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The Growing Resistance... (detail) - ceramic - 2025, BG Dodson. |
POST-MAC BLUES
A MAC TONNIES MEMORIAL
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
The Crow-kins Unite!
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
The Cosmic Web & other discoveries
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Cosmic Web |
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Credit: Florian Sterl, Sterltech Optics. |
"A tesseract (a four-dimensional cube) and the "shadow" it casts on a plane—the quasicrystal discovered by Shechtman. According to Prof. Bartal, "The fact that a quasicrystal is a 'shadow' of a periodic crystal in a higher dimension is not new in itself. What we discovered is that the projection includes not only the structure but also topologically properties such as vortices."
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Scientists Uncover Colossal Underground Water Reservoir, Surpassing All Earth’s Oceans Combined
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Images Show Entire "Universe" of Circular Structure That Can Only Be Seen as Radio Signals
"It's comprised of radio sources so faint they have never been seen before."
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List of top 10 eVTOL companies in 2025
"eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing)"
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
AI Eye Candy
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Helicoid with two handles: Image credit Ulrich Pinkall. |
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Found Object: A Curious Doodle
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A curious doodle - ballpoint pen on notebook paper - by an unidentified artist. (Click to enlarge.) |
(This post was originally constructed - as is - in 2021. For a number of reasons, it was stalled in draft mode... but, I found it again recently and decided to let it fly.)

- From the Wiki entry for Surrealist automatism. Inset right is a 1907 automatic painting by Spiritualist artist (and mystic) Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) found here.
"Austin Osman Spare (30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956) was an English artist and occultist who worked as both a draughtsman and a painter. Influenced by symbolism and art nouveau his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed idiosyncratic magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self."
- From the Wiki entry for Austin Spare. For more Austin Spare see the Addendum of this Trans-D post.

Austin Osman Spare likely would have been completely forgotten were it not for Kenneth Grant, an over-enthusiastic young man who had grown up on H. P. Lovecraft books, who never shook the conviction that Lovecraft was writing codified non-fiction, and who soon undertook a lifelong pursuit of Magick. Like Israel Regardie before him, Grant came into Crowley’s orbit, becoming his secretary in the final years of his life; Crowley obliged the young man by demonstrating occult processes like ether-assisted astral travel."
- Excerpt from Jason Louv's wonderful article: The Strange Life of Austin Osman Spare, Chaos Magician. Inset left is Spare's unique interpretation of the astrological sign of Capricorn - his own birth sign - found here.

