*thinking* - Blog Posts

~Spiritual Implications As Shown By Television~

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This is sort of random thoughts but I thought this to be interesting so I'm sharing. As many may know by now, television and various shows and movies we view tell us certain spiritual truths yet their hidden in plain sight.

I could be wrong about this but for a while, I've been a fan of an anime called Seven Deadly Sins or Nanatsu No Taizai. One of the main reasons I enjoy it so much is because of the influences the author/writer, Nakaba Suzuki used in the making of it.

Various symbolisms within the show and the manga are very intriguing to me and I believe I happened to find one that could correlate to shadow work. If you don't know what that is, it's not a "New Age" practice but rather taking some time to be still, quiet, and think on the darker aspect of ourselves, the shadow, the part we suppress. Hence, "shadow work."

Anyway, there was a moment in the second season of the anime in which a central character, Meliodas, had to undergo certain training so he could receive the dark power he once had again.

If you're familiar with the franchise then you know that Meliodas is the leader of a group of powerful "warriors" or idk what to call them that each has one of the seven deadly sins (wrath, lust, greed, gluttony, slothfulness, pride, envy) assigned to them.

Meliodas is the sin of wrath and he was assigned this sin essentially because- well it's a long story, but, he completely decimated a kingdom with a great sum of his dark power that was taken from him as well as his wrath because he witnessed his reincarnated lover die once more in front of him (if you know, you know).

Nevertheless, once a new menace, the Ten Commandments appeared, he needed that power back. Yet, to make sure he would not go berserk again, he had to undergo training to control and face his emotions/wrath (that could stem from trauma).

Anyway, upon being taken through the trial, in which he had to revisit memories and strong negative emotions that could cause him to beserk, he eventually came to the point where he truly confronted the pain and in a way accepted it.

Not necessarily saying he (Meliodas) healed from anything but stepping away from the anime and into reality, we all have to face experiences in our lives that have caused us hurt, trauma, loss, and all kinds of negative emotions and things within ourselves in order to truly grow and flourish into the fullness of what you as a human and soul on this planet are supposed to become and learn/gain while here. (Also, notice how the place in which he was tested in is completely dark, possibly related to the whole shadow concept).

Not to mention, the place Meliodas and his crew at that point in the story visited was a place called "Istar." In the anime, it was the holy land of the druids but what I found interesting was how "Istar" is strikingly similar to "Ishtar" who is or was quite a significant goddess in various cultures around the world.

There is an ancient Sumerian story or legend called "The Descent of Ishtar" or Inanna in which the goddess descends into the seven gates of the underworld and by the time she reaches her sister who was the queen of the underworld, she is stripped naked and pretty much has lost her sense of self. Yet after having faced some adversity, she “resurrected” or rose out of the underworld a superior version of herself.

This analogy I believe is symbolic of coming into this world and the experiences we endure for our own separate personal purposes related to our own growth (which involves shadow work) but I don't know if that was on purpose by Nakaba or just me.

Lastly, once Meliodas is finished, he goes to receive his power from Zaneri’s (the one that gave Meliodas the test) older twin sister, Jenna. The name Jenna could be various things such as “white shadow/phantom,” “paradise,” “heaven,” “fair,” and so on. Which seems to be the opposite of what Meliodas just had to tackle within himself. 🤔

I apologize if this may seem random or if I’m reaching but it’s not written in stone, just random thoughts. Thanks for reading✨

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Optimism, Pessimism, Perspective and the Question of Society and Art

Recently I experienced an emotional antinomy in regards of how current technology and social media affect art.

My first observation was that it multiplies the art outlets and creates a vast stock of memorabilia about artists for the ages to come. How nice would it be to read Fitzgerald’s tumblr posts.

The second observation was that the increased outlets and the conservation of everything brings about a horrific picture about our age. As cheap horror flicks went down the sewers a hundred years ago and then disintegrated from human remembering, we cannot anticipate today’s trash to just disappear because it will haunt the internet forever.

