Rocks and Stones
computers are “rocks we tricked into thinking with lightning” gets at the spirit of what’s going on.
A Camera, Not an Engine: Modern AI puts us firmly into an age of exploration of computational reality Venkatesh Rao 12.9.2023
A Camera, Not an Engine: Modern AI puts us firmly into an age of exploration of computational reality Venkatesh Rao 12.9.2023
2023 A+, Models, & Best Articles
The answer to the koan, “does the rock have Buddha nature?” is apparently just a straightforward yes.
A Camera, Not an Engine: Modern AI puts us firmly into an age of exploration of computational reality Venkatesh Rao 12.9.2023
A Camera, Not an Engine: Modern AI puts us firmly into an age of exploration of computational reality Venkatesh Rao 12.9.2023
2023 A+, Models, & Best Articles
[living stones]
The heart that grasps the mysteries is one that is naive enough to think all souls worthy of Paradise, even souls who may have drenched their heart’s life with bitterness. It is a heart that feels and sings like a bird, without caring if there is no one there to hear it. It rejoices over everything that is beautiful, everything that... See more
The heart that grasps the mysteries is one that is naive enough to think all souls worthy of Paradise, even souls who may have drenched their heart’s life with bitterness. It is a heart that feels and sings like a bird, without caring if there is no one there to hear it. It rejoices over everything that is beautiful, everything that... See more
Sublime Zettel Candidates July 2025
One of the most inspiring things I learned was about how the ancient Greeks used to consider marble a semi-living thing. “The exhalations of the earth.” The idea of stone as crystallized breath is so poetic to me. It’s also a reminder of the great systems that are in progress all around us, the natural order of things, it’s nothing short of a
... See moreSara Petersen • Combatting Seasonal Sadness With Beauty
The place is alive. Every rock is animate and sentient—but in our worldview this is true of all rocks.
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
A. Graham Cairns-Smith once proposed that the first self-replicating systems were clay-crystal lattices. Layered silicates can store pattern defects; those imperfections might have functioned as primitive “genes.” Organic molecules later hijacked that replication mechanism, replacing the inorganic scaffold with carbon chemistry. In that sense, life
... See moreMetamorphic rocks embody the animate, resilient, creative nature of the solid Earth. For us mortal Earthlings, they speak of the possibility of reinvention, the beauty of transformation – and the ephemerality of any particular version of the world.
Roaming rocks: Metamorphic rocks are our emissaries from the deep, travelling to alien realms and... See more
Roaming rocks: Metamorphic rocks are our emissaries from the deep, travelling to alien realms and... See more
2024 A+ Zettels
“Behind the effervescent force of the plant is concealed the warmth of feeling, behind the mobility of the animal lies the force of thought. Thought and feeling are united in the gravity of the stone” - Hilma af Klint
‘This,’ he said, handling it, ‘is a stone, and within a certain length of time it will perhaps be soil and from the soil it will become plant, animal or man. Previously I should have said: This stone is just a stone; it has no value, it belongs to the world of Maya, but perhaps because within the cycle of change it can also become man and spirit,
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