Certainty
I’ve talked before about how there’s no such thing as true randomness – that is, the term ‘random’ is just a shorthand for events with causality too complex to be determined by a human observer. However, because all events are…
Category Life in the Machine
Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time
For the past month, I’ve been working on my entry to the Idle Thumbs community game jam, Wizard Jam X. This is the final Wizard Jam, due to the Idle Thumbs podcast going into a long-term hiatus from which it…
Spiral
Nostalgia’s not what it used to be. With a small delay, the standardized media practice of selling the same thing over and over again becomes elevated, refreshed, a satisfying throwback, a novel familiarity and a familiar novelty. Every new film…
Luck of the Draw
In August of 1993, Magic: The Gathering was released. I was 10 at the time, and it was a year or so later that I was introduced to the game, I believe somewhere in between the release of the Antiquities…
Refractions
When we experience art, we never experience it completely, just the parts of it we notice and that we engage with – merely a slice, and often a narrow one, of the whole. This is why we have so many…
Virtually Real
Virtual reality will never be what you want it to be. What do we want virtual reality to be? We want the complete experience of being someone or something else. We want to be able to do what they can…
Machine Problem
Diagnosing problems with a machine can be difficult when you live inside that machine. Whenever something goes wrong with our bodies, we have to address the issue as best as we can while also contending with its consequences, and all…
Examined Life
One cannot observe without affecting that which is observed – this is true in physics, where even the bouncing of photons necessary for observation affects the outcome, but also more generally true of human beings than we often care to…
Random
What is randomness? We tend to imbue the term with more authority than it ought to have, to invoke an ideal of completely unknowable numbers and events that come from nowhere, from nothing, beyond nature, supernatural. However, all of the…
Meaning
When we search for meaning in an uncaring universe, what is it we search for? Meaning isn’t an object that can be found, isn’t an inherent trait of anything, isn’t even a truth that can be discovered – meaning is…