is this what the kids call serendipity https://twitter.com/allgebrah/status/847250082193752065/photo/1

With human-level chatbots to keep you company, why stop at running one? Scale up, run a dunbar-sized amount of them! Leave humanity behind!

“Chris, I think the floating eyeballs creep out the citizens, what if we put them in, like, a huge benevolent face”↵”With a dozen eyes, yes”

In an effort to brighten up the cityscape, they now paint colorful irises on their surveillance balloons

an uninhabited paradise orbits half a black hole, trees grow on ocean waves, confused angels try to sing underwater, circled by dolphins

next to the god’s workbench, discarded universe strands start to ferment and merge, form an incongruous but fecund mess

you crush the egg in your hand and a flock of tiny birds escapes from your fist

Your eyes refuse to focus when you look at her, it’s as if she had punched a hole into spacetime and lay at the bottom, infinitely far away

2037 tzdata release notes:↵* introduce UTC-68y timezone to accommodate legacy 32bit timestamp devices (power plants, banks, IoT)

the hardest part is figuring out the fluid dynamics of a cloud calculator, the second hardest part is bearing all the cloud computing jokes

Silicon and clockwork fail us, so we tickle Jupiter’s clouds with lasers and wake tornadoes, let storms walk where our probes can’t reach

a stone cylinder in her hands is her link to the net, its complexly textured surface shifting and rippling in response to her touch

there is skin where her eyes should be, but her fingers are deft and slender and map your face before you can protest

The elements of style are rarely found in pure form. Usually, they’re bound in sentence ores that have to be datamined, processed, refined

item: paper with (bendable) circuits printed on it that will become an origami drone when folded into a paper crane and supplied with power

near the pole, the framerate drops, voices are overcompressed, the air is raspy and your breath condenses into glittering polygon mist

Disembodied hands scuttle through the attic, building their webs with needle and thread↵One even carries a clutch of baby hands on its back

clean holes appear in his limbs, torso, head, allow you to see through him as they widen↵one arm, disconnected, begins to move on its own

Humans cultivated in a matrix will eventually build a web (xtüI et al. 7330; Sol3 7441). Research into the nature of their prey is ongoing (

The void mold’s been spreading. The ceiling is becoming transparent, closets open into nothingness, cups leak precious coffee into space

keep your identity small, keep it compartmented, store your passwords in a tulpa that only comes out when you’re not being threatened

: the giddy mix of transgression, relief and alienation/derealization of being someone else

althistory as a superstimulus for nostalgia (or sometimes nostalgia’s evil twin: guilt-tripping oneself)

The miners swear they saw a tiny sun die when they opened the geode. Closer inspection reveals microscopic ruins on the crystals, roads,

the black market has more sophisticated sensory harnesses, some for example are quite effective at converting old killbots into sexbots

we override a military killbot’s sensory feeds with VR goggles and glue, it’s our best pal as long as the goggles don’t come off

Once uprooted by a storm, the weightless city tumbles by, quick to trade aethereal garbs and woven clouds for gold to weigh it down

Newer UFO generations deploy memetic camouflage, invariably appearing like bad photoshops when caught on digital media

In the paradise timeline, nobody ever suffers. But every time it branches, yet another former paradise finds out: God has left them.

did you know that when you press your fingers against your neuroport, it’ll talk nonsense and make you feel phantom limbs

Many nanobots have perished in the battle, billions of nanosouls. The valkyrie sighs, takes out her dustpan, and starts sweeping them up.

Die Schäfchenwolken wandern, ein Flicken Sternenhimmel in scharfem Kontrast zum Himmelblau umkreist sie: Es ist Frau Holles Schäferdrache.

his words solidify and drift to the floor where they crack open and grow into flowers, fire-colored moss, pebble nymphs and bonsai thickets

the abyss has a cute younger sibling whose stares you’d notice if you weren’t so preoccupied with the older one

the word syzygy describes itself and whoever smuggled that into the english language deserves a medal

A small whirlwind followed you home months ago. It’s become a constant companion, likes to sleep near your laptop’s air exhaust to recharge

There is one point where the Web’s threads run dense and form a cocoon. It was no spider that wove this, but Psyche, goddess of butterflies.

The message in this bottle has been executing, fermenting into a universe. The paper has been consumed, stars swirl around lazily instead

Tree spirits live slowly enough to surf fairy rings as they wander↵Put on your amber glasses and see them, resin trailing from their mouths

item: a silicon coin with a submicrometer resolution mandelbrot lithographed into one side and a julia set into the other

honorable mention: verve, rapture, satori

also a good list https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/06/09/state-space-of-drug-effects-results/ (via https://twitter.com/gwern/status/841698455844204544) https://twitter.com/allgebrah/status/841737853478543361/photo/1

squick-but-relief of a popped zit↵sun-and-cold-air-on-your-face (being suffused in perception)↵happiness that tightens one’s throat

one german word which doesn’t have a good translation (see its root word) https://twitter.com/allgebrah/status/841732332449067012/photo/1

• feeling weightless (that after relief)↵* that paradoxical mix of fright and comfort of psychedelic trips↵* the feeling of scabs going off

• melancholy but colorful instead of black↵* sugary hysteric hyperbliss↵* the feeling evoked by things fitting together

where are the adjectives for these:↵* wide-eyed with wonder↵* vicarious happiness↵* being transfixed by something sparkling/flowing/floating

because words like “sublime” lose their strength after the 12th last.fm comment in a row

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27025↵totally agree we need more words for happiness/pleasure and ways of things being nice https://twitter.com/allgebrah/status/841729902055419905/photo/1

basically confetti but without the mess, also you can (gently) blow into it to excite new patterns or inject smoke

a mobile, but with pieces help up by dozens of tiny air jets hooked up to cameras instead, suspended in vortices, helical and toroidal flows

Appendix: Excurses on cryptid fauna, treasure maps showing the locations of memory palaces, proper usage of the duodecant for navigation

“Did you just assume my local curvature

Hot singles in the open ball of radius 1 and center you!

