Nils Loc

Thanks for humoring me a bit. :pray: It maybe healthy to leave the desk behind now and again to watch the birds.

Makes me feel rather guilty. I should just STFU and become a nun. :death: Though there is a perceived lack of humility and good will in the elites, wh...

Am looking forward to Robert Eggers Nosferatu, and the premise is related, pushed to the limit. A young bride is being possessed to the horror of ever...

@"Vera Mont" In the following link, a bird watcher hears a greater racket-tailed drongo mimic the sound of a crested serpent eagle to protect its nest...

Very interesting post but you should've left this out if you don't want us to ask what this controversial escape clause is. Is it obvious? You must be...

Many species do predator call mimicry. If the nest is being attacked they make the sound of even larger predator to scare off and deter the threat.

An interesting analogy would be in the dance of sexual selection, where the subject/object of your desire demands a great performance. If you pass the...

@"Vera Mont" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxNGSpTt9Bg Maybe their imitation is in very limited in scope and range, as their squawks sound much lowe...

Ravens can mimic song like many other Corvids. I wonder what they get up to in a natural setting, whether they imitate other birds. Could ravens lure ...

:scream:

Looks like AI generators have the same skill issue that Adolf Hitler had. Either the perspective is wrong or its just an aberration of architectural f...

If only we could make Socrates a bit glad and mad with the question. He is somewhere, strolling about, talking with poets, Extolling the virtues of st...

Doubtful. The topic is as shallow or a deep as you'd like it to be. It actually requires others, like yourself, to give it depth or shallowness. And b...

Hark! Bark and growl! It commeth! The bad poet, Dionysus possessed, when drunk, is dizzied, wayward and dangerous. If his speech does not follow from ...

One could just as well affirm the opposite of this. Some states of first world discomfort, the emptiness of modern material life from the perspective ...

The archaic metaphysics/myths of Indian religion (Vedanta/Hinduism) seems to have room for all manifestations of God. Paramatman/brahman is supposedly...

Depression/anhedonia as a sort of locked flat state without the alternation of good emotion, could be characterized as one dimensional. Though even he...

Slaver dripped from lips. Eyes as large a dinner plates. He curses the dogs. Hannibal is cloistered now. Romans at the postern gate.

Narcissus was dead. He couldn't make heads or tails. The crowd was too much.

ChatGPT output is the canned food of our digital information era. There is no ingredients list on the back of the cans.

But what would you do that you wouldn't do? That is what we do and don't want to know.

It's less a story than it is an attempt to sketch a picture/scene by words. Perhaps a "mathematically invalid" structure could employ illusion or cont...

Many facts aren't ideal perfections written in stone, they're relative, provisional, ephemeral, context dependent, general or specific bits of informa...

God wouldn't get to watch the dramatic unfoldment by his own (atrocious) desire if no one comes around to open the basement door. Someone will always ...

Most of the commentary in this thread seems mutually compatible and complimentary to your idea here. Gods are definitely inflated and deflated by huma...

You mean that intended, desired or expected form and content are missing. The blob is still a form and generates content for Bob. If it didn't have fo...

I'd be afraid to tell humans that they are the children of God (my children), for fear of what that privilege entails in their own minds. Whereas Adam...

This could be a matter of mutable perspective. I might as well be a mechanical limb at this point, controlled by speech impulses, which he would gladl...

This seems to me like a ridiculous generalization. If I lie to my boss this morning which makes him take unnecessary action, why can't I be held respo...

Jesus Christ NOS. We could get you killed with speech.

It is dyed cloth, using cold water dyes (procion) under melting ice. The mandala is very similar to making snowflakes out of paper. You fold natural c...

It would free the world up for exploration. No zone, aside from apparent risks, is a no-go zone any longer. You can always do art projects or read, if...

Very cool Hitchens quote. Am pretty ignorant about which version of atonement theory becomes go-to dogma of any specific flavor of Christianity. The m...

Alternatively, we could go with Nietzsche's observation to further appease everyone: "There was only one Christian and he died on the cross."

The Christian apologist, Rene Girard, has a radical non-theological interpretation of what the Christian myth could means. The crucifixion is a symbol...

Patriotism is more about virtue/social signaling, which helps to organize groups/movements with shared goals/identity/politics/delusions. We say we lo...

Just what we'd expect a philosophical zombie alien with a false conscience to say. Luckily, we humans will come to the rescue in doubting what the omn...

As an old millennial I've not watched even one full episode of TOS. My fondness for the fantasy escape is limited to Next Generation, Voyager, DS9. Am...

A lot of Sci Fi has a problem with technological inconsistency for the sake of conflict, story. Star Wars is a great example. All war would likely be ...

Flame has more of the properties one might attribute to deities (dynamism, power, transformation) and its use might be explained as a kind of sympathe...

In an ideal situation, livestock farming could possibly reduce suffering/pain below the level that happens in nature. All animals die but under contro...

If Karma applies to only intentional acts, the influence of non-intentional acts (acts from ignorance, compulsion, nature) make the concept muddy/inco...

Infinity is an unreasonable stipulation and whether or not numbers "exist" is not all that relevant to me. The natural numbers definitely have a limit...

We are just concerned with the finite numbers that appear on both dice and which is greater than the other. Sounds like 50/50 chance. Once the player ...

There would be no way to read the numbers because any of them could appear to be unlimited and by the physical limitations of the universe would there...

Sounds good. What do we do now to reconstruct the public's ideas around Valentine's day. If you use Valentine's day as an excuse to tell your friend h...

As they say, it only takes a few bad apples to ruin the bunch and to stoke resentment. Agricultural fraud is rampant where folks stand to increase the...

Here is an article which pertains to comparative (dis)advantage between France and other EU countries, due to France's own agricultural policy. It say...

It's a classic tale that the small farmer stands in opposition to the economic forces of global trade. Go big (and cheap) or go home they say. Costs a...

:100: Like my rhino beetle problem. Do I save palm trees by using imidicloprid drenches at the cost of killing more of the honey bee population (and o...