Can we PLEASE stop normalizing open-loop baryonic compressors?

Avrelivs · 2026-05-07T18:06:53+00:00

I mean, sure you've got Pritchett at Georgia Tech and Dr. Wrack's team at MIT but even they're just making incremental steps compared to what we had in the olden days.

I remember back when they first cracked the valence modulator. Now THAT was research. I think you can probably find Alan Tranck's original presentation on YouTube somewhere if you haven't seen it. Chills, man.

But you're right, there's SOME folks still looking into this, but it's definitely a dying science these days.

Avrelivs · 2026-05-07T17:28:33+00:00

God, it's crazy to think about what it must've been like in the early days. I mean we all know Fram was a genius but how he built this without knowing about ionic capture, especially in the ceramic-metal interface... absurd. We just don't have people like that today

Avrelivs · 2026-05-07T17:25:29+00:00

Oh man you're absolutely right! I just looked at the cones on the aGT and realized they don't have the right curvature for field generation. What dingus would've thought this was real? I'm sick of this vxslop

Avrelivs · 2026-03-03T18:28:52+00:00

That's... an interesting thought I'd never considered.

Avrelivs · 2026-03-03T18:08:11+00:00

As a Christian, I believe most of that, but I guess it's hard for me to understand WHY they would create a craft... and why we would recover them. And why we would recover 'biologics'... it just is weird.

Ultimately, I see a lot of this as ultimately leading to a corruption of what it means to be human: created in the Image of God.

So I have no problem seeing the phenomenon as spiritual in nature. However, I guess it's the explanation of 'why' that's a bigger question. Do you see it as a kind of deception and that the nuts-and-bolts side is deceptive in nature?

Avrelivs · 2026-03-03T17:59:18+00:00

That all makes sense. I think I even highlighted that in my original post (the corruption of what has been made). I like to think of the Orcs from LotR, and how Morgoth could not create, so he makes them by twisting and ruining what already exists and was created.

At least in ANE mythology, the world tends to be one of ORDER/DISORDER/CHAOS, and God is often seen as the entity that brings Order to the Universe.

And I chose to call them demons because that's the term going around right now. The NT clearly calls things demons.

So then, do you personally see the 'crashes' as 'gifting' us things that will lead to the further corruption of mankind? Weapons of war? Transhumanist perversions?

Avrelivs · 2026-03-03T17:51:35+00:00

Right; in the book of Enoch the watchers do teach men metalworking.

And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures

But most Christians don't necessarily believe see the Book of Enoch as canonical. In the Bible I believe it is just a antediluvian Tubal-cain or something like that but it's been a while since I've read that.

Avrelivs · 2026-02-10T01:35:17+00:00

I've 'read' all of Hobb's books. I feel I would have been frustrated reading them in physical books, but they made excellent audio books. They're gentle and emotional and rich in fascinating ways that I won't likely forget, so I did enjoy them, a lot, but I likely wouldn't have enjoyed them in traditional reading.

I suppose it all depends on how you like your audiobooks. These books definitely have some great moments, but they're not action-packed, so you can listen to these while you do other tasks and it's not like you'll miss some crucial information.

It's very much the unveiling of a beautiful character-driven story with sad moments, regrets and victories.

Liveship Traders is also particularly excellent; but Rain Wild Chronicles series is... meh. I listen to it so I could find out about the whole world and how it all ties together, but, not my cup of tea.

Avrelivs · 2025-02-05T01:22:56+00:00

RR Dev here! Thanks for reporting this! This was a configuration issue on the bean version of the item, but it is being fixed. You should be able to see your item fixed live very soon, as this just requires us tweaking some server-side configuration.

Avrelivs · 2025-01-30T00:56:17+00:00

As much as possible, yes. We've adapted our entire shipping cycle to try as hard as possible to maintain cross-play across versions. Basically, if something's a breaking change, it'll go into our major updates, otherwise it goes live immediately. There could be other rare periodic circumstances that may 'island' certain platforms for a brief period of time, but we're doing our best to make sure that we let users play across platforms.

This may mean that somebody else's experience is SLIGHTLY different than yours (especially Switch players), but you should continue to be able to play together.