- Excerpt from Kenneth Grants's Austin Osman Spare: An introduction to his psycho-magical philosophy.
"I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment."
- Via the great Surrealist - and master of automatism - Roberto Marta. whose untitled work (1965) appears above, inset right. It was sourced from his amazing website.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Odds & Ends
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Credit: SciTechDaily.com. |
Physicists Harness 13,000 Entangled Spins To Unlock the Power of the “Dark State”
"Quantum dots just became serious contenders for quantum networks. By stabilizing nuclear spins into a robust quantum register, researchers have cleared a major hurdle toward scalable quantum communication and computing."
- Via SciTechDaily.com.
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Digital image, 2006, DS. |
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
The 8th Day of Christmas
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Determining the "U" in UAP
- accelerate at hundreds of gs (or more) for several seconds,
- that move at speeds of hundreds of thousands of km/hr (or greater),
- or that can change their distance from you by amounts that are greater than any known rocket can travel in the same span of time,
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The moon in a phi-shell. G - DS - 22024. |
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Breaking News! The Cryptoterrestrials Reconsidered...
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Screenshot of the Reference page from a recent academic research paper (see below). |
"In a new paper that's bound to raise eyebrows in the scientific community, a team of researchers from Harvard and Montana Technological University speculates that sightings of "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" (UAP) — bureaucracy-speak for UFOs, basically — "may reflect activities of intelligent beings concealed in stealth here on Earth (e.g., underground), and/or its near environs (e.g., the Moon), and/or even 'walking among us' (e.g., passing as humans)."
Yes, that's a direct quote from the paper. Needless to say, the researchers admit, this idea of hidden "cryptoterrestrials" is a highly exotic hypothesis that's "likely to be regarded skeptically by most scientists." Nonetheless, they argue, the theory "deserves genuine consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness."
- Via the June 11, 2024 Futurism news article: Harvard Scientists Say There May Be an Unknown, Technologically Advanced Civilization Hiding on Earth.
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Well, it's been awhile, but I'm always happy to report news stories directly related to Mac Tonnies. This one regards a research paper presented by Tim Lomas, Brendan Case, and Michael P. Masters from the Harvard Human Flourishing Program and Montana Technological University, which can be read online. See: The Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis: A case for scientific openness to a concealed earthly explanation for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.Much of it will seem familiar, but the bones of Mac's 2011 "thought experiment" are now seen in the light of recent developments in the field of UAPs. Note: although referred to as "bureaucracy-speak," - and although I've said it before - we know UAP from another beautiful mind: Bruce Duensing.
BTW, Nick Redfern is listed in the references, too.
In other news, I recently read 3 Big Think articles which might interest readers of this blog. Via the first article, What was it like when Venus and Mars both died?, we have the following:What goes around, comes around.
Also see: Even the smartest AI likely won’t be “alive.” Here’s why.; and Does science fiction shape the future?
Saturday, March 30, 2024
A Lost History Retrieved
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Artificial Life Form #5 (with a phi shell). 2024 - GDS - DS. |
The artificial life form known only as "Model Five" - or "Five" - was the most successful and advanced of the miniature cyborg life forms produced by Project 15: a coalition formed by the collaboration of several (anonymous) cyborg artists, and a rogue - "Rainbow" - biotech industrial facility (also anonymous) in the early to mid-21st century.
For the most part, Five resembled a small embryonic, aquatic animal whose body was suspended in a transparent, fluid-filled sac. In reality, the animal and the sac were one glutinous unit which could rapidly ambulate in water, a feat aided by the cluster of tiny spheres located at its flexible base. The spheres served a number of purposes. Essentially, water was the only substance necessary for Five's survival; the smaller spheres absorbed and transformed this simple liquid into a type of fuel and/or nourishment.The larger spheres were databases, however, which were, in turn, wirelessly in communication with a central database. These tiny devices were not merely programmed to monitor Five's location and overall physical state, but, allegedly their owner's physical state as well. Some speculated that Five might monitor a great deal more, but surveillance had ceased being an issue by this time; civilization had been conditioned to accept it and, with albeit a little trepidation, overlook it.
Unlike earlier attempts regarding miniature cyborgs, Five was the first "living" Bluetooth-like device which might "warm the heart" of its owner. It had character. It possessed creature-like eyes; optical lenses interfaced with a "brain," a biotechnical marvel which its makers claimed approached the complexity of its organic rivals. Moreover, this "brain" was designed and programmed to communicate with actual organic brains provided one owned the dedicated interface app, a password and a small device implanted in ones brain via a simple injection.
There were those, of course, who imagined Five might technically be conscious, or even, perhaps, sentient. Certainly, it gave the illusion it might be "aware" of it's surroundings. However, in the last analysis, it's unlikely even its creators knew the exact nature of its cognitive abilities - let alone what its cyber-golem might be thinking - anymore than they could ascertain the full content of any living creature's mind - or, conversely, the secret life of a wristwatch. As the line began to blur between the "living" and the "not living"; "life" became a relative term.
(continued after the jump-break...)
Saturday, February 3, 2024
True Science Fiction Tales - The Plasma Lights
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A photograph of the Fornax galaxy. (Previously posted about here.) |
"Plasmas may have been photographed in the 1940s by WWII pilots (identified as 'Foo fighters'); repeatedly observed and filmed by astronauts and military pilots and classified as Unidentified Aerial-Anomalous Phenomenon. Plasmas are not biological but may represent a form of pre-life that via the incorporation of elements common in space, could result in the synthesis of RNA. Plasmas constitute a fourth state of matter, are attracted to electromagnetic activity, and when observed in the lower atmosphere likely account for many of the UFO-UAP sightings over the centuries."
- Via the abstract of a Research Gate publication (.pdf): Extraterrestrial Life in Space Plasmas in the Thermosphere.
"Plasma-like entities have been filmed congregating in their hundreds, particularly around satellite tethers which generate electromagnetic activity.
They have numerous shapes, travel in different directions, with some moving quickly while others hover in place. They even appear to target or follow each other and sometimes collide, leaving what resembles a plasma-dust trail in their wake.
Co-author Dr Christopher Impey, of the department of astronomy at the University of Arizona, said: “This does not mean these plasmas are alive, or engaging in intelligent purposeful behaviour.
Rather, as documented experimentally, these upper atmospheric electromagnetic plasmas may be engaging in ‘energy cannibalism’ and behaviours referred to as ‘collisionality’ in which they turn, follow, collide, intersect, and, possibly exchange energy.”
- Via a Telegraph article found today: We know what ‘foo fighters’ that buzzed Second World War pilots really were, say scientists. Oddly enough, while we're told earlier in the article that the plasmas are not "alive", later on we find:
"Some of the authors believe that the plasmas may even represent an alternate form of life that is not carbon-based, although others are skeptical.
The team has called for more research studying the plasmas, including sending up satellites which generate electromagnetic pulses equipped with infrared and X-ray cameras to capture the phenomena."
When I came upon the Telegraph article (cited above) this morning, I found myself completely astounded. It brought me back to my early days as a Traveler - the summer of 2017 specifically - after I had spent a full year living in my Nissan sedan, the "black turtle" (or tortoise); photographing mountains, following the ravens, and sleeping (literally) beneath the stars. All things considered it was not a bad life. Nowadays, I see it as a kind of privileged life. But, then, I merely felt like "the (wo)man who fell to earth": an anomaly; dazed & confused, subversive, unwanted and essentially invisible.
I used to blog from libraries in those days. Great places, libraries - the best places in the world if you're a traveler - they accommodate you regardless of who or what you are.
Watching people coming in and out of a library is good practice for a writer. You'll note a number of diverse and fascinating faces drifting through its halls. Some faces radiate intelligence, some don't. But, it doesn't matter. Every one has a story. Every one is like a closed book (but some of them have more intriguing jackets than others).
The best part of my days were either spent at the library, or lying on my car's front seat late at night, watching the stars through my windshield (which I distinctly remember had a small hole in it). New Mexico has great sky views in places... even parking lots. I slept in vacant parking lots off and on throughout that period.
Strangely enough, it was not entirely surprising to me when - for three consecutive midsummer nights - while watching the sky above Bernalillo, I saw weird little lights moving in the distance, seemingly weaving through the many stars like bioluminescent microorganisms. My first thought was: "Wow, my eyes must be really tired!" My second was: "Satellites?" By the second night, after noticing them again - this time, in larger numbers - I knew that what I was seeing was some kind of phenomenon... possibly extraterrestrial... in the sense that the lights didn't "live" on planet earth, they operated in the atmosphere only...
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Morrisey and Bowie - Together & Live
Thursday, August 24, 2023
India on the Moon!