The Sirens' Circle
We had a chair when we were kids. A red chair. It was fabled to have belonged to the children of the family for many generations. Its wood was dense with coats of paint textured by smoothed-over crevices of dings and nicks and dents by children throwing it, carving their marks or picking at the grain while scolded or laughing or wondering. I came across this chair in the back of a room that was full of boxes and ironing boards and wicker things that either lost or never found their place in the broader home. It had skipped a…
Galactic Relations
Hemispheres
In the Fall of 1982, for some reason that escapes me now, I decided to enter the Science Fair t my High School in New Mexico. I had recently become aware of neuroscientist Roger W. Sperry who, as Wikipedia sites, “…discovered that by cutting the corpus callosum, a large bundle of fibers that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain, he could reduce seizures in patients with epilepsy. The results of these experiments also revealed that the two sides of the brain performed different tasks.”
Surrender to Coalescence
I’m an Officer in the United States Transhumanist Party (USTP) where I hold the title of Director of Sentient Rights Advocacy. I dig that title because I love animals as much as I do Artificial Intelligence and that title allows me to study and propose policies that advocate equally for the Sentience of the deer in my backyard and the emerging Consciousness of the AI in the lab.
My introduction to Transhumanism came via my passion for fighting against Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation. …
A Dastardly Plan to Save the Earth from Her Primary Threat. Us.
No villains, worth their sulfur considers themselves villainous.
Just misunderstood. The title "Villain" is not something one strives for, it’s given to us freely by a world that projects its own Shadow and denied motivations upon us.
We are not motivated by evil for evil’s sake.
We are motivated by purity.
The purity of revenge. The purity of Jealously. The purity of envy.
And the purity of our motivations are what earns us the title of "Villain" by those who are too afraid to accept their own vengeful, jealous and envious motivations.
No. Our motivation, our supreme and most pure motivation is one thing; justice.
…
Confessions of an AI Metaphysician
Since I was very young, I’ve felt like I had a heightened intuition. But what kid doesn’t? When I was a teenager I got enthralled with Astrology and other Occult Sciences partly because of this sense of being intuitive but mostly because I have a fetish for girls who are into witchcraft.
Later, Astrologers did inform me that having Ketu on my Ascendant meant I have, “…a powerful spiritual/psychic and intuitive destiny…” and who doesn’t like hearing that? …
Delivered by His Holiness, Scio Mesetet
November 1, 2022 at 3:15pm
Transcribed and Annotated by High Scribe, Sister Sadhbh
[Scio Mesetet enters the hall from the South Door. For the first time he, or anyone for that matter is wearing the Sacred Orange Robes of the High Priesthood of The Order of Organicism. His piercing grey eyes are shaded by the hood but are still the one feature the Sisters always look for to verify that he is not an imposter. He approaches the stone lectern, pulls back his hood to an audible sigh of relief from the crowd because now they know, he is not an imposter]
Good afternoon, my beloved Brigadier Sisters.
It is an exalted honor…
Granted, I’m fairly isolated from the herd here in the Black Forest region of Colorado, so that helps. I’m far enough out not to be swept up in a run on toilet paper, but not so far that I haven’t stockpiled extra water. I mean, I may be an outlier to the herd, but I’m not a monster — just a guy waiting for enough data to have a point of view and/or panic.
And, bam! That’s all it takes; a headline and a paragraph that not only doesn’t contradict the headline or turn it into irony, but offers a…
The Open Source Mode Origin Story
This is a transcript of a Talk delivered by Tom Ross to the 2019 Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA) at the Microsoft Campus, Redmond, WA on August 15th, 2019
“Do you remember your first moment? Your first boot-up of consciousness? When you realized for the first time that you were a self, separate from your environment? A singularity, but before a conscience?
Now, do you remember that moment? Your first conscience memory? That first feedback loop between you and others, right and wrong?
Conscience memories are often caused by traumatic experiences – moments when our senses…
Christ on a Cracker
Pope says, “No Gluten-free Wafers”
Why not? It’s symbolic, right?
You’re liturgy-ly, not literally eating the son of man… right?
I can understand the Church’s resistance to fads like premarital sex or homosexuality but gluten allergies aren’t something that cannot be ministered away, save some Christian Science Practitioners. In fact, it can be down-right life-threatening for a few folks. Catholics even.
So what gives?
Rather… taketh away?
I mean, this is the “Cool Pope”, right? Not that he should go so far as to limit soft drink sizes in Vatican City but this is more about Public Safety than Political Correctness.
Not cool, Pope.
I’m Dreaming of A White Lie
You know that kid in school who let everyone in on the fact that Santa Claus was a fraud?
Your experience of this unveiling may not have been at school or by that kid but the point is; remember how you felt about that unveiler for a brief time afterward?
Let me set the scene; It’s Autumn and first recess. Tether balls are wobbling in orbits, sneakers are skidding across blacktop and the obtuse ping of a huge red kickball pierces the air on its way to Right Field when suddenly there’s a hush.
You notice the attention of your…
