Sounds like a transposition of Zeno's traversing half of a half of a half... distance with color.

If physics solves Zeno's paradox by pointing to the relationship between distance and time as measured for a moving object, then maybe we can apply it to a color continuum (or perceived changes in color states) in some way.

Cheer up.

Life is absurd because wherever you go, there you are. Unless you are not. But that is seldom if if ever the case. It might be the case when you don't notice yourself.

Spread your wings, gird up thy loins, pull yourself up by your bootstraps -- whatever metaphor you like, engage the search for what might make life worth living. You are a smart young man (?); but settling on meaning requires more than thought; it also requires life-experience. — Bitter Crank

It's really good. Wish I could make mine as enjoyable but writing is like trying to collapse Bimble's superpositions. The wave never collapses as one wishes it to.

I wonder if any of the following tales refer to titles of books in the story itself.

Herman Melville's Moby Dick or Billy Bud
Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Joseph Conrad's A Tale of the Forecastle

I had to read about Captain Nemo's motivation.
______________

"Yeoren! Bring rat-catcher! Now! I'll have em chained to the hold if e won't do is job. The rats and Nils can ave him."

A large brown rat was squeeing and chattering away in the captain's book case, chewing the spine of a favored book, The Phantom Atlas.

"Yeoren! A ship full of donkey's knaves! I'll do it meself."

A wooden laundry paddle flew through the air. With a shrieking squeak, books tumbled, pages fluttered and the rat vanished.

Captain Luda would have been a handsome chap if he didn't want to appeal to his men by unhygienic imitation in looks and speech, like a scurvy dog, or so he'd tell himself. After years of sailing the high and lower seas on his beloved ship, Erromander, he slowly lost the will to wash. The rats didn't help at all. Word below deck was that the ship's wood had quite a flavor judging by the scent, of smoke and mushrooms, and that sooner or later the critters would eat a hole in the hull itself causing everyone to go down the the ship.

Yeoren's grimy face slid out behind the cabin door. "Sorry Sir! Was fixing the scuttlebutt leaks again."

The captain sighed. "What are those damn Nils for if they can't do anything useful. Teach um what needs doing. We need the rat-catcher to step up his game. Have em deliver his catch count to the galley at sundown."

"Yes sir... But the Nils, they... only do coffee and tea sir, it's in their contract. Custom tier service is not in the budget."

Luda gritted his teeth as he pulled on his dusty beard. "Then get um to bring me a cup o special blend 77. Go."

On deck a crowd had gathered around Bimble.

It's all very gnostic. Sad to say I'm not Truly interested in anything, just half-heartedly interested.

So if we go through the door (by some art of numerological gnosis) do we notice that the universe is changed or are our memories modified in that shift so that we believe nothing has changed even though it has?

If you can't measure an absolute change does that mean the change didn't occur precisely due to an inability to determine it with regard to time?

You're one strange cat, that's for sure. I think doing numerology would make me depressed because I wouldn't know why I'm doing it. What is the point?

Even worse, what if you could never teach the point. You have to look at your student and tell him to get lost, got to a vocational school, as he/she is just not up to the task of learning about the Secrets of the Universe.

Is spinning a clay pot any less significant?

Because The Ancient Ones Measured The Great Pyramid In "Feet", "Mile", "Yard" For Their Unit Of Measure — The Grandfather Of Philosophy

Were the Ancient Ones the ancient Egyptians? Do you find any humor in the "fact" they used these units of measurement? They might have used the royal cubit.

But why can't we change the units of measurement? What happens if you change the diameter of earth to kilometers but keep the height of the sphinx and giza in feet?

Surely the Egyptians didn't use our units of measurement.

Objectively, The Square Perimeter Of Earth Is Exactly 31680 Miles. — The Grandfather Of Philosophy

When you say square perimeter of Earth, does this also mean the area of the earth, or is it the area of a square or circular plane tangential to the sphere of earth?

The perimeter of a sphere is a circle, yes or no?

However, The Unit Of Measure Does Not Determine The Mathematical And Geometrical Connections, — The Grandfather Of Philosophy

Then why bother measuring? And where did you get those measurements anyway? Are they on Wikipedia?

What deity does my name correspond to by this numerological system? Does it work backwards?

Did you ever hear the joke about the ten day camel? — Sir2u

Found it on reddit but it might be a mistelling. This is the chaos of mindless internet wandering.

You hit the camel's balls(?) between two bricks as it is drinking to turn a 7 day camel into a 10 day camel. But no one told the guy in the first place.