But just today I woke up with a realization that alleviated my passionate opinions. I remembered that people read and watch and touch what they choose to. The internet does not change the people fundamentally, it is exactly the other way around. However the current society wishes to shape the world of art, it is not a danger on the bigger arc of things. The case has never been changed, not even slightly, dumb people have always been into dumb things and smart people have always been into smart things. Any alternation that has ever happened happened in the individual’s life. We, as persons, and not as society, move forward. It is because of each individual’s limited time on earth: we start from nil and run as fast as we can to get the farthest possible but it does not affect society, as it survives the individual. Unless people can somehow learn to give birth to children with a refined sense of society in their heads, society will not become smarter or dumber, just a mass of us.

Time is a theory that is hard to understand when you think about it but trying to imagine a world without time is even harder.

My thirst for blood is stronger than my longing for contentment.

Dinosaurs S1 E2 The Mating Dance

We see here Roy and Earl are in deep thought.

“Dedicate your heart.”

I just want to share my thoughts, in an attempt to deal with what has happened in the last chapter, hoping that that could help someone else too. So here we are.

What Eren is doing seems to not present any solutions. And Hange, the one who has been able to gather all of them, to make fighting side by side prior enemies, the one without which none of them could have gone so far, now says that there seems to be no hope anymore. Eren has demonstrated nothing but her powerlessness. 

Hange, despite her inextinguishable strong-will, despite all of what she’s done, by now feels that she’s not doing enough: she’s the commander of the SC, but she has killed her comrades. She’s supposed to be the one able to devise a plan to stop Eren, but they still didn’t think about a credible way to stop him. And I didn’t fully realize until this chapter how much Hange blames herself for all of this. After all of these years, many of their comrades have died, they had to kill innocent people in Liberio, and now the whole humanity seems to be doomed. And Hange thinks of herself to be responsible for all of it. I can’t imagine the burden and guilt that she could feel. She’s not been able to prevent the start of the cruelest disaster that humanity has ever faced, Hange, the one who has dedicated all of her life to save humanity, constantly putting her life on the line. And who has seen so many of her comrades, her friends, dying for that purpose.   

And I think that, since becoming the commander, she has always felt the imperative to ensure that their deaths were not in vain. To make sure to give meaning to them. 

It’s so hurting, because clearly this is a too heavy burden, it’s a too big responsibility, that no single human being could take. She shouldn’t feel fully responsible for all of this, because no one could have avoided that. She alone must not bear the guilt and burden for all of those lives, for all of what has happened. And it’s too painful to see that she felt that she didn’t do enough, because she did so much, already before her final sacrifice. No one other than Hange could have been able to do what she did. She irrevocably opposed to the mass genocide, when all others were still confused and didn’t know what to do, she gathered all of them. She never really lost hope, and she brought everyone else so far, till where they’re now.

But, by doing that, Hange also put them in the utmost dangerous state of all, into what seems to be a hopeless mission, where, to save humanity, they would have to risk their lives again. And she’s painfully aware of that. And so, when the Rumbling arrives, and they have to gain time, she knows that. She’s the one who has to do that. No one else has to sacrifice themselves, because she’s the one who has led them to face all of that. So again, she takes responsibility for all of them. She deliberately, willfully, chooses to sacrifice herself.

So she takes her leave of them, saying her goodbyes, and designating Armin as her successor.

She knows that she will die in her last fighting. But there’s no other way to save her friends and give them a chance to save humanity. Hange acknowledges that, so she makes her decision. She has to do it, in order to fulfill her duty as commander, and she embraces that path. And, despite the cruelty of her death, despite all the pain, I’m at least relieved by that: her last sacrifice was not a helpless, desperate last act, something done by someone who has lost everything. She did it in order to save her friends, because, despite all, she still did believe, she knew that a hope was left. For them, for humanity. It’s apparent by her last words to Armin (he’s able to never give up, and to completely comprehend), and her decision to make him the next commander.  I also think that because of her last words to Floch (who however was no more able to hear them): “We can’t give up now. Even if we fail today, we’ll win another day.” 

Being the commander has undoubtedly put a heavy burden on Hange’s shoulders. And I’m also convinced that she suffered from sorrow and guilt for what she was forced to do to other innocent people, and to her comrades. But she never lost the will to strive to fight, to find a solution. She never lost hope, never surrendered to what seems to be a desperate future.

