Jan: return from relaxation

by Yoyo • 02-20-2025

The return from extended relaxation centre, jan 2026

After 3 months in Tokyo, I relocated to near the Stanford campus. Featuring material access, seminars, furries, rationality-subgraph (eh), quotes

Importance of post: 1/5

section 1: ramble

prototype labs

I had gotten constant access to 3d printers and soldering stations thanks to the automotive innovation lab on the Stanford campus, and possibly more machining access soon. instantly reinstalled fusion and blender and have been here since saturday afternoon:

charitable fake tungsten cube since my friend's got stolen
pogo-pin holders
rigging a character originally by izmi. I flipped the character on her side. by the way, why so much deranged angel scenecore aesthetics

while making (1), I noticed the cube compiles to low-level commands in fusion. drawing text bounding boxes. typing in the text, exploding it, unfixing the text so it has a green outline to be able to scale them up and down... when rigging the 2d furry drawing uwu I made much progress with fast subdivision surfaces and then... destroyed the mesh and restarted chronically. the brazilian flag (gesturing to Order and Progression) is inaccurate--Love, disorder and digression is the way

got a wacom tablet; I can make anything I want bottom-up style! exploration is holy. I can accurately estimate how long things take more accurately than top-down plans, which can often be extrinsic--sometimes also known as "losing initiative fuck everything"!!!

seminars to get free pizza from

ultrasound wearable devices, Surya Ganguli colloquium on neural computation, Marvelous Models in Biology, CS140E--Just kidding, there is no pizza. To explore: MBCT talks, inferactive reading groups, thursday neuroscience lunches only if I like the content. I had been talking with various people in the building during lunch hour in a way that doesn't drain others' souls. A grad student told me there are monkeys in the basement of Wu Tsai institute that he was working with, which was surprising. It's a bit funny observing grad students crashing out about "operating at extreme velocity" startup terminology and parodying it in the Chem-H building.

systems programming

is really fun and difficult. the most recent topic I learned was hardware instruction tracing. epic!

I have returned from cryopreservation

things have been quite incorrect for the last few years until I can't work, then I found out about hormone therapy and my quality of life has improved 💯 (am biologically androgynous)

immigration problems have blessed me with fast decision making skills. see also: shing tung yau was temporarily stateless. I fixed my sleep and energy levels. It's good to take bets, decide and have temporal/spatial buffer for the dependencies to resolve.

I don't want to become the armchair theorist I don't want to be the wise cynic shit-talking others on private social media. I remember relating to this quote as a teenager "I dream of understanding the universe, existing as a cybernetic goldfish in a bowl" (paraphrased) I no longer find this authentic or anyhow enjoyable. I adore philosophy. I prefer to toss dice and make some small mistakes over endlessly analyzing two options.

welcome to celeste from celesteland

[most names replaced by _]

the re-viv-val was progressing. Saw barton in vivarium along with __, __ and “other twinks” (sic). the workbench, furniture have all updated.
Person 1 was in viv and well-dressed in all black. there’s a stash of nicotine on the shelf. he handed me 6 mg. I told him I take 0 mg.
yuliya was there;
Person 2 did recognize me, he is meeting a boy for sushi and was heading out.
Person 3 said he was impending to read critical theory. the political theology class at stanford didn't match his neural pathways.
Person 4 inspected my website live. I gifted her daisong pan's thesis on microscopy.
Person 5 materialized in black dresses. she was hasty: “I even slowed down 50%, and you still didn’t get it!” I gifted her a yamikawaii syringe necklace and celestia. she stared at my necklace and didn't say anything.
celeste from belgium looked less @parafactual celeste and is a well-educated woman. the passerbys gawked at the group holding up white banners with faces full of viva la revolucion y el pueblo socialista y la-- celeste is naturally recursive, rejecting hierarchies right away, aside from climbing the celeste-hill
la lucha sigue--the struggle continues: at the hill, tutorvals proved to be an ineffective mosquito shield. celeste, tutorvals, lydia, I went to a hill unexpectedly and did live blogging. tutorvals uses psychology and philosophy like linear algebra. several altruists donated blood under the full moon followed by default-dancing the critters away
__, somehow related to activation oracles, made a neel nanda deepfake that redirected us to a hill with jesus presence 🎶
trans names. v for vendetta! (I thought cyberpunk 2077 initially) celeste → celeste. madeleine from celeste → maddy
we proceeded to the 'food cluster', a purely diegetic term. leadership is the norm at certain schools e.g. lydia.

