6.06.2025 - Weekly Digest
Paramusings on normality this week. Thanks for indulging me.
6.03.2025
There's a device in this science fiction series I'm reading that involves people being put into long periods of hybernation with instructions to only be woken up if something important happens. It's not a main feature of the story but it's a useful mechanism for the author, allowing him to re-use the same handful of characters across centuries and eons of epic storytelling. Also a common gimmick in space stories in general. All of this rests on an assumption that, if we get ourselves to the point where we're traveling between planets and stars and what-have-you-nots out there in yon cosmos, we'll need to put ourselves to sleep using cryonics to weather the voyage. There are other alternatives, of course - warp speed, generational ships, worm hole portals or whatever - but if we go with the assumption that there's a speed limit and acknowledge our own limitations in approaching it with the tech we have and the way we understand physics, it seems like a reasonable enough practice. Like all cool spec-fic ideas it makes you think about how you would use the tech yourself. Probably a pretty appealing concept to a lot of us these days. The luxury to go to sleep somewhere protected and wake up in a future when technology and civilization have improved sounds pretty good. Also requires a bold leap of faith. I already feel like I've been sitting things out for the last few months and to just nap it off and assume I won't wake up in one of those Matrix pods being fed liquefied human remains by a robotic fly doesn't seem like a great bet.
6.04.2025
Then there's the notion that only your own version of the world exists. Kids believe this, and animals, probably. I know I did. Some people still think this way and it's called solipsism. Don't recommend befriending or voting for them or using their tech products. It's a symptom of having limited imagination or understanding. I remember distinct moments when I was creepily certain I had just popped into existence, fully formed, with all my memories and evidence of the past intact. Ties in with some interesting ideas, once fringe science, multiverses and all that. All the rage in pop culture a while back and another convenient mechanism for messy storytelling. Online I see a lot of concern from people who spend too much time online that the evidence of simulation theory is everywhere, that the world has become 'weird' and 'strange' and doesn't feel real anymore. I agree with the sentiment. I happen to think it has more to do with our brains being rewired by the communication devices we carry around with us and being partially connected to an invisible information net that manipulates us and tries to control our thoughts and behavior. Also a once-frequent sci fi idea now so on the nose I doubt anyone even bothers with it anymore. Then there's the Mayan calendar thing that says the world ended in 2012. All neat ideas. Not sure if it matters if you're still in your own frame of reference though. This universe is wacky enough and there's plenty of room for saga whatever your definition of reality.
6.05.2025
Then there's the Mandela Effect. If you don't know what that is do a quick search right quick for the Berenstein Bears. See? Now you're in the warp hole with the rest of us. The name for the concept comes from an apparent shared assertion that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. It comes with a whole set of collectively reinforced memories of a big funeral and the political fallout and everything. I'm not from that universe, but the Bears thing? Yeah, I know that's wrong. To contribute to the craziness, I just want to point out that the first book in the series was published in 1962, aka known as the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis (at least to some of us). The notion that things got knocked out of wack when the ICBMs started flying and that discrepancy somehow jumped membranes and became part of our world sounds as logical to me as a lot of other things folks take on faith. I prefer to think it's just an example of a time travel screw up, along with the missing cornucopia on the Fruit of the Loom underwear logo. A lot of things wrong with the world could be hung on shitty time travelers, if you think about it. And now you're thinking about it, instead of doing whatever you were supposed to be doing. Good for you.
6.06.2025
The one that intrigues me most concerns unidentified aerial vehicles or whatever acronym they're using these days hanging around facilities that use nuclear energy. Especially missile sites. Loads of credible servicefolk in the US and the former USSR where it was considered normal to drill holes in the ground and fill 'em with long range fissile weapons have reported for decades on what's apparently a pretty common deal: flying saucers hovering around the site and sometimes shutting off the power to the facility while they take a look around. You know how those crazy bastards like to horse around up there. And there are sightings of floaty drone things whenever there's a nuclear spill - there were quite a few around Fukushima, and when the fighting in Europe gets alarmingly close to any of the power plants there's an uptick as well. I like this one because I can spin it to offer hope. Specifically, that there are ETs watching over us who refuse to let us use the most disastrous weapons ever developed, and when you consider there hasn't been a significant mishap or a single battlefield deployment since Nagasaki, it's nice to imagine that deterrence is out of our hands. I'm not sure I buy that humans have enough restraint to keep us from disaster. You can see the aliens' motivation here too: if nukes are powerful enough to blast dimension holes in spacetime and change the name of a pair of children's book authors, they may have a vested interest in us keeping our hands to ourselves. So it's a cynical kind of hope, and it strays into faith in the unknown. I'm aware of that. It's also harmless in that it doesn't have any material effect on how I interact with the world. Just helps me imagine things might not be as scary as they often seem.