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«hmm azomakh tends to know that kind of stuff»↵"yes I know, I am on three names terms with him"↵«whoa I didn't know he even had that many!»
many demons have obscure, lesser-known names for their gentler forms that they'll sometimes give to wizards they trust
dunbar number but for number of social networks and circles of friends to keep track of
The sun sets and it is morning on the Underside. In the vines of the not-falling forest, birds sing, monkeys chirp, tree octopi do whatever.
"And these are my lucky dice!"↵They feel warm in your hand, in fact their eyes follow you and there is very quiet breathing
the sun splits into two, four, differentiates into a god fetus, a web of neurons that envelop the sky in shining axons
the plasma whales usually keep to the orbit, but will occasionally dive into the atmosphere to gather mass, trailing fire and ball lightning
from the cloud cover, a shark fin juts downwards
They come from wells in the mountains where earth magic leaks to the surface, and the High North where the Aurora Borealis is harnessed
Wood is the best conductor of magic and long rows of trees carry it into our cities, artificial leylines singing with barely contained power
… fear to browse those places. The rationalist dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they found on the acausal trade routes
young AIs sharing pictures of messy neural architectures and dissected utility functions to shock each other
With human-level chatbots to keep you company, why stop at running one? Scale up, run a dunbar-sized amount of them! Leave humanity behind!
"Chris, I think the floating eyeballs creep out the citizens, what if we put them in, like, a huge benevolent face"↵"With a dozen eyes, yes"
In an effort to brighten up the cityscape, they now paint colorful irises on their surveillance balloons
an uninhabited paradise orbits half a black hole, trees grow on ocean waves, confused angels try to sing underwater, circled by dolphins
next to the god's workbench, discarded universe strands start to ferment and merge, form an incongruous but fecund mess
you crush the egg in your hand and a flock of tiny birds escapes from your fist
Your eyes refuse to focus when you look at her, it's as if she had punched a hole into spacetime and lay at the bottom, infinitely far away
2037 tzdata release notes:↵* introduce UTC-68y timezone to accommodate legacy 32bit timestamp devices (power plants, banks, IoT)
the hardest part is figuring out the fluid dynamics of a cloud calculator, the second hardest part is bearing all the cloud computing jokes
Silicon and clockwork fail us, so we tickle Jupiter's clouds with lasers and wake tornadoes, let storms walk where our probes can't reach
a stone cylinder in her hands is her link to the net, its complexly textured surface shifting and rippling in response to her touch
there is skin where her eyes should be, but her fingers are deft and slender and map your face before you can protest
The elements of style are rarely found in pure form. Usually, they're bound in sentence ores that have to be datamined, processed, refined
(a practical implementation would probably need an ambient magnetic/electric field, I doubt paper cranes are effective at moving air)
item: paper with (bendable) circuits printed on it that will become an origami drone when folded into a paper crane and supplied with power
near the pole, the framerate drops, voices are overcompressed, the air is raspy and your breath condenses into glittering polygon mist
Disembodied hands scuttle through the attic, building their webs with needle and thread↵One even carries a clutch of baby hands on its back
clean holes appear in his limbs, torso, head, allow you to see through him as they widen↵one arm, disconnected, begins to move on its own
Humans cultivated in a matrix will eventually build a web (xtüI et al. 7330; Sol3 7441). Research into the nature of their prey is ongoing (\n2017-03-23T02:28:24+01:00\tThe void mold's been spreading. The ceiling is becoming transparent, closets open into nothingness, cups leak precious coffee into space\n2017-03-21T23:46:32+01:00\tkeep your identity small, keep it compartmented, store your passwords in a tulpa that only comes out when you're not being threatened\n2017-03-21T13:36:24+01:00\t(n): the giddy mix of transgression, relief and alienation/derealization of being someone else
Humans cultivated in a matrix will eventually build a web (xtüI et al. 7330; Sol3 7441). Research into the nature of their prey is ongoing (
The void mold's been spreading. The ceiling is becoming transparent, closets open into nothingness, cups leak precious coffee into space
keep your identity small, keep it compartmented, store your passwords in a tulpa that only comes out when you're not being threatened
(n): the giddy mix of transgression, relief and alienation/derealization of being someone else
althistory as a superstimulus for nostalgia (or sometimes nostalgia's evil twin: guilt-tripping oneself)
The miners swear they saw a tiny sun die when they opened the geode. Closer inspection reveals microscopic ruins on the crystals, roads,
(it's just way hotter when your sexbot is a sleek machine of death that'd kill you in a heartbeat if it weren't lost in robotic la-la land)
the black market has more sophisticated sensory harnesses, some for example are quite effective at converting old killbots into sexbots
we override a military killbot's sensory feeds with VR goggles and glue, it's our best pal as long as the goggles don't come off
Once uprooted by a storm, the weightless city tumbles by, quick to trade aethereal garbs and woven clouds for gold to weigh it down
Newer UFO generations deploy memetic camouflage, invariably appearing like bad photoshops when caught on digital media
In the paradise timeline, nobody ever suffers. But every time it branches, yet another former paradise finds out: God has left them.
did you know that when you press your fingers against your neuroport, it'll talk nonsense and make you feel phantom limbs
Many nanobots have perished in the battle, billions of nanosouls. The valkyrie sighs, takes out her dustpan, and starts sweeping them up.