And, on a different note, I think that she never lost her will to live. She was forced to sacrifice herself by the fucked up situation where they’re now, but in other circumstances, I think that she would have found a way to joyfully, passionately live her life. Because that’s her way, that’s how Hange is. She would have carried the weight of her guilts, of all the cruelty that she couldn’t manage to prevent, but she would have also found a way to live her life somehow. Because, despite all, Hange never lost her love for life.  (It’s also interesting to note that Zoë is the transliteration of the Greek word ζωή, which means “life”). She never lost her love for exploring, for discovering all of the unknown. She never lost the love for her friends, something that would have brought joy and warmth to her. And she had that love. Hange brought in her heart her love for the closest person to her, someone with which she just wished to live her life with.  And when about to go and put on her fight, she finally knew it. That person would have carried her in his heart as well, and he will do that after she’s gone.

This is heartbreaking. Hange was just forced to abandon him, Levi, the most important person to her. And when faced with him, that was the most difficult moment of all: she was going toward her final act, and she had to say goodbye to the person with whom she would have shared her life, knowing that she will never be able to see him again. And finally, with Levi’s last gesture and his final words for her, I think also knowing that her feelings were reciprocated, and that she was leaving him alone. This is the utmostly cruel thing of all.

It’s too too painful, too cruel. But nevertheless, despite that terrible pain, despite that cruelty, At the same time, there’s so much beauty in her last sacrifice. Because, till her last moment, Hange kept in her heart all of these beautiful feelings, her passions and curiosity, her love for his friends, her love for Levi. She protected them, she kept all of that in her heart till the end. She fought for them, with her heart. As Levi asked from her, Hange dedicated her heart.

She didn’t lose the hope till the end. And her sacrifice was not in vain. Now, her friends are flying away, there’s still a possibility for them to save humanity, and this is all thanks to her. She fought till the end, she was able to dedicate her life to what she believed in, and to go out like she wanted. Hange has gone with the wings of freedom on her back. 

She did well. In the cruel world where they live, I couldn’t think of a better way to say her goodbye than that. We will always keep you in our heart, sweet angel.

"If cattle had opinions, they would make fun of anyone interested in anything besides the grass!" (c) Epictetus.

Check our channel to join stoic wisdom for more ancient insights.

Every time I say "I love you"

I am really trying to say much more than those three words,

I am trying to let you know that I adore you and I cherish the time we spend together,

I am trying to explain you that I want you, I need you and I get lost thinking about you.

Everytime when I whisper"I love you", I am trying to remind you that you are the best thing that has happened to me.

Nigth thinking, when you see yourself in a miror. You, the subject analyse an object who in that case is also you and therefore become an object who is analyse by an another subject and so on. This kind of scenario is a paradox since no dimension can contain it self ( mathematical property ) But we do it, we contain our subject and object who both interact in a fractal nature, the more you analyse and zoom on it, the more the patern will repeat it self.

In fact, we shouldn't exit

We containt ourself in ourself, but how?

