ancient human

 humans have been doing mostly the same thing for SO many years. talking to each other, schools, trade, crafting, law, society. cultural modernity was reached 50,000 BC don't forget. 

but it all started with the "recognition of I", of self, which is on the order of tens of millions of years ago. thats when humans really started to take a turn. hominids diverged from gorillas around 9 mya. probably the theory of self, gestural communication, cooperation, social hierarchy, tool use, and other basic aspects of human life were already in place (or their foundations). 

after 3 mya and by 700,000 BC, early hominids (Homo erectus and heidelbergensis) already had established cave man culture and had left Africa to expand. by 500,000 BC, most of Europe and Asia had at least been colonized by someone (prior species evolving into Neandertals and Denisovans). all this time, Homo sapiens was evolving from heidelbergensis in Africa, until 70-60,000 BC when they too migrated out. this was the full blown migration of sapien that would overtake the world.

after 500,000 BC, and by 100,000 BC, abstract symbolic thought AND sophisticated spoken language became fully developed. broca's & wernicke's areas become fully evolved. story telling developed. "Our god is the earth, we must kill them, this is my family, i will give you this fish, dont touch my bear" etc. ever since then we've been wheelin and dealin in boats, weapons, trade, structures, clothing, all the good stuff.

so we had about 1 million years of consistent rich cave man culture and activity, most modern lines of thought already had foundations, religions being created, primeval city states and monkey kings. just, no one was writing anythng down in any preservable context. 

after 100,000 BC by 50,000 BC, humans all over the world were behaviorally modern: abstract thought, symbolism, language, hunting, society, laws. neanderthals were already operating flint mines in the ground, for tool making. south african humans already had a hematite mine operating, extracted for pigment production. we can mine, yall. but seemingly most precious metals back then were used in cerominial purposes: badges, funeral things, etc. slabs of marble in funeral tombs. 

so we had over 50,000 years of consistent rich fully developed human culture before anything got even documented.

after 30,000 BC and known by 10,000 BC, basic writing was finally being employed preservably: hieroglyphics, symbols, calendars, math, counting. 

so after 10,000 BC, and known by 1000 BC, the Greeks had already colonized the mediterrenean coasts. Crete was already long since colonized by the Minoans by 10,000 BC, with great seafaring prowess. and the phonecians were living a vibrant, scholarly society to the east. and egyptians, similarly, to the south. and (?proto-) romans to the west. and to the north: macedonia (who would cause trouble) and the germanic tribes. Greeks (and ?most coastal societies) were adept at crafting boats, sailing, etc. 

so by the time Homer wrote the Iliad around 750 BC, he was just documenting oral stories that were being told for ?hundreds of years already.

agriculture and land controlled were the two main wealth resources of the day. but we're all so close together now, some are super rich. well luckily we found shiny metallic stones in the ground that look super cool and its kinda a pain in the ass to get but if we start collecting a ton of it, its gunna look way cooler, and other people will also want it. 

thus economics with coins is born!

but how did currency evolve? it probably started 10s of thousands of years BC with the evolution of the theory of mind, altruism, accountability. when humanoids started realizing "if you try ten times as hard as he does, and the community all benefits, you should receive more than him". an extension of "I have this" and "I need this", which is at the base of evolution itself. cooperation then underlies the origin of currency. in a hierchical social group, everyone understands that everyone else is different - we just need a way to quantify that, to counteract cheaters in the group.

after 100,000 BC and by 50,000 BC, the main form of currency was promises and debts, NOT trading materials. favors too.

by 10,000 BC, agriculture was booming, and crops and livestock became all the rage. grains were some of the earliest material currency. by 4000 BC, egyptians were using gold and mesopotamians silver. mesopotamians in 3000 BC said "If you work 20 hours we will give you one bushel of grain", and "deposit a bushel of grain with us each day, and youll receive a clay tablet that you can use to redeem services with us". for generations, humanoids had already been trading with debts, promises, favors. and for tens of thousands of years, trading with materials here and there. but by 10,000 BC, humans basically had the hang of material items as a form of currency.

spacetime & the illusion of gravity

 there never WAS gravity, eg a linear force pushing or pulling things. there is only spacetime (more of a solution, or material) and mass, which is king - and therefore, energy is king. 

energy is simply when 'momentum is transferred through a field to other bodies'. energy is a property OF matter. matter HAS energy, and matter can express this energy in various different ways. 

energy also comes in FLAVORS, in that many different flavors of events can all result in the same ol 'energy'. one flavor is called mechanical or thermal energy. nuclear, gravitational, etc. but no matter what, energy always just seems to be MASS MOVING AROUND. mass moves, implying distance over time. now 3 variables can be affected by energy, and indeed themselves ARE energy: mass, distance, and time. where distance itself is actually 'distance over time' redundantly (since 1 meter = the distance light travels in 1⁄299792458 second). distance IS space over time: spacetime. 

