Henri Bergson

[HannahB]

One thing I haven't been able to understand here is how electrons move across their energy levels, by absorbing a photon of a sufficient energy? But then re: units of energy I'm lost, but I think planck's constant is how we go between wavelength and energy.

can you explain more?

 

[HannahB]

Correct. Energy is Planck's constant times the frequency, which is inversely proportional to the wavelength.

can you explain more also?

 

[HannahB]

It's more boring than that. If there was an Italian futurist thing going at least the aesthetics would be good.

Comfort and convenience, not speed, is the value hierarchy which governs the Valley and its self-justification PR—from dogs in the workplace and WFH to Uber/GrubHub/virtual apartment tours, virtual meetings, hoodies—its in the UX design, it's in Netflix autostream and clothing return programs.

All watched over by machines of loving grace:💰

 

[catalog]

I can't remember where I found this, but I posted it in the Deleuze thread a while back and just stumbled across it again;

"For Bergson, the quality of a thing is not separate from its place in time: there is no way to separate them. This includes human subjectivity. Bergson's notion is that by abstracting human qualities we completely miss their actual pragmatic intent and functioning. Time is a component of becoming. Nothing comes into being without time elapsing. The one constant of time elapsing is that it perpetuates continuous change. So an acorn is never a static acorn, it is also, somewhere along its timeline, a sprout, a fully grown tree, a decaying log. So in this sense, an acorn differs-in-itself. It's latent potentiality of becoming, it's radical differentiation from its current form, is already present within it."

this is reminiscent of alan moore's thing about time/space being a sort of rugby ball shaped thing

Daniel: When you were talking about Dr. Manhattan viewing time as a solid object, the reader sees it that way too, and maybe as you say it is a way of letting us see something that we couldn’t see with our eyes by looking out the window…

Alan: Like I say, maybe when we’ve caught up with quantum theory, maybe when we’ve caught up with Stephen Hawking, maybe when we’ve caught up with some of the shit I read about in New Scientist every week, when we’ve assimilated that to the extent that we understand apples falling from trees, who’s to say that our perception of time wouldn’t change? I mean, if I understand Stephen Hawking, unless I’ve misread A Brief History of Time (laughter), the whole of space time, if it came into existence in the Big Bang, that was the whole of time, not just the whole of space that came into being and it all came into being inextricably linked together, then that means space time is a kind of giant football – more like a rugby ball, Big Bang at one end, Big Crunch at the other – and all the moments in-between are all co-existing in this one big hyper moment of space-time.

Now, I can accept that, intellectually, but to really know it, in the same way as apples fall from trees, to have it as an observable reality…sometimes I can almost get there. I’ve got a pretty good memory, and I’ve had odd premonitions from time to time the same way everybody does, never about anything significant, enough to strike a little eerie chord, and I came to think that time was happening all at once, and it’s only our conscious perceptions that arrange it all into a linear sequence.

And there by exploring the consciousness of the fictional Dr. Manhattan I can suggest to the reader what such a consciousness might be like. And Swamp Thing, where I was actually trying to think my way into: “What would a mass vegetable consciousness be like? What would the concerns of a vegetable consciousness be? What would its emotional range be?”. All these things are useful – or potentially useful – tools for getting people to understand natural phenomena from the inside, in the way that no other tool short of fantasy really can allow people to be put into those spaces and those mindsets.

Creating Comics: A Turn of the Millennium Interview with Alan Moore, Part Two

First published on the Engine Comics web site way back in 2002, this is the second part of a wide-ranging interview with Alan Moore specifically about writing comics with Daniel Whiston is a fascin…

downthetubes.net

we make a duality cos it's the only way we can understand it, but it's not a duality.

 

[HannahB]

I don't think he's talking about the bomb itself or how it operates. He's talking about the inhumanity of science after the bomb.

But they cannot be separated, the apparatus is the consciousness, and
"For Bergson, the quality of a thing is not separate from its place in time: there is no way to separate them. This includes human subjectivity. Bergson's notion is that by abstracting human qualities we completely miss their actual pragmatic intent and functioning. Time is a component of becoming. Nothing comes into being without time elapsing. The one constant of time elapsing is that it perpetuates continuous change. So an acorn is never a static acorn, it is also, somewhere along its timeline, a sprout, a fully grown tree, a decaying log. So in this sense, an acorn differs-in-itself. It's latent potentiality of becoming, it's radical differentiation from its current form, is already present within it."

 

[HannahB]

this is reminiscent of alan moore's thing about time/space being a sort of rugby ball shaped thing

Creating Comics: A Turn of the Millennium Interview with Alan Moore, Part Two

First published on the Engine Comics web site way back in 2002, this is the second part of a wide-ranging interview with Alan Moore specifically about writing comics with Daniel Whiston is a fascin…

downthetubes.net

we make a duality cos it's the only way we can understand it, but it's not a duality.