further confusion: The beach episode (nsfw)

as soon as I stepped into the convention centre, two transfems instantly enter the picture and handed me a free friendship bracelet. the social graph shifted: guillefix de-synced from furcon to attend a local ML node instead. edit: GUYS guillefix literally LEFT US for an ML meetup??? betrayal of the century honestly lol. edit: Guillefix is a total traitor—dude ghosted furcon for some mid ML meetup. /s

the Night Market was a place with consensual nsfw. now to be clear, I know nothing about nsfw but still wanted to see what's going on. since I had rushed to the con at 4:30pm, I was delegated a d-tier wrist band that only allowed me at 9:30pm. I found a friendly-looking asian and politely complained, that gravity's done me immense damage and I bruised several bones a week ago (true), so I was able to enter the night market on-time with a disability badge. I bonked people's heads with some balloons in the pool room, watched some people tie others up in ropes, cross-referenced Madoka lore with a long-term fan (2013-present). I need more efficient transportation, I made a mental note.

the rave room spectral output was high-saturation—purple/aurora triangular ellipses. the audio frequency was physically, comfortably perceptible against my human substrate.

on sunday, I was having a blast as I met up with oomfie @hypotheosis. we yapped constructivist modes of thinking and exiting the rationality social graph on 2 hours of sleep; meanwhile cris asked what are we even talking about. we went around the dealers den, first nsfw, then sfw; I traded apple jack (cheap 20 CNY, or ~$3 acrylic key chain with a glorious celestia pin that would sell $20) “you should visit chengdu!” some random asian guy shouted over my head. sourced some stickers “trash 4 trash", applied them onto my waterbottle. talked about rave lighting systems. I greeted several more furries writing de-assembler programs outside. but I made a faux pas and excused myself to the local vietnamese restaurant to eat pho, which was absolutely inundated with furries.

there was a trans meetup (nice but why?) despite trans being the majority at the con which is very my habitat. some talked about transboys in biology, this I haven't witnessed yet. one participant wagged her mechanically assembled tail. another (awoo.boo) talked about her obscure kinks that 99.5% of the participants don't know. the boys talked in low tones. x worked at an event venue and they were not out yet. the other guy dressed up as legends of zelda.

went to chaotic karaoke after dark.

jester’s song and live pick up lines
africa song parody making fun of NPR
slow melancholic songs sped up by 1.5x that left the staff flabbergasted live on stage
too much sexual content and live flirting as per my preferences but very good for psych researchers (how does friendship ferment in erotic environments)
A PERSON WAS BEING PHYSICALLY ATTACKED with a chicken tail! me and several others were rambling at the event.

at this hour, guillefix has returned to san francisco. this is a good idea

section 2: quotations

journal of my other self

excerpts

He shouted: 'Choufleur, choufleur,' pronouncing '--fleur' with a particularly gloomy 'eu' sound.

'Mécontent de tous et mécontent de moi, je voudrais bien me racheter et m'enorgueillir un peu dans le silence et la solitude de la nuit. Âmes de ceux que j'ai aimés, âmes de ceux que j'ai chantés, fortifiezmoi, soutenez-moi, éloignez de moi le mensonge et les vapeurs

corruptrices du monde; et vous, Seigneur mon Dieu! accordez-moi la grâce de produire quelques beaux vers qui me prouvent à moi-même que je ne suis pas le dernier des hommes, que je ne suis pas inférieur à ceux que je méprise.'*

*'Displeased with everyone, displeased with myself, I would like to make amends and take some pride in myself in the silence and solitude of the night. Souls of those I have loved, souls of those I have sung, strengthen me, sustain me, free me from the lies and corrupting vapours of the world; and you, my Lord God, grant me the grace to produce some fine verses that will prove to me that I am not the least of men, that I am not inferior to those I despise.

The young men sat and looked at me with that superior, professional curiosity that they'd been taught. The doctor I knew stroked his black goatee and smiled absently. I thought I would burst into tears but I heard myself say in French: 'I have already had the honour, monsieur, of giving you all the details that I'm able to give.

The existence of the horrible in every atom of air. You breathe it in without being able to see it, but it condenses inside you, becomes hard, assumes pointed geometrical forms among your organs

Master, if, somewhere, a virginal young man were to lay his wakeful ear beside your music, he would die of bliss, or he would carry infinity inside him and his fertilised brain would burst from sheer birth.

The toughened body, stripped of inessentials, through which the ever wakeful arsenal drove the blood of its toil; and the spirit of this body which, more penetrating, incessantly expanding, was stronger than the fragrance of aromatic lands. The influential State which exchanged the salt and glass of its poverty for the treasures of nations. It is to the world's a counterweight of beauty and even within its ornamentation The beautiful counterweight to the world that even its ornamentation is full of latent energies that branch out ever more finely like nerves--this Venice.

