Yesterday (S1, D2) was Sunday 09/27, and found us making two trips to our new home bringing bringing a carload of what furniture and boxes we could squeeze into our little car with each trip. Between trips we treated ourselves to a buffet lunch at King Buffet. The wife spoke on the phone with the mover she's lined up for our big move this Saturday, and was very disappointed with the estimated cost, which is much higher than the amount she'd been led to believe.

Today (S1, D3) is Monday 09/28. and the wife is at work; she plans to continue working her part-time job, mornings (08:00 to Noon, M-F) throughout our move. I will be busy on the phone today making arrangements for transferring the utilities at the new place to my name, removing my name from the utilities at this house, setting up the Internet at the new place, calling our landlord of this house and updating him of our new address, the current and projected moving plans, etc. And I'll be calling the leasing agent of our new place with a few questions we have.

We plan to make at least one trip this afternoon bringing a carload of stuff to the new house. And I hope to stop at my bank and the Post Office and notify them of our change of mailing address.

And the adventure continues.

Inbetweeners 26- Zariel's Parasite

So, equally transformative to Lurian's inauguration was Zariel's transformation. As soon as Uzo brought Callie to Zariel's War Room in Avernus, he set things into motion he couldn't possibly comprehend at the time. To review, the parasite inside of Callie resurrected her anytime she died. It also gave her the ability cause grevious harm simply by looking at an opponent (high level toll the dead as an action.) So, she was able to devastate a professional army just as a little girl. Now imagine what the parasite could do inside one of the most formidable combatants in the multiverse.

Zariel knew she simply couldn't take the parasite from Callie and put it into herself. So many things could go wrong. The parasite could not take, or it could take but could take control of Zariel. The magics could interact adversely and cause some sort of unexpected calamity. She also knew that working with such an ancient and powerful form of magic was beyond the ken of anyone in her circle. However, the Interloper had helped her turn the tides of the Blood War with magics and weapons beyond anything she had encountered before. And best of all, he was transactional. So she wrote him a letter, and sent Uzo with the parasite to him. Basically, fix this parasite, weaponize it, and give it to me so that I may use it on the battlefield. Name your price. To Zariel, this was worth any price, because immortality meant certain victory.

So the Interloper considered it. This was certainly within his ability. He examined the parasite. It was an interesting, ancient form of magic. From before Primus established The Weave. However, he immediately noted some corrosive effects. Over time, with each resurrection, it would hollow out its host. Turn them into something... warped. He was able to make some tweaks, suppress its worse effects while maintaining the resurrection capability. The parasite itself could power indefinite resurrections. But the Interloper went further. He wanted to duplicate it. He made it so that anyone chosen could be infected, and they would resurrect on death. However, they could only host the duplicated parasite for a limited time before it completely consumed them and their soul. Mechanically it was one day per hit dice a creature had, and then each resurrection took a day off the counter. So, for example, if Zariel put the duplicated parasite into a bearded Devil, she could send it into combat and since it has 8 hit dice, opponents would have to kill it 8 times to put it down for good. This type of power multiplier on the battlefield would be a game changer, and sacrificing the souls of her soldiers was well worth it. The Interloper, behind the scenes and unbeknowst to his players, sent word directly to Zariel about his findings and his offerings. And he named his price. He wanted Tiamat.

The price was a nonstarter for Zariel. Tiamat was an ancient powerful god, God of Chromatic Dragons. She simply lacked the ability to get him what he wanted. Even if she deployed all of her forces towards Dis, threw everything she had at Tiamat, maybe she could wound her, temporarily bring her down, but there was no way she'd be able to incapacitate her and take her to the Grey Room. Furthermore, the remainder of Hell would certainly intervene. Tiamat served as the ultimate guardian, preventing any demonic incursions from reaching the lower levels. Tiamat had contracts with hundreds of infernal lords who would be bound to come to her aid. Not to mention the chromatics. Swarms of red, black, blue, green and white dragons would come as well. There was no world where this worked. So she simply replied, “It is impossible. What other price can I pay?”

The Interloper was disappointed but not suprised. When he became aware of Tiamat he realized that her power vastly eclipsed anything he encountered. So, she was more the starting point for negotiation. They eventually settled on a consort of Tiamat. Tiamat had five male consorts, Great Wryms of each color. I had this as very powerful ancient dragons, probably like CR 28ish though i never did a statblock. Had I done so, they would have probably been about 50% more powerful than the ancient dragon template for each type. Zariel had to isolate one, incapacitate it and somehow deliver it to the Interloper alive. Again this happened in the background, not during session. But I would say she had to put together a small, elite team. A fully mobilized army would draw too much attention. Fortunately dragons are vain and egotistical, and it may not retreat right away. So she with some of her most trusted and skilled warriors struck. The fighting was fierce and it almost killed her, and killed many of her troops. It was particularly costly because they were going for incapacitation not death, which meant pulling their punches against an incredibly powerful dragon that was using every offensive weapon in its arsenal to take her and her group down. Not sure I ever settled on which color one she took. It probably would have been blue, green or black. Not red because its the strongest or white because its the weakest. Something in the middle. But anyway, she delivered one of the consorts on a platter, at great cost, in return for the prime version of the parasite, modified or “fixed” for her, and then the ability to duplicate it as a temporary enhancement for her troops.

Now, she could fly ahead of her armies and land in the center of a demon army and start tearing them apart. She could attack with reckless abandon, because if she died she'd simply reappear at full health. This sent the enemies into full disarray, just in time for her main host to attack. The Blood War had always had dozens of generals and lords and as many armies hosted. Massive battlelines and formations similar to what you'd see in World War I. Since she made her pact with the Interloper her armies had been marching ahead, a vanguard seeing victory after victory. Now, things were on an entire other level. She completely left behind the bulk of the devil forces and her group began conquering large swaths of Hades. Anytime a force outnumbered them with superior enough numbers, she could simply deploy the duplicate parasite to shock troopers to turn the tide. And though the parasite darkened her a little more than she already was, she more or less remained herself. What she didn't know however, was how the Interloper made the modification.

When the Interloper fixed the parasite, he added a backdoor. Essentially, he maintained the parasite, kept it at bay. In return, he essentially had leverage over Zariel, and could turn it on or off at will. He didn't tell her this, but figured it would be useful down the line if she ever became an issue or he needed to use her. A bigger issue though, one Zariel wasn't aware of at all and one the Interloper either hadn't considered or didn't care about, was that if he was somehow incapacitated, the parasite would revert to its original form. And spoiler alert, this happens later on.

So yeah, Zariel was an unstoppable force before, now she is truly inevitable. However, her newfound power becomes the talk of the Demon Princes, other Lords of Hell, Yugoloth Lords, and even the upper planes and Mechanus begin discussing it. The multiverse is balanced on the constant back and forth of the Blood War, and many would lose their power and station if it were to end. So, Zariel's enemies began to mobilize, plan and plot without directly confronting her. The more power she claimed, the more precarious her position became. But... how could they stop her if she couldn't die?

The only entity in the conflict seemingly not concerned about her new condition was Asmodeus. He was watching. Interested. Ready to see how it played out.

I should also mention her that since Uzo was the one who delivered her the parasite, she wanted to reward him. He received one of the best melee weapon sin the campaign, Paradox. This was a Far Realm relic, not of the Interloper but of exceeding power. She paid the price of a medium sized nation for it, but she treats loyalty well and what reward would be deserving of immortality. So here were the stats:

Paradox Legendary Greatsword (requires attunement, can only be wielded by someone who has died before, anyone who hasn’t attuned to it must make a con save (DC 17), failure and they take 10d6 necrotic damage, success and they take 2d6 necrotic damage and drop the sword either way.

+3 Great Sword

Abilities:

Gets 5 charges per long rest:

Chronocleave- 1 charge: You may select two targets in 10 feet of you. Roll your attack against the target that is harder to hit (AC or dodge or otherwise) If you hit that target, both targets take the damage.