so energy is mass, space, and time. when matter is affected by energy, either its mass, its space or its time can be affected. 

the photonfield - a 3D field where its excitations are focal packets of energy called 'photons' that push the field forward in a wave like pattern (similar to how in a wave of water, each water molecule is pushing into the one in front of it, resulting in a forward energy even tho the wave itself has no different mass than before)

just as a photon is a massless surge of energy through the photonfield (magnetic and electric fields), so are gravitational waves massless surges of energy through the spacetime field. the electromagnetic field affects matter via moving (distance over time) particles around based on the particle's charge (an intrinsic value of the matter). similarly, the spacetime field affects matter via moving (distance over time) particles around based on the particles' masses (an intrinsic value of the matter), in the sense that even tho gravitational acceleration moves matter while IGNORING the mass of that matter, it is the matter itself thats curving the spacetime in the first place. this redundancy (the mass bends spacetime, spacetime then moves the mass irrespective of the value of the mass, then the mass re-bends spacetime, then spacetime moves the mass more, etc) is probably why gravity is always an acceleration, not just a velocity.

what else is massless? how gravitational acceleration works. spacetime curvature causes two masses to ACCELERATE towards each other, REGARDLESS of either's mass. they are gaining energy, in a mass-agnostic fashion. energy is king, mass means nothing.

photons are confusing: all energy, but no mass. they are beings of distance=space, and time. their own energy is in the FORM OF space and time - their ability to MODIFY it among others. photons in a box will have zero mass, but not zero energy. e=mc2, so this energy is all in c2 units, aka space and time. but this equation should really just be m=e/c2, because MASS is usually king.

but, no. ENERGY IS KING - as proven by photons. you can have energy without having mass (as w eknow it)

time is just 'how fast things are allowed to move', as a foundational property of the system - but it can change. when space is distorted by mass, the foundational 'rate of time' also changes. 

since photons have no mass, they can only control things via space and/or time. perhaps when a photon blazes past something, it exchanges energy with it by giving up some of its time dilation. photons are fast, so their time has slowed down; but if they pass something, 

gravity just means "this particular curve of spacetime will have [this effect] on energy". how do you know what spacetime in that location looks like? what is the nature of its 4D shape, aka its geometry? imagine a 3D world of just space, then imagine another, differnt exotic 3D world of space. these two flavors of 3D space are just different geometries. 4D includes space (the distance between things) and time (the rate of things), so different and exotic types of 4D universes would simply differ in how their space looks and how their time looks. the catch is: matter itself (aka energy) CONTORTS the 4D spacetime around it, filling our own universe with myriad pockets of exotically different 4D areas, each different from each other, yet all within the same universe! so spacetime will change based on the position of an energy mass, and the 4D environment gets particularlly bizarre/exotic when two masses are involved (as is always the case in practical physics). 

so energy contorts spacetime, which is space (distance) and time (rate). And so, THE NOBLE THREE: energy, distance, and rate - thESE ARE THE 3 FUNDAMENTAL variables of the universe.

interestingly, gravity is not a velocity, its an acceleration. meaning, somehow, its adding energy - the object is going faster and then even MORE faster. E=mc2, and since the mass isnt changing, and energy is increaing, that means c2 must be the one causing the increase, and since its units are distance2/time2, either distance (space) is increasing, or time (the rate of things) is decreasing, which means time is slowing, meaning theres potential energy being built up inside the object since the rate of things is now slower so more energy is sitting on the left side of the reaction, waiting to pass to the right side. AND/OR, spacetime becomes more and more stretched as you approach a massive object, meaning space itself, the distance of things, is increasing. making space itself wider somehow could increase overall energy, perhaps by the fact that increasing the radius bw two objects will increase the force of gravity bw them. since space and time are inextricably linked, it must be that distance is increasing AND time is decreasing at the same time, together, and in such a way that overall E is still increasing simply exponentially ^2.

 as this object slides down a very curved spacetime, it gains exponential energy because space is stretching (more potential energy generated between any two points in space since raidus increased), AND because time is slowing (slower rate of things, so more stored potentnial energy waiting to be spent per unit time). 

perhaps the true sources of energy are space itself and time itself. space, if its the case that there is inherent potential energy between any two given points of empty space, and as space stretches, these imaginary points grow farther apart, increasing their potential energy - like an elastic tension, or rubber band. similarly, as time (the rate of things) slows, potential energy increases - similar process, where since the the distance between two points in TIME is now farther, that same elastic energy is increasing. think of the light box, or an 'interval' in spacetime where its two events separated in time. if you slow time, then matter must move farther to complete a full cycle/carry on at a rate, so potential energy increases. 