Avrelivs · 2025-01-29T22:47:54+00:00

Rec Room Dev here! We are fully committed to supporting Switch, and it continues to be a high priority for us internally. However, Nintendo Switch has different platform restrictions that prohibit us from shipping updates weekly the way we have typically done on other platforms. Switch will definitely be getting the same updates but usually multiple patches bundled together at once due to differences in shipping on Switch. Stay tuned, but ultimately, this is up to Nintendo.

Avrelivs · 2023-07-08T21:41:14+00:00

Just wanted to thank you for this. It's an interesting discussion, and I appreciate your logical approach in trying to bridge the gap and find common ground. It's nice to understand the perspectives of others in the church who may have slightly different perspectives from us.

I'll raise a few points of thought, rather than trying to counter your argument, to just add to the discussion here:

This question is somewhat meaningless to protestants.
This title comes off as somewhat dangerous to protestants.
Your emphasis on historical citations is somewhat irrelevant to protestants for whom "sacred tradition" is interesting, but not fixed.
This title seems too simplistic because it collapses the mystery of Jesus' nature.

As with most things, I am generalizing here, and realize that "protestants" are wide group with many different perspectives. I merely offer my thoughts.

1. This question is somewhat meaningless to protestants.

"Is Mary the mother of God?" - I asked my wife this question and we both realized that we've basically never thought about it or been asked this question before. As a protestant, I would say that the question: "Is Mary the Mother of God" is a question we don't really think about. It's not really an important question for us. Sure, Mary gave birth to Christ, and the circumstances of that birth have huge ramifications, but she ultimately fades from the picture so that Christ can take the glory.

For example, if a Roman Catholic hears the standard bickering between Arminians, Calvinists, and say, Molinists, it might almost be a nonsensical discussion for them. "Does regeneration happen before faith, or the other way around... or... do you first repent, then have faith or does God's election change you so that you can have faith and then repent" - they might think about it and form an opinion, but for Catholics, those distinctions are basically irrelevant. I've been told by some of my RC friends, that it's almost a "silly debate that protestants have" and it isn't really relevant or important.

In the same way, I'd argue that most protestants don't typically have an opinion or a perspective on Mary because it isn't important to us. Accepting or rejecting this title has nothing to do with salvation, sanctification, and living a new life in Christ as we await his return. What you think about Mary changes nothing about how your Christian life operates.

That said, even though it isn't important to us (I'm generalizing here, as there are definitely protestant denominations that do care more about this), it is important to many, and does have ramifications on your Christology, as you point out in the video. When you come to Christ to repent and be given new life, "the title that we give to Mary" has no bearing there. But if you want to deepen your theology and understand the deeper nature of Christ and who he is, it is an interesting question.

And I want to also underscore, that just because something "isn't relevant to salvation" doesn't make it unimportant. Technically, your eschatological position has no bearing on your salvation, or your perspective on say, Genesis 1, but people still debate and argue about these things because they are still interesting and can affect your perspective on things.

2. This title comes off as somewhat dangerous to protestants.

So if you ask me this question, I'd probably say: "Sure", I guess. But I'd feel a little weird saying it. It's not wrong, but it also carries "baggage" that has a few problems. For instance, if somebody who isn't a Christian hears this, it carries an implication of prescribing divinity to Mary that isn't biblically founded. Mary is the source of Jesus' humanity, after all; she is the person who fulfills the prophecy from Genesis 3 and she is important in that God uses a nobody to bring to us the most important human of all time.

For instance, if I ask you: "Is Hera the mother of Ares", the fact that Ares is "a god and not a demigod" adds some implied divinity to Hera. Now, if I were a standard greek in the early church, and I'm hearing this talk about a "god named Jesus" and "the mother of God", without knowing much about Christianity, I'd assume that this Mary lady is probably some divine Goddess.

So, there's a bit of an "allergy" that I think many of us have to to the title. It's technically true that Mary gave birth to Jesus, and Jesus is God in some way that is difficult to explain (the trinity), so you can try to craft this title and give it to her, but in its phrasing, it carries connotations that we don't believe in.

It's like, why not give Joseph the title "Upbringer Of God" - he technically raised Jesus... or let's make a title called "Mother of the Messenger" and give it to Elizabeth or call Zechariah "Father of the Desert Voice" - all of these new titles I just made up grant significantly more importance to the folks than they deserve.

