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La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (en valenciano y oficialmente Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències) es un complejo arquitectónico, cultural y de entretenimiento de la ciudad de Valencia (España).
El complejo fue diseñado por Santiago Calatrava y Félix Candela, junto con los ingenieros autores del diseño estructural de las cubiertas del L'Oceanografic Alberto Domingo y Carlos Lázaro. Fue inaugurado el de junio de 1998 con la apertura de El Hemisférico. El último gran componente de la Ciudad es el Ágora, situado entre el puente de l'Assut de l'Or y l'Oceanogràfic
Feliz domingo a tod@s
Neither the smallest nor the most inconsequential element to the image, this red boat had me following its path. Meandering about, a father and his two boys enjoy time out on Trout Lake. When they began to slowly travel toward the north end, I quickly beetled toward this sunken log.
Like arrows in my quiver, none of the previous shots of this scene, ever made it to post. However, this one combines the multiple components needed, so the log is a supporting element, framing the boater and anchoring the Fall colored trees.
This is a close-up photograph of the intricate, rusted and weathered components of an old threshing machine. Primarily used for wheat and oats, this piece of agricultural machinery dates back to the late 1800s. The lighting here emphasizes the textures and depth of the machinery, showing the various metal rods, chains, sprockets, and curved metal paddles.
Companies like the Wood Brothers in Des Moines, Iowa, manufactured this machine that helped revolutionize agriculture. However, farmers still needed the support of labor-intensive crews (8+ men). So, threshing rings were formed and acted as community cooperatives, with farmers sharing labor, machinery, and often moving from farm to farm during the harvest.
With endless fields of corn and soybeans today, I find it interesting that Iowa’s cash crop was initially wheat in the early 1800s. However, after facing crop failures, soil depletion, and pest issues with wheat, farmers pivoted to corn and hogs by the Civil War (1861-1865), primarily due to soil suitability and basic economics. Soybeans became popular in the 1920s and by 1969, Iowa had become the second-largest state in soybean production, harvesting 171 million bushels.
Developed with Darktable 4.8.0.
CaixaFòrum, Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, València, España.
La Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències es un complejo arquitectónico, cultural y de entretenimiento de la ciudad de Valencia, capital de la Comunidad Valenciana, España.
El complejo, de estilo neofuturista, fue diseñado por Santiago Calatrava y Félix Candela. Fue inaugurado el 9 de junio de 1998 con la apertura de El Hemisférico. El último gran componente de la Ciudad es el Ágora, situado entre el puente de l'Assut de l'Or y l'Oceanogràfic.
La Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències está situada al final del viejo cauce del río Turia (jardín del Turia), cauce que se convirtió en jardín en los años 1980, tras el desvío del río por la gran riada de Valencia en 1957. En 2007, fue uno de los ganadores del concurso 12 Tesoros de España.
The City of Arts and Sciences is an architectural, cultural, and entertainment complex in the city of Valencia, capital of the Valencian Community, Spain.
The neo-futurist-style complex was designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela. It was inaugurated on June 9, 1998, with the opening of El Hemisférico. The last major component of the City is the Ágora, located between the Puente de l'Assut de l'Or and the Oceanogràfic.
The City of Arts and Sciences is located at the end of the old Turia River bed (Turia Garden), a bed that was converted into a garden in the 1980s after the river was diverted during the great Valencia flood of 1957. In 2007, it was one of the winners of the 12 Treasures of Spain competition.
For Smile on Saturday 'Tabletop Game Components' theme. Have a good weekend you wonderful folks out there.
It’s Christmas day and the scrappers working in Wisconsin Central’s Shops Yard locomotive facility at North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, are home with their families enjoying the holiday. In the foreground, torched hoods sit on the ground, and the prime movers, generators and other engineroom components already gone from the locomotives. The job isn’t done yet, but the fate of these three former Soo Line GP30s is sealed as WC Nos. 709, 717 and 718 are not much more than scrap metal on December 25, 1994.
Buje / Istrie
Look in Large !
Join the Group / one door a week / Donderdag /Thursday
Het hoofdbestanddeel moet een deur zijn /
The main component has to be a door
One from the final few days of last year with all 3 (at the time) remaining Belgian Air Component Sea Kings from 40 Squadron. Seen returning after the last 3 ship farewell tour. RS02 has since retired and the remaining RS04 and RS05 retiring by end of March. Long live the king!
Sometimes, all it takes is your smile
(even if forced) and a domino effect of smiles happen, infectious.
Ace Antonio Hall
The beauty here arises from the interplay of perfectly normal physical and biological processes:
Sunlight is scattered by the moist morning air. Tiny water droplets in the mist primarily deflect the short-wavelength components of the light, while warm, yellow-gold light remains dominant. This creates the soft rays and the warm color palette. At the same time, leaves, grass, and water absorb and reflect light differently, creating contrasts and depth.