Human whack a mole, sounds interesting. But what or where is nothing? — Sir2u

I want a Zen master to give me the easy way out of life. If it takes a mallet, so be it.

Why don't the units of measurement attached to those numbers matter in your deciphered output?

Don't be too much of an excrement poet. Graffiti invites graffiti.

Oracle Night includes a time travel storyline. I can’t help wondering, in a semi-inebriated state, if you knew that or if this is another instance of coincidence. — praxis

These ideas are very common but they're dressed up in different ways. Maybe we can say there are archetypal patterns which shift into metaphor/analogy. Your brain is taking a structure underlying one thing to map another thing and its lighting up associations.

We impose upon events a synthesis of cause and effect which suit us. The events happen as they do because they make sense that way. All of this is probably unconscious to some degree. The coincidence might be a confabulation, like a sense of deja vu, seeing data in noise, apophenia...

Don't go too far down the rabbit hole. No psychedlic mushrooms. Tea is best.

I concur by absurd rejection. I just don't know what I don't know.

All beings are equal when and if all beings are equal.

There are no gods if and when there are no gods.

You love us when and if you love us.

When things that are are what they are then they are what they are regardless of what they are not.

:vomit: :death: :flower:

It could be that this D&D gameplay shifted all of us to an alternate universe where Oracle Night features an old asian guy similar to Master Zeo. Because this theory could be true, I suggest excluding non-deterministic spacetime anomalies from any further gameplay. With the virus/economy things are bad enough as it is. — praxis

Coincidence is an explanation for the parallel you describe also, but not very exciting or spooky. You've provided a new means to shift the content of this thread because we can go back and edit that which has not really carried into the future yet by someone elses acknowledgement. Who would notice unless they were constantly re-reading? New authors/readers would have different stories from old authors/readers unless they reread the content frequently.

That kind of extinction of the thread (by vaccum decay wave) is not necessarily a bad thing though. I explain it as just trying to set a limit on the boundary of our play or as motivation to continue or end. All decisions are reversible by whatever proposed mechanic. There are really as many get out of jail free cards as you'd care to use in the world of fiction.

I was thinking about Tinker Bell effect today but need to read up on it. "Every time someone says 'I do not believe in fairies', somewhere there's a fairy that falls down dead." There is a moral qualm (just a feeling) about torturing fictional characters. We are priming and exercising torture circuits in doing so, or it reveals something about the pscyhology of the author. But I want to pursue the idea that if a imaginary character is being tortured and folks have the ability to relieve that torture by changing fate, as participatory authors, are they at all motivated to? How much work does it take for an audience to invest in a character? Is there an audience of more than two here? Mysteries.

The gods of the Ancient Greeks are looming, moving and transmuting characters like clay. When do their works become alive?

It's a long walk out of the boonies of Botsawana, my geographical antipode, once I dig through the center of the Earth to get there. Will I survive?

I've no impressive family pedigree. None of us have great facility for academics or entrepreneurship, though both grandpas were golden playboys from the greatest generation.

The word pedigree came a precursor literally translated as crane's foot, so the foot theme is still going. Peter Pettigrew's surname in the Harry Potter series means crane's foot.

There is something called sleep. It exists. "It like to be asleep" would be unconsciousness. Do you have to be aware for "something to be like"? Maybe, but that's not the topic at hand really. — schopenhauer1

Yes. There is no 1st person experience of death or sleep presumably. There are kinds of awareness around or preceding (in case of death) those events.

Time does not pass for an unconscious or dead being subjectively.

In the case of sleep or death then inevitably there is nothing (no 1st person or something it is like) until there is awareness.

I've often thought it would preferable to not exist but one can't really be certain of what that entails. But maybe awareness is inevitable because neither death or sleep is an experience.

A light in the distance drew Bimble toward it. The brazier next to the town's well created an island of the known. This memory of town held up and stabilized his sense of place. But there was a pall of silence, as if nothing outside of what was touched by the light of the brazier existed. The contrast was both deafening and blinding.

"It is silly to run." A voice spoke as if immediately behind him. Bimble turned around but saw no one but a few shambling hollyhocks.

"You cannot see me because of the direction of the light but you would not recognize me anyway. We are one and the same in a way and nothing alike in another. You carry me around like you carry your feet.

Bimble shivered in cold perspiration. "What demon is this..." he thought to himself.

"Do not interrupt!" the voice hardened. "We don't have much time. I have given you my grief and it is no trifle. This gambit is a risk of desperation and so you must feel it in the pit of your core that both of us maybe free before the end. Inside is a wound caused by the death of what you would've loved had you come to know it."

