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Annihilation (2018)

The premise: Natalie Portman is a soldier/biologist who is part of a group investigating this bizarre occurrence. There's an area of the world surrounded by a weird shimmering effect. Within this area, reality is broken. Teams that have entered this area have not returned. The area is growing and unless we figure out how to stop it, it will grow at an exponential rate and probably swallow the world.  Inside the shimmer, it's an acid trip.

I enjoyed it a lot. There are a few great mindfuck moments. I don't want to spoil anything, but if I had to put this in a genre, the box says "sci-fi thriller" but I'd call it "cosmic horror" - like, the phenomena in this movie is never completely explained, and it doesn't fit neatly into human expectations or tropes. CAN we understand the universe? Or are our cognitive facilities only equipped to process the stuff that happens on our planet? If there's life elsewhere in the universe, would we even recognize it as life?

The "nemesis" scene in this one may just be one of my favorite things.

In the spirit of Cosmic Horror, like Annihilation, I thought The Void was good. Had to watch it twice- first time gave up after 10 mins thinking it was a dressed up slasher movie. More recently for a different direction of cosmic I thought Underwater might merit a trip to the theatre- TJ Miller providing comic relief.

In retrospect, this thread was doomed from the very first line.

Imagine time as a solid object.

Those are certainly all words, but as a both a metaphor and a starting point, the amount of assumptions and presumptions needed are insurmountable.

this must be why they call it the block model.

It's the same, every time. The moment you get comfortable they tell you to "roll it up!"

[action potential]

I did some googling on Michael Persinger, the originator of this God Helmet thingy.  Here are a couple choice quotations:

The space-time characteristics of the axonal action potential are remarkably similar to the scaled equivalents of lightning. The energy and current densities from these transients within their respective volumes or cross-sectional areas are the same order of magnitude. Length–velocity ratios and temporal durations are nearly identical. There are similar chemical consequences such as the production of nitric oxide. Careful, quantitative examination of the characteristics of lightning may reveal analogous features of the action potential that could lead to a more accurate understanding of these powerful correlates of neurocognitive processes.

Our primary assumption is that consciousness and its variants of mystical states can be expressed as quantum phenomena, as predicted by Niehls Bohr and others. If consciousness and thought are coupled to electron movements, then a macroscopic manifestation should be congruent with the magnetic field strengths associated with neurocognitive activities. Access to the information within the movements of an electron, its fundamental charge, and the photon emissions associated with changes in electron movements, would allow mystical states and the information with which they are associated to have alternative interpretations that recruit the fundamental properties of space-time and matter.

...it's just so...beautiful.

Yup, that part, the one about action potentials. Leaving the lightning bit aside, I wonder what the effect of an electromagnetic field would be on the polarity those potentials. Could an induced experience of God also compel me to act accordingly? God... Hell... met...

I made it about half way through the "Three Body Problem" trilogy. Must say I kinda preferred the first book: maybe the translator, or the conditions under which I was reading it. It's Dantesque, trying to get through something like "The Dark Forest" with someone called "No Brain" practicing their beats and rhymes right next to you all day long. I am now however well versed on the exploits of one "Nipsy Hustle"

This reminds me of something I read this morning in the NYT.

An eminent Lithuanian rabbi is annoyed that his yeshiva students devote their lunch breaks to playing soccer instead of discussing Torah.
The students, intent on convincing their rav of the game's beauty, invite him to watch a professional match. At halftime, they ask what he thinks.
"I have solved your problem," the rabbi says.
"How?"
"Give one ball to each side, and they will have nothing to fight over."

[size=78%]- so who are these three?[/size]

Records indicate that they have previously been identified as Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacobo Rusticucci[/size].[size=78%]

It's very rare to use reason to actually decide something - usually, we make a decision based on emotional factors, and then build a chain of reason as a scaffold underneath it.

the story I keep on telling myself is that as long as people are going to hell, free will works for me.

US border wall funding gives way to emergency "Space Alien Diplomacy Force."

[edit]

Space Force revealed as foil for Time Force: The only game left in town...
When you are The One, even a second of distraction's worth more than ANYTHING!

IT is here and for all foreseeable futures, we done something wrong already.

There goes your bliss.

The Me that Watches, having read this post, suggests that considering it to be a separate entity is a fundamentally flawed viewpoint.  But I'm too sleep-deprived to work through that.

Sometimes I feel I must sleep-deprive myself just to take the edge off.
So that that great lathe can't so closely carve my flesh from bone.
That it be forever interrupted rest of this sentence incomplete
Cleaved from the memory of it's sin
    &      lost without confession's bite
Strung together like a roll of freshly sliced and strangled meat

oOf course The Other will not let me sleep against its point
    &.     Pierce the reason of its being
LayeRED before me in concentric rings of thought dismantled
As IT sucks the marrow of my soul from whence it came
Decorated in the skin from animals of old and those unborn still
Becoming the silence that whistles through my empty skull.

The flesh is very strong.

At this point, I'd like to note that one of my motivations in posting this thread was to mock Elon Musk.

One in Billions Chance Reality Not a Simulation

Ah, yes. Well, my sentient robot overlord calculated that the chances of his sticking to that scenario are identical: "One in Billions."

Konstantin Stanislavsky discovered to have been foremost Russian mind-control expert whose master plan was internal subversion and undermining of US propaganda complex. He continues to live on as humuncular horse whisperer of American state actors.