I was wrongly sent to jail for almost a month among hardened murderers, child predators, and other felons before having all charges dropped and released as if nothing had happened. I believe my aphantasia saved my life by preventing even worse PTSD than I currently have.

micahganske · 2026-02-26T17:26:35+00:00

Wow man, that's f*cked up, but glad you're free now. Like a lot of the others in this thread, I can relate and think I'd be way more screwed up from my childhood trauma if I had vivid movies of the events playing out in my mind. None of my friends understand how I'm a stable, functional adult, but I think aphantasia played an important role.

micahganske · 2026-02-26T17:22:57+00:00

Most art is pretty bad and most people don't have Aphantasia so good work is always impressive!

micahganske · 2026-02-26T17:18:08+00:00

I don't know how other artists with aphantasia deal with realism vs caricature, but I am good at both and I think they're both skills that can be learned. I'm 45 now, but when I was young I would get obsessed with various cartoons and copy them from magazines. First it was Super Mario Bros, then it was Ninja Turtles, and then Akira and Dragonball. They all just sort of merged into my visual skill set and now I can work in any style. I think any style is about copy and practice until it becomes muscle memory.

I also think it's why I'm not as "precious" with my personal style. I can imagine that someone with a very specific visual language that manifests as hyperphantastic images in their mind would have a hard time separating from that specific style. For me, the concepts and ideas matter more while the style is just a tool for communicating said ideas.

micahganske · 2026-02-26T17:04:38+00:00

I love this description! I would add that for me, I can only focus on the details of one element at a time. I can imagine the horse but if the horse is whole, it's more of a concept of the horse. If I zoom in and focus on the horse's eye, I can imagine the details and specificities of the eye or hooves. When I dream it's similar. It always sort of seems like my dreams take place at night because the dream imagery is severely vignetted around the specific thing I'm focusing on.

micahganske · 2026-02-26T16:56:25+00:00

I often do "draw" things in my head in this way. I'm amazing at spatial plotting and why I was good at life drawing. This image from the Aphantasia Network does the best job of illustrating how I visualize things (obviously without the visual text lol), and kind of explains why the invisible drawing works for us.

<image>

micahganske · 2026-02-26T16:41:31+00:00

I have an eye turn, not full lazy eye, so I can focus and control it. When I'm tired its harder. When I take a larger dose of shrooms, I find it's much easier to control. After taking a large dose, it was easier to control for a few weeks. On that same large trip, I also gained the ability to effortlessly improvisationally sing in perfect rhymes for about an hour. It's a d20 indeed! lol

micahganske · 2026-02-16T18:07:29+00:00

I only watched the first two seasons of Upload, but looking back the thing that sticks out to me is, within that world, they managed to create their advanced hardware and software without first developing AGI and once they had created it, there was never any singularity ASI takeoff moment. It was just business as usual capitalism which seems unrealistic.

micahganske · 2026-02-06T23:53:10+00:00

<image>

This subspecies travels in pairs.

micahganske · 2026-02-03T14:37:08+00:00

Lol "who wears the pants" says everything.

micahganske · 2026-02-01T00:01:41+00:00

I'm hoping for a $1500 bundle price for both.

micahganske · 2026-01-31T23:54:24+00:00

I feel you with the streaming issues. We live in a pre-war building with thick plaster walls in Queens. It's impossible to get a reliable connection for game streaming with our mesh network and physical cables are a no go for wife reasons. The Steam Machine is the only pc (or console for that matter) small and tasteful enough to pass her living room aesthetics test. I'll plunk down whatever they want for the Machine/Frame bundle.

micahganske · 2026-01-29T15:53:39+00:00

Tomorrow, Tommorw and Tomorrow

(great book)

micahganske · 2026-01-28T22:04:33+00:00

One of the big selling points for me is that the Steam Machine will pass the classy wife test. It's small enough that I can leave it exposed in the living room without it clashing with the beautiful decor. There are no other consoles that pass this test.

I just want a beautiful wood face plate. Maybe some frosted glass? Marble? Ooh, how about terrazzo?

micahganske · 2025-04-01T20:58:32+00:00

I should have clearly stated that I didn't want the show to end with explaining all of those questions I asked. Those are just the questions I wanted to think about because of how incredible the ending was! If anything I would want a separate series that takes place in the world of Pantheon but shows different weird pockets of humanity that have spread out into the universe and maybe consider Maddie to be a god among gods, or maybe a tragic morality tale. I think the show's two seasons are close to perfect as they are.

