered powerful enough to impact young minds. And maybe a few old ones.
long stories shortened... (discarded and abandoned and intertwined short stories) well..actually they are chunks and fragmets and notes of stories that never made it
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a young PhD math candidate writing his dissertation on an obscure arab mathematician from the middle ages who specialized in cycles and periods in infinite series and develops a process to determine prime number density in a large number space. (which is all and good) except this makes it an excellent tool to decrypting military grade encryption, which is based on the computational difficulty of factoring large numbers into their prime components
the arab mathematician was ultimately censured by the religious mullahs for developing tools to rationalize the infinite, which is of course the nature of Allah and for man to attempt to place Allah into a human scale is blasphemy
so the arab mathematician disappears and the young phd candidate finds that his dissertation has been suspended pending review but cant get any information on who is reviewing it
finally another young mathematician approaches him and starts a long discussion on math and the nature of numbers and the mathematicians love of the underlying structure of reality that math represents. the phd candidate is leary of this mathematician cause he wont answer what he does or where he went to school or how he knows so many cutting edge fields in math
eventually, the young mathematician offers the phd candidate a position with the NSA, National Security Agency, (where all the big crypto and high math goes on) but explains that if he accepts that he will essentially disappear from his current world. his work will be classified, he will not be able to publish in academic journals or speak in public, or talk about his work to his friends on the outside, but the compensation is that he
would be able to work unfettered with the greatest math minds in the country, totally funded, free to explore any field or fancy he thought. after a few moments of thought, the phd accepts.
then the story will go back to the arab mathematician who is also approached my a young beared mullah, who offers him a position within his group of thinkers who do ponder and explore the nature of nature reality and Allah through mathematics, but that by joining them he would need to disappear from the world, after a few minutes of thought, he too accepts...
--
Daniel sipped his 6th coffee (colloidal suspension for caffeine transport) while his batch jobs on ramanet, the Indian supergrid, finished their checksum verification. His chin, a bit stubbly, itched. His eyes, a bit red, were sore. The goa trance shoutcast feed had mushed into a fast cadence drone. The flat screen monitor warped and bulged with the oscillating fan blowing on Daniel's face
'O' glamorous larval life of a PhD student...' he jotted and doodle-circled on his notepad.
Daniel cracked his neck and jutted his jaw, stretching out the accumulation of kinks, as RamaNet finished the final integrity check on his dataset. this two hour round of processing on the Indian supergrid would cost about $130 out of his precious grant fund, but you couldnt beat the bargain. 120 minutes times 150,000 PCs in the RamaNet processing collective = 1,080,000,000 seconds or 18,000,000 minutes or 300,000 hours or 12500 days or 34.25 years of processing time for the price of a video game. Calculation was commoditized now. You uploaded your pre-fromatted dataset to RamaNet. the data was packeted and sent to out to 150,000 Indians who lent a few percents of never-to-be missed CPU cycles off their systems for background processing. when their alotted package was completed it was sent back to RamaNet for re-assembly into something coherent for the buyer. in return the Indians got a rebate on their net access charges or access to premier bollywood galleries or credit towards their own processing charges. a good deal all the way around. Daniel's dataset, an anthology of complex proofs from a long-dead arab mathematician, was queued with amateur weather forecast modeling, home-brewed digital CGI for indie movies, chaos theory-based currency trading algorithms, etc. the really high end, confidential jobs, like protein folding analysis or big pharm drug trials were more likely handled by the huge western collectives of several million collaborative systems, usually high-performance machines in dedicated corporate server farms. the cost there was out of Daniel's range, but you got a faster return and better promises of encryption for your buck.
