Satan: Well, the thing is, you see, souls are super valuable because they power the universe. This is a tiny collection compared to my soul imperium in Hell. But I’m seeing steady growth.
The use of the word imperium is curious – perhaps invoking Ethereum?
Alternatively, I stumbled upon this:
One big positive, at least for the development of the “Imperium” technology, is that The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense, is currently working on it, along with 10 other governmental agencies, such as the FDA, NIH, and others.
A machine that reads your DNA and then digitizes it so it can be stored inside a computer. This is why it’s called a “DNA sequencer” , because your DNA is made up of a “sequence” of over six billion letters. Since DNA is the stuff inside your cells that carries all your genetic information, it’s not surprising that some of the “usual suspects” such as Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment LLC and Mark Zuckerberg are also invested in Imperium technology in one way or another.
Coincidentally, in this episode of Little Demon, the soul that is harvested is from a matador who died while bull fighting – the name of the reporting site above is Green Bull Research.
In the same scene . . .
Chrissy: Man, this is some real messed up Libertarian bullshit.
The scene prior to this . . . Satan requests a spit sample from the dying matador to formalize a soul contract (so as to harvest his soul):
Whoah - those islands remind me of Skerry that I referenced with Gaiman.
Also is the matador a reference to Delgado’s mind control?
The most famous example of the stimoceiver in action occurred at a Córdoba bull breeding ranch. Rodríguez Delgado stepped into the ring with a bull which had had a stimoceiver implanted within its brain. The bull charged Delgado, who pressed a remote control button which caused the bull to stop its charge. Always one for theatrics, he taped this stunt and it can be seen today.[7] The region of the brain Rodríguez Delgado stimulated when he pressed the hand-held transmitter was the caudate nucleus. This region was chosen to be stimulated because the caudate nucleus is involved in controlling voluntary movements.[2] Rodríguez Delgado claimed that the stimulus caused the bull to lose its aggressive instinct. It has been argued that it was easier to block motor control than motivation or feelings. Howeve
Using the stimoceiver, Rodríguez Delgado found that he could not only elicit emotions, but he could also elicit specific physical reactions. These specific physical reactions, such as the movement of a limb or the clenching of a fist, were achieved when Rodríguez Delgado stimulated the motor cortex. Humans whose implants were stimulated to produce a reaction were unable to resist the reaction and so one patient said “I guess, doctor, that your electricity is stronger than my will”. Some consider one of Rodríguez Delgado’s most promising finds is that of an area called the septum within the limbic region. This area, when stimulated by Rodríguez Delgado, produced feelings of strong euphoria. These euphoric feelings were sometimes strong enough to overcome physical pain and depression.[2]
Rodríguez Delgado created many inventions and was called a “technological wizard” by one of his Yale colleagues. Other than the stimoceiver, Rodríguez Delgado also created a “chemitrode” which was an implantable device that released controlled amounts of a drug into specific brain areas. Rodríguez Delgado also invented an early version of what is now a cardiac pacemaker.[2]
@AMcD Super freaky. I had not even seen your Skerry/Gaiman post.
After reviewing your post, I most definitely consider the rocky geological formations featured in Little Demon as skerries. Of course, this would circle us back to basalt, which brings us back to peridot/olivine – leading us straight back to primary water/mantle/transition zone water (see references below).
Funny . . . This image you posted is also quite thumb-forward . . . linking back to the thumb imprinting/template I referenced above:
This has me thinking about BlackRock (see black rock reference below – Dubh Artach in Scotland) . . . Is the company name invoking black volcanic basalt (inherently magnetic) . . . Skerry imprinting? Scottish Rite?
Is the Ethereum logo actually evocative of basalt (see diamond image below) and/or a skerry (again, potentially signifying primary water)?
@AMcD Meanwhile . . . speaking of being synchronized . . . I know you recently acquired a peridot necklace. Two days ago, I received a very inexpensive peridot necklace. I wore it for the first time yesterday – throughout the day and night . . . Then watched this episode of Little Demon. Now that I am observing the skerry formation in the image I posted above, I am seeing peridot/olivine (indicated by the green hues). I missed it the first time around. This inspired me to order a raw chunk of basalt with embedded peridot . . . Will be a few weeks until delivered.
The term “skerry” is derived from an Old Norse word “sker” which when translated means “rock in the sea.”