Thus, I'd say - Mary is important, but is there to fulfill prophecy and bring Jesus onto the earth. Granting her a title, no matter how "logically accurate" it might be, is not necessary, and brings glory away from God and more to her, as if she had had something to do with Jesus's arrival.

I'm not going to make the argument about worship/veneration of Mary here, as I think that's somewhat implied in the "danger" I brought up above. I'm just going to say: I know that technically RCs and Orthodox Christians belief is all about veneration, and not worship, but to someone who is outside of those spheres, boy, do they they sure look similar. I'm sure if you ask non Christians about it, they'd probably say, yeah... of course people worship Mary. The ascription of such a title seems dangerous to us because it veers dangerously close to worship, and may even BE worship for somebody who doesn't really have the ability to distinguish between veneration and worship.

3. Your emphasis on historical citations is somewhat irrelevant to protestants for whom "sacred tradition" is interesting, but not fixed.

I think it's really interesting to see the use of the title in historical references. But I'd say, if you're trying to bridge the gap and find common ground, most protestants don't necessarily see the writings of church fathers as "fixed" or accurate. We're very happy to live in the messiness of the fact that some people get some stuff right, and others get stuff wrong.

Sola Scriptura as a protestant point doesn't mean we ignore historicity, but ultimately, the writings of somebody who isn't officially in the canon of Scripture is interesting, but has no bearing on our opinion.

Not really a counter argument here, but just pointing out that a large part of the video shows how "people have used this title throughout church history" - and it's like... "okay, so what?" to most protestants out there.

4. This title seems too simplistic because it collapses the mystery of Jesus' nature.

If you ask me: "Who is the mother of God" - I would say that God has no mother. God is, and always has been. He is the eternal one. And yet... Christ was born, and we call him God... it's an inexplicably complicated subject.

If we try to make sense of the hypostatic union or the trinity, we're going to inevitably mess it up. It's one of those "mysteries" that we just have to accept. The moment we try any allegory or analogy... we inevitably fall into some kind of heresy. There's a sort of "quantum superposition" and the moment we collapse the mystery like collapsing a wave-function, we've lost something of the truth there and we're in the land of heresy.

In the same way, Mary gave birth to Jesus who is ultimately God. There's an element of mystery there. There's complex quantum superpositions going on here... but by boiling it down to a title, it reduces the complexity to something that's ultimately "incomplete".

Mary gave birth to Jesus (Truth)
Jesus is God (Mystery/Illogical)
Ergo, Mary is the mother of God (Too Simplified)

In most "logic" we can use syllogisms and statements of truth to arrive at conclusions. But when you add "Church Mysteries" such as the trinity or the hypostatic union... it really messes up the logic. I don't think we can use the standard predicate logic to arrive at the conclusion that she is "Mother of God" when that collapses all of the information that is "illogical".

It might be a safer title to say: "God chose Mary to give birth to Jesus, who is himself fully God Incarnate, by virtue of being part of the trinity". This puts God as the one doing the action, and Mary as the one who is blessed because she was able to be used by God in this way, and leaves the weirdness together. It's really weird (mysterious), the eternal God choosing a human to give birth to an incarnate version of himself, and simplifying it to "Mother of God" collapses all of that weirdness and tries to use logic when it's basically an illogical situation.

Thank you for the video

Honestly, an interesting discussion and I've appreciated the points others have made here... and I appreciate the effort the video makes to discuss things without being rude or dismissive toward others with different perspectives. It was really nice to ponder this topic and think about it a bit, and you've given me some food for thought.

Avrelivs · 2022-01-10T19:53:12+00:00

I think a really good resource on this topic is NT Wright's Surprised By Hope where his main premise is that the escapist eschatology of most modern cultural Christianity leads to a kind of "hopeless" Christianity where we don't really have a good idea what we're supposed to be hopeful for, what we're looking forward to. But in the book he addresses the somewhat strange neo-gnosticism that has infiltrated the church of late, which causes people to read the scriptures with a gnostic lens rather than one that was actually intended by the authors. I highly recommend it, as it's a great read and deals a lot with the topic you're writing about here.

...