Loop Imprint- 2 charges: When you strike a creature, you can choose to have the damage repeat again on the next turn. This damage is psychic and unavoidable. You must choose before damage is rolled.

Temporal Disjunction- 5 charges: When you strike a creature, you can pull it into a pocket dimension that only you and it exist in for 1 minute. After the minute, you both return as if no time has passed.

Sword recharges automatically if it has at least 2 charges. If it is down to 1 charge, must make a wisdom saving throw DC 15 to recharge it, failure and you must roll an attack against yourself with the sword with advantage. If it has 0 charges, the DC increases to 20 and the attack uses Loop Imprint.

The most interesting ability on it is probably Temporal Disjunction, because it isolates an opponent to either fight one on one, or as Uzo would later use it, is actually a great way to pause and chat with someone without being interfered with. The other abilities are just force multipliers, essentially doubling attack ability. This sword made Uzo into a one hobgoblin war machine. Here is my notes on how it was delivered:

“Uzo- A messenger from Zariel arrives because Xivora is otherwise engaged. Seroth, Emberflesh is a tall, flame-wreathed figure in cracked plate armor. He is fanatically loyal to Zariel… but lacks much personality. He comes with a message “Thank you for your loyalty Uzo, you have delivered me the means to deliver creation from the abyss. I thought you would enjoy this” At this point he produces a prismatic blade that seems to flicker in and out of existence. Similar to something the Interloper would produce but different.. Its own unique signature. “

and then

“After the sword appears, Seroth says with disdain how such an unworthy filfthborn creature shouldn’t have such a mighty weapon worth the price of entire kingdoms. He then mentions that Zariel commanded he offer to fight Uzo, if Uzo so desires to test out his new toy. But warns if he accepts the challenge, Seroth will try with all effort to destroy him. He is unworthy of her grace and divine might. “

Here was Seroth's statblock:

Seroth, Ember-Tongue of Zariel CR 12 Fiend (Devil), Lawful Evil Description: A tall, flame-wreathed figure in cracked infernal plate. His voice burns with zealotry; each word carries the weight of damnation. Once a mortal war-priest who pledged his soul to Zariel for power, he now bears her decrees with ruthless precision.

Stat Block (D&D 5e) AC: 18 (Infernal Half-Plate) HP: 187 (22d8 + 88) Speed: 40 ft., fly 40 ft. (fiery wings) STR 18 (+4) | DEX 16 (+3) | CON 18 (+4) INT 14 (+2) | WIS 16 (+3) | CHA 20 (+5) Saving Throws: Wis +8, Cha +10 Skills: Intimidation +10, Religion +7, Insight +8 Resistances: Fire, Cold, Lightning; Bludgeoning/Piercing/Slashing from nonmagical weapons Immunities: Poison, Charm Condition Immunities: Charmed, Frightened, Poisoned Senses: Darkvision 120 ft., Passive Perception 13 Languages: Common, Infernal, Celestial, telepathy 120 ft.

Traits Fiery Herald. When Seroth speaks, his voice echoes with Zariel's fury. As a bonus action, he may issue a divine command once per short rest. All fiends within 120 feet gain advantage on their next attack and +5 radiant damage for 1 round. Zariel's Brand. Seroth can mark a creature within 60 ft. as a bonus action (once per long rest). For 1 minute, all devils have advantage on attacks against that creature, and the target emits dim red light. Magic Resistance. Advantage on saving throws vs. spells and magical effects.

Actions Infernal Glaive. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (2d10 + 6) slashing damage + 9 (2d8) fire damage. Tongue of Flame (Recharge 5–6). Seroth exhales a line of purging hellfire 60 ft. long, 5 ft. wide. All in line must make a DC 18 Dex save. On fail: 45 (10d8) fire damage and ignite for 1 minute (repeat save at end of turns). On success: Half damage, no ignition. Command of Zariel. Seroth channels his mistress’s will into divine compulsion. 1/day, as an action, he casts mass suggestion (DC 18), flavored as a holy command to kneel, charge, or betray.

Reactions Fiend’s Rebuke. When struck by a melee attack, Seroth may respond with a blast of radiant-tinged hellfire. The attacker takes 10 fire + 10 radiant damage (Dex save DC 16 for half).

Basically he was an optional fight if Uzo wanted to XP grind, but the party had fought a lot lately so Uzo simply ignored him and took the sword. Seroth hung out for a while in the Grey Room before eventually returning to Zariel. On a last note, because I'm not sure where else I'd put this, but the Grey Room at this point had some interesting characters just hanging out. The ghost of Taric was there, as he was trapped. Also the Jailer had been repurposed by the Interloper and now served as a guard. So, the players would sometimes come in and on one the walls would be a giant projection while Seroth, Taric, the Jailer and he watched live footage, for lack of a better word, of Zariel's triumphs on the battlefield. Kind of a little fun side thing for flavor. That reminds me... I'm not sure whatever happened the ghost of Taric, I kind of lost that thread. He might still just be in the Grey Room, or perhaps he's moved on to the afterlife.

Anyway, that's it. Zariel can't die due to the Interloper modified parasite, and Uzo got a new cool sword.

I've read Blindsight recently, being referenced in a lot of recent AI discourse and all, and it really does put into your head the question of: why do we even have self-awareness? It's a very convincing novel in that sense. If we are to actually answer that, though, we'll have to start by making an important distinction first.

It's not about self-awareness

What Blindsight was describing, that part that separates man from animal, is not really about awareness or even self-awareness.

Awareness is, when you look at it, a really simple concept. A body is aware of something touching it because of nervous and chemical signals traveling through it in response to said contact. It's a chain of cause and effect. Being aware of something essentially means that it has influenced you in a way that you get to react to. Really, awareness is a concept that is very close to reactivity. An individual that is more aware is an individual who is more sensitive, and sensitive means that they're reacting, or are able to react, to more things, subtler things, more various things, because they perceive them in a way that enables feedback.

In that sense, even bacteria possess awareness of surroundings (eg. running away from sources of pain) and self-awareness (which they need to self-regulate, self-repair, etc.). Awareness is the ability to receive stimuli as a part of a feedback mechanism. On that note, bacteria already do an admirable job at being aware and self-aware, and it only gets better with increasing life complexity.

And also, as an aside, that story point about pain being only distracting for us is questionable. Pain basically by definition (of unpleasant perception of body damage) is distracting, and centralizing/debilitating in sufficient quantities, just by virtue of being a signal that competes for attention with other signals and being potentially strong enough to flood the zone of perception (including nervous/chemical signaling channels). It gets bad enough that an evolutionary survival strategy for many animals is to simply become insensitive to some common specific sources of pain.

Another very questionable point is the scrambler's (lack of) self-cognition, as narrated in the window question interrogation (essentially a mirror test).

“It was stupid, it was just a—a warm-up exercise, really. I asked it to name the objects in the window.” She laughed softly and without humor. “That's the thing about functional languages, you know. If you can't point at it, you can't talk about it.”

“And what did it say?”

She pointed at Stretch's first spiral: “Polyhedron star Rorschach are present.”

“It missed the scrambler.”

“Got it right the second time. Still, stupid mistake for something that can think rings around a vampire, isn't it?” Susan swallowed. “I guess even scramblers slip up when they're dying.”

That it answers at all proves that the scrambler is capable of abstract conceptualization, so I can scarcely imagine that an organism as complex and intelligent wouldn't have even a primitive idea of self, especially since they display capabilities such as planning and deception, which do require self-conceptualization.

As an aside, scientists like to use mirror tests for discerning self-cognition, but it is a flawed methodology prone to both false negatives (when it fails, it denotes a lack of visual understanding before a lack of self-awareness) and false positives (it's not necessary that it is specifically the animal recognizing itself in the mirror that eg. triggers the cleaning of the mark on their body).