Bimble could feel the strain of gravity within, a gut-twisting funnel of iron rising from the pit of his stomach to his throat. A body-collapsing anguish stained him.

"If you would destroy this feeling you must take me to the waters of Sahul. You must drag the grief with you like a leaden shadow and stare into the water's surface. Then I and the grief will be gone."

Vaccum decay had been initiated by a non-deterministic irregularity in the fabric of space time 22 to the 12th power miles away from Dungeon Master's Tavern. This would give the denizens of the world 2 weeks before the speed of causality would sublime them unknowingly.

10:09 AM

I don't think there is anything wrong with "nothing is still something" because negation requires something to negate.

Nothing is always framed by something. In the question "why is there something rather than nothing" our concept of nothing completely relies on the general acceptance that something cannot also be nothing.

In absence of framing what is or what isn't (by an observer) there is not even nothing.

No one wants to break the law of identity but what stops you from doing it. Nothing until something arrives to stop you. "You moron!, that is not how to do what ought to be done because it produces nothing of value because X,Y, Z. "

Suppose there is nothing it is like to be dead.

So there will potentially be something it is like to be after one has taken the suicidal leap.

There is nothing it is like to be asleep. There is only what it is like to be around sleep (ex. drowsie awareness, warm under the covers, thinking about preferences in a bed, feeling rested).

Pedimanous (handlike) feet are always prehensile (they grasp) in nature.

I've always had a tenuous grasp on the definition of the word glib which has been used recently on the forum.

When someone talks as if they know what they're talking about when they don't really know at all what they are talking about, but the audience is taken in, are they being glib?

Are professional sophists, like the infamous Stefan Molyneux, always glib?

Next time you are inspired to go to the ceramic studio, consider trying the technique of Sgraffito in decorating your cups, bowls, bongs, tea pots, Russian masonry stoves and new-age iconostases.

You basically carve away glaze on the surface to contrast with the underlying medium (glaze or pot).

Anything to distract oneself from watching the hollow rodomontades of the RNC. Murica elites first!

The icosagon glowed like a faceted piece of coal. Silence broke with a thudding knock and light poured through a door.

"What in tarnation is going on up here?" @Wheatley, the bartend and musical narrator for the Dungeon Master's Tavern, stood in the door way holding an oil lantern.

The room would have looked unexceptional if not for the pallid face of a horrified youth staring into the ruddy blotched face of a stout mustachioed innkeep. Shadows danced on the walls as the lamp light flickered.

Bimble was seized and knew instantly he was in the grip of a night terror, paralyzed.

His own shadow twisting around him, creeping upwards and around his neck.

A silhouette of a figure appeared on the ceiling, as if caste by his bed-stand candle light.

"You must find the waters of Sahul that you may know your true face. Then you will die that I might live."

Bimble awoke, gasping for air in a room of complete darkness.

Stewed beef in coconut milk, with yucca, green plantain, white cabbage, served over rice is great though. — Sir2u

Sounds very similar to a Thai curry, minus the manioc and plantain.

Never have tried a plantain or manioc (outside of tapioca dessert) but I'm guessing they are basically an unsweet starch with their own unique texture.

Let's not argue the enforceability of it but this post was mainly to argue the ethics of it. — Gitonga

Why shouldn't the likely consequences of enforcement come to bear on the ethics of it? It's all hypothetical/imaginary anyway.

I thought it was everything is goat. Did I miss some huge revelation? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

No, we've got the domestication list for the chef:

Banana (Goat)
Potato (Goat)
Goat


Fried plantains and stewed goat. Vodka. Enough to fuel any will to abstraction.

Oh you can see my correct count but I cannot. Mine is stuck at 664. The fault is somehow on my side.

Edit: Oh, never mind. I'm looking at the other counter under profile.

Case solved... almost...

No one uses seeds any more because it is so much easier just to cut and replant the shots that continuously come out of the roots. — Sir2u

Apparently the giant companies like Dole are eschewing new tech gene modification to try and get ahead of the new oncoming fusarium wilt problem (like what hit the Gro Michel with panama disease in 1950s). There is a Vice piece I think where they show workers collecting seeds from generally non-seeding cultivars to try and select fusarium resistant progeny. They were squashing a huge amount of fruit to find just a handful of seeds. Seems dumb but I guess these companies are afraid of the public perception of "GMO" bananas.

No, just like wheat and corn they were mixed and match to get better fruit and ended up like the ones this guy buys in the supermarket. — Sir2u

An interesting question then might be just how fast bananas became near sterile cultivars in the course of their domestication. Though folks still can use seedy fruit from wild types (probably also domesticated) as you've shown.

