Daria Stories

I don't read fan fiction, except this. Great Daria stories by Richard Lobinske. 

Sanity

 Saying that there is a fine line between genius and insanity is like saying that there is a fine line between a powerful engine and a broken steering wheel. It's just nonsense. There is no connection or correlation.

What he said

 

... From Good Omens, the TV series (on Prime). Both that and the book by Pratchett and Gaiman are *warmly* recommended. 

Infinity?

The fact that you can't currently see the end of something does not mean that it is infinite. 

DPreview channel (Digital Photography Review)

If you are interested in cameras and lenses, I recommend this channel, these guys know their stuff, they talk clearly, and on top they are often very funny. 

Defining evil

Evil: 

Any person or influence which inhibits life or communication more than it helps it. 

Architechture Of Art

[From a book yet unfinished]

Architecture of Art, definitions

by Eolake Stobblehouse 

A central part of this book is the chart I call the "Architecture of Art" (AoA for short). I considered "Anatomy of Art", but I liked better the implication of a structure, or something built, or even the building of something, than that of the practice of taking something apart, which is a quite different activity from what we are talking about here.

In the AoA I have divided art into three different parts or aspects. These three parts are again each divided into three parts. The AoA could be viewed as a structure or machine providing a process reaching from the physical universe into spiritual spheres. Or vice versa.

You could say that it is a blueprint of art as an machine. The lower the level the easier it is taught, observed, evaluated, and corrected. The higher the part, the more slippery it is to pinpoint or evaluate and to handle all in all.

The top of the scale is the reason why art has mystical connotations to many people. It simply cannot be explained easily if it is not perceived directly, since language derives from the physical universe, and the top of the scale is spiritual (and yet still real).

From a spiritual viewpoint the parts are more important the higher you go, and from a materialistic viewpoint the lower parts are more important.

 

Art consists of: (From the top) Static, Process, and Object.

"Static" consists of: Naturalness, Creatingness, and Wholeness.

"Process" consists of: Motion, Attraction, and Substance.

"Object" consists of: Representation, Association, and Materials.

 

Here are the basic definitions (from the bottom up).

Object: The part of the work that enters into the physical universe. It is the anchor that connects the creation to reality.

Process: Expanding the spirit, creating awareness of new things.

Static: The idea. The permanent part of the work. Not physical. This part endures as long as there is time. It also reaches far beyond the physical universe.

Materials: Are simply what the word says, the physical tools and things the artist uses in order to get his idea to appear in physical form.

Association: Is what the receiver thinks of, consciously or not, when viewing the work of art. Some associations are sane, like thinking of the smell of roses when seeing a picture of a rose, and some associations are not sane, like feeling a pain in the elbow when seeing a picture of a rose. There are many, many associations for any subject, and some are very personal (and so unpredictable), and some are more universal (belonging to a people or a species), and can be used by the artist.

Representation: The work of art represents an idea in the artist's universe. The more the Object is like the idea the stronger the art.

Substance: The created mass plus related masses (those masses made relevant by association.) A larger work needs great skill and integrity to keep these masses together seamlessly.

Attraction: That which keeps the work of art and those viewing it from blowing apart. (The process would tend to cause that otherwise, since it makes the viewer's universe expand and so push things away.) This is synonymous with "prettiness", and it is an important part of the popularity of a work, but only a smaller part of its overall importance.

Motion: The motion in the work/idea. It is the actual motion of the particles making up the idea, just like the motion of electrons etc. make up matter. Something which is not moving will not be perceived and if there is no motion at all, nothing exists. Motion creates space and time, making communication possible. (The Object does not, of course, have to be in motion for the work or the idea to be.) Both the quality and the quantity of the motion is considered.

Wholeness: The togetherness or the integrity of the work. How well the parts of the work play together in their action. Also the relative lack of superfluous or missing parts.

Creatingness: The amount of creation in the work. How much of it not taken from somewhere else. The power of creation put into it.