Is this about consciousness?

Okay, but then the REAL question must be, what about consciousness? What about qualia? What about the experience of actually perceiving the world?

We're definitely getting closer here. Like, yeah, all lifeforms necessarily perceive the world in some way, but do they really do it like we do? Do they have some sort of subjective experience of perceiving it? Because we (humans) obviously do, and so that has to come from some sort of Thing or Process that we are doing, yes?

(Fair warning here, next three paragraphs are about my metaphysical views. They're not core to the inquiry, FWIW)

And, as far as I know it, the answer is actually no. We all like to think that this whole qualia thing comes from some kind of observer in the brain, only that's not true, and various schools of thought have gone at length to investigate and disprove it, and if you go looking yourself you may find out by direct experience that there's no observer anywhere. Not in your brain, and not outside. What actually exists is just the raw experience. Life being life, in and of itself.

From what I understand of it, given my experiences, consciousness is a fundamental building block of the universe, that exists before energy like energy exists before matter, and is the thread with which maya is woven; and that the Universe is, in its essence, the act of itself experiencing itself. The Universe is the experiencing itself.

Experience exists before the localized experiencer (or better explained, experience exists in a way that does not require a localized experiencer as we imagine one); what happens with the likes of us, specifically, is that just like a spotlight in a dark room focuses and restricts attention (making the unlit parts of the room too dark comparatively to perceive), or like a whirlpool creates a complex, individuated structure in the flow of the river, so does our nervous system provide a rich and complex and captivating perception ecosystem, such that the resulting impression is of an island of consciousness amidst numbness.

But that's not all; on top of this—the localized, individualized experience—there's something else, related but separate, that accompanies it: the perceived presence/existence of an observer of this experience, what we perceive as The Experiencer, a construct which is commonly called the Ego.

Said ego is, as many lineages and disciplines and philosophers explained at length (including several of Blindsight's own inspirations), a mere illusion, a persistent hallucination, a layering of thought on top of this raw experience, that colors experience with a kind of radial-ity, and a sense of property. Effectively, the experience has shaped itself into conceptualizing an experiencer, The One Who Experiences. As hallucinations go, it's both very widespread and very persistent, afflicting just about the totality of humankind, at the least.

And, after teasing apart all these concepts, at last this is what I would consider the real, genuine target of Blindsight's inquiry. Why does Ego exist, specifically? Why this illusion of an experiencing self? Why this idea of a subject to the object? What gives? Cui prodest? What's the point of it? It is a genuinely interesting question, well worth exploring (in this case, with a blog post).

What is ego

There is a lot that is going on in our body at all times, and Ego occupies only a small portion of it, capturing a filtered, digested stream of the body senses, as well as being the main hub for logical and linear thought, plus odds and ends.

Peter Watts is right in saying that our brain is capable of much more than that, and in fact does just that behind the scenes, constantly coordinating untold amounts of subconscious processes. Our body collects ~a billion of bits of data each second, but what percolates to conscious reasoning is about 10 bits of information per second, a mere pinhole in comparison, which ends up being our narrow gateway to conscious action to boot. This is an expensive process for such tiny bandwidth, so there has to be some really good reason for its existence or it wouldn't stick around evolutionarily, right?

To answer that, we can look first at what it means not to have an ego.

A look at the egoless

We are born without ego. A scant few of us even report remembering the moment when it kicked in, when they gained this central locus of consciousness, generally around 2-3 years of age, and this timeline is also confirmed in studies (including the aforementioned mirror tests). Even then, it's a small, fragile ego, that grows and strengthens with age and experience.

At the same time, we also recognize the years of youth as the most formative, impressionable and delicate years of life. Kids are like sponges and will absorb just about everything that is thrown their way, be it information, life lessons, skills, and whatnot.

There is also another life situation that is recognized as being particularly neuro-plastic and prone to radical changes, and that is the so-called altered states. They can be caused by psychedelics, meditation, trance states, hypnosis, etc. and they are also generally characterized by a diminishing or even absence of ego (the so-called ego death), and essentially (as shown with eg. psychedelics or hypnosis) the less ego there is, the more transformative the experience is (although not necessarily in a positive direction; vulnerability can still go both ways).

Looking at this, there is a strong correlation between absence of ego and mental impressionability, and it doesn't take much to argue for this being a tie of causation.

Our nervous system is highly intelligent because it is tremendously adaptive, capable of learning entire new skills within weeks or months, and this happens because it is made of independent, mercenary agents (neurons) that are constantly on the lookout to optimize their functioning, looking for maximum payoff for minimum work. Minimizing surprise (ie. having a good predictive model of the world) is the main strategy to accomplish this, which means they are very eager to learn. These neurons are highly responsive and adaptive, and this capacity is not lost as the years advance; it is always possible to learn new things at any age, even if the ability to do so can become less accessible as the years go by (sometimes requiring said altered states to unlock).

But then we can also see that, as much as this receptivity is a natural state of our nervous system, it is not always desirable; our capacity to adapt can lead to overfit if not moderated. Our impressionability can lead to experiences that impact us too much too quickly, and we can end up developing a maladaptation (ie. trauma) from them. It is precisely our great intelligence and receptivity that gives us such a stark vulnerability.

This isn't about dealing with Nature

Something to take very careful note of is that ego has very little to do with Nature (defined here as the non-human and non-human-made world we interact with). In fact, one can experience their sense of self entirely disappearing once they live without human contact for prolonged periods. That's because the normal adaptability of our minds is basically all upside in Nature. A stream here means water here. A tiger here means danger here. It's all just so straightforward.

Nature may be harsh and cruel sometimes, but it is, at some level, entirely honest; the closest it reaches for deception or deceit is mimicry and stealth (at least as far as interactions between man and Nature are concerned). There's none of that shit we got going on amongst ourselves. It's refreshingly terse. With small exceptions such as physically hiding, it doesn't hide what it is from you and you don't have to hide what you are from it. It's an uncomplicated relationship. Plants do what they mean and mean what they do. Same for animals.

It's possible for an impressionable intellect (such as that of animals) to develop a phobia in Nature, but evolution generally considers this an acceptable trade-off to a receptive mind.

You can trust Nature to give you honest feedback every time. Nature will not reward you for false beliefs.

There's none of that stuff where people don't say what they mean and don't mean what they say, or they say one thing and behave in another, or are just straight up trying to manipulate you, and you just cannot take things at face value, and often it is an active disadvantage to read too much into things, and often they require you to play along with falsehoods (in the subjective sense of something we disagree with/don't believe). People play social games with one another, by which I mean that their interactions are heavily moderated, if not actively insincere.

The ego is a social buffer

When someone from the outside is actively trying to manipulate us, naïve behaviour would lead to us playing to their tune, generally to our disadvantage. Sometimes something they say or do has to be disbelieved, and not absorbed. Sometimes their provocations have to be resisted, and not played along. Sometimes one has to actively resist not being distracted or swayed, and keep to their original idea or plan. Sometimes we are called to act within a framework that would be detrimental for us to actually believe deep down.

All of this can be satisfied with some base resistance to outside inputs, a buffer zone that distances outside events from our ability to absorb them and self-modify in reaction, a thin bottleneck of information that only permits very limited data to come through, pre-processed and pre-digested in a way that allows for easy refutation, dismissal, disregard, or detached manipulation.

Being that thin, 10 bits/second pinhole into reality is precisely the main function of the Ego.

Once a species' intellect becomes powerful enough, if they are willing to manipulate each other, they become too dangerous for each other's own good, and countermeasures have to be deployed. Ego is such a countermeasure.