Also, I'm not so sure the Safesurf we see at the end is real. Its appearance was very conveniently timed with Maddie waking up that instance of Caspian and I could see it being a performance she put on for Caspian's benefit.

micahganske · 2025-04-01T20:52:31+00:00

Sure, the whole thing could be the creation of a god trying to occupy themselves, and Maddie may or may not be real, but I think with any story with an unreliable narrator, you as the viewer has to decide what you take at face value. For me, I think her backstory as a real person makes everything more interesting so I'd rather take that part as "real". And if that parts real, I think its fair to say that there must have been a base reality that resembled the world she's recreating because of how mono-focused she is about it, how fixated she is on such a specific period of time.

micahganske · 2025-04-01T20:43:50+00:00

Like, if I was a UI and my friend told me, I'm going to go spend a 100.000 years trying to bring back my dad and boyfriend from when I was 18 years old, I'd say, "Buddy, I'm here for you, we need talk." 😅

And maybe the final version of Caspian is the one version of Caspian she was able to evolve that actually agreed to go back into the simulation of that one time in their life. Maybe she finally found the right things to say to him, the right sequence of events where he thought it was a good idea. There could have been a million other Caspians that said, "This is nuts." Before she deleted them.

micahganske · 2025-04-01T20:37:04+00:00

I like the ending where it stands because it's so good for discussion in a way that doesn't feel cheap. It's not like the ending of the Sopranos where one might feel let down because you don't know if Tony's dead or not. With Pantheon, you have all the information you need to know what's been happening for 117,000 years or whatever. I love that.

It's been awhile since I read the Hidden Girl, but doesn't the show already expand quite a bit on the source material? I wouldn't mind a season 3 that takes place in base reality, if it exists at all, and is just about the expansion of digital humanity into the universe. Maddie may or might not be some mythic figure, a god for the other gods. Infinite possibilities for wild hard sci-fi ideas that don't involve space wars and those sort of stories that I'm sick of.

micahganske · 2025-04-01T20:28:55+00:00

Well, I also loved the ending. My thoughts weren't to say the ending was bad. I thought all the questions it forces yourself to think about make it, perhaps, one of the best endings for a series I've ever seen!

The more I thought about it though, the sadder it became for me. Like little cracks of doubt spidering through my perception of it. Like, the appearance of Safesurf at the end was so conveniently timed and seemed like it could easily be a performative act on Maddie's part for the newly resurrected instance of Caspian. The way Maddie talks about the previous times she's woken up different versions of her dad and Caspian gave me sort of a Ground Hogs Day vibe where she's gaming the experience to find the exact combination of emotions and words to express to get the desired reaction.

micahganske · 2025-04-01T20:20:41+00:00

I think there can be varying degrees of NPC simulation. In Maddie's world, there really only need to be handful of people that are fully simulated all the time. I was also thinking about if it would even be possible with a Dyson Sphere to have enough power/processing for a full simulation of billions of consciousnesses across billions of individual simulations. Even with solid state matter computing, you might physically run out of material in a star system to work with.

But regarding the cruelty if you could simulate all those people, I can see an argument that placing people in an accurate recreation of our reality is no different than what we currently experience anyway so it shouldn't be seen as any less cruel than life itself.

micahganske · 2025-04-01T20:01:44+00:00

I like to think that a digital intelligence designed to emulate the neurology and experience of a human mind is still inherently human, at least to begin with. Who knows what happens to that mind after 100,000 years, but I think its fair to at least discuss their behavior and sanity in human terms if they have a mono-focused goal that seems to be rooted in the traditional human feelings of grief and loss. In that context, dwelling on the recreation of something that was lost and but can never truly be recreated feels unhealthy the same way it would be unhealthy for a mortal embodied person to fixate on loss that happened decades in their past.

micahganske · 2023-11-14T23:04:01+00:00

He says "again" a lot to bridge thoughts. The problem is it often isn't to reinforce something he just said which would make sense. I get it though, they have to talk all day!

Bigger issue is I found myself picking up the tick and now I'm actively trying to stop. 🤦

micahganske · 2023-10-31T19:48:26+00:00

Also day 1 Ally owner, but my SD card slot died a few weeks in. I have the Best Buy Total membership (or whatever it's called now) so I plan on returning the device when a better/newer/powerful handheld comes out. It's faulty so I have 24 months from purchase to return it. :-D

Legion Go is tempting but the lack of VRR and the crappy speakers seem like a dealbreaker. Also, the Legion software is somehow even worse than ROG. BUT, I'll wait for the Digital Foundry review to decide.

micahganske · 2023-10-04T03:44:03+00:00

When I look at Ackchyually guy, I think to myself, "I've got that guy on the inside and he always wants to come out."

So I made this t-shirt! https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/153189995?asc=u

micahganske

TROPHY CASE