Skerries In Russia
The Minina Skerries in Russia are examples of these geological features. The Minina Skerries are a series of islands situated in the Kara Sea in northern Siberia from the mouth of the Pyasina River to the Mikhailov Peninsula. The Minina Skerries were named after renowned Russian explorer, Fedor Alekseyevich Minin. The islands which make up the Minina Skerries include the Plavnikovyye Islands, the Kolosovykh Islands, and the Kolosovykh Peninsula. While these islands are individually separated, the extremely cold winters experienced in the region lead to the merger of all the islands by ice for many months. The Minina Skerries fall under the administration of Krasnoyarsk Krai, and flora and fauna found on the islands are part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve.
Skerries In The United Kingdom
A notable example of a skerry in the United Kingdom in Dubh Artach. The Dubh Artach skerry is situated on Scotland’s west coast and about 18 miles west of Colonsay. Dubh Artach is a Scottish Gaelic word which means “The Black Rock.” The skerry is a basalt rock which rises 35 feet above sea level and has a length of 240 feet and a width of 130 feet. The Dubh Artach skerry is part of the Isle of Mull, an island group which covers 32,000 square feet. Another skerry found on the Isle of Mull is Skerryvore. Skerryvore is a skerry situated 12 miles south of Tiree, in the west coast of Scotland. The 156-foot tall lighthouse constructed on Skerryvore is Scotland’s tallest lighthouse. The only structure on Dubh Artach is a 145-foot tall lighthouse which was constructed in the late 19th century. Another skerry in the United Kingdom is Staple Island, a small island situated in Northumberland, England. Staple Island is among the islands that make up the Farne Islands. The Staple Island skerry is uninhabited but is frequently visited by tourists who admire the wildlife diversity on Staple Island, which has significant populations of grey seals, kittiwakes, and Atlantic puffins.
Skerries In Norway
Norway has one of the highest concentrations of skerries in the world. Many of the skerries found in Norway were formed as a result of glaciation and are known as “skjaergard.” The skerries are found in clusters which are arranged parallel to the coast, stretching for many miles forming protected channels. The Blindleia channel, for example, is protected by numerous skerries and stretches from Lillesand to Kristiansand.
Formation Of Skerries
Most skerries are formed at the outlets of fjords after submerged valleys formed through glaciation, merge with other such valleys in a complex array.
Basaltic magmas within Earth are thought to originate from the upper mantle. The chemistry of basalts thus provides clues to processes deep in Earth’s interior.
Basalt is often porphyritic, containing larger crystals (phenocrysts) formed prior to the extrusion that brought the magma to the surface, embedded in a finer-grained matrix. These phenocrysts usually are of augite, olivine, or a calcium-rich plagioclase,[9] which have the highest melting temperatures of the typical minerals that can crystallize from the melt and are therefore the first to form solid crystals.[17][18]
Etymology
The word “basalt” is ultimately derived from Late Latinbasaltes, a misspelling of Latin basanites “very hard stone”, which was imported from Ancient Greek βασανίτης (basanites), from βάσανος (basanos, “touchstone”).[24] The modern petrological term basalt describing a particular composition of lava-derived rock, originates from its use by Georgius Agricola in 1546 in his work De Natura Fossilium. Agricola applied “basalt” to the volcanic black rock beneath the Bishop of Meissen’sStolpen castle, believing it to be the same as the “basaniten” described by Pliny the Elder in AD 77 in Naturalis Historiae.[25]
The mineralogy of basalt is characterized by a preponderance of calcic plagioclase feldspar and pyroxene. Olivine can also be a significant constituent.[46] Accessory minerals present in relatively minor amounts include iron oxides and iron-titanium oxides, such as magnetite, ulvöspinel, and ilmenite.[41]Because of the presence of such oxide minerals, basalt can acquire strong magnetic signatures as it cools, and paleomagnetic studies have made extensive use of basalt.[47]
In tholeiitic basalt, pyroxene (augite and orthopyroxene or pigeonite) and calcium-rich plagioclase are common phenocryst minerals. Olivine may also be a phenocryst, and when present, may have rims of pigeonite. The groundmass contains interstitial quartz or tridymite or cristobalite.Olivine tholeiitic basalt has augite and orthopyroxene or pigeonite with abundant olivine, but olivine may have rims of pyroxene and is unlikely to be present in the groundmass.[41]
Source rocks for the partial melts that produce basaltic magma probably include both peridotite and pyroxenite.[60]
The common corrosion features of underwater volcanic basalt suggest that microbial activity may play a significant role in the chemical exchange between basaltic rocks and seawater. The significant amounts of reduced iron, Fe(II), and manganese, Mn(II), present in basaltic rocks provide potential energy sources for bacteria. Some Fe(II)-oxidizing bacteria cultured from iron-sulfide surfaces are also able to grow with basaltic rock as a source of Fe(II).[123] Fe- and Mn- oxidizing bacteria have been cultured from weathered submarine basalts of Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount (formerly Loihi).[124] The impact of bacteria on altering the chemical composition of basaltic glass (and thus, the oceanic crust) and seawater suggest that these interactions may lead to an application of hydrothermal vents to the origin of life.[
Carbon sequestration in basalt has been studied as a means of removing carbon dioxide, produced by human industrialization, from the atmosphere. Underwater basalt deposits, scattered in seas around the globe, have the added benefit of the water serving as a barrier to the re-release of CO2 into the atmosphere.[134][135]
TL;DR: We are launching a NeurIPS competition and benchmark called BASALT: a set of Minecraft environments and a human evaluation protocol that we hope will stimulate research and investigation into solving tasks with no pre-specified reward function, where the goal of an agent must be communicated through demonstrations, preferences, or some other form of human feedback. Sign up to participate in the competition!