The ego is a filter for the outside

We can also explain ego with a more physical metaphor: a living being depends on many different complex parts to operate and survive (organelles in a cell, organs in a complex body), but generally these parts are optimized for efficiency of function and not at all for toughness. For just about every living being, enough exposure of the insides to the outside ends up being fatal. The outside is full of variations (in temperature, composition, etc.) and disturbances (mechanical, chemical, bacterial, electromagnetic, you name it) that are very much not in the acceptable range of operation for the squishy organs on the inside, and so a fundamental component of any organism is a protective wrapping that separates the inside and the outside. It has to be porous, because the inside depends on ongoing exchange of energy and matter with the outside to survive, but this communication between the two sides has to be very limited and extremely regulated.

So it is with individual cells: they have a cellular membrane, which keeps in what's meant to be inside, keeps out what's meant to be outside, but also allows for select exchange of energy and substances for the ongoing prosperity of the cell.

So it is with complex beings: they all possess some sort of protective wrapping (be it skin or leather or bark) that protects them from most of everything happening outside, with select openings for exchange of nutrients, information, and side products.

So it is with the ego. Considering that our outside environment can be hostile to an intellect that's too impressionable, especially among peers, we develop a filter that doesn't let most information of a certain kind through, and only allows a small selection to trickle to our subconscious psyche after careful vetting. We are capable of interacting-with and parsing the world even subconsciously without hassle, but the write-access to our psyche is very carefully rationed, and wrapped in layers of metaphorical red tape.

The ego is a language interface

There are two main modes of operation for the ego: symbol and language.

Symbol means the compression of events and entities of life into shorthand signifiers. When parsing the eyes' vision, where the rest of our psyche would read beautiful regions of color, physics objects, or even impressions of emotion (from expression, pose, movement, etc.), what our ego sees is a chair, a cat, a businessman, a to-do list, a sunset. It is such a dominant reading that often people have to unlearn running this ego-based classification all the time in order to actually see things properly (and be able to eg. actually draw them)

Language is another mode that the ego employs, a type of compression specifically for use of symbolic communication between people. Since the ego mainly accepts very limited input at a social level, language is a way to fit what we want to transmit through such a small aperture. Naively, there would be methods of communication that could transmit much more and more quickly (the way a picture can say a thousand words, or how much one could parse from just the way another moves, etc.) but generally such streams of information don't get channeled into any process that would lead us into changing our mind, unless we decide to specifically pay attention and “decode” them (ie. digest them into language and symbol so that they can (potentially) pass through the ego and out the other side).

The realm of Ego, thus, is also the realm of Metaphor and Narrative. Metaphor as in drawing connections between symbols that are only indirectly (and not directly) inspired by our observations of the world; and Narrative as the fundamental way in which we fit the dynamicity of life into the box of language. Our ability to tell a story coincides with our ability to describe the world as it lives and becomes (in the form of language). At the level of ego, what we believe about ourselves is the story of our life, and what we believe about other people is the story of their life. One of the main functions of the ego is thus that of the Storyteller, that of being able to digest events into stories, and to be able to parse and absorb ready-made stories, since this is the ego's main channel for appreciating and learning about the variety and wonders of life.

But why the internal focus on ego?

So okay, this is all well and good, and the ego fulfills many important functions to those of us who live in a society, but there's still the question of, why the mental fixation on ego? Why do we believe we are the ego, and why do we relegate the rest of our functions to subconscious operation, where they may not even be heard when the time comes?

To my understanding, the reasons are twofold.

The first is that in order for us to participate in this social game of deception, we must put up a front, for a variety of reasons: One is to hide our true intentions to other people, and to simulate reactions to other people's actions/manipulations, both to essentially throw people off our game. In order to do this, we craft a persona, a mask that hides our true visage and becomes our social interface instead. Even when maliciousness does not enter the picture, we still end up having to moderate ourselves for most social interactions, and so the mask(s) stay on.

These masks hide our inherent complexity and replace it with a simpler, more programmatic, more legible façade, which makes us more predictable actors, which is useful for purposes of gaining trustworthiness towards cooperation, and for allowing manipulation of each other to be channeled in ways that don't have profound psychic repercussions.

These masks are fundamental to our continued social success, to the point that we go to great lengths to ensure their continual functioning. And, as we can see with actors, one of the main ways to “sell” a character is to get lost into the character, to become the character. And so do we, losing ourselves in our performance and becoming a person, the individual that self-identifies with the mask and regales the world with their life-long performance. All the world's a stage.

These masks, being simple and symbolic, also allow others to parse us in compressed, symbolic terms, further justifying the use of symbols as main reasoning block. (It turns out that this mode of mental operation also makes you Smart in other interesting and tangible ways, such as abstract reasoning and complex problem-solving, but most often the main drive for developing this kind of framework is the evolutionary advantage to tight social dynamics.)

The second reason is that the main resource that the ego is dealing with, and redistributing, is attention. Our capacity to learn (and change) correlates directly with the direction and quality of our attention, and in order to properly ration learning, attention has to be carefully directed, or rather diverted. The ego, then, becomes itself the default locus of attention, pulling it away from the world and into a filtered representation, in the same way we could tune out someone talking to look at our phone giving a live transcript of what they are saying instead.

The unerring focus on the ego, then, is the main mechanism by which the ego fulfills at all its purpose. For us to continually focus on the ego, and look through the ego's pinhole, is precisely the way it can function at all as a filter. When we move our focus away from ego and its ways, we return to a world that is not paved over with symbol and language, the original world of childlike wonder and animal existence, of raw color and sensation and pulsion, which we are frequently required instead to reduce and diminish both ways.

The ego is an inside filter too

This combination also has an unfortunate consequence: as we identify with, and focus primarily on, the ego, we end up dis-identifying with the rest of ourselves. The conscious self is something that “we” do, while the rest of what goes on inside ourselves is something that “the body” does, or “the brain” does. In playing its part, the ego believes it is in control, which is quite ironic, since most of the actual decisions are in fact made by the subconscious bodymind, often leaving the ego with the mere task of rationalizing them and presenting them as its own.

Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger. Too late! The electricity's already halfway down your arm. Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self 'chose' to, for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an afterthought— to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as the person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other.

(While Libet's Readiness Potential findings have been refuted, it remains that most of our primary drivers are subconscious (eg. emotions) and that a main mode of operation of the ego is rationalizing unconscious decisions.)

Ego is, in essence, an act of dissociation, in its most widespread and enduring form.

This separation is built-in to the ego's functioning because the point of the ego is to be separate from the inner workings. In order to make distance between the outside and the inside, it itself has to be at arm's length from both. Too close to the outside and the individual becomes too impressionable; too close to the inside and the individual becomes too spontaneous/impulsive and sincere.

For example, what we observe in most savants (those with peculiar abilities to access their own subconscious functions more freely) is that generally they display social ineptitude and/or hypersensitivity, denoting some malfunction of the ego process. To put it with the membrane metaphor, it's like they had bits of their organs sticking outside of their skin, with all that it entails.

This is also why “be yourself” is such a simple, intuitively understandable piece of advice in theory but it ends up being complicated to put in practice: any self-expression is by default mediated by ego, and as such learning to be yourself actually means carving a new hole in the mask through which a new form of expression can flow.

Most people can consciously perceive the subconscious influences, nudges, and commands given, by way of feelings of all kinds: emotions, intuitions, gut feelings, hunches, and more. This grants the ego much-needed input from the rest of the mental council, and effectively grants the ego the ability to steer its own behaviour and escape the baser, more programmatic flowcharts of its persona.

This is also the reason why many “rational” thinkers are actually some of the most irrational people you can find: in focusing obsessively on logical, conscious thought, they end up reinforcing their ego and shutting out most of everything else, becoming people with no insight into their own emotional states and prone to extreme rationalization, and generally very difficult to change the minds of, despite their own claims to the contrary.