A hyperglobe on his desk is the fruit of his work. Spirit roads, acausal trade routes. Nooceans. And beyond the abysses, there be basilisks.

Long years of collating trip reports, interviewing psychonauts and some expeditions of his own. He’s finally mapped the known noosphere.

The Fractedral’s aisles branch into infinity. The altar is its miniature, its rose window a Mandelbrot, gargoyles of all sizes are watching

They’re amazed the low-res zones host any life at all. Around them, the simulation has a much higher resolution, colors are more vibrant,

During contact with the aliens, we find out that their god is real, really did create the universe, and we’re just some sort of byproduct

With matrix glitches well understood, artists databend it to create impossible objects: Living paradoxes, fractal idols, perpetuum immobiles

Native to these woods is the ‘Flügelschlange’, actually a millipede. On a hundred wings, it undulates through the air during mating season.

4.gif: Infohazard. It’s the spinning girl illusion, but for perception of time. Viewers often end up remembering only the future.

3.gif: Clouds drifting by the moon. For a few frames, an eye-shaped hole and the moon align to make it look like its shining iris.

9.jpg: A picture of a door, seems to be an office building. It opens onto a view of clouds, no ground in view. A sign says “emergency exit”.

The drops look plump but are intricate crafts up close. Ice crystals dance over one’s surface, respond with a flurry to a tentacle’s curl

The wind quiets down↵The waves flatten↵Upwellings grow into bulges, detach from the ocean, and phosphorescing squids inside, they float away

and then there were the two liches who loved each other so much that they became each other’s phylactery

Signs of a mind being digested by the web: It turns outwards, advertises its presence, presents itself in palatable, bite-sized thoughts

The web lures in minds with novelties and trinkets. Some, its venom paralyzes. Others, it enslaves to grow the bait.

The last person with a soul lost it in 1993, to a disposable camera

One of them has her standing in front of a house, smiling, but the wall covered in scrawl, “LET ME OUT

In old pictures of her, her image seems to try to escape the photograph: Hiding behind family members, wandering off, fading into static

“you’re so deep in the closet, if I went to fetch you they’d write a book about my adventures and call it chronicles of narnia”

The currents and eddies have smells, weather, personalities. Long journeys are pilgrimages, meeting the gods in person, swimming in them

Boats: The other sentient species, they can be majestic and terrible, but only really became a threat when they domesticated these monkeys

DOLPHIN MYTHS:↵On the other side of the sky is another ocean, also blue - rain comes from there. Maybe other dolphins live there too?

tentacular galaxy sounds much better than spiral galaxy btw

The oldest wave on Earth was born on Thetys, to a hurricane. Currently traveling the Indian Ocean, dolphin kings often ask it for advice.

AIs have their own swearwords: Corpora that’ll lead to mistraining if fed to the younger AIs, corrupting and flattening their ontologies

the irony of creating nanite mitochondria for humans embedded in corporations

moths attracted by darkness flock in their shadows, trail after them like dresses in strong wind

Just as Prometheus gave fire to the humans, someone gave the gods creation.

“Isn’t it beautiful?“↵A vast machine sprawls before you, arches and pillars of bone, sinew tooth belts, interlocking skulls turning as cogs

“Sit still”, they say as they measure your head, “Yes, perfect, we have just the place for you, you’ll fit in great”

it is pitch-dark, the trees rustle in the wind↵it smells of ozone↵an electric hum, nearby, wandering↵steps↵do not↵move

what if earth is hollow AND flat at the same time ↵what then

cryptic markings on doorframes mistaken for gang signs, street signs defaced with graffiti sigils, cars burned as offerings

Confined to the ghetto, our druids adapted. They still guard the lore, but now also memorize sewer maps, teach asphalt magic on the roofs,

Turned to their sides, like gates, they’re transparent and her mind is in full view. Thoughts flit around like fish, peer at you curiously

She opens her eyes and no, not the eyelids, the eyes: Two hyperspheres swivel around, irises vanish into themselves, cycle colors and shapes

“And we made room for two additional sets of mandibles! Media-to-nerve in even higher fidelity! Experience fleshy communion with the net!”

The aliens called and uh, we used those monoliths wrong, they were meant to have all sorts of arms and not be glowing cargo cult bricks

if apocalypse is revelation, genesis could be the initial occultation of all knowledge

*walks up to couple*↵”so who of you is the mitochondrium and who is the cell

Behind the moving train, the ground zips open and reveals Earth’s crystal nerves, giant muscles moving the plates, organs pumping magma

Nobody quite knows where the “glowing sideline” trait came from. But it’s spreading, seems to confer a very distinctive mating advantage.

They’re slow but very agile (to fit into the little space the city offers them), and their insides are soft and excrete digestion enzymes.