Naturalness: To which degree the work and its parts are the artist's own decision and is made from his own necessity. This is the naturalness (for the artist) of the viewpoint from which the artist creates his work.

 

The Architecture of Art chart is a tool.

It can be used to simply understand art better, but also has a variety of uses beyond that. It can be used as a tool during the whole process of creating a work of art from before the first idea to the last polishing.

It is not a tool of criticism. Criticism is in general a destructive (or at least deconstructive) process, and even though destruction can be good and necessary, the AoA is far too powerful a tool for such use. It is for the use of the artist when evaluating or creating his own work.

Witches Departing

Witches going to their Sabbath (The departure of the witches) 

c. 1878 Luis Ricardo Falero (Spanish, 1851–1896) 

It's interesting how witches have always been, and still are, the chosen arc enemies of the xian (Christian) church. It can't be because of what little power they have/had, it must be just because the church needed an enemy, like all political parties. (Harry Potter books have been labelled evil and satanic many times.) I'm wondering though, if making witches seem as attractive as this was not self-defeating!

Necro Mary

Necro Mary, digital art. 

 

Frostbush

 "Frost Bush", Nikon D100, 85mm 1.8. 

Grey matte with black line, digitally made. Of course it can also be made with a white line, or none. But I find that a grey matte is usually preferable to a white or a black one, it gives most rest to the eye. 

Paige Pooler art

 18 years ago, Paige Pooler made this wonderful drawing based on a photo of Zanna from my old web site. 

About Looking

I first wrote about this in the nineties. (This issue was actually the origin of Domai, Dirty Old Men's Association International.) But it hasn't changed yet (haha), so here goes again...

A certain kind of young woman gets offended if you look at her and admire her beauty. 

I say, "what?" You put all this money and time into looking your best, and we are not supposed to look at you? How does that make sense? How does all your work pay off if nobody sees it? 

I would hate to think that it is a status thing, or a power game of some sort. That you hold the power by being so desirable, but if we look a bit too much and enjoy it, then we get enjoyment for free without giving you anything in return, and you hate that. Surely that is not true? 

I've been reading around on answers this question, and the upshot seems to be: 
1: a glance is OK, staring is not. So in other words, we need to be intimidated enough to not look longer than a split-second, literally? And: 
2: if it's a young and good looking guy, it's great. If not, then it's creepy and wrong. What blatant discrimination. We can't all be hot, and none of us stay young. So we need to stop living once past forty?
Obviously, if he is young and hot, you have a good catch on your hands. If he is not, don't give him anything.  

So it seems to me that yes, it really is just a power game. If they can intimidate all men into only glancing and being terrified of looking and giving offense, then they hold all the cards. 

If there is no power game, then there can't also be makeup, hair styling, silk stockings, and all that jazz. All that is a girl's way of saying, "I'm a better sex object than those other sluts you see. I'm the one you want". You can't play the sex object game and then demand to not be seen as a sex object. That's like saying that the other team has a moral obligation to stand down their goalie and their defence players. It is saying, "You can bite the hook but you can't eat the bait". And if we obey, we have been hypnotised into fully submitting to their power. Which admittedly is a great power, but there are limits to concessions. 

I should add that physical touching is a totally different matter, because men are stronger physically, and can easily abuse that power. So in civilisation we don't touch without permission. But to give up the freedom to look at anything we want is not civilisation, that's Stockholm Syndrome. 

Some say "look but don't feel lust". That's a bit absurd. For one thing, how do you control that? For another thing, that's what goes on in my private head, that's none of anybody else's business. 

Update: 

RunSilentRunDeep has written a lengthy, but excellent note to this. Fear is an essential point to this that I almost addressed, but it did not fit in right with the post, I felt. But I do believe it's at the heart of the issue. 

Now then. I think I remember this note, back in the 1990s. It certainly felt true to me, then.

Since then, though, I have come to see more clearly a specific difference between men and women.

When I walk around outside, in my suburban/urban setting, usually I am not particularly alarmed by the presence or behavior of the people around me. 