Daniel scratched his scalp and flexed his fingers. 'two months from today i will be a doctor of mathematics...and no job. damnit. i need to find something fast.' Daniel calculated in his mind how quickly the student loans repayments would kick in and completely wipe him out. RamaNet would have done it in nanoseconds, ha! he laughed to himself. Daniel had avoided the rounds of job interviews and recommendations that passed his way. he was too absorbed in his research to look ahead, and perhaps a bit intimidated by the idea of the job hunt flea market. flexing his CV, getting a monkey suit, trying to explain his research to recruiters, who were often the same finger-counting business majors in college that made his skin crawl. Daniel always felt a bit embarrassed when he announced he was math PhD candidate. folks would immediately glaze over,
tsk tsk out a 'that's interesting', and swiftly change the subject. something will come up, he mantra'd to himself over and over, something will come up. stick with ali, there is something real in there, just a bit deeper. the real problem was his thesis advisor. dr. fuentes was not returning his calls, his secretary was not taking appointments from Daniel. he had submitted his finished draft of his thesis two weeks ago, but hadnt heard back since, except for a cryptic email saying that the review committee was having some issues with his paper and that Daniel would be hearing from him shortly. Daniel was rerunning his calculations on RamaNet to assuage the gnawing doubt that he completely botched some component of his argument and that the review committee was debating some manner of telling him to redo the entire effort. no PhD and no job. that would ice the cake. Daniel started calculating his body mass and general aerodynamic resistance relative to the height of the school cathedral to figure out if he had time to reach a terminal velocity before impact...only a failed math PhD would attempt to determine at what speed his body would smack concrete, he morbidly thought to himself.
ali ja'far muhammed ibn abdullah al-farisi slipped meditatively on his cup of water, thinking about his proof. he dipped a finger in the cup and held up a droplet of water under his fingertip, watching the sunlight prisimatically splay out on the mouth of the cup. 'praise be Allah and his wonderous bounty' he mumured to himself.
the elders had been in conference all day over his proof. though the heavy doors to their chamber were closed, he would occasionally hear muffled but distinctly angry shouts. ali sat on a divan in the anteroom, served numerous cups of tea by an obviously nervous secretary. ali knew there was deep resistance to his research, but for the life of him he couldnt figure out why. he was a simple mathematician. he came up with some unique observations. he wanted to share them with his peers...
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Overview: biotech researcher discovers a new life-extension technology and is murdered. He is cryogenically frozen for 150 years. When he is
revived he must stop a dark corporate conspiracy – and find his murderer.
Summer 2015 - Hot genius free-lance biotech researcher unravels the key component of a radical life-extension gene therapy that will ensure 300 years of robust life to its recipients. The researcher is murdered shortly after he hides the critical component. His distraught friend has him cryogenically frozen. 150 years later, the researcher is revived by the same major bio-med corporation for which he had originally been working.
Quickly he realizes that their motives are less than altruistic: his modification of the gene therapy is needed to resolve an unforeseen debilitation now creeping up in the recipients of the life-extension process. The recipients, now nearing 125 years off added life, are decompensating into psychotics. The researcher at first tries to remember and reconstruct what he did with the hidden critical component, but stops in disgust when he learns that in the past 150 years the life-extension therapy has been reserved solely for the ultra-affluent and has created an extreme and cruel global gerontocratic elite. He voices his disgust to his corporate minders, who cease being beneficent and show their true colors as trying to gain control of this critical technology in order to control the elites.
In the process of dealing with the corporation, he learns about his murder and begins investigating.As he comes closer to the identity of his murderer, he uncovers a wider conspiracy and is the target of more murder attempts.
He was killed by a friend in 2015. The friend was the CEO of a small bio-gen firm that the researcher was doing the LET work for. The CEO, a biz-head with a genetics academic background, took the researcher’s work and exploited it as his own, in the process growing his small firm into a bio-med powerhouse and him into one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
The CEO also was the first recipient of the LET and is now 190 years old, but doesn’t look a day over 45. Smart, urbane, ruthless, the CEO used his wealth and position to start the cabal of Ultras. It is a faction of the top 50 smartest and wealthiest people in the world who have ‘ascended from the world’ (faked their demise) and control the global economy with their vast coordinated wealth. Perhaps they will call themselves ‘The Ascended’. We need to decide how the cabal lives. Are they sequestered on a luxurious island compound, or do they live in the open, surgically re-sculpted after each faked death, or do they live in the open.
Also we need to figure out what the world will look and feel like in 150 years.