Can we build an agent that can help recreate Middle Earth on MCME (left), and also play Minecraft on the anarchy server 2b2t (right) on which large-scale destruction of property (“griefing”) is the norm?
Conclusion
We hope that BASALT will be used by anyone who aims to learn from human feedback, whether they are working on imitation learning, learning from comparisons, or some other method. It mitigates many of the issues with the standard benchmarks used in the field. The current baseline has lots of obvious flaws, which we hope the research community will soon fix.
Note that, so far, we have worked on the competition version of BASALT. We aim to release the benchmark version shortly. You can get started now, by simply installing MineRL from pip and loading up the BASALT environments. The code to run your own human evaluations will be added in the benchmark release.
If you would like to use BASALT in the very near future and would like beta access to the evaluation code, please email the lead organizer, Rohin Shah, at rohinmshah@berkeley.edu.
There’s a theme afoot in my imagination, knitting together these last couple of threads on ‘Little Demon,’ soulbound tokens, Neil Gaiman, skerries, and even Dart as components in the modern horror story of Sandy Hook, a “We Choose Love” crafted story of major transmedia proportions. It occurred to me over this last year that Sandy Hook had a distinctive H.P. Lovecraft imprint—I didn’t know anything about Lovecraft before. I noticed it investigating the Gillette connections in Connecticut, concerning the actor William Hooker Gillette, famous for portraying Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, who built a stone castle in the same town that modeled Lovecraft’s “Dunwich” –story origin of the Cthulhu monster “twin” that is also tapped by Neil Gaiman. Connecticut even has its own skerries jutting into the Sound called the Thimble Islands, hundreds of rocky outcrops, the larger of which support vacation homes. The Thimbles are in a part of Connecticut near New Haven (home of Yale) and the outflow of the Housatonic River (between Bridgeport and New Haven).
A comment on the word skerry— as derived from Nordic “skjar”, with a soft consonant sound similar to “share” in English, probably has a root from the same origin as ‘science’ (‘to divide’)—see “PIE root skei, to cut or split… Old French ‘scier’ meaning ‘to saw’—surely a rocky coast boat-splitting hazard. I found English language roots from charcoal-to-cherries from this older source which also produces ‘korone’ (the vessel or the crow)
I posted this word-root in the Corona the Crow piece:
[the word Science]
“The original notion in the Latin verb probably is “to separate one thing from another, to distinguish,” or else “to incise.” This is related to scindere “to cut, divide” (from PIE root *skei- “to cut, split;” source also of Greek skhizein “to split, rend, cleave,” Gothic skaidan, Old English sceadan “to divide, separate”).” science | Etymology, origin and meaning of science by etymonline
The equivalence of Science from its ancient roots evolved from ‘scythe’ (‘scithe’), ‘sword’, ‘scion’, ‘scier’ and ‘sek’: The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) use of ‘sek’ is suggested in the Hittite word ‘shakk’, or “to know,” and the Lithuanian word ‘isekti’ which means “to engrave, carve,” and rather tellingly associated by sound and spelling to the Old French ‘scier’(’sier’) meaning ‘saw’. “Since the Middle Ages, it was carried by personifications of Time and Death.”scythe | Etymology, origin and meaning of scythe by etymonline
If you consider the word kith: ”kith**…** before 900; Middle English; Old English cȳth, earlier cȳththu [or cuththu] kinship, knowledge (c. Old High German chundida) =cūth known” as a reference to one’s knowledge of the land and seacoast, it also makes sense as the cutting divide of the boundary between land and sea. Not only a place for boats and birds, but for tectonic subduction, volcanic accretion, and (a la Steve Mann) transhuman aspirations.
