John Carpenter performs at Aragon Ballroom on November 9, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by ... [+] Daniel Boczarski/Redferns)

In late December, filmmaker and composer John Carpenter moseyed around his Los Angeles home, fielding calls to discuss his new music. A few days before Christmas, the Master of Horror was in good spirits. It turns out the iconic scary-sci-fi aficionado has a soft-side for holiday cheer, family time and gathering around the tree.

While anticipating a conversation with one of the greatest purveyors of the abnormal, its easy to romanticize where the chat might go. Would it be an off the rails dive into the supernatural? Surely, at the least, it must be a psychoanalytical dissection of the mirroring themes from his cult-classic films and the sociopolitical climate of the Trump Era? Maybe hed lay into the film industry for what its doing wrong, explain why the economic elite deserve to be dethroned and confirm how prescienthis foreshadowing of class warfare in America actually was?

John Carpenter at Paramount Studios, 1996. (Photo by Bob Riha Jr.)

Somehow Carpenter completely subverts those expectations, but leaves you feeling satisfied.

Despite a chaotic 2020, the 73-year-old creator of epics like Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York prefers to discuss the mundanities of everyday life, the weather or make small-talk about your hometown. But, hell also interject with a tidbit perfectly suiting his storied personality.

Franklin Graham is on the television right now, telling me that Im a sinner, the Halloween (1978) director announces, scoffing at the Evangelical figurehead.

While Carpenter may have strong feelings about current events, the Hollywood veteran couldnt care less about sharing them. He tends to agreein an exhausted sighwith sentiments regarding outlandish politics and religious fanaticism, but doesnt care to pontificate in detail on such matters. Its common for him to throw some rhetorical questions as a caveat, too, when broaching a controversial subject. Hell sarcastically discredit himself or charmingly ask, Now, why would we want to talk about that?

Perhaps the director prefers to avoid making outrageous headlines at this stage in his career. In fairness, no one wants to become the personification of the old man yells at cloud! meme. Or maybe, at this stage, he just doesnt give a crap.

Daniel Davies, John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter

One thing Carpenter does make clear, is that hes grateful to be breathing and creating. And while the moviemaker turned touring musician doesnt know if or when hell return to the road, hes excited to share his bands newest album, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death, out February 5 via Sacred Bones Records. The synth-heavy group consists of Carpenter, his son, Cody, and godson, British multi-instrumentalist Daniel Davies. Davies father, Dave Davies, played guitar and sang in The Kinks.

Below, Carpenter discusses Lost Themes III, the delayed release of Halloween Kills and his unfamiliarity with The Mandalorian. And in his own ambivalent way, The Horror Master addresses conspiracy theorists, the concepts of Simluation Theory, the Multiverse, the Technological Singularity, and for good measure, UFOs and aliens.

Fans and critics have connected the themes from your films like They Live and The Thingto the current state of the world. I think one angle that hasnt been addressed is how there are all these anti-science right wing people who claim theyre the antithesis of the sheep. They believe they suddenly have their own all-seeing sunglasses.

But, instead of believing in Big Brother or the Powers That Be, many are just jumping on a similar bandwagon of blind-faith conspiracy. Do you see that irony? A few years ago you knocked down conspiracy theories about They Live and Judaism, in the time since conspiracy theories have become totally mainstream.

I do. Some of these conspiracies its weird. These conspiracies about Jewish people, have been around, since, forever. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a Russian hoax! Now its being regurgitated by these fools. God, really? I dont understand, man. The anti-science, the anti-vaxxers, I dont get it! Thank God Im old.

If I may make one more nod to They Live, I was recently driving on a highway between Tennessee and North Carolina and I saw a big billboard that basically said that Jesus would save us from the pandemic. To me, that seemed like the quintessential OBEY sign.

[laughs] Of course it is!

Ignore the doctors, ignore the science! Jesus has this under control!

I know, I know. That stuff never goes away.

Film director and composer John Carpenter (C) performs with scenes from the movie "They Live" in ... [+] support of his album "Anthology." 2017, Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)

Lets talk about music. Lost Themes III: Alive After Death isnt a film score, but youve got the word themes in the title there. Do you always see a cinema-esque quality to your music?

This is what I do. I make this kind of music, Im gonna put it on you. You have to come up with the story, but I will provide the soundtrack.

There must be some difference between going in to record a super synthy record like this as opposed to scoring a film. Whats the former like?