the elastic energy principle: there seems to be a strange inherent principle in the universe: that when one thing is moved away from another thing (whether two points in space, or two different rates of time where a slower time has particles needing to travel farther distances), a potential energy is generated. an elastic tension. but why?? is it just because? well, potential energy is being stored up, almost as if entropy is decreasing, as if energy is being put into a chemical bond that can be broken later and harvested. as things stretch, this potential energy builds up and radiates outward as dark energy, which expands the universe exponentially. entropy is decreasing as the objects fall down spacetime curves (potential energy being generated and stored as space and time are stretched), and its radiating outwards to the rest of the universe causing an overall increase in entropy. 

it could be THIS VERY elastic force that is supplying the energy for acceleration here. as energy becomes stretched in both space and time, its radiuses of ALL types and forms are increasing, creating a RUNAWAY EFFECT where more stretching leads to more energy leads to more acceleration, as the masses continue to move ever-down the spacetime curve until finally meeting their end (probably at a blackhole somewhere millions of years down the line), its like, as energy increases, spacetime is stretched, and this very stretching generates a spontaneous, hot friction that exudes outwards. this 'increased potential energy between things, generally' 

so energy is simply generated by the process of 'a thing changing its position', whether its changing its position in space, or in time. energy is generated as things fall naturally down a slide that compels them downwards, gently with ease. a universe filled with energy is inherently always falling inwards towards itself, down the spacetime curve of masses attracting each other... but as spacetime stretches, it generates the radiating friction energy which causes the expansion of the universe constantly, for as long as matter is allowed to fall inwards down its gradient, which will be "forever" or "as long as two energy piles exist". 

energy is constantly attracting each other. massive energy balls curve spacetime around them, and other energy balls fall inwards down a gradient in response, on a huge scale. compare two sources of energy in two different 4D spacetimes: as energy travels through space OR travels through time, the farther it goes, the more energy is generated (somehow). 

"energy travling down a spacetime gradient will inherently increase itself because of the stretching of things, both distance and time itself"

everything is accelerating. WHYz? because energy inherently stretches spacetime, and as spacetime stretches energy is inherently generated (a potential energy, via particles having to travel longer/farther to do things, but its a REAL energy, realized as spacetime itself expanding outwards. as if potential energy on the spacetime level is kinetic energy in the IRL level).

 Einstein realized the fact that we dont notice we are accelerating while sitting on earth, therefore gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration, so it must be one. whereas velocity is a constant: it doesnt change, just as an object at rest doesnt change, aka inertia, aka an object with constant velocity will only ever stay in that state, and another perspective is the object is at rest while everything is just moving around it (relativity). 

lichens and photobionts

 what if there was a variety of mushrooms that also plants? thats lichens: a tube of fungus, filled with chloroplasts in the form of either green algae or cyanobacteria (or both). critically, this changes the typical fungus strategy from decomposer to primary producer - they can simply sit on a rock and live off sunlight, just like a plant!

they are essentially the 'ultra-plant'. lichens compose the majority of biomass in a variety of habitats (like Sequoia groves) for this reason. they are very successful, can resist drying out, so can colonize almost any habitat or surface. 

what came first? cyanobacteria! (which came from deep sea thermophilic bacteria)

cyanobacteria, the 'first plants', invented chlorophyll. fungus probably evolved next, separately, as a marine organism. fungus would become terrestrial and steal the cyanobacterial cells, creating lichens. and, proto-algae (eukaryotic protists probably) would steal them too via endosymbiosis, creating chloroplasts and therefore algae. algae evolved and gave off true plants.

fungi see these photobionts (cyanobacteria and/or algae) as simply gelatinous balls dripping sugar syruip when exposed to light. so, fungi wrap their arms around them and absorb up all that sweet sugar. 

the fungus seems to remain in control, though, so lichens generally just do fungus things. they crawl outwards and fruit with caps (usually cup-shaped apothecia) and spread out spores. the photobionts give up 80% of their sugar production to the fungus, and allow the fungus to penetrate them with special hyphae, so they do seem like slaves. crucial, however, since that same fungus isolated in culture without its partner would simply grow as an undifferentiated mass of hyphae. 

can fungus copy that proto-algae, and themselves engulf a photobiont via endosymbiosis? yes! but its only happened once: Geosiphon pyriformis, the only member of its genus, a fungus whose cells have engulfed Nostoc cyanobacteria cells, creating a 'chloroplast' again. its not a lichen, because the symbiosis is intracellular, not extracellular. fungal-bacterial endosymbiosis has occurred a few other times as well, but apparently never involving chlorophyll/photosynthesis. so, if Geosiphon eventually internalizes the Nostoc genome into its own nucleus, it would become a new type of organism. 