H.P. Lovecraft lived in a Brooklyn N.Y. neighborhood called “Red Hook” which inspired his first published writing success in 1927 with the story “The Horror at Red Hook”, January 1927 issue of Weird Tales. The word weird in old English tradition means twin (Robert Graves uses ‘weird’ many times in describing the ‘sun’ heroes who divide the year, ascending sun and descending sun, as twins). The Dunwich Horror, published in 1929, brought Lovecraft his single largest payday-- $240—and is rated as possibly his best story.
The Dunwich Horror - Influence
Influence
Neil Gaiman’s short story “I, Cthulhu” features a human slave/biographer referred to only as Whateley, possibly in reference to one of the characters in “The Dunwich Horror”.
Sandy Hook had a ‘visible’ Haller family, Veronique Haller (Posner), allegedly a representative at the U.N, and her brother, Vatican lawyer Alexis Haller:
“On the night of the shooting,[Alexis] Haller arrived in Connecticut to help lighten the logistical load for his sister, coordinating with a state trooper assigned to meet the family’s needs and establishing a Web site to collect donations to pay for counseling and education for Noah’s siblings, including his twin sister. He received an expression of support from the Holy See…
“One month later, Haller found himself in Washington, D.C… Haller had crafted and forwarded several proposals to prevent future gun violence that were shaped by his experience as a lawyer for the Holy See…”
“Hitch your wagon to a star”, taken from Ralph Waldo.Emerson, is the memorial plaque quotation for Sandy Hook victims fixed to the firehouse with 26 stars on its roof and a 6-pt star-of-stars flag on its pole.
One example of story element I’ll share here is this:
Dunwich is on the Miskatonic River: “The Miskatonic River springs from the hills to the west of Dunwich… flows east past the town of Dunwich and continues in that direction for many miles before turning to the southeast…” Miskatonic River | The Wilmarth Cafe Wiki | Fandom
Newtown’s Sandy Hook lies beside the southeast flowing Housatonic River— and note two bridge crossings:
–Newtown is the only place on the entire river with a ‘twinned’ (dividing a major interstate, cut both ways) bridge listing, incidentally spanning I-84 Newtown at exits 9-to-11. List of crossings of the Housatonic River - Wikipedia
The Rochambeau Bridge is getting reconstructed, scheduled to complete on 12-23-2023, which is exactly 11 years and 9 days after the Shooting on 12-14-2012. https://www.rochambeaubridge.com/
Lovecraft died on March 15, 1937 (or in numerology 3+15 (18) plus (19+37, because it is under 100,) 56, or 18 + 56=74 (7+4)= 11. Adam Lanza’s birthday –born in New Hampshire, the ‘Live Free or Die’ state—is given as April 22, 1992 or 4+22(26) plus 21= 26+21= 47(4+7)= 11.
I remember there were tons of ads for a while to send in your DNA in order to supposedly trace your family history. I don’t see those ads anymore. The Blackstone Group did purchase ancestry.com though.
The classic pretzel shape involves a simple twist and is attributed to a number of sources, most with religious connotations. One popular story is that pretzels were invented around 610 A.D. by a baker–monk who wanted to find a use for leftover scraps of dough. He twisted a length of dough and formed the pretzel’s iconic shape, which was meant to resemble crossed arms. The pretzel’s three holes are said to represent the Holy Trinity.
Although classic pretzels are what we see most often, it’s just one of many ways the soft, clay-like dough can be shaped. From a bow tie to a dagger-like corkscrew, the shapes are limited only by your imagination. You’ll find a number of different step-by-step pretzel shaping guides in chapter 25 of Modernist Bread.
Shaping pretzels provides a tangible example of a branch of mathematics known as knot theory; it explores which knots are truly different from one another and which can be manipulated until one is equivalent to another. These determinations are far from obvious—in one case, it took nearly 100 years before one knot believed to be distinct was shown to be the same as another. This relatively young field has proved useful as well as elegant, with applications in biology (think of knotted DNA strands), chemistry (which involves molecular knots), and physics (for the study of quantum mechanics), as well as expanding into theories about the creation and structure of the universe.