"In the same rivers, we step and do not step, we are and we are not." Heraclitus

Feenin Jones "Sexualization" art on the backs of business cards

VERY SOON

i know that soon i’ll be able to tell you what made me fall in love with you

i’ll be there to show you what i saw

i get to finally explain to you what we are

i know you still love me

i know your masks are on and your walls are up

everytime i see you, my heart stops

everything that reminds me of you makes tears fall even though i’m not sad

i get why you left

it’s overwhelming, i know i feel it now

i didn’t lose myself in you

i was emerged in you to learn you

i will soon get to finish learning you as you relearn me

i’ve grown and i’ve realized

i just hope you did too

because very soon you will come

but you may not like my decision if you are not up for the test

I've mostly left the places that I loved, perhaps out of a fear of being unloved. How long can I maintain these broken, yet intact, bonds? I rarely said goodbye because I didn't want things to end. I still have a lot of love for the people I no longer talk to or talk to only rarely. I distanced myself. It was my choice to be in a cold space instead of a warm home. It was a life I chose to live. I regret it. I regret it so much that it breaks a piece of my heart. I don't know how and when I'll heal or will I ever heal, but I'm very sure that now I'm allowing myself to heal, maybe that's what healing is all about, knocking on the door of the warm home. Who knows what lies ahead? In the present we regret the past, are sorry about the future, but what about the present? Why do we miss ice cream in winters and snow in summers? Why don't we start to enjoy the beauty in the present, the time that's mine and yours? It's ours; I know it's a habit to miss what you can't see, but why don't you see enough that you're able to see what's here right now in the moment, a moment you'll only live once. You can think of the past and future, but you must learn and love to live in the moment. Look around the world; you'll see things that only you can see.

©-shelovesskiez

Since March 2025 is almost over and its international ideas month, have you given ideas flooding around in your head a proper thought?

Hope everybodys third month of 2025 was (is) okay...

RAYMOND ABLACK  as Joe | Ginny & Georgia (2021— )

When algorithms surprise us

Machine learning algorithms are not like other computer programs. In the usual sort of programming, a human programmer tells the computer exactly what to do. In machine learning, the human programmer merely gives the algorithm the problem to be solved, and through trial-and-error the algorithm has to figure out how to solve it.

This often works really well - machine learning algorithms are widely used for facial recognition, language translation, financial modeling, image recognition, and ad delivery. If you’ve been online today, you’ve probably interacted with a machine learning algorithm.

But it doesn’t always work well. Sometimes the programmer will think the algorithm is doing really well, only to look closer and discover it’s solved an entirely different problem from the one the programmer intended. For example, I looked earlier at an image recognition algorithm that was supposed to recognize sheep but learned to recognize grass instead, and kept labeling empty green fields as containing sheep.

When machine learning algorithms solve problems in unexpected ways, programmers find them, okay yes, annoying sometimes, but often purely delightful.

So delightful, in fact, that in 2018 a group of researchers wrote a fascinating paper that collected dozens of anecdotes that “elicited surprise and wonder from the researchers studying them”. The paper is well worth reading, as are the original references, but here are several of my favorite examples.

Bending the rules to win

First, there’s a long tradition of using simulated creatures to study how different forms of locomotion might have evolved, or to come up with new ways for robots to walk.

Why walk when you can flop? In one example, a simulated robot was supposed to evolve to travel as quickly as possible. But rather than evolve legs, it simply assembled itself into a tall tower, then fell over. Some of these robots even learned to turn their falling motion into a somersault, adding extra distance.

[Image: Robot is simply a tower that falls over.]

Why jump when you can can-can? Another set of simulated robots were supposed to evolve into a form that could jump. But the programmer had originally defined jumping height as the height of the tallest block so - once again - the robots evolved to be very tall. The programmer tried to solve this by defining jumping height as the height of the block that was originally the *lowest*. In response, the robot developed a long skinny leg that it could kick high into the air in a sort of robot can-can. 

[Image: Tall robot flinging a leg into the air instead of jumping]

Hacking the Matrix for superpowers

Potential energy is not the only energy source these simulated robots learned to exploit. It turns out that, like in real life, if an energy source is available, something will evolve to use it.

Floating-point rounding errors as an energy source: In one simulation, robots learned that small rounding errors in the math that calculated forces meant that they got a tiny bit of extra energy with motion. They learned to twitch rapidly, generating lots of free energy that they could harness. The programmer noticed the problem when the robots started swimming extraordinarily fast.

Harvesting energy from crashing into the floor: Another simulation had some problems with its collision detection math that robots learned to use. If they managed to glitch themselves into the floor (they first learned to manipulate time to make this possible), the collision detection would realize they weren’t supposed to be in the floor and would shoot them upward. The robots learned to vibrate rapidly against the floor, colliding repeatedly with it to generate extra energy.

[Image: robot moving by vibrating into the floor]

Clap to fly: In another simulation, jumping bots learned to harness a different collision-detection bug that would propel them high into the air every time they crashed two of their own body parts together. Commercial flight would look a lot different if this worked in real life.