As the ultras decompensate into psychosis, the CEO orders the researcher to be revived in order to find a cure. The CEO had the researcher’s lab notes decrypted and figured that the he was close if not successful in finding the missing component to stabilize the LET.
Tiberius Syndrome: the decline into cruel psychosis experienced by the ultras, named after the roman emperor Tiberius’ degenerate behavior after he sequestered himself on Capri.
The ironic twist might be that there is no cure, no stabilization. The psychosis is not the result of the LET alone, but also due in part to the unfettered ego/wills of the ultras. Absolute power corrupts…
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a brazilian hacking syndicate was subcontracted by a st petersberg crew to run interference on a hit on SWIFT, the global currency clearinghouse notification network. The UniFavela clan was going to run a multi-flank raid. They specialized in fast propagating virii and had created a custom mail-in virus that exploited a few microsoft vulnerabilities that they had discovered and kept mum. Their target was a Latin American PR spokesman listed on the corporate web site for press queries. The PR flak would be just the sleepy guard on the wall for their virus to slip past. 30 minutes after opening an inocuous spoofed email from a French e-trade publication requesting clarification on the SWIFT-Indentrus partnership. the virus would port scan and map its entire site LAN, salmoning its way up the router paths till it found the deep waters of the main corporate campus network in Brussels. Shortly, the internal LAN at Brussels would be suffering switch and router buffer overflows and traffic would gasp, ack, and sputter. UniFavela would then towel whip out a vanilla DDOS on the main company web site, any INTERNIC-registered addresses, and any other system in the IP block reserved for SWIFT that had previously port scanned as interesting, or ,even, as nothing. Mongols charging the village gates and tossing flaming torches on thatched roofs. IT Operations would be running to and fro, trying to figure out the internal bandwidth crunch and if there was a bleedout causing the external net problems.
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The Post-Human Story of Minos:
the CEO of a powerful commercial combine is bore an illegitimate son by his indiscreet wife in retaliation for his own dalliances. the son has a hideous deformity but is fantastically brilliant - brilliant enough for the father overcome his own repulsion of the child - as a bastard and a freak. the father sequesters the child in an elaborate virtual domain. the child, a hacker savant, is used to breach competitor nets. but as his power in the digital realm expands, the child transforms into the tyrant-monster. using the nets, he lashes out at people who have caused him pain, then evolves into enjoying the taste of terror and fear. He becomes the Minotaur.
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'there was a mad scramble amongst all the big spook governments, dark side corporations, and the privacy maccabees once it was determined that quantum computation had left the tidal pool of academia, grown legs and air-breathing lungs, and was headed for the nat sec intel highlands. all previous encryption models were rendered obsolete, and worse, exposed. QC became an undefiable xray spotlight, laying bare any encrypted secret with a ease of opening a mathematical candy wrapper. And for a while it swung the advantage back to the state in the digital Boer War against the freecon partisans.'
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The Oort, to the Intras, looked as one people. Extra-stellar hillbillies, ekeing out a subsistance existence on extracted organics from the frozen crud comets and other planetesimals of the Oort Cloud that slung around the solar system in a 1K AU circuit. To the Oort there was no Oort. Each station, each kampong was distinct and seperate. Seperate dialects, traditions, norms, goals. Some were scientific collectives, some were tired mining operations, some were intense sectarian cults - they shared little between themselves beyond necessary trade links for scarce commodities.
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A young prince is disgraced in an internal court scandal and sent into a quasi-exile on a worthless mission. On his travels he builds the wisdom and learns the skills necessary to be a just and effective leader.
His exile was a gambit by his patriarch to remove Genji from the arena of pointless court intrigues and develop him as a real leader. The patriarch dispatched a team of loyal praetorians to discreetly follow and protect Genji on his odyssey.
Genji was sent as an emissary to the Oort system. He must pass through the Martian-Saturnine corridor, populated with industrial trading guilds and their private militias.
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Genealogy becomes paramount in a closed culture; hierarchy by heredity. Reference the roman patrician class’ death-grip obsession with lineage, or the medieval Japanese imperial court’s strict intra-elite caste system.
