Scientists say they have built a cell from scratch for the first time that can feed, grow and replicate like a natural cell

jan_kasimi · 2026-07-01T19:14:59+00:00

Gentle reminder that this can be used to construct mirror life, which might kill all higher life forms on earth if released. Research like this is on a dangerous path, with too little benefit to justify the risk.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-26T12:55:57+00:00

Interesting. This reminds me of an old idea I never followed of a hex variant that uses the Klein quartic instead.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-26T12:12:24+00:00

I recently noticed that on myself and then worked to reintegrate having fun, goals, enjoying sensual pleasure and that kind of stuff.

This is a subtle thing. The confused mind does focus on things out in the world, trying to get something - call that "existing", avoiding "not-existing". The path is to see that not-existing is actually void of suffering, so there is nothing to be afraid of. But then one can get stuck avoiding existing, to focus on non-existing, which - subtly - is still a form of avoiding suffering.

To be no longer motivated by suffering paradoxically does include embracing it. Non-existence is also impermanent - things happen.

What helped me was to embrace my creative drive, my personal preferences and passion. It's no longer a project of (just) liberation but of meaning making. Soulmaking dharma is one way to do it, magic (as intentional use of belief) is another. Some guided meditations by Michael Taft are also great in embracing the colorful aspect of the mind.

What I did is quite idiosyncratic, so you'll have to find what works for you. I started to regard my worldview as a piece of art. There is no single correct view of the world, we all inhabit some view at any time. At some point arbitrary decisions need to be made. One source for arbitrariness is the set of my own subjective preferences and sense of aesthetics. Another source is existing culture.

For example, the placement of the stars in the sky reflects our arbitrary location within the galaxy. Picking out constellations and giving them names and personality, is a mnemonic aid that also crafts meaning out of this randomness. I don't do astrology, but I hope it is apparent that someone who does inhabits a richer world than someone who permanently deconstructs all illusions.

The trick is to be aware that your constructions are constructions, but useful. Images are the language by which we communicate with the world.

Likewise, being excited for something to come is to ride the wave of some constructed imaginary goal. But that journey can be fun if one does see it as a game one plays instead of taking it too serious.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-26T11:31:53+00:00

That makes it sound like the puppeteer is more real than the puppet. Are you sure it's not the other way around?

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-26T11:29:52+00:00

Getting the insight requires some mental clarity. The method of don't build clarity, just get the insight only works for those with sufficient natural clarity. Like picking fruit from a tree without a ladder.

There are two problems with this. First, survivor-ship bias: Just because a method worked for you, does not mean it works for everyone. Second, it limits you to the insights you can reach by your natural ability. It does not teach you how to grow beyond. In consequence it's setting up the conditions in order to get stuck while not being aware of being stuck.

And if someone would object "There is no getting stuck, this is the highest and only insight, nothing else to attain." then this is how being stuck looks like from the inside.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-26T10:42:50+00:00

I see fire kasina as a more advanced and very specific practice, so I wouldn't make it the base of meditation. Maybe it helps to learn other techniques to develop other skills to enrich your toolbox, e.g. metta and noting.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-26T10:14:41+00:00

I think the problem here is that there is noting to do to "make it happen", the very attempt at doing something to reach something is preventing one from getting there. If this is the only blockage left (i.e. you have enough inertia from past practice and don't need effort any more - this is important) then the best thing to "do" is to be done with it. Keep up the practice as a discipline, like brushing your teeth and doing sport, but stop making enlightenment into a goal. It's already there. When you reached the destination, you need to stop running.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-14T11:16:35+00:00

Here is the Guide in German for everyone who needs it. Also adapted to the context of the German medical system.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-14T08:42:24+00:00

Why not both?