Discovering secret moves: Computer game-playing algorithms are really good at discovering the kind of Matrix glitches that humans usually learn to exploit for speed-running. An algorithm playing the old Atari game Q*bert discovered a previously-unknown bug where it could perform a very specific series of moves at the end of one level and instead of moving to the next level, all the platforms would begin blinking rapidly and the player would start accumulating huge numbers of points. 

A Doom-playing algorithm also figured out a special combination of movements that would stop enemies from firing fireballs - but it only works in the algorithm’s hallucinated dream-version of Doom. Delightfully, you can play the dream-version here

[Image: Q*bert player is accumulating a suspicious number of points, considering that it’s not doing much of anything]

Shooting the moon: In one of the more chilling examples, there was an algorithm that was supposed to figure out how to apply a minimum force to a plane landing on an aircraft carrier. Instead, it discovered that if it applied a *huge* force, it would overflow the program’s memory and would register instead as a very *small* force. The pilot would die but, hey, perfect score.

Destructive problem-solving

Something as apparently benign as a list-sorting algorithm could also solve problems in rather innocently sinister ways.

Well, it’s not unsorted: For example, there was an algorithm that was supposed to sort a list of numbers. Instead, it learned to delete the list, so that it was no longer technically unsorted.

Solving the Kobayashi Maru test: Another algorithm was supposed to minimize the difference between its own answers and the correct answers. It found where the answers were stored and deleted them, so it would get a perfect score.

How to win at tic-tac-toe: In another beautiful example, in 1997 some programmers built algorithms that could play tic-tac-toe remotely against each other on an infinitely large board. One programmer, rather than designing their algorithm’s strategy, let it evolve its own approach. Surprisingly, the algorithm suddenly began winning all its games. It turned out that the algorithm’s strategy was to place its move very, very far away, so that when its opponent’s computer tried to simulate the new greatly-expanded board, the huge gameboard would cause it to run out of memory and crash, forfeiting the game.

In conclusion

When machine learning solves problems, it can come up with solutions that range from clever to downright uncanny. 

Biological evolution works this way, too - as any biologist will tell you, living organisms find the strangest solutions to problems, and the strangest energy sources to exploit. Sometimes I think the surest sign that we’re not living in a computer simulation is that if we were, some microbe would have learned to exploit its flaws.

So as programmers we have to be very very careful that our algorithms are solving the problems that we meant for them to solve, not exploiting shortcuts. If there’s another, easier route toward solving a given problem, machine learning will likely find it. 

Fortunately for us, “kill all humans” is really really hard. If “bake an unbelievably delicious cake” also solves the problem and is easier than “kill all humans”, then machine learning will go with cake.

Mailing list plug

If you enter your email, there will be cake!

Fai di te stesso il tuo motivo per sorridere.

- Serena P. (unaragazzadadifesa)

Non penso si possa imparare in modo eccellente senza sbagliare altrettanto bene.

Serena P. (ascolta-la-voce-del-silenzio)

Vorrei aiutare tutti, ma poi mi accorgo che a volte non ho nemmeno la forza di aiutare me stessa.

- Serena P. (unaragazzadadifesa)

"Va bene pensare agli altri, ma non diventare uno zerbino."

- Serena P. (unaragazzadadifesa)

28.09.2017

Il tramonto. È il momento della giornata in cui sembra che il cielo sia stato dipinto da un artista di graffiti. - Mia Kirshner

Vorrei solo dimenticare...

Serena P. (unaragazzadadifesa)

This is so cool

Do you ever wonder how many people lie awake at night thinking of you, or if anyone does at all?

it’s that time of the night again

My home town isn't always so bad.

Tonight is one of those nights :-/

люди

самое отвратительное и самое прекрасное, что может быть самое добродушное и самое бесчувственное самое красивое и самое ужасное но я люблю вас

I really do think with my pen, for my head often knows nothing of what my hand is writing.

Wittgenstein Culture and Value

Mr.Jason:왈왈 왈왈왈왈 왈왈왈

Thinking about my younger self and the oddly poetic thoughts i had, still have never met anyone quite as existential as 10yo me