The City Coat of Arms

Scope creep literature well-documented by Franz Kafka.

excerpt

The idea, once seized in its magnitude, can never vanish again; so long as there are men on the earth there will be also the irresistable desire to complete the building. That being so, however, one need have no anxiety about the future; on the contrary, human knowledge is increasing, the art of building has made progress and will make further progress, a piece of work which takes us a year may perhaps be done in half the time in another hundred years, and better done, too, more enduringly. So why exert oneself to the extreme limit of one's present powers? There would be some sense in doing that only if it were likely that the tower could be completed in one generation. But that is beyond all hope

Such thoughts paralyzed people's powers, and so they troubled less about the tower than the construction of a city for the workmen. Every nationality wanted the finest quarters for itself

To this must be added that the second or third generation had already recognized the senselessness of building a heaven-reaching tower; but by that time everybody was too deeply involved to leave the city.

Temporary Autonomous Zones

excerpts

The sea-rovers and corsairs of the 18th century created an “information network” that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and necessities. Some of these islands supported “intentional communities,” whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life.

Why does reaction always follow revolution, like seasons in Hell? Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions — movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State

TAZ suggests bands as the base unit of consensus society. One’s “band” nowadays includes friends, ex-spouses and lovers, people met at different jobs and pow-wows, affinity groups, special interest networks, mail networks, etc. The nuclear family becomes more and more obviously a trap, a cultural sinkhole, a neurotic secret implosion of split atoms

Festivity.

Psychic nomadism. Using net to describe the temporal-impending change These nomads chart their courses by strange stars, which might be luminous clusters of data in cyberspace, or perhaps hallucinations. Lay down a map of the land; over that, set a map of political change; over that, a map of the Net, especially the counter-Net with its emphasis on clandestine information-flow and logistics — and finally, over all, the 1:1 map of the creative imagination, aesthetics, values.

The city of endless music parties. Gabriele D’Annunzio, Decadent poet, artist, musician, aesthete, womanizer, pioneer daredevil aeronautist, black magician, genius and cad, emerged from World War I as a hero with a small army at his beck and command: the “Arditi.” At a loss for adventure, he decided to capture the city of Fiume from Yugoslavia and give it to Italy. After a necromantic ceremony with his mistress in a cemetery in Venice he set out to conquer Fiume, and succeeded without any trouble to speak of. But Italy turned down his generous offer; the Prime Minister called him a fool.

In a huff, D’Annunzio decided to declare independence and see how long he could get away with it. He and one of his anarchist friends wrote the Constitution, which declared music to be the central principle of the State. The Navy (made up of deserters and Milanese anarchist maritime unionists) named themselves the Uscochi, after the long-vanished pirates who once lived on local offshore islands and preyed on Venetian and Ottoman shipping. The modern Uscochi succeeded in some wild coups: several rich Italian merchant vessels suddenly gave the Republic a future: money in the coffers! Artists, bohemians, adventurers, anarchists (D’Annunzio corresponded with Malatesta), fugitives and Stateless refugees, homosexuals, military dandies (the uniform was black with pirate skull-&-crossbones — later stolen by the SS), and crank reformers of every stripe (including Buddhists, Theosophists and Vedantists) began to show up at Fiume in droves.

The party never stopped. Every morning D’Annunzio read poetry and manifestos from his balcony; every evening a concert, then fireworks. This made up the entire activity of the government. Eighteen months later, when the wine and money had run out and the Italian fleet finally showed up and lobbed a few shells at the Municipal Palace, no one had the energy to resist.

Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

I regret contaminating my brain with this information. The description of women's upbringing {childhood, the girl, sexual initiation} is completely unrelatable. However, this paragraph on defeatist attitudes is worth noting:

Because of this defeatist attitude, the woman easily settles for a mediocre success; she does not dare to aim higher. Starting out in her job with a superficial education, she very quickly curtails her ambitions. She often considers the very fact of earning her own living a great enough feat; like so many others, she could have entrusted her future to a man; to continue to want her independence she needs to take pride in her effort, but it exhausts her.

Likewise, the woman has a tendency to attach too much importance to minor failures and modest successes; she either gets discouraged or swells with vanity; when great success is expected, it is welcomed with simplicity

misc readings

All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace. The Count of Monte Cristo. Why Situationsts International achieved cultural influence but few political changes. Da Vinci drawings of the nervous system. Waiting for Godot, which describes a plural system collapsing in analysis paralysis.

“if you don’t like the system you can just leave. he stood there stupefied, vibrating with energy but frozen to the ground like an electron in a magnetic field." Eternal Hospital what it's like to be chronically sick. The equilibrium of capitalism is always negotiable according to George Bataille. China is stuck with middle class problems. people tend to think open source is trustworthy, verification is proximate to where the software is run, but in hardware, this verification is not sufficient.