Its all instinct and improvisation. Nothing exists when we start. Were creating out of whole cloth. Whats the sound? Sometimes you take a long time just getting the sound right. Sometimes it comes quickly. Its all different. If were doing a soundtrack, we have a visual image to guide us and thats easier. That goes quickly.

Did you record the album in 2020? Was it born during the pandemic?

It was born right as we were finishing the [2018] tour. We had a couple of tunes that were rattling around, then it began to grow a little. It took a while. It wasn't like we have to do this. And we did the score for the first Halloween (2018) remake, that came in the middle. Actually, the score to the second, Halloween Kills (2021), came right at the end. So we did two scores while we were doing this album.

The release date of Halloween Kills is now pushed back to October of this year, as opposed to being released early on a streaming platform. Have you heard that Warner Bros. decided to place their 2021 films with HBO Max? Are you familiar with the blowback from some directors? What are your thoughts on the whole situation?

In general, not real specifically. This is what worries me, that this is the future here. These theaters are closing! Thats really bad. Ay! It seems like this business is changing once again.

Are you happy theyre holding Halloween Kills until people can see it in theaters? [Carpenter scored the film and is credited as original creator]

I dont know. They have to make business decisions. But theres nothing to say thats gonna last. Theres nothing to say that everybody wont be putting their slates of films on television. But what do I know? I worry about it. Theaters are important to the movie experience. Theyre communal.

I know youre into video games and basketball, but have you watched anything good lately?

I just saw the Herman Mankiewicz movie with David Fincher, Mank. Its good! Its good. Its not great. But, its good! I like David Fincher a lot.

Are you into the Star Wars world at all?

No, not really.

Can I spoil something for you? [Warning: Mandalorian spoilers ahead]

Hell, I hope you do.

They just finished the second season of The Mandalorian on Disney+, its meant to take place after the original Star Wars trilogy. In the final episode, they brought back your buddy Mark Hamill, who appeared in a few of your productions, like Village of the Damned and Body Bags.

At the conclusion of The Mandalorian, Hamill appeared as a young Luke Skywalker. They did some sort of deep fake CGI thingMark Hamill was on set, but hes portrayed just as he looked in 1977. What do you think about using technology to deage or bring people back from the dead?

Most of the time it doesnt look real. Most of the time you can tell. You can tell because you know the person doesnt quite look like that or is no longer with us. But theyre just servicing the story. So, I dont know. I have nothing against it nor do I think its the greatest. Im not gonna complain about a thing. Im a happy guy.

Mark Hamill and John Carpenter at the 22nd Annual Saturn Awards for Science Fiction excellence. ... [+] Century City, CA, 1996.

I was wondering what implications it has for the business side of film and likeness. In 50 years, when someone decides to cast a young De Niro or Pacino, whats the legality of that?

I dont know. A person has the right to their own image, I think! You would have to get permission and all that s***, but I dont know! What the hell? [laughs]

Lets make a turn here. Are you familiar with Simulation Theory?

No, whats that?

Its the concept that we could all be living in a simulation. The idea is that the Earth could just be a fabrication in someones video game in another universe...

Im not quite sure if I grasp it yet Ive heard of the timelines business before in physics. Its an explanation for a lot of things that they dont understand. But, Simulation, they call it?

Alternate timelines are connected to Multiverse Theory, right? Do you think theres any possibility that could be real?

I dont know. Theres no evidence for it. But, I guess its possible!

Is the Technological Singularity near?

Have you heard of the concept of The Technological Singularity?

Whats this Singularity business?

Futurists embrace the idea that man and computer will form and be one sentient being. With exponential technological growth, The Singularity could help you live forever and have access to the internet in your brain. That type of thing...

It sounds like bulls***, but okay.

If given the chance, would you live forever as half man and half robot?

Hell yes! Are you kidding, of course? Sure!

1978: Carpenter on 'Halloween' set. (Compass International Pictures/Sunset Boulevard)

Youve mentioned that you believe Contagion is a great film. Do you think that any director could make a good film based on COVID-19 or the year 2020?

That depends on the story. If youre talking about, Okay, here we are in a civilization and we get a virus, contagion, and we get a pandemic going.

Okay, well, were living it! So, what else is there to the story?

Plus, its been done. So, how does that work?