Conversely, for people sufficiently aligned with their own interiority, “because I feel like it/felt something” can be all the justification necessary, with trying to rationalize/explain it being a superfluous and sometimes even detrimental step, since the compression into symbol and language is inevitably lossy and can be misleading. This is the thrust behind Voltaire's quote “Men argue, Nature acts”.

Could the scramblers be egoless?

I've discussed before how it made little sense for the scramblers to be without self-awareness, but how about egoless? I'd say almost. It's easy to imagine them as creatures with little energy to waste on social games and very focused on a limited set of objectives (such as guarding the Rorschach), and as such they would have little need for language, for storytelling, for posturing, for hiding themselves, and so on. As such, they have no use for much of an ego, aside from maybe the barest essentials of knowing one's station and being able to coordinate with others, if even that. We've seen them being capable of deception and plan formulation, so it is something that they have, or at least have the potential capability for developing on the spot, but that they likely don't use very much or very often, and nothing attention-centralizing like we're used to.

Could we be egoless?

The ending of Blindsight describes a world of (essentially) egoless people to which the protagonist is soon to return, of people unlocked and freed from the burdens of having to layer this extra filter on top of everything they feel or think.

Could such a thing happen to us? Is there a future for us in which we do away with the ego primacy and unlock using 100% of the brain?

The base reality of the current situation is that ego (in its most most limiting and self-deceptive acceptions) is something that we do to each other. For ego to disappear from human consciousness (or even just lose the grip on the wheel) would require a profound shift in human culture, moving away from our fear-based antagonism born of the feeling of separation from each other, and into the felt and lived sense that we are all deeply connected, and that much like what really matters to the individual cells is the life of the organism, what really matters to our individual lives is the prosperity and richness of our ecosystems, both physical and psychic. It would take a sea change, rooted in notions such as our collective oneness and wholeness, awareness of our fundamental divinity, and operating in unconditional love as default.

It is a rather big ask, which is why it's also useful in the meantime to think of some useful work-arounds.

What to do about it

1. The first, base advice, of course, is to be conscious of the ego and its role as mediator between outside and inside. To act outside of the ego requires an outside view of it, and so being (and staying!) aware of what it is and what it does is the prerequisite for much that follows. A visualization exercise I found useful for this is imagining the ego as a protective skin that barriers your interiority from outside influence.

2. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the force that restricts, that dissociates, that stiffens, that overfits and makes things brittle. Fear is the main driver of the ego's shortcomings. Fear can become a valuable friend and messenger with time and practice, but in the meantime there's much to unclench and a lot of tension to release.

3. Since the ego is mostly a mask between the Self and the outside world, it's worth getting to know in more detail who's sitting behind the mask. And since one is Large and Contains Multitudes, one of the more naïve approaches to dealing with this is to turn the social machinery inward and conceptualize the Self as a plurality, but without the need to stick to precise boundaries or definitions. I called this framework “fluid plurality” once upon a time.

4. It is also very important to understand that the subconscious does not primarily deal in words, or even symbols. Words are a very coarse and imprecise tool, and wielded incorrectly, they amount to violence to those impressionable inner parts of yours, so be careful! Learn the “language” first, listen to feelings, pay attention to your imagination and to dreams, appreciate how much of your subconscious mind is actually literally the body, get to really understand emotions. Lurk moar.

5. There's no shortage of techniques around to learn to interact with the subconscious, just a search away. Perhaps this was not needed back then, but we do have a use for them now. Very famous is Jung's active imagination, or any variation of using the imagination as a common ground for interaction. Also, we do possess a tendency to externalize and project those inner parts of ourselves in order to reveal them, so one might as well make use of this property. Some made do with using a hand puppet, a surprising number of people use plushies for this, but even just imagining a Guy or two and listening to what they say, or writing it down and panning it for messages can be a technique.

6. On that note, the modern body of work on plurality/tulpamancy can be useful to kick-start your toolbox and conceptual framework for dealing with yourself below the surface. To note, there is no need to go through the explicit creation of a tulpa or (persistently) self-identify as multiple selves to make use of most of this; if you sometimes talk to yourself, or can imagine two Guys talking to each other in your head, it doesn't need to get much ontologically deeper than that. As a warning, these are powerful tools and not entirely fit for purpose, so handle with caution and respect. Plus, plurality is already a spectrum, and identity is fluid. Don't sweat it. (As an example of a particularly productive but low-stakes tool, there is conceptualizing ego as an interface that more subconscious parts of you make use of.)

7. In fact, the Buddhist conception of tulpa is also very useful: that of an archetypal thoughtform of divinity used (eg. in meditation) in order to focus and shape ourselves. We all are driven by powerful archetypes, and learning to identify them and their effects within ourselves, and then harnessing them, is some of the most important inner work one can do.

8. Your subconscious is vastly more effective and powerful than the conscious ego when it comes to proper decision-making. This is where the various practices of manifestation/visualization come from, as methods to communicate specific intentions to the subconscious, which is where they get to matter. Aside from the point that you can just have a proper relationship between conscious and subconscious self with practice, which can work out much better (especially coming initially from the limited perspective of ego), the main qualities of messages that actually get through are clarity, coherence, and focus (without tension). Any other details to the techniques are just tricks to get these qualities in place.

9. My personal recommendation is to prioritize harmony (in a musical sense) within the self. Allow disagreement but let every voice be acknowledged. Be understanding of differing viewpoints, but push back on victimization. Be gentle, but firm when necessary. Work to be more than the sum of the parts. Come from the right place, whether it's different every time or the same every time, depending on the moment.

10. Love is the language that will carry you the farthest here. I've talked at some length on what I mean specifically by Love, for those interested.

11. One fundamental lesson of enlightenment is that everything you need is already inside you. “Eat when hungry, sleep when tired.” Listening to yourself carefully and acting accordingly is the whole of the Law. Hold on to the center. Do your best to maintain this channel clean, and ego on the thin side. The daily maintenance of your connection to your deeper Self is the core of the spiritual practice.

De Bedweter ; Cöda 4091x

Als ik slaap weet ik alles, hoe het moet wat het doet, wanneer en hoe goed ik weet waar ik naar toe moet werken hoeveel palen er horen te staan in de perken je hoeft me niets te vertellen als ik slaap ik weet precies wat me te doen staat maar zodra ik wakker word ben ik het kwijt ken ik het verschil niet tussen lunch en ontbijt dan zit ik altijd met de handen in het haar voortdurend komt vanalles op maar niks klaar maar gelukkig na iedere raadselachtige dag komt het mooie moment waarop ik naar bed mag in bed weet ik alles weer beter dan de rest ben ik dirigent en alle spelers van het orkest als ik droom dan krijg je mij nooit klein ben ik de meester genezer van elk type pijn dan word ik toch wakker sta min of meer op maar er zit alleen maar rommel in mijn kop kijk naar de broodtrommel met open mond ik weet niet eens meer waarom ik opstond dan na weer zo'n dag vol geheimzinnigheid lig ik weer daar waar ik iedere dans leid in droomland ben ik de ware grote baas en overal daarbuiten een enorme dwaas kon ik iedere dag maar op bed doorbrengen dan kon ik iedere ontwikkelde strijd winnen de meest gewenste mens zijn overal waar ik kom en op elke overbelichte plek doven ze de zon omdat ik anders waarschijnlijk zou ontwaken en daardoor zou iedereen van streek raken als ik in bed lig is dat ook allemaal normaal geef ik de zin aan elk opborrelend verhaal maar ik slaap te weinig om dit te bereiken wakker ben ik al blij dat ik in de spiegel kan kijken en mezelf daarin wel eens kan herkennen en dit harde feit daarna niet ga ontkennen in bed heb ik al deze 1001 problemen niet vandaar dat je mij zo weinig buiten de slaapkamer ziet.