But in an era of extreme genetic engineering, how can bloodlines retain their importance? Perhaps this is the wrong question. Perhaps in an era of extreme genetic engineering, authentic bloodlines can only retain their importance. The longevity of an unchanged gene line demonstrates success in evolutionary competition. Over time however, the fitness of a rigidly enforced and ‘sequestered’ gene line will degrade. Consider the hemophilia of the European royal strata.
I would not want the imperial court of the inner system to be pure blue bloods, eschewing genetic manipulation. Rather I would have them take the opposite tack – and embrace genetic engineering in the pursuit of perfecting particular socially valued or distinctive attributes; a roman nose, elongated refined fingers, even the possession of certain ‘noble’ afflictions (for ex., the aforementioned hemophilia as a sign of noble lineage).
The elites should pursue genealogy with the same passion and gusto as horse breeders; studs and mares and percentages of bloodlines, enforced and suppressed gene expressions, surrogates, and gene modes des saisons.
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a bum finds a the wallet and keys of a man who jumped from a bridge
he goes to his townhouse to find something to eat or steal
is impressed and overwhelmed with the man's townhouse
showers, eats, gets cleaned up, finds some clothes
is ready to leave when he helps a woman wrestling with groceries at her door
she thanks him, but looks stunned.
‘are you the man in #560? umm..i have lived here for 3 years and have never actually seen you. you seem to leave so early in the morning and get
home so late and keep to yourself.’
they spend 30 minutes talking, having a generally warm friendly encounter.
‘well, I am so glad to have finally met you. Hope to see you soon.’ As she closes her door, the bum turns to leave but pauses and thinks for a moment, then goes back into the man's townhouse
he pours through the man's papers and keepsakes and learns that the man has no family that he speaks with, no friends, lives off a well-endowed trust fund
and
the bum moves in and takes over the mans identity
he brings warmth and sincerity to the man's identity
what makes a hermit tick? what lengths do they go to to remove themselves from society? does it become a game to avoid contact, trying to become a shadow, a phantom? does society dissolve away as a mental force in their thoughts, atrophy away or does it become an amputated impression?
what divsion line stands between a hermit and convict in solitary? the hermit, by and large, chooses their isolation, the convict has it enforced upon them. at what point does the human need for society or socialization collapse? is there anything left that we can inspect and evaluate? a hermit, however, is able to maintain walls against the Great Other, which would imply that they are seeking refuge from the world. a schizo or an autistic will be physically surrounded by others but unable or incapable of making contact.
when does the will to contact die? what is left over? do humans require contact to retain our humanity? can you love and sacrifice in a vacuum?
what defines humanity? oooh, a big question...
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genetic engineering will continue to deconstruct the human species
there will be catastrophic disasters: gene sequence specific viruses engineered to attack 'types' of people. Der Genkampf
petroleum will be replaced- hydrogen-powered locomotion and green power (in the wealthy states). the poor states will continue to be held hostage to oil politics
(cultures and civilizations do not move forward uneringly. they spasticly jerk forward and fro, in clumps andgrains, never ever as a lemming death drive.)
developed economies will be netized. a new state structure will be needed to manage and dsitribute resources. the corporate structure, the commercial backbone of the capitalist democracy, will replace the republic. it is flexible to markets and political forces, insistent on accountability, it provides a sufficient compromise between individual representation and republican government. they will begin their political evolution as projects in community development. assurances of an educated workforce by charter education. assurances of uninterrupted utilities by running their own power/water etc. net-based marketplaces create corporate agoras. employees are in fact de facto citizens of the corporation. citizenship, or regular employment, will be a reward for merit, stock shares will count towards suffrage.
great corporate collectives will arise. housing, education, security...all the needs of the middle class will be absorbed in the corporate state. the tradtional state will cede roles and responsibilities to the corporate state as their resources dwindle. a few isolated violent reactions (military or legal)by the republics against the corporate states, but they will fail over time. against, or more so, in conjunction with the homogenized corporatsists wil be the diasporae, non-corporates will glom to other modes of networked alignment, ethnic allegiance will become stronger over time - as the chinese, indian, and jewish disporaestrengthen as a formula for a successful competition against/with the corporates.
the american state, succored by its overwhelming techo-military supremancy, loses its mission, its vision - substitutes will to dominate for will to excel - and falls into the deep narcotic, insulated slumber of the unassailable. GE, nano, and the banknote net weaken the mythic cohesion of the american spirit. we are no longer united by common experience (mass-mediated or otherwise) the promise of science to make us stronger, smarter, near immortal is held like a manifest destiny or a divine IOU for services rendered to humanity.
