fallslikesnow

From metafilter today: "you've spent a lot of time being an obedient little robot and doing what you've been told, by people who give no shits about how you feel. Precisely how happy has this made you?"

Just a short Buddhist outlook on life.   1. Take into account that great love and great achievements       involve great risk.   2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.   3. Follow the three R's:       Respect for self       Respect for others and       Responsibility for all your actions.   4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a       wonderful stroke of luck.   5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.   6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.   7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate       steps to correct it.   8. Spend some time alone every day.   9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values. 10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer. 11. Live a good, honorable life. Then...

I imagine you in that darkened closet An unremarked node of imbricated data A confluence of modulated electrons Constrained to color-coded worms Of deep red copper fleshed in plastic You were picking the lock On a box filled with light But my mind turns from that beginning To the moments before the end And my thoughts have the texture of The surface of The wood of The wheel on Which they would break you Rough, splintered, unfinished Poorly formed But sufficient And in those moments Were you hooting with woe? Indrawing great sobs Like a child with whooping cough? Or were you moving surely through That world of knife edged shadows Making a choice that seemed The most adult you had ever made? Perhaps you will be reborn In the electric clash Of the mind of a child Understanding something new Or the moment of surprise When two opposing views Are shown to be equivalent

Running on the Rocks Searching the wide oceans with hooks and spears We shake the tall trees till the leaves drop round our ears Swimming the cold water where the sun will never shine Making preparations for the whip-crack time Hauling the Kraken up with blocks and chains - We're sailing into the eyes of hurricanes You know that no-one here gets out alive Only one thing makes it when the Devil drives: WE'RE GONNA STEEL UP THE FLESH TO THE FIRE YOU GONNA FIND OUT WHAT THE RULES ARE THEN WELL SISTER, SISTER, WON'T YOU PRAY FOR ME - WE'RE GOING RUNNING ON THE ROCKS AGAIN... Flaming amazement - madder than the gale Wreathed in shadows; crackling in the sails This is our mission now as then - We can do no other here we stand: Amen The winds are crying - remember me Through the holy silence of the desert and the sea The next Armada waiting for the tide Wind and rain are nothing to the storm inside WE'RE GONNA STEEL UP THE FLESH TO THE FIRE YOU GONNA ...

Owen Schuh draws his inspiration from mathematics and complex organic systems. In particular, he is fascinated by simple sets of well-defined rules that generate unexpectedly intricate and nuanced structures. His work is painstakingly created by hand, using at most the aid of a pocket calculator.

A Sun of the Nineteenth Century’; cartoon from Puck magazine showing Charles Darwin as a shining sun, chasing the clouds of religion and superstition from the sky, 1882

The loosely organized hackers of Anonymous don't just launch distributed denial-of-service attacks for the lulz. They do it to send a message, which is why they've petitioned the Obama administration to recognize DDoS as a legal form of protest. The petition, which was filed on the White House's We the People website, argues that DDoS "is not a form of hacking in any way" and that it's really not much different than repeatedly hitting the refresh button in your web browser, albeit on a much larger scale: It is, in that way, no different than any "occupy" protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time. The Register

I got a Nexus 7 as a present from my generous wife so I may be posting more frequently here. Anyway, happy holidays to everyone except the spammer who has attempted to comment in excess of fifty times today - you can rot on hell.

Komatiite (play /koʊˈmɑːtɪ.aɪt/)[1] is a type of ultramafic mantle-derived volcanic rock. Komatiites have low silicon, potassium and aluminium, and high to extremely high magnesium content. Komatiite was named for its type locality along the Komati River in South Africa. True komatiites are very rare and essentially restricted to rocks of Archaean age, with few Proterozoic or Phanerozoic komatiites known (although high-magnesian lamprophyres are known from the Mesozoic). This restriction in age is thought to be due to cooling of the mantle, which may have been up to 500 °C hotter during the early to middle Archaean (3.8 to 2.8 Ga). The early Earth had much higher heat production, due to the residual heat from planetary accretion, as well as the greater abundance of radioactive elements. Geographically, komatiites are restricted in distribution to the Archaean shield areas. Komatiites occur with other ultramafic and high-magnesian mafic volcanic rocks in Archaean greenstone belts. ...

My poem "The Veil, the Blindfold of Thorns" has just appeared in the August issue of Horrotica Magazine (link not safe for work).