Even the bananas domesticated in the pacific by(?) seafaring polynesians are seedless. I don't think they carried seeding varieties with them but I could be wrong.

The banana rabbit hole...

If the banana was domesticated 7,000 years ago, does that mean they were as seedless back then?

The selection of the banana preceded any why. Maybe it coincided with "Oooooooohh!"

You can still breed from the Cavendish (the ubiquitous market banana) by seed but you have to mash a lot of fruit to find them. I wonder how many pounds of banana you have to smash on average to find one viable seed.

The banana is the atheist's nightmare.

As for magic, he dropped out of wizardry school after one of his professors caught him using an invisibility spell in the girl's shower room. Apparently the spell wasn’t strong enough to cover his huge hands entirely. — praxis

This is exactly a training task assigned in some spy guilds, to infiltrate the local whore houses using invisibility but the prevalence of guard dogs has always been problematic. Finding and disenchanting magic doilies and wards is by no means a piece of cake but the dog problem is a whole other kettle of fish. And don't even talk about doilies on dogs... spy folk might as well quit while they're behind.

____________

Nil starred blankly into his cup of tea.

This is already like DnD.

The forum is full of characters who have skill profiles. Original posters are like summoners of monsters (the posing of a problem). Then folks converge to attack, befriend or disenchant the problem.

I'll be Nil. A horribly burnt child who cloaks himself in black robes and a mask, who rides in back of the cart and prepares coffee, tea and other pick me ups to sustain effort in the face of absurdity (i mean adversity).

Edit:

Nil ought to be a religious caste of being that has interchangeable members (copies) of itself. So there are many burnt children who conceal themselves in cloaks all which have the same name. We are all Nil, made in the same burning ritual, trained to do exactly was Nils do: serve coffee and tea and pick me ups in the back of the cart. Maybe we also know how to shoe horses.

:strong: :kiss:

They must be stupid and dull people, eh? If only you could tell them to their face.

If it is fated that I will get fatter by abstaining from eating food, then it is fated.

If it is fated that I will bear a child as a man, so it is fated.

If it is fated that nothing is what it seems, so it is fated.

Medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America.

If it is fated that the doctor errors in treating me, so it is fated.

炬燵 Kotatsu (kanji for torch and footwarmer)
火燵 Kotatsu (kanji for fire and footwarmer)

I still wonder how the Japanese prior to the Westernization of Japan dealt with poorly insulated houses during colder months. The overbearing heat of summer is given as an explanation of large sliding or removable doors which can help air move through the house. But Japanese winters are also brutally cold.

At some time the precursor of the Kotatsu developed, which was a grate for hot coals over which a table top could be placed. Then some-kind insulating cloth/blanket was placed over the table top. You sit with your legs under a table feeling the radiative heat of hot coals with the blanket covering the lower half. I get the idea but it sounds kind of smokey to me but I'm sure everything was smokey back then.

Today electric Kotatsu are still popular because central heating systems are cost prohibitive. How many Japanese sleep under a Kotatsu?

The decadence of nobles is always tawdry aside the privations of the common folk.

In some towns there are not the smallest of tittynopes left to sustain even rodent life.

Tittynope maybe the finest and least tawdry word ever to grace any tome of diction. One can grow fat on the tittynopes of nobles.

Heart accounting is both impossible, because you can’t twist an abacus into the shape of a heart, and incredibly easy because the heart cannot lie. Its beats are like the notes to a song, some skip short and others diphthong long. — praxis

:rofl:

Unfortunately I was slurring vowels together trying to distinguish diphthongs today while skimming leaves out of the ponds. It's based on sound and not the spelling.

So "beer" is a diphthong but "heart" is not.

"You" could be no one else, otherwise it is someone else we are talking about. — schopenhauer1

Sarah could be no one else, otherwise Sarah wouldn't be who she is.

After schopenhauer1 drove antinatalist arguments into Sarah's head she was not herself anymore. The innocent Sarah of my immediate past had changed. She wanted to abort our baby.

No matter how many questions I posed to this new "Sarah", I could not find the counterfactual essence to which I was attached, nor could I convince her to keep our baby.

But I've used the transporter and materialized a copy of Sarah from two weeks prior to sudden change.
Thank science she is back. I've very carefully disposed of the old copy and have purged the transporter records.

Where did the real Sarah go? She shouldn't be other that who she is. I must shield her from the philosophy forum, less she unbecomes herself again.