Many sci-fi and horror fans watch films as a momentary escape from reality. Ive noticed that now, outside of film, everyone seems to be living within their own version of the real world. You could go door to door, and people might believe a completely different list of truths about what is going on in the world. Do you think its always been like this or are things getting way trippier?

Its a crazy time, man! I dont know. What scares me is maybe this just revealed whats going on and its always been like that. I mean, I always knew there was racism, I didnt think that ended. I grew up in the Jim Crow south. I know how deeply that belief is ingrained in people. But some of this nutball stuff, its unbelievable.

But, there are people who believe theres a satellite orbiting the Earth and it controls our thoughts. People believe crazy crap! They always have. Theres always been stuff that, if you do some critical thinking, you realize that its horse s***.

Have you found that as a director of science fiction and horror films that people expect you to believe in absurd stuff? Do you ever have to explain that youre a filmmaker and you dont believe that people like Starman exist?

Well, I have to differentiate. I know what you mean. Look, the supernatural exists in the movies but not in real life. Look at it that way. In the world of directing and telling stories, thats where all the ghosts and goblins are. But not in real life.

Have you kept up with all the new UFO footage and stories being reported by places like The New York Times? Many legitimate sources are beginning to give credibility to the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Well, now did you see the footage that they released? Wow! I dont know what that is! I have no idea what that is! You can usually tell a fake. But that doesnt look like a fake to me.

Would you like to live in a world where alien life could exist?

I dont know. I suppose. I dont want to live in a world where the aliens that I depicted in The Thing are real. I dont like that idea. Thats bad. That means the end.

Whats in store for John Carpenter when the world restabilizes?

Ill go back on the road again when its safe, maybe, or maybe not. At my age, you just take it one day at a time. If I wake up, boy, Im doing great.

Thats a great outlook to have.

I have no choice!

Follow me on Twitter at@DerekUTG.

Originally posted here:

John Carpenter Ponders It All: Conspiracies, Simulation Theory, The Singularity, UFOs And Aliens - Forbes

For all its comparisons to the human brain, AI still isnt much like us. Maybe thats alright. In the animal kingdom, brains come in all shapes and sizes. So, in a new machine learning approach, engineers did away with the human brain and all its beautiful complexityturning instead to the brain of a lowly worm for inspiration.

Turns out, simplicity has its benefits. The resulting neural network is efficient, transparent, and heres the kicker: Its a lifelong learner.

Whereas most machine learning algorithms cant hone their skills beyond an initial training period, the researchers say the new approach, called a liquid neural network, has a kind of built-in neuroplasticity. That is, as it goes about its worksay, in the future, maybe driving a car or directing a robotit can learn from experience and adjust its connections on the fly.

In a world thats noisy and chaotic, such adaptability is essential.

The algorithms architecture was inspired by the mere 302 neurons making up the nervous system of C. elegans, a tiny nematode (or worm).

In work published last year, the group, which includes researchers from MIT and Austrias Institute of Science and Technology, said that despite its simplicity, C. elegans is capable of surprisingly interesting and varied behavior. So, they developed equations to mathematically model the worms neurons and then built them into a neural network.

Their worm-brain algorithm was much simpler than other cutting-edge machine learning algorithms, and yet it was still able to accomplish similar tasks, like keeping a car in its lane.

Today, deep learning models with many millions of parameters are often used for learning complex tasks such as autonomous driving, Mathias Lechner, a PhD student at Austrias Institute of Science and Technology and study author, said. However, our new approach enables us to reduce the size of the networks by two orders of magnitude. Our systems only use 75,000 trainable parameters.

Now, in a new paper, the group takes their worm-inspired system further by adding a wholly new capability.

The output of a neural networkturn the steering wheel to the right, for instancedepends on a set of weighted connections between the networks neurons.

In our brains, its the same. Each brain cell is connected to many other cells. Whether or not a particular cell fires depends on the sum of the signals its receiving. Beyond some thresholdor weightthe cell fires a signal to its own network of downstream connections.

In a neural network, these weights are called parameters. As the system feeds data through the network, its parameters converge on the configuration yielding the best results.

Usually, a neural networks parameters are locked into place after training, and the algorithms put to work. But in the real world, this can mean its a bit brittleshow an algorithm something that deviates too much from its training, and itll break. Not an ideal result.

In contrast, in a liquid neural network, the parameters are allowed to continue changing over time and with experience. The AI learns on the job.