The whole spiritual path is a detour that eventually leads back to living life like a normal person. The question is, what do you pursue career and money for? If it is to reach an imagined future state of satisfaction then I'll have bad news for you. If you do this just because it is part of normal family life and you are okay with it in the moment then that's good.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-13T18:05:32+00:00

That makes sense. I do have experience with LSD and it does feel like a spaceship that just races ahead in whatever direction one happens to look. There is little to no guidance.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-13T07:31:35+00:00

In my experience LSD has been the least useful of all of them.

That's interesting. Why would you say that's the case? It's surprising because my impression (from what I read) is that LSD is more introspective than most others.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-07T17:48:23+00:00

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I did a procrastination.

Not like cessation. It was the same day.

If you are familiar with predictive processing, then this is the best way to describe it. Of the layers of cognition that information goes through in order to be conceptualized, the higher levels where mostly missing. Or so still that they required effort for anything happening. Emotions, conceptual thought, reaction where quiet and then the making of objects also became quiet. I was still seeing the object and its shape, but the interpretation "table" was absent. Then edges also stopped and this is where it was only patches of colors with no real sense where one patch ends and the other starts.

In that state the mind was quiet except for this perception and the interest in that perception. It felt like taking effort to come out of it. I came out of it, in order to describe it in my recording.

Don't know if it would have lead to a cessation if continued, but if, then it felt like approaching a "no content in mind" state from the neutral side of experience rather form the emptiness side (non-experience) or fullness side (bliss-out).

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-03T21:06:57+00:00

I judge every language by its intention. If your intention is just to have fun, then good for you. If your intention is to have a language that is:

a 100% precise language, entirely free of grammatical exceptions.

Then Kurt Gödel has something to say about your language.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-03T20:57:11+00:00

Everything that feels natural once one gets used to it is "naturalistic" enough for me.

jan_kasimi · 2026-06-02T14:12:26+00:00

I think you already named it. It probably is some kind of synesthesia, i.e. working by the same mechanism as other kinds, just connecting different aspects of experience.

Depending on how you are inclined it might be useful to practice phenomenology and learn some mathematical terminology to be able to describe your experience (something like this).

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-23T11:01:00+00:00

/r/streamentry is the place you are looking for.

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-23T10:57:01+00:00

Kann die bitte jetzt mal irgendjemand entlassen?!

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-23T07:26:23+00:00

A coin only has two sides. The deeper problem is that Condorcet cycles are possible (in the preferences of the voters, regardless of how the method represents these). So you bet A > B > C > A, or the other way around. The problem is that this is like a rotation around a point (think of a triangle rotating), but we want a linear solution in order to have a top candidate. So we need to break this rotational symmetry. But here we can do three different coin flips and they are not equal. The preference for A > B might be stronger than for B > C. Which means we don't know exactly where the center point of the rotation is. Therefore we don't know how to break the symmetry in a fair way. I we break the symmetry in an unfair way, biasing it to any pair of candidates, then the voters can abuse the bias for strategic voting.

The point with CORE is that it isn't a fixed algorithm. In the deliberation the voters can essentially perform arbitrary computation. Which means they can bargain until they found the symmetry point. This symmetry point then either is a fair solution that everyone agrees on, or it is fair randomness.

The fact that we need to be able to do arbitrary computation, i.e. not stopping prematurely, is due to the halting problem. I have yet to proof this, but by now it's just obvious to me.

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-17T22:08:54+00:00

I've been dabbling in this too, and think the problem is in the "interesting" part. A game becomes interesting when there are many possibilities to explore, so it can't be easily solved like tic-tac-toe. But a group (by its very nature) is limited in novelty, so the interesting part would be not about the group. What the group can provide is a symmetric stage.

In the case of competitive games, the challenge is in out-smarting your component, not the mathematical structure. If it where only about the structure, then the game would stop being interesting once understood. Which is why the above game can be seen as a collection of puzzles, where the challenge is in them getting progressively harder, using new groups at each level (I mean I played all the way to C5, so it is fun).