mycorrhizae are fungi that are symbiotes with plants. there is a plant analogue to lichens: plants will wrap themselves (their roots, specifically) around fungal hyphae, surrounding them and feeding off each other - the ectomycorrhizae. even more common are the endomycorrhizae - fungi that dont just wrap gently around, but instead penetrate and invaginate into the plant cells - an intracellular endosymbiosis akin to Geosiphon, except in plants they are much more common: ~85% of all plant families have had endomyco's found, compared to simply 1 species of the fungal-algal endosymbiosis.   

stories

why do humans have such a tendency towards creating stories? "A literary cycle is a group of stories focused on common figures, often (though not necessarily) based on mythical figures or loosely on historical ones." take the Matter of Britain. for centuries, groups of people just began telling each other stories sometimes non-fiction, but over time fiction penetrated deeper and deeper until eventually certain stories were complete fabrications, yet still passed on (eg., the Greek gods). while Charlemagne truly existed, most of his paladins did not in the Matter of France. why is it compelling for us to create fabrications? creativity? 

being creative lets you be fanciful, imaginative, and interesting. it excites the mind and intrigues the audience. it's crucial to rhetoric. its as though thinking wildly is a dopamine-producing process, similar to how solving puzzles or playing games is. theres no particular reason humans should necessarily gain satisfaction from games evolutionarily, though 'play' is encoded into all mammals in some sense, yet humans love games for the sake of it. Similarly, wild thinking must stimulate us arbitrarily so. 

if I can trap your attention by stimulating your imagination, you'll keep listening to me. you'll grow to like me. my words have meaning and instill the production of thoughts and values within you. by telling a riveting story, I can now capture your attention, have you believe what I'm telling you, eventually trust me and even become a follower or a rival. group theory dictates that any method whereby humans can create trust among disparate tribe members will be evolutionarily advantageous. this extends to the benefits of religion. 

so, religion IS stories. mythology. religion is a series of stories that are collected and passed on about specific historical figures, and over time about made-up ones as well. the stories provide a gathering of people, ways to cope with scary thoughts (death, purpose), morals, values. a group of people said let's stay in a big group and all tell these stories, and recruit others to tell these stories. but the foundational question is, why are stories so potent to humans? and is there even a line between religion and stories?

stories are a subclass and a flavor of LANGUAGE as a whole. so, what's so valuable about language, that which is instilling stories with such value? whatever benefits language provides, stories must also include those. the origin of language is multifactorial. before language we needed to evolve a basic theory of mind, recognize you are different from me, and abstract abilities like planning. infant language development is revelatory in that early language among humans probably started similar to that, and all early language could only continue to evolve if it WAS understood by the children at the time. nonhuman primates are revelatory as well, like how chimps can communicate with hand gestures, have genetically encoded gestural signals (eg chest beating). gestures were the first form of language. 

so how did language become subspecialized into stories, and why? each can refer to objects or events that aren't present in the moment (including imaginary ones), each can put an idea in someone's head and get them to change their behavior to do it. each can instill NEW ideas inside someone's head, things they never even conceived of but now can consider doing (eg, learning). what ideas would you want to instill? evolutionarily, look to apes to see how they use gestures etc to communicate with each other, what types of things they try to get the others to do. move, stop, come, do this for me, there will be rain, that way is dangerous, if you do this action then this bad thing will happen, i love you, help me. 

mental images are entities conjured inside your mind. humans evolved to do this in three ways: (1) dreams [spontaneous]), (2) memory recall [think about a past experience], (3) prefrontal synthesis [active imagination]. early language served a more operational, functional purpose - getting food and water, staying safe, where's the tiger? strict memory recall, and theory of mind, were important, but only later on did we start flexing our prefrontal synthesis muscles, once we had the basics already figured out. 

stories are language that hijacks and stimulates the prefrontal synthesis pathways directly. telling stories can quickly conjure 'memories' into other people's minds, as well as new ideas = teaching. stories are typically fanciful or atypical, novelty which cements its teachings more quickly in the user. also, children seem to preferentially enjoy the fanciful, and were integral to the evolution of language, so perhaps stories grew initially as vectors for quickly and reliably teaching children evolutionary advantageous lessons without having to demonstrate anything to them physically. same as regular teaching or communication would be, except spicier, with more flare. 

the spicy flare aspect is what seems unique to stories, and what seems to fuel their main strength: the ability to quickly transmit among the masses and influence them. stories require symbolic culture - a feature of certain human cultures where they pass on behavioral traits among generations via centering the reasoning for those behaviors on something completely made-up, symbolic. it started as distant as 300,000 years ago. "we must do these behaviors because of [concept that's made up]". promises, currency, etc. social constructs were likely the first or one of the earliest forms of symbolic culture - we must do certain things this way, 'just because we trust each other' (essentially). at its core, its the concept of trust - we all agree to trust that the made-up thing is real/reliable, and therefore all agree to conduct our behaviors as such. so, cooperation. 

what purpose did the Matter of Britain serve? or ancient African folklores? what about LOTR? what about DND? 