This adaptibility means the algorithm is less likely to break as the world throws new or noisy information its waylike, for example, when rain obscures an autonomous cars camera. Also, in contrast to bigger algorithms, whose inner workings are largely inscrutable, the algorithms simple architecture allows researchers to peer inside and audit its decision-making.

Neither its new ability nor its still-diminutive stature seemed to hold the AI back. The algorithm performed as well or better than other state-of-the art time-sequence algorithms in predicting next steps in a series of events.

Everyone talks about scaling up their network, said Ramin Hasani, the studys lead author. We want to scale down, to have fewer but richer nodes.

An adaptable algorithm that consumes relatively little computing power would make an ideal robot brain. Hasani believes the approach may be useful in other applications that involve real-time analysis of new data like video processing or financial analysis.

He plans to continue dialing in the approach to make it practical.

We have a provably more expressive neural network that is inspired by nature. But this is just the beginning of the process, Hasani said. The obvious question is how do you extend this? We think this kind of network could be a key element of future intelligence systems.

At a time when big players like OpenAI and Google are regularly making headlines with gargantuan machine learning algorithms, its a fascinating example of an alternative approach headed in the opposite direction.

OpenAIs GPT-3 algorithm collectively dropped jaws last year, both for its sizeat the time, a record-setting 175 billion parametersand its abilities. A recent Google algorithm topped the charts at over a trillion parameters.

Yet critics worry the drive toward ever-bigger AI is wasteful, expensive, and consolidates research in the hands of a few companies with cash to fund large-scale models. Further, these huge models are black boxes, their actions largely impenetrable. This can be especially problematic when unsupervised models are trained on the unfiltered internet. Theres no telling (or perhaps, controlling) what bad habits theyll pick up.

Increasingly, academic researchers are aiming to address some of these issues. As companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft push to prove the bigger-is-better hypothesis, its possible serious AI innovations in efficiency will emerge elsewherenot despite a lack of resources but because of it. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Image Credit: benjamin henon / Unsplash

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New 'Liquid' AI Learns Continuously From Its Experience of the World - Singularity Hub

Stardock Entertainment revealed this past week that Ashes Of The Singularity: Escalation will be getting a major update. It's been a long minute since we've heard anything about this game as it has been riding on only minor updates here and there. But nothing major has come down the pipeline in a while until this past week when the developers revealed that Version 3.0 is on the way. According to the announcement, this update is going to be a near-complete overhaul of the game's balance as they will leave very little of it as it once was. These changes will include units, buildings, orbital abilities, and more. It's not going to break the game (fingers crossed) but it will definitely change the way you see things and play it. We have more info on the update below as the update will roll out sometime in the month of February.

"Game balance is constantly a work in progress," said Brian Clair, the VP of Publishing for Stardock who worked extensively on the update. "This version is huge our major focus was to completely overhaul the game balance and optimize performance. GPUs and CPUs are constantly evolving. We wanted to make sure that the benchmark evolved with it. We removed redundant units and armies, revised to show more unit types, and updated camera views and positions for an overall better look."

Both game factions have had their units and buildings carefully balanced against each other. Rather than just adjusting hit points and unit cost, v3.0 focuses on giving each unit a unique role to play. The AI has also been updated significantly, which should provide players with new and exciting challenges when playing against a computer opponent. v3.0 brings a new benchmark, performance optimizations, and major improvements to visual effects. New maps, campaign adjustments, and much more are also included in the massive update.

Gavin is the current Games Editor for Bleeding Cool. He has been a lifelong geek who can chat with you about comics, television, video games, and even pro wrestling. He can also teach you how to play Star Trek chess, be your Mercy on Overwatch, recommend random cool music, and goes rogue in D&D. He also enjoys hundreds of other geeky things that can't be covered in a single paragraph. Follow @TheGavinSheehan on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vero, for random pictures and musings.

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Ashes Of The Singularity: Escalation Will Get An Update In February - Bleeding Cool News

On their debut album Homecoming, the Keith Robinson Band aimed to create a record that was true to Southern Arizonabut avoided sounding local. In many ways they succeeded. While never straying far from a folk/rock template, much of the albums singularity can be attributed to frontman Keith Robinsons lyrics jumping between genre conventions and more abstract themesand hell, even a mellotron made its way in between the acoustic guitars and desert imagery.