Welterusten

I dreamt of torrential rain in the twilight of evening, and I was standing outside very willingly drenched. The air felt thick and warm, therefore being soaking wet felt like a non issue. When was the last time anyone simply stood in the rain and felt it envelope their entire being? Are we so opposed to feeling primal in nature? I am sure there is an evolutionary explanation for this, so I shall continue. As I stood there I felt deep within my body a rumble I did not realize was thunder until a flash of light caught the corner of my eye. The vibration stayed with me until it settled into my heart. I became frightened then, worried I may have been struck by lightning and this was all a damp in-between state of consciousness (which it very well was as it is a dream to begin with), so I calmly walked inside my home that did not look like my home, but it must have been because my loved ones were looking at me with concern. I closed the door behind me and looked through the window to a scene I was not expecting. Off in the distance, three violent swirling pillars of gray carrying with them dust and debris were dancing around one another. My body suddenly felt cold. I glanced down at my hands that now felt stiff and numb. I raised them in front of me, level with my eyes to get a better look as I could not believe it. The tips of my fingers were purple almost to the point of total blackness. I had not realized how long I was standing outside in the rain, nor how piercingly cold it turned in an instant. When I was outside life seemed so peaceful and soft. I wanted to go back, but the danger was too real for me to risk changing things back to how they were. Here is where the dream becomes too hazy to remember. I only remember feeling dread and thinking to myself how quickly things could change from serene to apocalyptic. When I finally woke I was confused to see a bright day shining through my bedroom window, the azure sky radiant without a single cloud obscuring it. No rain had come here, clearly. No tornados. My confusion turned to relief, yet there was a minuscule fear creeping into my mind that perhaps the dream was a premonition. How could my dream and waking life be so intensely dichotomized if not to show me something?

This week, a conversation with a client inspired my latest spiral of thinking. A lot of people I work with, and a lot of people I know in general, have a deep belief that they are not “deserving” of positive things in life, like joy, safety, relationship security, and so on. I’ve felt this way myself plenty of times. What does it mean, though, to deserve something, especially something that is positive and helpful? Can we deserve the bad things that happen to us? Who is it, exactly, that’s dishing out these rewards and punishments, anyway? I’m not sure these questions are even meaningful in the first place. But let’s chase this rabbit. 

Ok, here goes a most trite cliche: the dictionary (Merriam-Webster, in this case) defines deserve  as “to be worthy of; merit; to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital.” Given that, who then deserves to be happy or safe or loved? And who doesn’t? Who deserves a small rock to always be in their shoe and to never be able to find the cool side of the pillow? Now, I’m certainly not the first person to ever consider these sorts of ideas, and finer philosophers and theologians than me have thought about reward and punishment for centuries. I’d like to skip the theology altogether, and honestly I doubt what I’m writing rises to the level of philosophy as such. But here it is: how does the average rando understand sweeping ideas like the deserving of goodness or ill, reward and punishment? 

My instinct here is that human beings deserve a certain level of happiness or contentedness simply for the fact that we are human. I don’t mean that everything in life will be perfect or that there will be no suffering because that’s simply not reality. And after all, some adversity can push us to do more, learn more, reach a different level. I think everyone deserves to have moments of enjoyment, creativity, and safety, as much as is possible. Yes, even that guy. And her. And them. I don’t think there is anyone inherently unworthy of positive experiences, though I often sit with people who feel this way about themselves. 

Less often do I sit with people who feel that there are others who don’t deserve positivity. However, there is certainly a lot of discussion about this in our broader culture. From all sides, there are people blathering about why this certain individual or group of folks are The Problem. And being The Problem, these people deserve any awful thing that comes their way. It’s a bit simplistic, and it brings up simplistic solutions. If The Problem is eliminated, we will all be happy again. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work this way. I also wonder if The Problem gets to experience contentedness, perhaps they will be less, well, problematic. 

Who deals out all this contentedness and suffering, anyway? God? Great. (I said I was going to veer away from theology. This was a lie.) Humans can also reward and punish other humans, and this can happen intentionally or not. Is there some other mechanism at play? Maybe karma, which doesn’t work the way most Western people think it does, but it provides a mechanism for determining who deserves what. All of these ideas about cosmological reward and punishment assume that if we all just behave ourselves, good things will happen, but everyone I know has pondered why bad things happen to good people. I also frequently ask the opposite: why do good things happen to bad people? There is no simple formula for this. 

I’m therefore back to my original premise, which is that everyone deserves and should be able to experience joy, safety, love, simply because they are human. No behavioral requirements, no gifts from the universe or a deity. No need to earn good experiences. There are other reasons to be a good person and act the right way, but the idea that you might be rewarded with the feeling of joy or peace shouldn’t be one of them. It’s enough to be human. Being human is hard enough, anyway, so why not embrace the idea that all of us should have a baseline of security and at least some measure of happiness? 

Can we want this for ourselves and for others, even for the people we really can’t stand? What makes any individual happy will vary, of course. Still, what would it be like to start from the assumption that people can seek the things that bring them joy, and that that can be the foundation of life rather than its end goal? I’m not even sure that I allow myself to feel deserving of happiness. I wonder if I can embrace the idea of happiness as a baseline. I wonder what might be different in my life if I did.

Modeling the Standalone Value of Plug-In Solar in Northern Virginia

When Virginia passed House Bill 395, allowing plug-in solar systems up to 1,200 W starting January 1, 2027, it created a distinct class of distributed generation. Unlike traditional rooftop net-metered arrays, plug-in solar operates under strict physical and regulatory guardrails: it connects directly to a standard household branch circuit, bypasses utility interconnection review, and is explicitly excluded from net metering.

In Virginia, plug-in solar is strictly “use-it-or-lose-it.” Any generation not consumed behind your electric meter at the exact instant of production flows back into the distribution grid without credit.

This raises an immediate practical question for Northern Virginia homeowners and renters: Does an unbuffered 1,200 W plug-in system deliver enough real-world bill reduction to justify its upfront cost?

To answer this, I modeled a year of generation using historical weather and insolation data from Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia (August 1, 2025 – July 31, 2026), paired against my actual split-phase residential load data downloaded from Dominion Electric Virginia.

The Fallacy of the “Average Day”

Financial models for solar often rely on annual averages. Over the modeled 12-month period, Bailey’s Crossroads received 1,568.57 kWh/m² of total daily solar insolation, translating to a daily mean of 4.30 kWh/m².

Note: This is the maximum possible energy that could be captured by a system, however solar system efficiency results in only being able to capture about ~15-20% of the solar energy.

A daily average of 4.30 kWh/m² might suggest a steady, predictable stream of energy (kWh). The real distribution tells a different story.

Metric	Insolation (kWh/m²)
Maximum	8.58
95th Percentile	7.73
75th Percentile (Q3)	6.07
50th Percentile (Median)	4.09
25th Percentile (Q1)	2.64
5th Percentile	1.12
Minimum	0.30

(Note: Visualizing the daily swing from 0.30 to 8.58 kWh/m² makes it obvious why designing around a simple mean fails.)

Sunlight arrives in feast-or-famine cycles, driven by seasonal changes and weather impacts to useful daylight, as well as changes in ambient temperatures impacting the silicon photovoltaic panels efficiency converting the irradiance into usable electricity.

Three Days, Three Realities

To evaluate how a standard 1,200 W array (plugged into Leg 1 of a standard 120/240V split-phase service) performs against household demand, consider three specific days from the model.

1. The Winter Floor: January 10, 2026

Heavy cloud cover, short daylight window, low ambient temperature.

On heavily overcast winter days, available irradiance collapses. On January 10, the array produced just 0.357 kWh DC, resulting in 0.339 kWh AC delivered to the household after inverter conversion losses.

• Household Context: Total household demand was 22.13 kWh (11.07 kWh on Leg 1).
• Grid Export: 0.00 kWh (0%).
• Demand Offset: The system offset 3.1% of Leg 1 demand, or 1.5% of total household energy.