On an empty stage, under bright harsh lights In a closed glass case, airless and sealed tight I sit upright on a bare wooden chair Telling myself I no longer care The world is bleached, it's all knife-edged shadows It tastes of ash and bitter smoke, burned rose And I am under the light , on the stage Sweating and squirming, lost in a deep rage At what I have lost, at who I am now And the lights blur, I tense up, I know how I feel a different kind of grieving A grief at what I am now losing I'm naked under the lights , being watched By millions of eyes and I know I am lost

Rig Name: GSF Celtic Sea Rig Manager: Transocean Ltd. Rig Owner: Transocean Ltd. Competitive Rig: Yes Rig Type: Semisub Semisub Generation: 4 Rig Design: Friede & Goldman L-907 Enhanced Pacesetter Rated Water Depth: 5,750 ft Drilling Depth: 25,000 ft

Oh fly, fly up to the sky Summer Bean Fly up, fly back, tell me what you've seen "I saw stars like snowflakes on black, black cloth I saw two moons kissing, a comet like a moth Meteors hissing across it all Planets dancing as if at a ball" Oh swim, swim into the sea Summer Bean Swim down, swim back, tell me what you've seen "I saw fish flicker in front of crinkly coral I saw crabs scuttle, a ship in a bottle Seaweed ripples in the heavy waves Seahorses hide in deep, dark caves" Oh dig, dig into the ground Summer Bean Dig down, dig deep, tell me what you've seen "I saw worms wiggle, beetles in the soil I saw Molten rock bubbling, all on the boil Glittering gold, blue black stone I saw all this and then I went home."

Anne had found that there was a point where the complexities of a plan and the events it tried to influence collapsed to a short lived node of potential. All that could be done was to hope for the go signal before the node evaporated and a secondary plan had to be used. The go signal arrived two hours before the Earth viewing in 4Dome, the optimal time for plan one. *** Over the years on standby in Cylinder3 John and Sarah accreted bits of personality like an old ship accreted barnacles. They interacted with their co-workers, a group of social misfits themselves on the verge of forcible personality surgery. They went out eating and drinking, went to gaming parlors loud with the clatter of steel balls and the shimmering noise of sub3Dome strings. Their monitors allowed this, approvingly watching shallow cover become deep. Potentially useful roots were put down in a disaffected community. "Simon, Erica, we need your help." "Sure, what do you need?" Different g...

Anne and Thomas transited from Jovian to Lunar orbit in a years long slow sleep. Their weaponry and other dubious tech was removed or downgraded. Their brain augments were present but still empty. However, the mesh of Holes within their skulls, between them and across the system, allowed them to restore what had been taken from the last back-up. The Holes were the reason for their traveling as cargo, rather than simply stepping across to Luna. Pass a hole though another Hole and both would disappear in a cloud of hard radiation. Pass Anne or Thomas through a Hole and their entirely artificial mentalities would vanish, followed shortly by their biological brains. It was probable that their soul-spheres would survive. The question was, how far would their soul-sphere back-ups even make sense, given the highly distributed and non-local nature of their psyches. Jenkins was drip-feeding them the original contents of their optical networks. However, by the time they boarded the Slowship Bulk...

On Cylinder1 Anne and Thomas had their appointment at 1902 Spinward, Three Outward. A largish piece of real-estate mostly taken up with ceremonial hedges, low hills topped by wooden gazebos, winding gravel paths and the omnipresent water features. Gentle rippling light from the sea on the other side of the cylinder lent the scene a sense of peace. They both felt appreciation of an artfully reconstructed piece of Earth style total defense. Especially one that originally contained a very large, very dirty nuclear device as its centerpiece. The central house consisted of plates of creamy white fake limestone hanging from an umbrella of compacted Lunarian dust. Their new employer, Mike Jenkins, knelt on a cushion, a circle of important looking icons slowly circling him. He made a stylized gesture to Anne and Thomas who obediently knelt, dropped into Jenkins personal lagoon in Ocean and immediately drowned. *** John and Sarah reflexively started to destroy the terrible image and eve...

Mid Twenty-Third Century Later, when they could think of the boat trip dispassionately, it would be clear to both of them that the whole vacation had been set up as R&R before the task ahead. They looked over the side into the startlingly deep water, depth upon depth, shading to turquoise or jade depending on how far the river bed had been burned. They easily caught a nearly tame trout and cooked it whole in the sand box, leaving the sand to produce something edible out of the fish. Before they could eat, however, they were summoned by 3Council4Dome for reassignment. The boat stopped pretending to sail and the pretty blue tiller rattled loosely as they pulled alongside a narrow pier. It was Johns’ turn to be chivalrous so he got out first and helped Sarah onto the fake limestone slab. They were met by a small wheeled drone that called itself 4HumanCompliant1028Drone3Council4dome. “And for short?” asked Sarah. “No,” said the drone, leading them up the slope towards the edge of 4Dome...

My contract had ended and until I got another one I was left to drift around the apartment, cleaning, adjusting furniture, surfing the net and so on. We had plenty of groceries after a friend gave us a ride to a bigger store so I had no reason to head to the supermarket. One day, however, I had a craving for some rich chocolate ice cream. After shouting my conscience into silence I set off down the road. Once again there was a small crowd in front of the ex-office supply store. I was startled. What else could be left to sell? As I got closer I saw that the store had been modified in strange ways. There were heavy looking struts on the windows and a peculiar and heavy looking door at the entrance. In the door was some kind of pressure outlet and from it ran a hose to a powerful and noisy machine. "Ah, madam. welcome back," the tall man said. His face was flushed a deep red, as though he'd been drinking heavily. "Are you here to see the latest part of our program?...