Our brains perceive this as "beautiful" because they have an evolutionarily positive response to patterns such as smooth transitions, natural symmetries, and color harmonies—for millions of years, these signaled safe, life-friendly environments.
In short: Physics shapes the light, biology shapes the landscape, and our brains create beauty from it.
Unser Gehirn schafft Schönheit
Die Schönheit entsteht hier aus dem Zusammenspiel ganz normaler physikalischer und biologischer Prozesse:
Das Sonnenlicht wird durch die feuchte Morgenluft gestreut. Winzige Wassertröpfchen im Nebel lenken vor allem die kurzwelligen Anteile des Lichts um, während warmes, gelb-goldenes Licht dominanter bleibt. Dadurch entstehen die weichen Strahlen und die warme Farbpalette. Gleichzeitig absorbieren und reflektieren Blätter, Gras und Wasser Licht unterschiedlich, was Kontraste und Tiefe erzeugt.
Unser Gehirn empfindet das als „schön“, weil es auf Muster wie sanfte Übergänge, natürliche Symmetrien und Farbharmonien evolutionär positiv reagiert – sie signalisierten über Millionen Jahre hinweg sichere, lebensfreundliche Umgebungen.
Kurz gesagt: Physik formt das Licht, Biologie formt die Landschaft, und unser Gehirn macht daraus Schönheit.
Join the Group / one door a week / Donderdag /Thursday
Het hoofdbestanddeel moet een hele deur zijn /geen personen
The main component has to be a door / No persons
Award Code www.flickr.com/photos/jomisere/50493311618/in/dateposted/
Belgium Air Component F16AM departs for a sortie during Ex Cobra Warrior at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, March 2023.
Belgium Air Component F16AM taxis to stand after a sortie during Ex Cobra Warrior at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, March 2023.
Household dust is a mix of many tiny particles from both inside and outside your home. It’s less mysterious than it sounds—more like a microscopic scrapbook of daily life.
Main sources of household dust
1. Dead skin cells (the biggest contributor)
Humans constantly shed skin. These tiny flakes break down, mix with other particles, and settle as dust. Pets add even more skin cells and dander.
2. Fabric fibers
Clothes, carpets, furniture, curtains, and bedding slowly shed microscopic fibers as they’re used and washed. Walking across a rug or sitting on a couch releases more.
3. Dirt and soil from outdoors
Dust, soil, pollen, and pollutants are tracked in on shoes, blown in through open windows, or carried inside on clothing and pets.
4. Pollen and plant material
Seasonal pollen enters from outside and becomes part of household dust, especially in spring and summer.
5. Insect debris
Tiny fragments from insects—such as dead insects, shed exoskeletons, and droppings—are a normal (if unpleasant) component.
6. Dust mites and their waste
Dust mites thrive in warm, humid homes, especially in bedding and upholstery. Their waste particles become airborne and contribute to dust.
7. Smoke and combustion particles
Cooking, candles, fireplaces, and smoking release fine particles that settle onto surfaces.
8. Building materials
As homes age, materials like drywall, paint, insulation, and even electronics slowly degrade and shed microscopic particles.
Why dust keeps coming back
Dust forms continuously because these sources never stop. Even in a sealed, newly cleaned room, dust will reappear as people move, fabrics rub together, and air circulates—like snow slowly falling indoors.
All very interesting but I wish there was a way to avoid it.
Archive photograph taken in the Holy Monastery of Martha and Mary in Bethany.
Participation in Smile on Saturday, theme: "Blue for You - ME 2024".
Nature’s Call Doberman Pinscher
1930 from sau motorcycles
“Neo-Classic Split Level” original design made from Jammin components
Heart - Wild Flowers, Exotics, Largo Coconut Palms, Tropical Grond Cover
Studio Skye - Red Acer
Tridente. “Psi”.
Do Romano Neptuno, do Grego Poseidon ou do Hindu Shiva, ou ainda de algum Deus menor daqueles que adoram lançar o caos no Olimpo,...
Em 2010 um tal vulcão Eyjafjallajokull,... "uff só o nome já é um embaraço linguístico", lança o caos no transito aéreo europeu e pelo que parece fica a uns poucos km deste local,...
Psi (Ψ ou ψ; em grego: ψι, transl.: psi) é a vigésima terceira letra do alfabeto grego.
A letra Ψ é utilizada na irrigação para representar o Potencial Hídrico e dos seus componentes.
A letra Ψ é utilizada como logo para representar a Psicologia. fonte:Wki
Ice is water frozen into the solid state. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions. The addition of other materials such as soil may further alter the appearance.