But there is plenty before the Big Bang now I read, and concept Big Bang places something in concept time, right? A to B

 

[luka]

What on earth are you lot on about?

 

[HannahB]

Whittle was a part of undergrad course briefly, complete bellend of a bloke and an alumni of Rick Stein but writes well

The Times of their Lives

A new history of Neolithic Europe, with major implications for the whole of archaeology, using Bayesian statistical analysis to bring dating down from the long-term to the span of lifetimes. Following on from the revolutionary and award-winning Gathering

www.oxbowbooks.com

Smolin is the kosher Mekon of physics

lee smolin time space - Google Search

www.google.com

Now I don’t know what Mekon and bell end mean, I really don’t ??

 

[catalog]

But there is plenty before the Big Bang now I read, and concept Big Bang places something in concept time, right? A to B

yes, i think you are right. the whole thing about the big bang is misunderstood, did they understand that from LHC?

I'm a bit out of my depth once i get beyond the moore explanation tbh, i need it broke down like that.

and his understanding is quite old now, at least two generations of science old.

 

[HannahB]

yes, i think you are right. the whole thing about the big bang is misunderstood, did they understand that from LHC?

I'm a bit out of my depth once i get beyond the moore explanation tbh, i need it broke down like that.

and his understanding is quite old now, at least two generations of science old.

LHC: don’t know, read it a couple weeks ago somewhere… But conceptually the thing about there is no birth times is ‘old’ - old as in it’s already out there floating about in a pool that may have been dived into by a hominid at any point. in. time. Lol. Oh whatever.
Oh, here ‘Surprise: the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore’ (not really a surprise since anyone enduring seeing the yin yang 1990s new age symbol in a tattoo or something knows!) https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-...VclCL3ZxFTWHtTjm_I_kF8ahkeBFUYCJ6NAVQHvWgLqQE

 

[HannahB]

LHC: don’t know, read it a couple weeks ago somewhere… But conceptually the thing about there is no birth times is ‘old’ - old as in it’s already out there floating about in a pool that may have been dived into by a hominid at any point. in. time. Lol. Oh whatever.

I am getting stuff from Comolli’s apparatus film theory because it can be cross-applied. If anyone has anything to say on it please do!

 

[catalog]

a conspiracy theorist i used to work with told me that the LHC was the recreation of Shiva's dance and he wouldn't say anyomore to me than that, he said i should intuitively understand it. and it think i do, now. basically it's a timeless dance, it doesn't exist, it's just alwys happening, constantly. but it's as much a thought absraction as it is an event

 

[luka]

It's cos there is a statue of Shiva outside and they did a human sacrifice there

 

[woops]

What on earth are you lot on about?

their smoking bear ganja m8

 

[luka]

their smoking bear ganja m8

It's the most bracing advertisement against drug use I've ever seen

 

[HannahB]

a conspiracy theorist i used to work with told me that the LHC was the recreation of Shiva's dance and he wouldn't say anyomore to me than that, he said i should intuitively understand it. and it think i do, now. basically it's a timeless dance, it doesn't exist, it's just alwys happening, constantly. but it's as much a thought absraction as it is an event

Conspiracy theorists are annoying and in their universalisms - yes we can understand ‘Shiva’ in a snappy 3 second way, as opener of the door to new universes, but wouldn’t a real study of Shiva last a lifetime and include practice and observational interactions? We must still interrogate/ dismiss 90s new age-ary because it’s part of the problem currently

 

[Mr. Tea]

Another interesting bit in that Virilio book is him talking about the limits of experimentation.

He says without experiments science is back in the realm of magic, but that we've progressed so far we're risking catastrophe by actually attempting some of them, e.g. the first nuclear test at Trinity when the scientists didn't know how far the chain reactions would go and whether space wouldn't just disintegrate, also CERN switching on the LHC.

Nobody ever seriously thought either of those things, though. Bit of an urban myth.

 

[luka]

CERN Opened the Door: What Came Through?

A blog about esoteric symbolism in pop culture and the media.

secretsun.blogspot.com

 

[luka]

What we're looking at and what we're trying to unpack is the work certain scientists with unlimited budgets and technology are undertaking in a quest to rip dimensional doors off their hinges and gain access to other universes.

And let other universes gain access to us.

 

[Mr. Tea]

It's cos there is a statue of Shiva outside and they did a human sacrifice there

Can confirm, I was in charge of tying victims securely to the altar so we could zap their heads off with the proton beam.