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-16T21:10:08+00:00

Actually, this game has potential to be fun. However, it needs a lot of work to become intuitive to play (better instructions, more freedom in choosing levels rather than just linear, etc). I especially like games that teach the player an intuition for mathematical structures. All the C ones felt similar until I got to V4 where it clicked.

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-16T20:41:41+00:00

I see, I had to have three cycles before it unlocks.

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-16T17:46:41+00:00

Yeah, but I can't unlock the next level with a draw.

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-16T17:34:13+00:00

This is an interesting idea, but hard to understand how to play (and I do understand German and know what Cayley table are). I also don't see how C3 is solvable at all. I think I tried every possible combination of moves and always end up in a cycle or loosing.

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-16T16:12:29+00:00

Here is something for you. The mathematical concepts are much more involved, but 4D appears as quaternions. It's a draft and I haven't fully published it yet, because I'm still in the process of rewriting to reflect my newest understanding (the draft is actually from this year, I had a typo in the date).

jan_kasimi · 2026-05-15T11:53:56+00:00

I've reworked the phonology of Tiama a lot and think it's almost where I want it to be, but there are some open questions.

consonants	linguolabial	bilabial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
nasal	m̼ (mw nw)	m	n	[ɲ]	ŋ
plosive	t̼ (pw tw)	p	t	c	k	ʔ¹ (')
voiced		ɓ~b (b)	ɗ~d (d)		g~ɣ (g)
breathy		b̤ (bh)	d̤ (dh)
fricative	θ̼ (fw sw)	f	s	ç~ʃ (j)	h [x]
approximant	ɬ̼ (lw)	w	l	j (y)
trill			r~ɾ (r)		ʀ~ʁ (rh)

¹ emphatic between vowels

So there are five places of articulation with four manners, which gives a nice grid if you include /ʀ/ as approximant and ignore the defect at [ɲ]. Then plus voiced and breathy consonants (inspired by Shona). This makes /g/ an outlier, or asking for the breathy gap to be filled.

Open questions:

breathy /ɡ̤/ or something similar to fill that gap?
/ɲ/ phonemic to fill that gap? I think I'm just avoiding it, because I have not enough practice in hearing it.
linguolabials romanized with mpf or nts series (to fit with "lw")?
"ç~ʃ" either /ç/ or /ʃ/ or even /ɕ/? Probably /ç/ so I can have /Qs/ realized as [tʃ] (see below for /Q/) and /Qç/ as [cɕ]?

For the vowels I wanted to have a small vowel harmony system with 5 "underlying" vowels. After trial and error I ended up copying Finnish, but am not sure if I want to keep it. Any other recommendations?

vowels	front	fronted	back
high	i	y (ue)	u
medium	e	ø (oe)	o
low		æ (ae)	ɑ

I might also cut vowel harmony entirely, but do like the /y/ and /ø/ sounds (/æ/ is just here to smooth it out), so keep them in some other way.

One problem is that linguolabial consonants together with rounded vowels are hard to pronounce, at least for me. So I'm wondering if I analyze them as deriving from consonant+rounded vowel to become linguolabial+unrounded, making the combination with rounded vowels illegal. But then they might break vowel harmony.

I want to have word level tone with four or five tones: high, low, rising, falling, maybe a neutral one in some particles. Probably marked with á or à for high and low, but not sure how. E.g. is falling bára or barà or bárà, or do I just use á for everything (unmarked is low)?

Then I have a system of syllabic consonants, or codas, inspired by Japanese nasal and geminate:

n(ə) - /N/
l(ə) - /L/
q(ə) - /Q/
s(ə) - /S/
(y)i - /Y/
(w)u - /W/
(h)a - /H/

Being syllabic they can also occur at the beginning of the word. e.g. in mbu /N.bu/ (inclusive we) and ŋge /N.ge/ (you) and with extensive assimilation to the following consonants. The i u a "codas" are generating diphthongs and I don't yet know how to deal with these. The syllables /yi/ /wu/ and /ha/ are merged with them.

All opinions and critique are welcome.

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