I might be alarmed, if I have a specific reason to be: for example, if I'm in "a bad neighborhood," or if I see particularly hostile people heading my way.  But overall I know I'm probably going to be pretty safe.

For women, this is not always the case. Here's a specific example. After dark, if all other things are equal, most men won't think twice about walking out into that large parking lot over there to get into their car. 

If they were attacked there, no one would question their decision to go out. If we want these attacks to stop, then we need to go after the attackers, don't we? We shouldn't have to change our own behavior, should we?

Replace "men" with "women," in that scenario, and a lot of things change very suddenly. Most women, I think, will think twice about walking into the parking lot in that setting.

If they know they will be out after dark, they might look for a lot that is particularly well-lighted, in a place that has a lot of walking traffic.

Nonetheless, if a woman is attacked, in that setting, people all over will be saying that she used poor judgment. That "anyone would expect" such a thing to happen to her, in a dark parking lot all on her own. 

If we want these attacks to stop, they would say, women need to use some "common sense" and don't go outside in the dark, alone.

The men don't need to change their behavior, but the women do need to change their behavior. 

Why? Because the men don't face all that much danger. And because we men leave the women, who face quite a lot of danger, to fend for themselves.

Do you see how much this scenario changes, how the person's feelings and expectations change, when we replace a man in the scenario with a woman?

And do you see how much confidence a woman might sometimes (not) have, when it comes to being kept safe by the men around her?

Now, let's go back to that original scenario: going outside, during the day, by yourself. As I said, I'm probably not going to feel much stress about that.

But women? 

I have heard women tell me this: when they're walking alone and a man-they-don't-know is walking toward them, their senses go on alert immediately.

When they were little girls, their mothers and older sisters were teaching them that this is a potentially dangerous situation. That she's vulnerable here. Vulnerable to strange men.

They've told me that if they can, without attracting attention, they might cross the street -- just so that he will not get within arm's reach of them. To feel less endangered.

How many men have had this reaction to men who are walking their way? To women who are walking their way? (This is a rhetorical question, of course)

These different reactions come from the different dangers that men feel, and women feel, when out in public alone. 

Women (at least, American women, outside small towns) have spent most of their lives absorbing the lesson that they are vulnerable to physical attack, when they are outside the safety of their friends or their home. 

That they need to be careful, very careful, when a strange man approaches them. 

Now let's replay your scenario, and watch it through these eyes. A woman is walking along, her mind going over the coming day. A man, a stranger, approaches her.

And he looks at her. And looks at her. And looks at her. 

For her, the old question "what does he mean by that?" is more than the punchline of a joke about psychiatrists. 

It's Threat Evaluation, like a gazelle who finds she has crossed paths with an animal that may be a leopard. Her reaction is so familiar that she doesn't need to think it through with words. She thinks it through with her gut, with the pit of her stomach.

She and her girlfriends have probably rehearsed the process many times, when they have walked around together. But now -- she's alone.

"He's looking at me," she is thinking. "What is he going to do? Is he going to do something to me? Will he do it now, or will he follow me (or find me) and do it later?"

Because there are men who have done each of those things to women. 

And because, when you are vulnerable (and everyone agrees that a pretty young woman outside on her own is vulnerable), which is the safe move, the smart move: to behave as if he's harmless, or to behave as if he might be a threat to your personal safety?

Yes, he probably is harmless. On the whole, most men are. But you can't tell the dangerous ones from the harmless ones.* 

And if he is dangerous, your experience with him will be a lot more "bad" than your experience with a "harmless" male stranger would be "good."

Now then, a couple of closing remarks. First, one way that a harmless man can reassure the pretty, young, and vulnerable woman that he is harmless is by not going "ga-ga" when he sees her. By keeping eye contact brief, by being cordial and impersonal. This will reassure her that he doesn't suddenly have an obsession about her. 

She's going to find that behavior from a stranger a lot less alarming than a long, intense stare -- which might be "obsessive."

Second, women know that even talking with men about these matters can be dangerous, in itself. Many men, perhaps most, hardly ever try to re-examine the world through someone else's eyes. 