There is zero waste here—every watt generated is consumed instantly by baseline appliances—but the raw offset is negligible.

2. The Spring Surplus Paradox: March 28, 2026

High irradiance, cool air temperatures 50-60°F (10-16°C), low household load.

March 28 represents prime operating conditions: high insolation paired with cool ambient temperatures that keep panels operating near peak electrical efficiency. The 1,200 W system produced 8.956 kWh AC, losing only 0.037 kWh to inverter clipping.

• Household Context: Mild weather meant no heating or cooling; total household consumption was just 10.05 kWh (5.03 kWh on Leg 1).
• Demand Offset: The array provided 2.704 kWh toward Leg 1 demand, covering 53.8% of that circuit's daily energy.
• Grid Export: 6.252 kWh (69.8%) flowed backward out of the home.

Under HB 395, this 6.25 kWh export earned exactly $0.00. It served neighboring loads on the local transformer while providing zero financial return to the system owner.

3. The Midsummer Thermal Penalty: July 4, 2025

Clear skies, high peak sun, ambient high temperature of 103°F.

July 4 delivered strong insolation (7.47 kWh/m²), well above the annual average. Under Standard Test Conditions (77°F / 25°C), a 1,200 W array would run near capacity for several hours. Instead, the system generated 6.699 kWh AC.

Why didn't generation peak at 1,200 W? Thermal derating.

Photovoltaic silicon exhibits a negative temperature coefficient of maximum power, typically degrading output by -0.35% to -0.45% per degree Celsius above 25°C. On a 103°F / 39.4°C summer afternoon, roof-level or balcony panel cell temperatures would routinely surpass 65°C (149°F), shedding 15% to 20% of rated nameplate capacity.

• Household Context: Air conditioning and continuous charging of the EV drove total household demand to 64.03 kWh (32.02 kWh on Leg 1).
• Grid Export: 0.00 kWh (0%).
• Demand Offset: The system covered 20.9% of Leg 1 demand (10.5% of total household demand).

EV charging was 1,440 W continuous throughout the day until after sunset, meaning that every kilowatt-hour generated by the 1,200 W array was consumed behind the meter. Note: EV charging is really only on one household leg but for this analysis it was split evenly between the two legs.

The Annual Economics: Does Standalone Plug-In Solar Pay Off?

A single day in March might make plug-in solar look inefficient, but energy economics depend on the entire 365-day balance sheet.

When modeling the full year against actual 30-minute interval smart meter data:

• Total Annual AC Generation (1,200 W system): 1,958 kWh
• Direct Self-Consumed Energy: 1,015 kWh (51.5%)
• Uncredited Grid Export: 943 kWh (48.20%)

Payback Calculation

In Northern Virginia, Dominion Energy’s residential Schedule 1 all-in rate sits at roughly $0.172 per kWh (including base generation, distribution, and fuel adjustments).

1. Annual Retail Savings: 1,015 kWh * $0.172 / kWh = $174.58

2. Capital Expenditure (CapEx): A quality, compliant UL 3700-certified 1,200 W balcony kit (three ~400 W panels, integrated microinverter, mounting hardware, and outdoor-rated disconnect cord) retails for roughly $1,000.

3. Simple Payback Period: $1,000 (system cost) / $174.58 (savings per year) = 5.73 years

Even without net metering credits and discarding more nearly 50% of production, the standalone 1,200 W system pays for itself well within the standard 20-to-25-year lifespan of standard solar hardware. For renters and homeowners alike, it serves as a viable, low-friction tool to reduce electric bills.

The total electricity consumption over the analytical period was 6,737 kWh. The 1,015 kWh self-consumed energy represents approximately 15% of total electricity used. If all of the generated electricity could have been self-consumed this would have represented approximately 29% of total energy usage, a not-insignificant increase in value.

The Unresolved Dilemma

While the baseline economics work, the data exposes an obvious structural inefficiency:

1. Summer and winter production are suppressed—winter by short, overcast days, and summer by thermal derating right when air conditioners demand peak power.

2. Spring production is heavily wasted, with roughly 70% of generation dumped back into the grid uncredited because midday baseloads on a single leg are too small to absorb it.

The standalone system works, but it leaves substantial energy on the table. In the next post, I examine what happens when you introduce behind-the-meter storage: Can a small, modular battery capture that 70% spring surplus and shift it into evening peak hours—and does the added hardware justify its cost?

There are occasions when I sit down to journal, and my mind goes blank, and this is one of those moments when my head is a logjam of thoughts, memories, and a myriad of other things that have yet to be sorted, categorized, questioned, reasoned, tested, processed, and so on. I think this is the mind’s way of signaling overwhelm, and I’ll heed the warning, floating among the floundering detritus, neither pushing nor pulling.

#Intermundia

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By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

Créditos

© 2026 Juanma Menéndez

Esta obra está licenciada bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0).

Esto significa que puede ser compartida, copiada, adaptada y distribuida en cualquier medio o formato, incluso con fines comerciales, siempre que se dé el crédito adecuado al autor.

JOURNAL 27 septembre 2026

LE PACTE DES SŒURS

Aujourd'hui on s'est réunies à kabukichô, toutes les 8. C'était grave et un moment intense pourtant.

Nous avons conscience qu’à travers la disparition de #shieko et la volonté de nous cacher le plus de choses y compris même le corps de notre amie, c'est nous toutes qui sommes visées, comme m’a dit le frère de shieko, c’est notre faute avec nos idées de merde. Une vengeance ? Nous le pensons.

Mais nous avons décidé de nous unir définitivement comme une bande de yakuzas, exactement. Quand une sera atteinte les 7 autres seront là. Nous avons décidé après réflexion et d’un accord commun et volontaire (celle qui refuserait avait le droit de se retirer) et unanime que nous étions sœurs.

La disparition de shieko est notre fondement et c’est son esprit qui reste avec nous qui est le témoin de notre engagement, pour toujours. Seule elle pourrait nous relever de notre serment.

A. la cosaque venue de la lointaine Crimée Asu la reine de comédie Midori la douce Yôko la timide Izumi la rougissante Hayame aux larges épaules Ka chan la sérieuse et moi la petite souris nous nous tenons debout ensemble

Le patron a offert un saké de Fukushima qui ne sera plus jamais brassé Nous l'avons bu chacune le dédiant à shie qui était là aussi. Une bougie désormais brûlera pour elle ici chaque jour. Le patron pleurait. Nous aussi pleurions, mais droites. Ensemble nous ne nous laisserons pas abattre, jamais.

We’re talking mentally ill

In the hospital, in school, at work, at shows, in the military, everywhere, even online, mentor-type personalities have told me, “You’d do better if you weren’t mentally ill.” My answer to that is, “No shit, Sherlock.”

You’d be better at what you are trying to do if you weren’t mentally ill..

Not long ago, a friend online and a mixer I worked with told me, “You’d be a lot better at music without mental health issues.” He was trying to be nice. But engineer-types have a hard time there. It stuck in my craw. I am wrong for that. But he also should not have said it. I doubt I will get as much from him. He doesn’t care. I’m crazy, or whatever.

I have a dream

It’s important to me because I dream about being taken seriously as a person and patient. When tech-types or capitalist-types dismiss me for being nuts, they are the ones actually being nuts. But good luck telling them that.

One of many important timelines

If you can’t see how the world has been propelled forward by the study of psychology and psychiatry (and set back too), allow me to elucidate; here is just one timeline of early institutions and asylums. If folks got out of line, they got put away. What do you think the technician is saying when he says, “if it wasn’t for his mental illness…” He’s saying, “he will never be a serious part of the music scene.” Thanks, tech. I got enough diagnoses. I can do without that one too.

Meanwhile, at the house.