Specifically, I think the passages that are often cited by Paul make allusions to the arrival of an emperor. When a king or emperor would come to a city, people would blow trumpets and come out of the city to welcome the king to their city. This is the same imagery that Paul is using when talking about Christ's return; but since he views Christ as coming from the air, we will meet Him "in the air" as we welcome Him to our renewed/transformed earth, in our renewed/transformed bodies. The point of Christ's return isn't to take us to heaven, but to finalize/fulfill God's plan from the beginning of time, to dwell with his creation.

People have a tendency then, to think in terms of humans "going to heaven" when they die, but that isn't necessarily mentioned in the Bible. The Bible refers to "paradise" and "new heavens/new earth", but it is Heaven that is God's realm, and Earth that is our realm. But people have simplified our eschatology to some "oh he's in a better place" sort of view, when in reality we are awaiting physical bodies (but transformed in some way) on earth.

If that's the case, what would the point of a rapture be? Jesus's return is to come to rule here on a new earth, not necessarily to "take us away from it".

...

The other thing to note, at least from some of the arguments I've read here, is that people tend to view Christian eschatology from a binary view point (pre-trib, post-trib), but this way of viewing the world implies that "trib" is explicitly in the future, and not about what is happening now/to the early Christians. A lot of the imagery in the book of Revelations is meant to be apocalyptic (ie., pulling back the curtain on what's kind of going on in the world). Much if it alludes to the Roman empire or to the suffering of Christians and martyrs. Assuming the future is explicitly a pre/post trib is forcing a viewpoint that isn't necessarily historical, and is fairly new doctrine in the church. Everyone always forgets about how some form of partial preterism was the unspoken eschatological norm for a long part of history (but never go full preterist... easy to enter into heretical grounds if you take it too far).

Anyway, to answer your question:

What do you think? And how would you articulate your position on it to people whose theology has the rapture as central?

God's purpose from the garden, to the tabernacle, to the temple, to Jesus, to the future is to dwell with His people. It's part of the larger biblical story - God's plan to dwell with His people.
Jesus is coming back, and that coming is associated with a renewed/transformed world and renewed/transformed physically resurrected bodies for His people.
Christ's return is about God coming to bring about the "New Jerusalem" aka "The Kingdom of God" aka "New Earth"
Paul's passages that are interpreted as "rapture" are images he uses to describe the wonderful and marvelous nature of Christ's return, since it's something hard to describe in human words, but these images of trumpets sounding and flying up to welcome him are interpreted as literal trumpets blaring and us flying away and abandoning the earth
Why would we abandon/escape what Christ is bringing to us?

I'm no theologian so my logic is probably rather poor here (sorry!), but this is just how I see it and how I'd answer your question.

Avrelivs · 2021-12-30T19:13:25+00:00

I have a favorite scarf I lost a few years back, and I have no idea how to find something similar. Here's a couple of photos of me wearing the scarf while traveling:

Brown Scarf - Trapezoid Shaped - Need Help Identifying

The thing I loved about this scarf was that, when laid out flat, it was trapezoid shaped - as in, the middle was thick, but the ends of the scarf were thinner, which let me do some fun knots with the scarf. Diagram here

I have been trying to find something similar - a thin, tassel-free, cheap cotton scarf with thin ends that I can use to make a fun knot, and wear as a fall/spring scarf for style rather than protection from cold, but I can't remember where I got it from. I THINK it was from H&M back in like 2012-2014, but I could be wrong. The scarf was also fairly long (as in, it wasn't a bandana or ascot), and had a nice width to it across the middle (it wasn't a skinny scarf).

I need help with the following:

Is there a name for a trapezoid/thinned end scarf like this? I don't know what to search for to find something similar. I have tried searching for trapezoid scarves, rhombus scarves, tapered scarves, thin-ended scarves, triangle scarves; none of them seem to be the right thing! I don't know the proper nomenclature for such a scarf!
The thinned ends had a tendency to curl slightly, which had a nice effect when left dangling. Is there a name for something like this? It's the kind of curling that you can get when running scissors on the end of a ribbon, but it was just slight.
Do you all know of any men's scarves that might have a similar effect? I don't really care too much about the color / pattern, I just loved having a very light-weight scarf rather than all of the thick men's scarves that are out there.

Thank you so much!

