“it's sad that most people are consumers of technology and not creators” /  by Mirena Rhee

CEO John Riccitiello said in an interview that he believes this to be a side-effect of Unity's success in democratizing game development: "If I had my way, I'd like to see 50 million people using Unity – although I don't think we're going to get there any time soon. I'd like to see high school and college kids using it, people outside the core industry. I think it's sad that most people are consumers of technology and not creators. The world's a better place when people know how to create, not just consume, and that's what we're trying to promote."

My Boarding Pass to the Moon onboard Artemis /  by Mirena Rhee

Enough Earth already! :) just kidding. Been reading /watching/skipping on reading and instead plot summary reading on Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. It is depressing. We are all gonna die, ok. We are already part of the Overmind, we just hind behind couches from it.

Onward to Space and don’t fear! We been space already for 13.8 billion years just can’t remember it.

Mirena Rhee - Boarding Pass to the Moon onboard Artemis

Why isn't Putin taking up painting instead of killing /  by Mirena Rhee

I get it, an aging dictator realizing they are less and less significant in the world and just nobody cares and they could be deposed or dismissed at a moment's notice. History is just like that.

Well he's killing for the same reason that kids in high school kill their classmates and kids in neighborhoods kill their neighbors - instant significance.

When you attempt instant significance via a weapon you become master of the world in an instant without any toil without learning without creating anything. Destruction is much easier than creation - it's the laws of thermodynamics. In creating you have to toil you have to bust your butt you have to try really hard and then you get two people to like it. With a weapon you're the master of someone's world without doing anything other than holding a weapon.

How do I fix this I don't know maybe art education for one, so people have an outlet and a vision for creative life.

This is what I want to do with my life I want to show people the creative life the big bang side of the universe where things get made out of nothing and just because it’s awesome.

It has been quite a March where I had to face a lot of existential pressing matters /  by Mirena Rhee

There was the war in Ukraine where I saw little kids sprawled on the concrete and I was wondering what right do I have to write to my senators and representatives in Congress to send American kids to die defending other dying people, and then I read bunch of books on particle physics and then Tibetan stuff and also tried meditation which absolutely I cannot possibly do I'm just too fidgety. I'm glad it's April.

I know we also kill a lot of people around the world with impunity but the difference is that I can protest it and argue against it, and live.

On this beautiful spring day in New York City I saw the most fun beautiful art show I've seen in years - Keith Tyson. Drawings & Paintings at Hauser & Wirth gallery /  by Mirena Rhee

Awesome times when I look at paintings I try to see the sincerity of the work and if the work is pushing a narrative it pushes me away. People often try to make a body of work rather than a sincere outpouring.

It has to move me.

Hands down the most incredible fun beautiful and thinking show I've seen ever since I saw Salvador Dali house and museum.

t's painting and thinking and feeling and painting again and thinking again and just not holding back I guess.

I said that the mind of the artist is really beautiful and then the paintings are really beautiful mostly because of it.

100 paintings and this was my favorite, Note that it was painted in 2020 literally the picking apart of the world.

Simple but true

I wonder the same things I just never thought they were worth painting or drawing and here comes the artist that can.

Spontaneous installation in the streets of Chelsea in Manhattan /  by Mirena Rhee

On this absolutely gorgeous beautiful spring day in New York City I asked the question what is the difference between garbage on the street and the art in a gallery in the next block.

One word

Intent

Intent is important for the law and for art too

The next statement I make is not scientifically sound but I feel it in my gut

It's just not beautiful

Favorite line from a book I read this year /  by Mirena Rhee

.."since there is only one electron field, only one up quark field, and only one down quark field, you and I, dear reader, are connected to each other. Each of our atoms is a ripple in the same cosmic ocean. We are one with each other, and with all of creation."

How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang by Harry Cliff

The Metaverse /  by Mirena Rhee

Anyone remember Active Worlds? My first 3D virtual worlds job was making a 3D virtual marketplace in Active Worlds. This is the technology that made me absolutely love working in real time 3D building worlds and eventually doing video game art, and VR art. The company I worked for was called VWorld technologies, I believe the v was for virtual. This was in 1999.

But before that were the shadows on the wall of a cave.