Mathematically speaking, a knot is a closed loop that can’t be undone by untangling its threads: a circle, known as a trivial knot, is the simplest form. Working from that basic foundation, we shaped pretzels into some of the simpler mathematical knots (such as the elementary trefoil), sometimes weaving two or three pieces of dough together, depending on the complexity of the pattern. In scientific theory, the shapes would be considered infinite, with no start or finish. In our earthbound dough version, we tucked the ends of each pretzel underneath…and then added salt.
We based our pretzel knots on illustrations of mathematical knots. While there are many possibilities for shaping pretzels according to knot theory, we found that the simpler knots showcased the patterns the best because the strands didn’t proof and bake together.
Just want to chime in that counting is about creating “sets” and the vinculum is about placing a function over a set - for me I imagine creating “social sets” based on SBTs and them applying smart contracts of various sorts. Grouping things and then doing things with those groups.
Regarding Gillette I did come across a reference that they were part of the story around the creation of the Internet of Things - ostensibly by Kevin Ashton at Proctor and Gamble, though he pitched it to Gillette, too and they teamed with MIT to realize the Auto-ID Lab. Now that’s a name for the Singularity eh?
He went into a meeting with a dozen executives from the razor company Gillette, who were interested in partnering with P&G on the sensor project. (P&G later acquired Gillette, but in the 1990s, they were separate companies.) He called up the presentation and what would become a world-famous phrase greeted his audience:
The Internet of Things
And it was met with… crickets.
“They liked it. It went over well. But fireworks didn’t light up the sky. Time did not stand still. We had the meeting and then we all went out to dinner on King’s Road in Chelsea. Life went on.”
But the slide deck did the trick. “That meeting got me a meeting with a senior executive at Gillette in Boston, and they agreed to fund my research at MIT.” So the title lived on, and Ashton relocated to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he co-founded and led the Auto-ID Center – the research lab that helped build the foundation of the Internet of Things."
This is a really interesting synchronicity with pretzels because my mom bought a big bag of them a few days ago and I ate a few before coming onto the discourse forum. Another show that featured pretzels is the Simpsons, and it was a whole episode where Marge tries to start a Pretzel franchise, and it features the mob.
This clip also shows the association with Pretzels and baseball, I know if you are familiar with Michael Wann, he has the youtube channel called the Susquehanna Alchemist, and he did an presentation on baseball and it’s relationship with the entity Baal. I watched it a year ago, I haven’t been listening to his recent stuff though.
@Stephers I haven’t watch Little Demons, I did just watch a few clips and it reminds me of the movie ‘Devil’s Advocate’ which is another movie that Keenu Reeves stars in, as well as Al Pacino. I watched it recently, and it has a similar feel to Little Demons.
I just watched this presentation called ‘Not Knot’ and it talks about how knots in math will have compliments ‘not a knot’ and studying compliments tells mathematicians what type of knot they are looking at
The thumb nail for the radio reminds me of the cover art for the textbook William Thurston wrote.
It also reminds me of the battle room in Ender’s game, which also has a number of diamonds, which the children used for cover.
“counting is about creating “sets” and the vinculum is about placing a function over a set - for me I imagine creating “social sets” based on SBTs and them applying smart contracts of various sorts. Grouping things and then doing things with those groups.”
I like your choice of word ‘vinculum’ @AMcD, the ‘vines’ that bind, in the creation of sets for machinefunctions, I would say, explicitly geared for getting a job done. The pretzel image makes a lot of sense here too @Stephers, as a less metaphysical icon than a true knot. A classic pretzel has loose ends needing to be baked in (by contract), which limits its viability over time, so a pretzel deal will eventually dead-end of its own accord and need to be replaced with another pretzel or something durable like a true knot—a coiled ring of DNA perhaps, which is the best model I can think of. And this is where I sense the blockchain must go to survive—into DNA computers. The metaphorical 2-D crossings, or the boundary-lines for counting purposes in pretzel logic, are where unpredictabilities (demons at crossroads) arise and have to be eliminated by good engineering and behavior— the utopian cybernetic ‘flavor-of-the-millenium’ becoming manifest. Still looks and tastes like a pretzel deal to me—makes me thirsty like a burned out salt flat.