Ice appears in nature in forms of snowflakes, hail, icicles, ice spikes and candles, glaciers, pack ice, frost, and entire polar ice caps. It is an important component of the global climate, and plays an important role in the water cycle. Furthermore, ice has numerous cultural applications, from ice cooling of drinks to winter sports and the art of ice sculpting.
The molecules in solid ice may be arranged in different ways, called phases, depending on the temperature and pressure. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. The most common phase transition to ice Ih occurs when liquid water is cooled below 0°C (273.15K, 32°F) at standard atmospheric pressure. It can also deposit from vapour with no intervening liquid phase, such as in the formation of frost.
A wirewound resistor. This particular resistor uses ceramic material to support the wire used as the resistive element; certain other styles of resistors use a mixture of a conductive material and a naturally non-conductive ceramic material for the resistive element.
The original photo was of the walkway along the Kennebec River in Augusta, Maine. The walkway was converted from a railway route that went from Augusta to Gardiner and is very scenic, especially in the Fall.
Photofox Cloud Wanderer components were used to create this image. Philip Jose Farmer's "Tiers" science fiction series has a world in which the natural laws allow "land tsunamis" to happen. That was my inspiration for this creation.
Excerpt from www.cambridge.ca/en/learn-about/resources/Dickson-Hill-HC...:
Dickson Hill is one of the most unique communities in the City of Cambridge. Dickson Hill is named for the Honourable William Dickson, a prominent Galt settler who arrived to the area in 1816. Dickson is credited with founding the Village of Galt due to his considerable land holdings and was responsible for much of the commercial development on the west bank of the Grand River.
His son, William Dickson Jr., acquired most of the lands that currently make up the residential area of Dickson Hill. His own residence, located at 16 Byng Avenue was constructed in 1832. The development of the residential component occurred over several decades and by a series of developers. Florence Dickson, niece to William Dickson Jr., and his heir, controlled the development of this area until the 1890’s.
Dickson Hill features an extremely high concentration of significant buildings of various types: residential, institutional, commercial and manufacturing. In addition to the buildings, key elements that define the character of Dickson Hill are:
• Tree-lined streets;
• Distinctive globe street lights; and
• Prominent urban public spaces and landscape features.
A perfect evening in Lisbon, as seen from Jardim do Castelo de Saint Jorge, where Lisbon is in its full glory.
10th July 2016 - Lockheed C-130H Hercules 'CH-08' of the Belgian Air Components 20 Squadron based at Melsbroek Air Base and seen here in the static park at the Royal International Air Tattoo. This particular airframe was retired from the air component on 27th December 2017 with 22,219 flight hours on the clock since delivery in February 1973 and is to be reduced to spares in support of the remaining 10 aircraft of the fleet.
Both components were created in Wombo Ai.
The source is my manipulated photo.
Filters: PSE21 and Topaz Studio.
Because I can see the sea through my window today.
And the sound that sang me to sleep last night:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JekUNGo-RVk
Thank you for your visit, faves, invites and kind comments!
LOMO Lubitel 166 Universal and T-22 75mm f/4.5, Fomapan 400 in Rodinal 1+50 for 13 min @ 20°C and digitalized using kit zoom and extension tubes.
Thank you everyone for your visits, faves and comments, they are always appreciated :)
Hamilton Museum of Steam & Technology, Parkview East
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Nikon Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX
_DSC6076 Anx2 1400wh Q90 f25
Row of capacitors on the NeXTdimension color and video expansion board, for #MacroMondays #Numbers
Taken at 1:1 magnification. The capacitors are about 6 mm in diameter.
I've included a shot of the NeXTdimension logo in the comments.
Burlington Northern #2202 stands in for our "Thirty Thursday" selection, seen here on the end of a local sitting idle in a siding. The BN owned 55 of these units, which originated on two of the four component railroads. The CB&Q provided 38 units and the GN supplied the other 17. No surprise none came from the Alco loving SP&S, but also none came from the NP which seemed to not like second generation 4-axle EMD units. Fortunately a lot of these survived well into the future on account of rebuilding, but she sure doesn't look that optimistic in this photo. Has to be one of the dirtiest, beat looking BN units that I ever photographed.
The Taj Mahal ultimately from Arabic, "crown of palaces" is a white marble mausoleum located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal is widely recognized as "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage".
Taj Mahal is regarded by many as the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements from Islamic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Indian architectural styles.
In 1983, the Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While the white domed marble mausoleum is the most familiar component of the Taj Mahal, it is actually an integrated complex of structures. The construction began around 1632 and was completed around 1653, employing thousands of artisans and craftsmen. The construction of the Taj Mahal was entrusted to a board of architects under imperial supervision, including Abd ul-Karim Ma'mur Khan, Makramat Khan, and Ustad Ahmad Lahauri.
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...
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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.