I don't believe in the goggles side of the metaverse but I do believe that certain advances in representational technology can inspire people. I can be very excited in the possibility of a 3D reality, an immersive reality that is not necessarily a built environment.

But the device doesn't have to sit on your nose.

The particle physics of you and bananas! anti-matter /  by Mirena Rhee

Not only are we made of fundamental particles, we also produce them and are constantly bombarded by them throughout the day

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-particle-physics-of-you

Yes, this does include anti-matter.

Especially if you like and eat bananas. A banana makes one positron or anti-matter particle per hour.

The average banana (rich in potassium) produces a positron roughly once every 75 minutes.

I am an anti-matter factory on my banana bingeing days.

https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2009/07/21/positrons-from-bananas/

Atomix /  by Mirena Rhee

I remember one day my dad told me that I'm crazy and that's why I don't have kids.

I never thought that I would have kids, I was never drawn to that idea.

But I will have many kids, my atoms will become many many things and probably other universes.

When I leave this body all the veils will fall, and all my parts will be recombined and I will be part of everything that is to come.

Some people remember being in the womb of their mothers, I remember when my atoms were part of supernovas.

I feel dark matter filling all my cavities and dark energy pulling on my joints.

The most awesome book about everything, plus I love apples so it's indeed absolutely everything /  by Mirena Rhee

How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang

by Harry Cliff

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

—Carl Sagan”

It gets pretty Jabberwocky

in a

weirding way

There is the value of the Higgs field≈246 GeV

which is the equivalent of

42

From this wonderful book I learned the following words:

Protyl
Gazump
Phratry
Gawp
Barmy

“What's more, since there is only one electron field, only one up quark field, and only one down quark field, you and I, dear reader, are connected to each other. Each of our atoms is a ripple in the same cosmic ocean. We are one with each other, and with all of creation.”

field after field

where the absence of a field is also a

field

and that is the

standard model

which only gets us to 5 percent

the rest 95 percent is the weirding way

Starstuff Recipes

“A RECIPE FOR HELIUM— THE PROTON-PROTON CHAIN

Step 1: Two protons collide, briefly forming a highly unstable two-proton nucleus.

Step 2: Before the two-proton nucleus can disintegrate, one of the protons decays into a neutron, forming a deuterium nucleus (one proton, one neutron) and releasing a positron and a neutrino.

Step 3: Another proton collides with the newly formed deuterium nucleus to form helium-3 (two protons, one neutron) and releasing a gamma ray.

Step 4: Two helium-3 nuclei smack into each other and form a nucleus of helium-4 (two protons, two neutrons) sending the two leftover protons flying out.

”

“A RECIPE FOR HELIUM— THE CARBON-NITROGEN-OXYGEN CYCLE

Step 1: A proton tunnels into a carbon-12 nucleus creating a new nucleus of nitrogen-13, which then decays into carbon-13, emitting a positron and a neutrino.

Step 2: A second proton tunnels into the carbon-13 nucleus creating nitrogen-14.

Step 3: A third proton tunnels into the nitrogen-14 nucleus to create oxygen-15, which then decays into nitrogen-15, emitting a positron and a neutrino.

Step 4: Finally, a fourth proton tunnels into the nitrogen-15 nucleus, breaking it apart to form a helium-4 nucleus and the same carbon-12 nucleus we started with.

”

“THE RECIPE FOR CARBON— THE TRIPLE-ALPHA PROCESS

Step 1: Deep inside a star, smack two helium nuclei together to form a highly unstable beryllium-8 nucleus.

Step 2: Quickly now, and by quickly I mean in around one ten-thousandth of a trillionth of a second, fire in another helium nucleus and cross your fingers.”

“Step 3: If you’re very lucky, that helium nucleus will fuse with the beryllium-8 before it can spontaneously disintegrate, producing a nucleus of carbon-12 in Fred Hoyle’s special excited state.

Step 4: Time to cross your fingers again. Some of the time, that excited carbon-12 nucleus will just fall apart again, leaving the three helium nuclei you started with. But with a bit more luck, the excited state will instead de-excite by firing out two gamma rays, leaving us with a newly minted nucleus of good old carbon-12.”