They are even less likely to re-examine it through the defensive and vulnerable eyes of women. Instead, some men react with anger -- because, after all, they're harmless!  

Some will deny that women are in danger from men at all -- while, in their next breath, offering to escort women to their cars in that dark parking lot. 

Because every sane person -- even men -- does know that women are at greater personal risk in that setting.

Given all this, when a woman is asking men to behave differently because they have frightened or alarmed her, it may be safer for her to use a "more polite" word.

"Oh, no, I'm not saying that I am frightened when you do these things! I don't want to kick off an argument about whether I 'should' be frightened. 

(I do get frightened; in some circumstances I might be terrified. But I have learned through bitter experience that men often stop listening to me when I tell them this.)

I don't want to get into an argument, I simply want you to stop doing them! So I'm saying, instead, that I am 'offended' when you do these things. 

Even men who will blithely tell me that I should not be frightened when they do something that alarms me, will probably not launch into an argument about what I 'should' feel, when I say that I am 'offended' by them."

And -- thank you for the occasional photos. I enjoyed DOMAI for many years. I'm continuing to enjoy these emails. 

Best wishes, 

RunSilent RunDeep

===

Good points. I'm sad to say that at least half a dozen of men I've known, who seemed like great guys, have committed sexual assault. And those are just the ones I happen to know of, it's not something you like to reveal.
And if asked, very few men will admit to have done rape, but many, like 20%, will admit to "non-consensual sex"... which is more or less what rape is, except for petting. And that’s only those who admit to it. 

Anyway, last year I was out for a night stroll at like 3am, and on a dark and quiet side street, up ahead I saw a woman who was just coming out of a night shift (at the bus service centre), and stood alone waiting for a ride. We were the only two people in the whole street (in an industrial neighborhood), and likely to remain so. So what I did was that I went out in the street to walk so I would not have to brush closely by her. If I'd been a woman with a big tall man coming towards me in the dark of night, I'd have been nervous. 

As it turned out she was both cute and lively, she said "good night", and I replied "good evening". She laughed at me saying that at 3am, etc. 

===

Bill Brandt

Photos by Bill Brandt. 

Bill Brandt was an intuitive genius, probably the only one I consider to be in the same class as André Kertész and Lee Friedlander.

It is actually amazingly rare for a photographer to make pictorial *art*, rather than documentation. Brandt, even when he was hired to document things, still made fine art out of it.

... One thing I had not thought about: Brandt worked almost exclusively in vertical format, that is also really unusual. 

Thoughts about hypnotism

I'm currently studying up on HYPNOSIS. (It was surprisingly hard to find a good book about it, it is a thing which people are either strongly for or against, or they don't believe it's real.) (I've still not found a really good source of info, if you know one, do tell.) Because a lot of what I saw of it seemed so fake (and some is). But *if* some is not fake, then then it's a very powerful thing, both for better and for worse. The subconscious is far stronger than commonly believed.

Some practitioners like to tell you that their subjects are totally free to opt out at any time and are fully aware at all times. That's untrue, seems to me. In deep trance the conscious mind is totally out to lunch as has nothing to say, orders go directly to the subconscious.

And some claim that you can't be put into a trance without you yourself doing it. I don't think that's true either. It's very clear that with a skilled practitioner and a good subject, cooperation is not needed very much.

And worse, once you are deep in a trance, conscious cooperation is nil. The subconscious mind rules totally, and it does whatever the hypnotist says, no questions. And this level (deep trance, the third level) can be reached in less than eight hours of work, even down to one or two hours. And get this: in this level of trance, hypnotic suggestions are not "accepted", no they are TAKEN TO BE REALITY by the mind. The second the hypnotist tells you that you are falling from an airplane, that fall will be your reality. If you are told that you are violently ill with food poisoning, you'll be throwing up painfully.

And the orders that are given have effect later, they usually can't be overruled at all by the subject, and if he/she has been told they will not be aware of it happening, they won't be. This has been demonstrated ad infinitum.