pine tar

 

for most of our (Homo) time on this planet, all we had at our disposal was basically plants and fire. we had so much time (>50,000 years) to experiment, that we've done just about everything to plant products. if you light wood on fire, it burns. if you instead heat it up without lighting it aflame (heated in an anoxic environment since oxygen=explosion), instead it acts in a purely physics-type manner. all the molecules inside the wood have their ambient temp raised, turning solids into liquids and liquids into gases. the liquid and gas products then escape outwards (terpentine from smoke, pine tar from liquid run-off - to be captured by humans), while anything resilient enough to still be a solid is left behind (charcoal). chemistry, and the phases of matter, explains it all. 

can we leach human bones as if they were blocks of pine? bones are animal (not plant) and therefore seem to be more protein filled - bones boiled yield liquid collagen, which is a sticky glue-like substance, that solidifies when cooled. plant resin, in contrast, is more pure carbon - benzenes, phenols, cellulose (carbon-rich), polysaccharides - with less protein/nitrogen/amino acid content (?). 

plants REALLY LIKE benzene. but all Life loves squalene - an unsaturated hydrocarbon. cells wrap it around itself to form rings = steroids, different types between animals, plants and fungi. 

regarding biochemistry, "everything is water". meaning, in its basal state, all biochemistry existed in an aqueous medium, water soluble, polar. therefore, if cells wanted to enact meaningful change, they'd need a mechanism that was different - that was water insoluble. therefore, fats/water insoluble compounds became the 'key' to biology - these are the molecules that can bind to receptors, cross cell membranes, activate proteins. plants use terpenoids (unsaturated hydrocarbons) to interact with biology in a wide array of ways - cell sgnaling, deterring predacors, etc. 

hydrocarbons - these were so important to both life, and later to human society. we talked about their impact on biochemistry. all realms of life were excited to discover hydrocarbons and exploit them to no end. when human society discovered them, we did the same thing - distilling and separating wood and coal into all sorts of composing parts, heating them up to create new parts, mixing things together to get new parts still. using them in every industry from construction to medicine. human society exploited hydrocarbons hardcore. hydrocarbons were the key that allowed humans to fully exploit the field of synthetic chemistry and all it could be. 

petroleum (aka crude oil, from plankton) is basically the same composition as resin (from plants eg coal). 

god is the spontaneous bias towards life

 

what is god. god is the invisible force that drives particles together, that coaxes amino acid chains to fold and twist upon themselves in fantastic shapes, that swirls stars and planets around each other in massive clouds and strands throughout the universe. god is the drive of life, organization, evolution. god is anti-entropy. god is the spontaneous creation of order, a chain reaction. god is not passive - it is a force. it applies spooky energy towards compelling molecules to 'intelligently' arrange themselves in a feel of best fit. god is akin to gravity, two different forces that each compel molecules to move in specific ways. god is the invisible force that pushes proteins ever-onward towards evolution. 

take cytochrome c. iron is a fancy atom, its like a rare powerful gem that early cells wanted a way to shuttle around and use it as a tool. cells (a single cell is an enclosed community) began making a sticky twisted protein mass named cytochrome c to trap the iron and shuttle it around. proteins became legos, each finding new and interesting ways to create 3D structures and build worlds around them. cells began writing down ledgers of how to create different legos. recipes for crafting fantastical structures. they wrote these recipes as DNA and stored them in the cabinet, a nucleus. later, a big symbiotic community of various cells decided to pool their resources, donate all their DNA into a communal pot, and let that new communal cell replicate. "this god cell will let us all live forever", they mightve said, "though we may degrade, our recipes will be carried on by him, and he can create new copies of us, so while we die, our clones live on". 

and so cells became tissues became organisms. but why? how? what compelled them to do so? the invisible force of god

chemosynthesis and particle physics

 chemosynthesis is the twin sibling to photosynthesis. both create glucose/organic matter by harnessing carbon, but chemosynthesis uses explosions instead of light.

the oxidation of elemental sulfur to sulfate (S2O2-4) releases 150 kcal/mol of energy presumably as heat. imagine sulfur as a fat slow grey globe, hovering around weighed down by its swarming cloud of dense electrons. it is slow and cumbersome - it is fully reduced. it's charge has been reduced by all the negative electrons. 

oxygen is a black hole-like void. it hovers around sucking anything towards it, often to form a bond to it. when oxygen sucks up the electrons of something nearby, the target got oxidized. 

the explosion occurs when the electrons move. depending how fast oxygen is able to rip those electrons away, the bigger the explosion. if the electron is weak and oxygen rips it away super fast and strong, presumably more energy is released. often a bond remains as a result 

heat itself speeds up molecules. heat can add energy to a system and break bonds between elements. heat makes atoms move faster, which can then slam into each other at higher speeds. 