“I’d like it better if it wasn’t so busy,” what I found myself saying to artwork I was attempting. Busy can be good. But I was going for simple. So I wasn’t saying the art was bad, I was stating my preference. That’s okay, with art. People, it’s different. People change, know things they don’t say, don’t know things they do say. They are malleable in a way a work of art is not. People often grow. They can get better or worse since you last saw them. They can learn, they can forget. To write a whole human off because they act weird, especially for their music, is called bias.

When you are hospitalized as a mental patient, it’s easy to experience bias against other patients. No one gets out alive.

I overreacted, sure. However, I am not dealing with a mental health bias today. So, I’ll take the overreacting. As a mental health patient, it is especially painful when I notice my own bias. I try not to do it, but I am a human.

The betrayal of it all.

To be honest, it feels like betrayal as a mental health patient. It never comes from folks I thought of as enemies. Only friends and coworkers show their bias. Maybe they feel safe and let their guard down. What they do is reveal how wrongly I thought they thought of me. I feel like a fool. That hurts my feelings. Conflict ensues. Relationship toast. This cycle here is my social life in a nutshell.

But Keri, she does it perfectly.

Why it works with Keri is respect. I do not get that from the world. Keri wraps me in it. I act dumb around Keri. I even experience dysphoric anger and hypomania. I probably say the dumbest shit. She doesn’t care. She just loves. Keri is the singularly most non-biased person for the mentally ill I have ever met. This includes over ten years of psychiatric treatment. She sees the person under the crazy and talks to that. She’s always completely safe around me. Also, a goddess..

R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

I think this respect is applicable to more than just how we treat the mentally ill. We could do with a refresher course of respect online, in person, and for ourselves. I can look at a work, or listen to a song, or thumb through one of my catalogs and feel proud. I have garnered myself some respect. It doesn’t matter if anyone bought it. I am listening to it now. It works for me. I respect the artist, even if it is me.

Online I basically quit because of this issue. I need a certain amount of respect as a human or it feels like hostile territory. I do not venture into hostile territory for fun. Missions only. Some teenager calls me old fat white boomer or whatever and it bothers me. I can act like it doesn’t, but it still does. If I respect myself that day, I avoid it altogether.

How to respect someone going through a hard time.

When you look eye to eye with someone and it is obvious they are struggling, I’d advise offering assistance or staying clear. Putting their tirades and breakdowns on social media sets the whole human race back. Respect them. Respect yourself. Respect us. People do not earn respect to deserve it. They are people. They get it anyway. Waiting for the world to respect you before you respect the world is futile, verified.

Kelly Kintner

Just a bipolar patient today.

Trying to keep my thoughts organized, I'm looking at our big move taking place in three stages: Stage 1 (or S1) began yesterday when we picked up the keys to our double-wide, to our mailbox, and brought the first small load over; Stage 2 (S2) will take place next Saturday when the movers take our furniture out of this small house and move it into the double wide; and Stage 3 (S3) will be settling into the new place, doing what cleanup we can to this old property, and turning the house keys back to the landlord.

Yesterday was S1, D1, or Day 1 of the First Stage, briefly described above. Today, S1, D2, will find us making at least two runs over to the new place, bringing what we can fit into the wife's small car.

And the adventure continues.

Stay entertained thanks to our Weekly Tracker giving you next week's Anticipated Movies & Shows, Most Watched & Returning Favorites, and Shows Changes & Popular Trailers.

Anticipated Movies

• ☆ Digger
• Verity
• Just Play Dead

Anticipated Shows

• LEGO ONE PIECE
• Private Eyes West Coast
• Coven Academy
• ☆ East of Eden
• Kill Jackie
• War
• Overgeared

Returing Favorites

• ☆ The Simpsons — Season 38
• Animal Control — Season 5
• Blue Lights — Season 4
• Medusa — Season 2
• Scrubs — Season 2
• The Amazing Race — Season 39
• Shark Tank — Season 18
• The Ramparts of Ice — Season 2
• The Celebrity Traitors — Season 2
• Doc — Season 4
• Red Queen — Season 2
• Tougen Anki — Season 2
• Aoashi — Season 2
• Blue Box — Season 2
• Heartland — Season 20
• Marshals — Season 2
• Tracker — Season 4

Trending Shows Status Changes

• The Final Problem — Returning Series → Ended
• Welcome to Demon-School, Iruma-kun — Returning Series → Ended
• Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You — Returning Series → Ended
• A Different World — Returning Series → Ended
• Chainsmoker Cat — Returning Series → Ended
• A Killer Story — Returning Series → Ended

Most Watched Movies this Week

• = The End of Oak Street
• new The Love Hypothesis
• +1 Resident Evil
• -2 Mayday
• -2 Coyote vs. Acme
• new Toy Story 5
• -1 Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• new Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
• new UNABOMBER
• new Backrooms

Most Watched Shows this Week

• = Lanterns
• +1 Ted Lasso
• +1 Lioness
• new MobLand
• -3 Reacher
• +3 Slow Horses
• new Neagley
• -1 Stuart Fails to Save the Universe
• +1 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• -2 Dark Matter

Popular Trailers

• Ticket call out — Street Fighter
• Winners get things done. — Digger
• What's happening to him? — Clayface
• In Cinemas Now — Resident Evil
• Hands in. Reassemble your team and experience Avengers Endgame: Encore tonight in IMAX. — Avengers: Endgame
• Ben Bishop core — Runner
• Full Dog — Forgotten Island
• Unforgettable :15 — Heart of the Beast
• In Cinemas 1 October — Verity
• Buy It Now On Digital — Super Troopers 3

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Hi, I’m Kevin 👋. Product Manager at Trakt and creator of Rippple. If you’d like to support what I'm building, you can download Rippple for Trakt, explore the open source project, or go Trakt VIP.

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Publicat la 10 septembrie 2016


Uneori (abia dacă) îți dai seama cât de mult fac alții pentru tine. Alteori, când asta se întâmplă, realizezi (poate) cât rău le-ai provocat (voit sau nu). Numai că atunci când îți dai seama de toate astea, ei bine, este prea târziu. Ceilalți (sau unii cel puțin, și în special cei care contează cel mai mult) nu vor privi cu ochi buni atitudinea ta, acțiunile tale, iar iertarea lor nu va veni. Iar dacă va veni, este pentru că tu însemni prea mult pentru ei. Oricum, acea iertare nu va fi deplină. Deplinătatea ar însemna ștergerea amintirilor, iar asta nu se poate întâmpla!

Flames. Flăcări.

Flăcările. Astea marchează diverse etape ale vieții; ale vieții de acum și ale vieții de apoi. La început ele sunt pasiuni, apoi ele reprezintă chiar focul creației. La un moment dat, aceasta din urmă se transformă în focul pârjolitor, mistuitor, ce lasă în urmă doar cenușa. Și mai sunt două, dar nu sunt sigur care-i ordinea, însă gândesc că Phoenix-ul ar trebui să preceadă focurilor iadului. Așadar urmează, să spunem în mod mitologic, flăcările ce urzesc uimitorul Phoenix. Să fie oare flăcările iadului singurele flăcări perpetue? Singurele ce lasă în urmă pasiunea, creația, ba chiar și cenușa arderii pământene, inclusiv memoriile și mitologia? Așa se pare. Nimeni nu s-a-ntors de acolo să ne spună. Sau această noțiune temporală este legată de o religie temporară?

Publicat la 7 septembrie 2016


Să fi fost zi, să fi fost seară?! Să fi fost aievea, să fi fost vis?! Să fi fost albul, sau poate cenușiul?!

A fost și zi, a fost și seară… A fost aievea, a fost și vis… A fost și alb, a fost și cenușiu…

Va mai fi o zi, va mai fi o seară. Va fi aievea, va fi și vis. Va fi alb, va fi și cenușiu.

A fost și va mai fi! La fel sau altfel… Va mai fi…