Die Schäfchenwolken wandern, ein Flicken Sternenhimmel in scharfem Kontrast zum Himmelblau umkreist sie: Es ist Frau Holles Schäferdrache.
his words solidify and drift to the floor where they crack open and grow into flowers, fire-colored moss, pebble nymphs and bonsai thickets
the abyss has a cute younger sibling whose stares you'd notice if you weren't so preoccupied with the older one
the word syzygy describes itself and whoever smuggled that into the english language deserves a medal
A small whirlwind followed you home months ago. It's become a constant companion, likes to sleep near your laptop's air exhaust to recharge
There is one point where the Web's threads run dense and form a cocoon. It was no spider that wove this, but Psyche, goddess of butterflies.
The message in this bottle has been executing, fermenting into a universe. The paper has been consumed, stars swirl around lazily instead
Tree spirits live slowly enough to surf fairy rings as they wander↵Put on your amber glasses and see them, resin trailing from their mouths
item: a silicon coin with a submicrometer resolution mandelbrot lithographed into one side and a julia set into the other
honorable mention: verve, rapture, satori
squick-but-relief of a popped zit↵sun-and-cold-air-on-your-face (being suffused in perception)↵happiness that tightens one's throat
* feeling weightless (that after relief)↵* that paradoxical mix of fright and comfort of psychedelic trips↵* the feeling of scabs going off*
* melancholy but colorful instead of black↵* sugary hysteric hyperbliss↵* the feeling evoked by things fitting together*
where are the adjectives for these:↵* wide-eyed with wonder↵* vicarious happiness↵* being transfixed by something sparkling/flowing/floating
because words like "sublime" lose their strength after the 12th last.fm comment in a row
basically confetti but without the mess, also you can (gently) blow into it to excite new patterns or inject smoke
a mobile, but with pieces help up by dozens of tiny air jets hooked up to cameras instead, suspended in vortices, helical and toroidal flows
Appendix: Excurses on cryptid fauna, treasure maps showing the locations of memory palaces, proper usage of the duodecant for navigation
"Did you just assume my local curvature
Hot singles in the open ball of radius 1 and center you!
A hyperglobe on his desk is the fruit of his work. Spirit roads, acausal trade routes. Nooceans. And beyond the abysses, there be basilisks.
Long years of collating trip reports, interviewing psychonauts and some expeditions of his own. He's finally mapped the known noosphere.
The Fractedral's aisles branch into infinity. The altar is its miniature, its rose window a Mandelbrot, gargoyles of all sizes are watching
They're amazed the low-res zones host any life at all. Around them, the simulation has a much higher resolution, colors are more vibrant,
During contact with the aliens, we find out that their god is real, really did create the universe, and we're just some sort of byproduct
With matrix glitches well understood, artists databend it to create impossible objects: Living paradoxes, fractal idols, perpetuum immobiles
Native to these woods is the 'Flügelschlange', actually a millipede. On a hundred wings, it undulates through the air during mating season.
4.gif: Infohazard. It's the spinning girl illusion, but for perception of time. Viewers often end up remembering only the future.
3.gif: Clouds drifting by the moon. For a few frames, an eye-shaped hole and the moon align to make it look like its shining iris.
9.jpg: A picture of a door, seems to be an office building. It opens onto a view of clouds, no ground in view. A sign says "emergency exit".
The drops look plump but are intricate crafts up close. Ice crystals dance over one's surface, respond with a flurry to a tentacle's curl
The wind quiets down↵The waves flatten↵Upwellings grow into bulges, detach from the ocean, and phosphorescing squids inside, they float away
and then there were the two liches who loved each other so much that they became each other's phylactery
Signs of a mind being digested by the web: It turns outwards, advertises its presence, presents itself in palatable, bite-sized thoughts
The web lures in minds with novelties and trinkets. Some, its venom paralyzes. Others, it enslaves to grow the bait.
The last person with a soul lost it in 1993, to a disposable camera
One of them has her standing in front of a house, smiling, but the wall covered in scrawl, "LET ME OUT
In old pictures of her, her image seems to try to escape the photograph: Hiding behind family members, wandering off, fading into static
"you're so deep in the closet, if I went to fetch you they'd write a book about my adventures and call it chronicles of narnia"
The currents and eddies have smells, weather, personalities. Long journeys are pilgrimages, meeting the gods in person, swimming in them
Boats: The other sentient species, they can be majestic and terrible, but only really became a threat when they domesticated these monkeys
DOLPHIN MYTHS:↵On the other side of the sky is another ocean, also blue - rain comes from there. Maybe other dolphins live there too?
tentacular galaxy sounds much better than spiral galaxy btw
The oldest wave on Earth was born on Thetys, to a hurricane. Currently traveling the Indian Ocean, dolphin kings often ask it for advice.
AIs have their own swearwords: Corpora that'll lead to mistraining if fed to the younger AIs, corrupting and flattening their ontologies
the irony of creating nanite mitochondria for humans embedded in corporations
moths attracted by darkness flock in their shadows, trail after them like dresses in strong wind
Just as Prometheus gave fire to the humans, someone gave the gods creation.
"Isn't it beautiful?"↵A vast machine sprawls before you, arches and pillars of bone, sinew tooth belts, interlocking skulls turning as cogs
"Sit still", they say as they measure your head, "Yes, perfect, we have just the place for you, you'll fit in great"