”

“THE RECIPE FOR OXYGEN— THE ALPHA PROCESS

Step 1: Take a freshly baked carbon-12 nucleus and smack it with a helium-4 nucleus.”

“Step 2: Voilà! Oxygen-16 (plus a bit of leftover nuclear energy in the form of a gamma ray).”

Excerpt From: Harry Cliff. “How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch.” iBooks.

“The apparent “blockiness” of matter dissolves when we look closely enough. Particles are not particles, they are passing disturbances in quantum fields, entities that strain the imagination and yet fill every last cubic centimeter of the cosmos. All objects—apple pies, humans, stars—are agglomerations of vast multitudes of these vibrations, moving together in a way that creates the illusion of solidity, of permanence. What’s more, since there is only one electron field, only one up quark field, and only one down quark field, you and I, dear reader, are connected to each other. Each of our atoms is a ripple in the same cosmic ocean. We are one with each other, and with all of creation.”

I'm very enthusiastic about science and particle physics but until I read this book I never found anything coming even close to explaining the contemporary views among scientists.

This was an astonishing book in my opinion tackling very very difficult concepts and being able to convey them with clarity and wit.

There was a lot of insight compressed in this book and I understood almost all of it.

They're really startling sentences in there, I had to keep rereading some parts and googling. The best I've heard or read on the subject, served on a platter, with antimatter.

And there is the antimatter in a jar, he saw it, it's real, you're going to love it. I've never heard anything so fascinating as that.

I spent my entire day yesterday at the met museum strolling among the greatest art artifacts and mummies from 3,000 years ago /  by Mirena Rhee

I wanted to ground myself into things from the past, I strolled among the Egyptian artifacts and artifacts from Japan and Korea.

The Egyptian area of the Met is my favorite not because just the art but because it is so old and so epic, All these Pharaohs that made great battles and built great pyramids, and all the mummies laying in that museum with all these 21st century people snapping their phones.

It is where history meets today.

I looked at Rubens and Rembrandt and all the great Dutch masters, and I finished reading the Dalai Lama book on the history of Tibet and about how all Tibetans started wearing Mao suits.

I am also currently listening to a small course on ancient civilizations, and Egypt among them.

And today in the library I found really marvelous books and one of the books is about the cooking of all the elements of life in the soup kitchen of the stars.

Thank God for the greatest treasures in the world like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library, I don't think I would live in New York if it wasn't for its great public institutions. I'm really sad that many people in the US are really isolated from culture and especially inexpensive access to great culture and books. A lot of people just sit in there living room staring at televisions and watching ads on YouTube. I think this is bigger problem then global warming it's the isolation and diminishing literacy among people with proliferation of information.

Above the Mao suits Tibetans wear and below is Rubens

Speaking of uniforms I went to see the David show also at the met, there were some really nice drawings there but to be honest David's art was not as interesting to me as the politics when David operated, it was the newly minted French Republic. I think one of his strongest works was inspired by French Republic's proclamations, it must have been pretty exciting to witness the toppling of monarchy, I personally will be really excited to see say British royals become just what they should be - citizens of their state.

Below here is an excerpt from The met and also a picture of one of David's uniform designs. It's so funny all revolutions want to standardize people, That's one thing I'd be totally opposed to. It seems revolutions and terror are quite close.

After the National Convention proclaimed France a republic in 1792, there was a strong impetus to reimagine many aspects of daily life to reflect new egalitarian principles. Clothing, which had been a key means to distinguish social class and privi lege before the revolution, was one area targeted for change.

In 1794 David produced a group of designs for civil, military, and judicial uniforms, a project reflecting his political clout during these years, as well as his training as a history painter. The designs are eclectic in influence, with nods to the styles of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.

Below some David drawings.

below is David's drawing of the Head of Marcus Atilius Regulus

Roman general and consul; taken prisoner by the Carthaginians (255 BC) who, according to the legend, sent him to Rome to negociate peace or an exchange of prisoners; he adviced the Senate against both proposals and, true to his parole, returned to Carthage where he was tortured ant executed

The lesson is never trust murderous bastards autocrats dictators and other blood thirsty gangsters, especially in war.

I guess it's a good idea if you want to be the stuff of legends.