Back Garden - another shot of Mondays Greenfinch (looking rather grumpy in this one)
There were actually 5 together today (Thursday)
Actually it’s ice, and Ken took the photo. He had a struggle to get up the hill and worse getting down without falling! We are at 24F degrees just now at 6:15 PM. This ice will not be melting off!
Actually several but I only photography 2 above and 3 below. As I get close to photo they all eventually take of. Lots of Cormorants have come to Cornwall on water St. Lawrence River. I enjoy them yet many don’t and the even kill they, sad !!!
We actually returned to the same site not too long later. More of the area had been flattened at this point but we were still able to access the 'block' that we had before.
So, all good, right? The way in was the same, still no meaningful security on site... what could go wrong? Well, boy was it cold. Layered up in jumpers and coats, we had climbed the internal stairs without any trouble. The conditions on the roof were... worse. A layer of incredibly slippery ice had formed on the surface - typical considering on this visit I wanted to venture further down the rooftop...
Venture forward we did though: me, clutching onto the railing for dear life and Michael stepping forwards unaided without any fuss (could we be more different?). It certainly felt like one of the more dangerous things we'd done over the years.
Actually got out with my big boy camera last night. This is a 5 min exposure shot at f/10, ISO 100 using my extreme neutral density filter.
Happy Tuesday friends :)
copyright: yarin asanth/ gerd kozik 2015-2019
Prince Yarin van de Flickrs was irritated. Actually it was a normal ride with Rotz, the majestic horse. So, as every night, they rode once again through the magic forest, past the small lake of great harmony, along the coast of the sharp rocks and back to the castle. Today, in the evening light, the water almost looked as if it had frozen to ice, and in fact the Prince froze horribly. Rotz the majestic horse pawed uneasily with his hooves. It was this strange mood, as if time had stopped. Behind the rocks by the sea, something seemed to brew together. A quaking volcano or a bad-tempered dragon who might have just discovered them. In any case, nothing good. It smelled of sulfur and burned wood. The sky was turning rusty brown and a black cloud was hanging overhead. The whole scenery seemed eerie and somehow unreal. Maybe it was just a dream? The prince tried to wake up, but it was not possible. He was obviously too deeply involved in this crazy but terrible story. But what almost robbed him of his mind was that Rotz was constantly blabbering to him. Something about the Witch's Curse. Suddenly a crack, the earth shook and seemed to burst underfoot. A stinging blue-gray smoke rose from the cracks in the floor. Heartily, the prince tore the horse around. While they rode like the devil in the direction of the forest they were pursued by a huge fire roller. A really hot ride. Finally they reached the castle and in fact they had hung the fire roller. Rotz somehow smelled of burned hair and even the prince had the stench of sulfur hanging in his clothes. Showering, brushing your teeth and off to bed said the prince. Then it became quiet. Tommorrow I'll go ahead and pick the witch Lugana. The old quirk can experience something. Then it became very quiet in the castle. Good night!
Happy Sunday!
Yarin
PS: Hi Ed, it took a little longer ;)
Set:
2 graduated hardware filters ZOMEI 150x100 blue and orange
1 ND 1000 Filter ROLLEI 150x100
Strange weather
good location
horse
I actually won a lotto permit for the wave out of over 70 people. Took me two tries though. I found a bone prop on the hike there.
I had the rare occasion to take a photowalk by myself. It was so relaxing, refreshing to just be by myself . I had the time to actually focus on the subjects instead of hurrying up trying to figure out how to take the best shot real fast like when im around with the kids...can't wait for next time :)