They can also very easily be told to forget anything which happened in the session. This further nullifies the idea of their self-determinism.

Of course registered and ethical practitioners are not very likely to do anything unethical. But there are many unregistered hypnotists, and many unethical humans.

In the video below, I was fascinated by the woman having been told that every time she is asked how she feels, she will say "I am deeply hypnotised". And she does say it, quite relaxedly. (7.30 and twice later.) And even when she is asked how she feels about that answer she gave, she does not question it. "It feels normal", she says. She is totally unaware of herself obeying a post-hypnotic command! That is mind control. (I've not yet found out if people typically stay unaware forever after, or if it wears off.) (Update: seems it needs reinforcing occasionally, depending on depth.) 

And this is in her first session. Imagine what you can do with people if you work with them for a long time, and perhaps include drugs or whatever, for nefarious purposes, such as political warfare. 

There are many clips from the same channel of women acting like puppies or robots or cats, and instantly forgetting that they did so when they "wake up". Perhaps the "I'm deeply hypnotised" thing is more startling to me because it clearly is and it feels more real, even if I have become convinced that the puppies are real also.

Another thing they like to say is that you can't be hypnotised to do anything you don't want to do. This is so much bullshit. For one thing you can be made to believe that an action is for the best. For another thing, you can't usually predict all consequences of any action. 

And much worse, even direct work against self-interest is possible: a friend of mine saw people getting hypnotised, they were told to hold their hand under a stream of cold water, and that they were not able to pull the hand back. And then they were told that the water became scalding. And they screamed in pain, but did not withdraw their hand! So much for self-determinism... 

And get this: their hand *actually* became badly scalded by the cold water because they believed it would! That is incredible power of the mind and of suggestion.

The World Slavery Organisation estimates that 40 million people today are held in modern slavery! (30M of them women.) So clearly there is no want of people who have no trouble enslaving others. So I can't help wonder how many people among us seem like normal people but vote in governments for interests they did not know they supported? And how many are unknowing sex slaves even though physically they are seemingly free people? And so on, the mind boggles when you start looking into it. It really is startlingly easy to hypnotise many people, and with a bit of reinforcement, I really don't think "slave" is too strong a word for what you could make.

Update; one thing I was sure was fake, was the method used to start a trance by talking to somebody for a minute while shaking their hand slowly and rhythmically, then pulling it sharply, saying "Sleep!", and they droop. But it's real and works with many subjects, and described as one of the methods by seriously practitioners. 

To me it seems to indicate how suggestible many people really are.

Update: Support for my unease, from The Human Givens Project, here are some common lies they dismantle:

• “You will be aware of everything that is said to you”

Sometimes that is the case when someone is in a light trance but very often it is not, and that again parallels with dreaming since we don’t remember most of our dreams. When people go into a deep trance, they often have no memory of what the therapist said. That is not to say that they didn’t register it, but they cannot consciously recall it.

• “Hypnosis has nothing to do with sleep – it is just an extremely relaxed state”

Clearly this is wrong because hypnosis is very directly related to sleep: the REM (dreaming) stage of sleep is the deepest trance state of all.

• “A hypnotist cannot influence anyone to do anything against their will”

We know simply by delving into the history of hypnosis of many examples of unwanted influence. There are many modern day incidents, some of which are recorded on CCTV cameras, such as cashiers being hypnotised and handing over the money in their tills because they were put into a trance state, or people being shocked into trance and robbed in the street. Indeed, we have only to think of advertisers and politicians and rabble-rousers and gurus – all artificially induce the REM state in the people they wish to influence.

• “A person’s own ‘moral code’ will protect them from doing anything against their own best interests”

There is no evidence that people can be relied upon not to do things against their own best interests and masses of evidence that they do so all the time. People’s moral codes are as flexible and changeable as the climate.

- See article. 

Hummingbird In Flight

Sunlight passing through the wings of a Black Jacobin Hummingbird forms a prism of rainbows

(Photo: Christian Spencer)