chemosynthesis and cell respiration, life at a basic level, want one thing: fold carbon into interesting useful shapes, to create physical mechanical assets. using chemical reactions and enzymes, exogenous carbon can be ingested, processed, and turned into biomass matter. 

a photon doesnt have mass. its analog of mass is its wavelength, eg the way photons move will follow the stereotypical ways a wave would move. so photons have a wavelength based on how fast theyre going. therefore photons have that characteristic (their wavelength) and it moderates how it interacts with matter, the same as 'mass' would moderate how a 'particle' interacts with matter 

photons do act like particles too, though. a photon would say, "i'm a special snowflake, look at my cool unique wavelength. its my own special way to interact with other things. its a flavor of interaction. other photons have different wavelengths so they have their own flavor of interaction."

photons are abstract. they are more of a confluent ebbing force, an energy that pushes through spacetime. 

live life retrospectively

instead of making decisions based on your subjective feelings in the moment, instead make decisions based on what you think you would've wanted yourself to have done, looking back on this moment in the future. 

think back on an awkward or embarassing memory. the decision was probably made in the moment. what if you instead had thought, how would I want myself to have reacted, as my future self?

thinking retrospectively puts you in the third person perspective, watching yourself from the outside. it could make daily life easier and more straightforward if you feel like you're being actively coached by yourself from the future, and the decisions you currently know you like when you make. 

geology and geochemistry

Geology is the chemistry when traditional 'solids' instead intertwine and act as/are liquids instead. Simple chemistry nonetheless. Correlation: gas flows like a liquid, as when cold fronts come rushing down valleys.

Phases of matter all basically do the same things if put in the right scenario. They're not very different at all. Spectrum from solids/least interactive to gases/most interactive. 

jazz fusion & metal

 

as far as advancing the art of music goes, jazz and metal have made great strides. both have become havens for virtuoso musicians and creative innovators. deciding what types of music are 'interesting' or 'innovative' is hard to do and just depends on one's subjective impression of the music within the culture they're set in. maybe a more objective approach is to decide what forms are most 'unique' as compared to whatever style is statistically most popular within a given culture. either way, jazz and metal are among the highest echelons of music. 

the real flare is the 'progressive' nature of these genres. could all jazz be 'progressive blues' and all metal 'progressive rock', abstractly? 

jazz is - improv, polyrhythms, interesting rhythmic patterns from drummers and players in their notes, complex harmonic ideas, ambiguous rhythms, swing feel, groove prioritized in (a) the head and (b) memorable quotes in solos

jazz fusion is (borrowing from funk, rock) - electronic, groove, followable beats, followable riffs, more conservative/followable rhythm guitar/accompaniment, more/consistent high hats, audible kick, distortion, synthesizers, ambiguous and uncommon drum rhythms/time signatures, Complex harmonic ideas with more straightforward (if varied) rhythms

noting jazz fusion words, the corollary between them and modern prog metal is interesting. metals main innovation now is rhythmic variation, and secondarily adapting harmonic complexities of jazz. also complex 'arrangements' are important. 

metal is not defined by distortion. its defined by either/or of the two extremes of rhythm: (a) groove, or oppositely, (b) chaos. a tight chunky groove is metal af, same as how complete arhythmic chaos is metal af. metal is usually one or the other and often mixes both. but distortion is not required.

modern metal has lost the need for distortion. 'heaviness is in the hands' - metal is groove which comes from rhythm and syncopation, no matter how complex or chaotic it is - and extreme chaos is just as metal. modern metal is complex but rhythmic grooves blended with interesting harmonic content: tigran hamasyan, chon, sungazer, car bomb, the algorithm. 

to do something new, upcoming musicians will continue to expand these areas. anything less will be rehashing old ideas. as jazz evolved it became more harmonically complex and improvisational until it cumulated in free jazz. the most interesting new metal will follow a similar path. 

culture and cinema

 in the 1920-1930s, filmmakers realized people much prefer movies with racy and violent content - these made more money. but states began realizing this content wasn't what they wanted people to be seeing. catholics began banding together en masse (eg, the National Legion of Decency) to take down these movie studios and their products. many states began forming committees aimed at discussing how to censor content in movies. movies were showing things the government didn't want laypeople, women or children to see. left to their own devices, these industries began to showcase common elements of the human condition: gambling (major league baseball 1919), alleged murder and rape (1921). corporations realized they still needed to appeal to public opinion in order to profit off them. OR, they realized they were losing control of them, and wanted to bring them back into the fold (eg, Catholicism, since much/all of this was rooted in that and masterminded by Catholic players). in the case of movies, the MPPDA's list of "don't do's" lists a number of things which couldn't be depicted in movies made by the studios, suggesting that movies DO have an impact on the psyche of the masses - as would any form of media, eg radio, news. any means of communicating ideas to others is grounds for changes in thought and behavior. an extreme example is propaganda, especially when it's used to promote things like genocide. 