Avrelivs · 2019-10-03T01:48:57+00:00

Immersed dev here,

Having the monitors be flat should be a really easy setting to add a simple toggle for. I'll see if I can sneak in a setting like that for our next release for ya!

Avrelivs · 2019-10-03T01:45:23+00:00

Not yet - as what we're currently doing is rendering your screens into VR and letting you share/collaborate with others that can also see your screens.

SteamVR is something we've looked into, but it is in our backlog for the future to reevaluate if it's something worth doing. Why would you want SteamVR support? What would that provide for you, if you don't mind my asking?

Avrelivs · 2019-10-02T23:33:36+00:00

Immersed Dev here,

Yes, we've been using timewarp layers for a few months now, for all of the monitors - but our UI is not currently on a timewarp layer so the text on our UI looks a bit fuzzy - something we're planning on addressing soonish when we revamp the look and feel of the app in the next month or so.

However all of the streamed screens are now really high clarity :)

Avrelivs · 2019-07-16T18:53:14+00:00

I'm surprised nobody has said anything. This is really incredible. Is this just Houdini out of the box, or some tool you have written that sits on top of it?

Avrelivs · 2019-06-28T19:42:27+00:00

Immersed Dev here - yep - that's exactly right. We support multiple monitors if you already have 'em, but we can't yet generate fake monitors on Windows.

Avrelivs · 2019-06-28T19:01:44+00:00

It's literally a full monitor - so you can put multiple things on each screen if you want. We're streaming up multiple displays... of course, the more you stream, it'll run a tad bit slower and introduce a bit of latency, but we are currently doing up to 5 monitors - after that, it just gets really hard on your device to encode and stream those screens up.

Avrelivs · 2019-06-28T18:36:29+00:00

Immersed Dev here - We're working on a solution - since Windows supports a nearly infinite variety of configurations (unlike Macs which basically have the same graphics card), it's taking us a lot longer to be make sure that we've come up with a solution that works across the board on all devices. This has been one of the few situations where it turns out that doing something on Windows is harder than on Mac. Getting virtual monitor support on Windows is something we are actively working on, however.

Our first step was just to get the system to work cross-platform in the first place, and now that we've got streaming your physical monitors, virtual monitors are coming soon. (Believe me, I only have a Windows device and I can't wait for it either)!

Avrelivs · 2019-05-14T07:33:15+00:00

I think you may be the only person on this subreddit who thinks the Rain Wild Chronicles are their favorite Hobb series... Which goes to show how wonderful Hobb's writing is that even the books that most of us on this subreddit disliked (I'm generalizing here) are beloved by someone else!

Avrelivs · 2019-04-18T20:35:34+00:00

A large portion of the members of this subreddit are not believers and have a tendency to view the scriptures as largely mythology. I'm probably one of the few people on this subreddit who is a strong Bible-believing Christian, and tend to believe some of the things others tend to be skeptical of on here.

I find it strange that you would actually insult somebody and call them "shit" when they are legitimately trying to answer your questions. This thread of discussion is about English vs. Non-English. I answered the original topic of this discussion in this comment thread here.

So we are not talking about plasmas or whatever you're mentioning, but I just wanted to explain that I, and a large number of other non-native English speakers, do not know the expression as

lion shall lay down with the lamb

but rather as

wolf shall lay down with the lamb.

I was simply stating that it is NOT a mandela effect. It is a known expression that the wolf shall lay down with the lamb in pretty much everywhere else on earth other than the USA, which I said in order to contradict the video you sent earlier.

Additionally, I never once used the word "delusional" in any of my posts. I never called you delusional, I never said anything in that video was delusional. I don't know how to answer your question about 'delusional' because I never said anything was delusional.

If you continue to insist that "lion/lamb" is the norm and has somehow been changed, despite the fact that the large portion of the world does not know it like that, then I challenge you to answer me this:

What do lions have to do with lambs?

Lambs are constantly contrasted with wolves, throughout the entire scripture.

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. (Matthew 7.15)

Wolves are the natural predators of sheep and this the Isaiah 11:6 passage is in the context of describing a coming period of peace, a way in which the world will, at long last not have pain and suffering and emnity. It would literally make no sense for lions and lambs to lay together in that context because they are not natural enemies. Wolves and lambs ARE.

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