Substrate
A living collection of notes, ideas, and reflections from Doug Belshaw.
Prophecy At 1420 MHz
As you'd expect from Boards of Canada, their latest album, Inferno is not only a proper sonic experience but... a bit weird. There's a lot of religious influences, from a young person talking about "being able to do all things through the Lord" to Hari Krishna chanting.
…Yamabushi AI artworks
I lreally like this artwork, generated by Richard Nadler, which I discovered via Are.na. So I went looking formore information t and discovered it's part of a series. More here.
Yamabushi are revered as mountain priests or ascetic hermits in Japan, devoutly following the ancient traditions of Shugendō. This spiritual practice intertwines elements of Buddhism, Shintoism, and the indigenous worship of mountains. The very name "yamabushi" itself translates to "those who find solace in the mountains."
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AuDHD & interest-based neurology
On Friday, I had the immense pleasure of reconnecting with a friend I haven't spoken to for over a decade. I'm not sure why, other than we used to live near each other, and then we didn't. Life gets in the way, sometimes.
…Precorporation: the pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations and hops by capitalist culture
It's good to have a word to sum up the effect that capitalism can have on us, especially through pernicious advertising.
The lamp I want is playful. Confident. Carefree yet sophisticated. Qualities I want to embody… but buying the lamp won’t give me those qualities (though I would enjoy looking at it).
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The arbuscular mycorrhizal network is literally cool
I knew mitochondrial networks were interesting, but this is next level.
Using machine learning models, [scientists have] estimated that worldwide, the arbuscular mycorrhizal network stretches for 110 quadrillion kilometers, almost a billion times the distance from Earth to the sun. (Scoop up just a teaspoon of soil and you might find 10 meters of fungal strands.) Every year, these fungi shuttle around 4 billion metric tons of carbon, equal to 11 percent of humanity’s CO2 emissions.
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That escalated quickly...
My experience of Fable 5 this week was limited, and I didn't really notice much difference between it and the Opus models. I've been following people's experiences on Reddit, however, and it's been game changing for them. Simon Willison, also gave a hint of how 'proactive' it can be.
…You don't get super rich by treating other people as ends in themselves
Only 0.1% of Elon Musk's trillion-dollar wealth is in cash, with the rest depends on the value of shares in his company on the stock market. But I'm not here to quibble over whether he was richer than historical figures such as Mansa Musa. It's all gauche, unnecessary, and built on the back of industrial level theft.
…Mountains at Saint-Rémy
I don't think I've seen this painting before, but I really like it.
From the Guggenheim website:
During the years preceding his suicide in 1890, Vincent van Gogh suffered increasingly frequent attacks of mental distress, the cause of which remains unclear. Mountains at Saint-Rémy was painted in July 1889, when Van Gogh was recovering from just such an episode at the hospital of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in the southern French town of Saint-Rémy. The painting represents the Alpilles, a low range of mountains visible from the hospital grounds. In it, Van Gogh activated the terrain and sky with the heavy impasto and bold, broad brushstrokes characteristic of his late work.
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