a bunch of catholic people got together and made this list , the MPPDA, which banned: profanity, nudity, drugs, sex perversion, white slavery, interracial sex, STDs, childbirth, children's genitals, ridicule of the clergy, and willful offense to any nation/race/creed. they then have a longer list of "be carefuls", or things which you should really consider NOT doing, eg: negatively framing other nations, arson, firearms, robbery, brutality, murder, sedition, sympathy for criminals, sex, rape, marriage, and lustful kissing. 

but culture continued to evolve, and by 1962 prostitution was acceptable enough to be included in films. so was interracial relationships and adultery. does society have a natural tendency to progress towards acceptance or intrigue in foreign ideas in this way? 

by the late 1960s, the censorship code was over. 

types of color

i didnt know there were two types of color

structural color = the surface of the object has a microscopic texture with bumps the perfect size (400-750nm) such that they cause light waves themselves to bounce off at odd angles. this typically occurs most readily with the shorter wavelengths eg blue/violet, thats why a cloud of white smoke sometimes looks faintly blue, or a glass of water mixed with flour/cornstarch appears blue

pigment color = 

"Pigment color differs from structural color in that pigment color is the same for all viewing angles, whereas structural color is the result of selective reflection or iridescence, usually because of multilayer structures."

the formation of new religions, apotheosis, and their relationships to philosophy

most americans would agree that scientology is weird. what was the impetus of its creation? like 'real' religions, both have aspects of self help built into them, as well as tidbits of philosophy regarding how to view the world and interact with it. so at what point does a philosophy become a religion? or a self help toolkit become a religion?

furthermore, at what point does a man or woman become a god? many gods, saints and other religious figures we read about as being mythical beings were actually real humans who did (presumably) admirable things in life. their followers kept talking them up for years and years, generations and generations, to the point where deification occurred and they became mythical beings in the collective consciousness. 

jesus is a classic example, but consider also the ancient egyptian god of medicine, imhotep. he was an actual man who lived in the 27th century BC in egypt as a chancellor to the pharaoh, doing no doubt many kingly things, but it wasn't until 2,000 years after his death that people began equating him with a god of medicine. so basically, a following (cult?) formed around this kingly advisor, and the masses held him in such high regard that as his memory faded, they bolstered it by weaving stories of his divine healing powers: apotheosis. 

then we can find more modern examples of people who might be in the process of being deified. take eugene rose (1934-1982). born in san diego, he was raised christian, then at 14 became atheist, then went to college and grad school studying asian religions and philosophies (at one point under Alan Watts), and finally at 28yo went back to christianity and entered the russian orthodox church. he established a remote monastery in the forests of northern california and wrote about heaven and creation and whatnot until he died. the interesting line is "Orthodox Christians hold him in high esteem, venerating him in iconography, liturgy and prayer [citation needed] though he has not yet been formally canonized by any Orthodox synod." so here we see a recently-deceased religious man who did some good work, and now people are including him in their prayers and paintings, but the church itself hasn't formally canonized him yet. if they do, this man is elevated towards the divine. then what happens 500 years from now? people forgot he was a mortal, and remember him only as a god. 

alan watts, one of his mentors, is an interesting character unto himself. his forays into general semantics (a philosophy?) give us insight into pseudo-science (like neuro-linguistic programming) and further down the rabbit hole exploring bizarre practices like scientology. 

evolution is a battle: "sick strand of DNA, bro, can I have it?"

 DNA and RNA we often think of on a global scale of being the code for life and allows cells to produce copies of themselves etc. but when we throw endosymbiosis into the mix, or viral replication, its helpful to visualize DNA/RNA as a resource, the perfect combination of subunits that allows for the production of something cool. 

endosymbiosis, when one cell engulfs another and takes it hostage forever, may have been the origin of both mitochondria (animals) and chloroplasts (plants). the "proto-mitochondrion" is the hypothetical bacteria that was basically a free-living mitochondrion (so an energy factory) who got engulfed by another cell. Wiki below notes "They concluded that this organism was an aerobic alpha-proteobacterium catabolyzing lipids, glycerol and other compounds provided by the host." 

the exact nature of their relationship is unclear (parasitism, commensalism, etc) but the host cell basically said "dang, you're a good-looking bag of DNA, ima steal you" and so he did. DNA/RNA is only as important as the proteins it creates are; its all about the proteins baby. the proto-bacterium had figured out how to arrange DNA in such the perfect combination that it created unique and efficient enzymes, machines that could process environmental items into useful materials. the cell with the most useful and fancy enzymes wins, so amassing a huge collection of useful enzymes (like the host cell did) was a good idea. 

and so evolution is the race to obtain the coolest strands of DNA. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-mitochondrion

why can't plants walk?

early in the evolution of life, multicellular organisms climbed out of the oceans and became the first organisms to colonize dry land. early among these pioneers were plants: multicellular eukaryotes that could do photosynthesis (the latter of which evolved first in prokaryotic cyanobacteria).

if plants were among the first to step foot on land, why did they never learn to walk?

well, plants have evolved as largely sessile organisms, whereas animals began right off the bat by mastering the art of "movement". while those first land plants were busy deciding "should we learn to walk?", the oceans were already teeming with macroscopic animal life that was burrowing, digging, swimming - moving. so the kingdom Animalia was ahead of Plantae since basically day 1.

plants never "walked", and therefore they were much less likely to simply evolve that out of the blue once they hit land. animals, conversely, always 'walked' so they hit land up and running, literally. 

to be clear, plants DEFINITELY move and always have - just not perceptibly fast. 

thermodynamics and the origin of life

'the control of chemical actions' is essentially the definition of life, the main criterion. ancient cells were simply chambers walled off from the outside world where chemical reactions could take place in a meticulous fashion, later 'controlled' by the organism.

the origin of life must explain this sequence describing the evolution of organic chemistry and biology: 

• Small organic and inorganic molecules (eg, methane, CO2, water, ammonia) -->
• Middle organic molecules (eg, nucleotides, amino acids, glucose) --> 
• Large organic molecules (eg, proteins, DNA, RNA, phospholipid bilayers) --> 
• Protocells and single celled organisms --> 
• Multicelled life, etc

what impetus propelled these molecules forward into ever more complex configurations? this 'driving force of life' is enigmatic. thermodynamics gives a very interesting hypothesis: that these organic chemical reactions all occurred because becoming more complex was energetically favorable, allowing the release of heat as a byproduct, and therefore following the natural path set by thermodynamics. 

Laws: increasing temperature is increasing entropy. the entropy of a system must increase over time. higher temperature means more motion, so more overall 'states', and more entropy. low entropy means stuff is cold and ordered. it has heat waiting inside it ready to bound out like a coiled spring. 

life's original enemy: UV radiation

ultraviolet (UV) radiation is the original enemy of life. 

earth was formed ~4.5 billion years ago (bya) and rapidly cooled to allow creation of the oceans just 100 million years later. spontaneous organic chemistry, protocells and early single-celled life all evolved likely surprisingly soon after the appearance of oceans.

early life was fragile molecules and microstructures or proteins and nucleic acids that could easily be blasted apart by UV radiation. the sun has been there the WHOLE time, we take for granted that it's always had damaging effects on life. 

UV radiation smashes into structures like a bullet, so life developed strategies like

• build barriers to shield oneself
• build enzymes and other tools that could repair the damage

perhaps this is why "repair" is one of the earliest cellular functions that evolved. using tools like ribozymes (RNA fragments that act as enzymes) or protein-composed enzymes (eg., DNA ligase), both of which are ancient structures. one of life's initial goals was "repair molecular damage", implying life had a natural tendency to want to control chemical reactions. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16464022/

https://elifesciences.org/articles/32330

@40:10:

The Origins and Purposes of Religion

did religion start from (a) a desire to regulate behaviors on a mass scale eg instate laws, or (b) fear of death and the unknown so creating stories to cope?

new religions begin to occur when one population dislikes or stops doing a ritual or practice held by another population, or stops using their philosophies.

what were the principles and themes of the original ancient religions that set the tone for what people wanted out of religions going forward?

• the need to cement social bonds WITHOUT relying on language or necessarily appearance. If you go to a new country, you may not speak the language or look the same, but you’d feel reassured seeing your religious idols displayed and knowing those around you are “good christians” who obey the same ‘laws’ you do
• explanation of death. death resulting form “the loss of the soul” or something similar, then an explanation of what HAPPENS to this soul.
• a need to explain change, movement. ancient religions may have equated essentially ‘movement or change’ with an inner ‘spirit or god’. eg, the sun moves due to a god, the tides move, ants move, rain occurs, etc.

What is the main impetus for the global decline in religion? Is it science? Does this draw then a correlation between lack of scientific factual understanding about the world and the prevalence of religion? The less people knew about science, the more they relied on religion?

Introduction

Panuniverse | \ pan-yü-nə-ˌvərs \ (noun) - a word I made up

Welcome to The Panuniversal Review, where we'll be reviewing cool stuff from history times.

We'll start at the very beginning and continue into the distant future.

τὸ πᾶν, tò pân ("the all") | \ tò-pan \ | (noun) - ancient Greek philosophers from Pythagoras onwards used this word as a synonym to describe the universe, defined as "all matter and all space"

Panuniverse | \ pan-yü-nə-ˌvərs \ | (noun) - "universe-universe", or "all-universe", describing the scope of all the cool stuff we'll talk about guys

The Panuniversal Review - Erratic philosophical and educational posts not necessarily in any particular order haphazardly written with the goal of figuring out WHY IS EVERYTHING.