The album opens with Lost In Space, a rock song much in the borderlands vein, with fuzzy guitars and driving drums. However, it avoids sounding too familiar thanks to Robinsons philosophical background: studying Nietzsche and Heidegger at Fuller Seminary.

In the opener, Robinson sings about Judas and asks the Lord to show him the way, reflecting a kind of existential vertigo in the Sonoran sun. The following track, Psalm 151, shifts styles in favor of a sparse acoustic intro, slowly progressing as instruments join in. Its a delicate and gorgeous setting for Robinson to sing over: My malaise has gotten out of hand... Its a compromised promised land full of all these gospel songs.

We tried to balance the record for listeners by setting up dynamics and varying the instrumentation for different types of songs, Robinson said. At the same time we sprinkled some musical elements throughout the record to try to give it a unified feel rather than just a haphazard collection of songs; the picky stuff in Psalm 151 is echoed in the picking pattern in the final song, Homecoming, for instance. And the fuzz guitar in Lost in Space gets a reprise later in the album in Ocean Walker.

These varied sounds are helped with nearly every performer serving as a multi-instrumentalist: Robinson plays guitar, sings and performs some additional percussion; Evan Wagner plays bass and electric guitar plus percussion; Steven Tracy plays piano, organ and mellotron; and Dani Ponce sticks to the drumkit, though his energy serves multiple roles.

Released in the final days of 2020, the pandemic delayed and complicated Homecomings recording sessions. This isolation and difficulty is present in multiple tracks, but Robinson wrote the majority of the songs before COVID was in our collective vocabulary. This is reflected in the album cover, balancing saguaros on one side and tombstones on the other, and in lyrics like I saw an angel in the desert sun / A crystal hourglass empties fast / I used to walk on the forest floor / Present always becomes the past.

In March 2020, the band had a batch of songs ready to record, but everything was put on delay. While waiting, Robinson wrote two tracks inspired by the pandemic, which made their way into the recording sessions at St. Cecilia Studios in August, with Tracy as engineer.

It would have been tone-deaf, we thought, to record an album during such global upheaval without alluding to the pandemic at all, Robinson said. Everyone was wary of COVID, so the August sessions were limited to a tight little groupSteven, myself, bassist Evan Wagner, and drummer Dani Ponce. No girlfriends, friends, or outsiders allowed. We recorded the whole album in just three daysgranted, three long dayswith another day-and-a-half devoted to mixing and last-second adjustments.

Robinson credits these quick and successful sessions to the fact the band had extra rehearsal time due to COVID delaysthough this time both helped and hindered.

In April I was in a bad way. I had awful bouts of insomnia, I wasnt eating, I was cut off from almost all human interaction, I never knew what day of the week it was, and in my head it generally felt like the world was ending, Robinson said. That experience bled into the songs. The record, in other words, is not making any grand, definitive pronouncements about whether life is worth living or whether God exists. Those questions are up for grabs. The lyrics are more simply just an expression of how I was feeling at the time. Death seemed imminent, all around me, so I wrote material reflecting what that felt like.

Though themes of loss permeate the album, the warm instrumentals and broader philosophical linessuch as when Robinson echoes Heraclitus adage that you cant step in the same river twicecombine for an album that is true to Southern Arizona, and definitely true to the world beyond that.

The record certainly contains some bleak moments, Robinson said. But my hope is that the gloom contributes to the beauty rather than detracting from it.

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Keith Robinson Band digs beneath roots music on Homecoming - Tucson Local Media

In recent years, satellites have become smaller, cheaper, and easier to make with commercial off-the-shelf parts. Some even weigh as little as one gram. This means more people can afford to send them into orbit. Now, satellite operators have started launching mega-constellationsgroups of hundreds or even thousands of small satellites working togetherinto orbit around Earth.

Instead of one large satellite, groups of small satellites can provide coverage of the entire planet at once. Civil, military, and private operators are increasingly using constellations to create global and continuous coverage of the Earth. Constellations can provide a variety of functions, including climate monitoring, disaster management, or digital connectivity, like satellite broadband.

But to provide coverage of the entire planet with small satellites requires a lot of them. On top of this, they have to orbit close to Earths surface to reduce interruption of coverage and communication delays. This means they take up an already busy area of space called low Earth orbit, the space 100 to 2,000km above the Earths surface.

There are many issues associated with introducing this many satellites into orbit, from the dangers of space junk to obstructing our view of the night sky. But the shift toward mega-constellations is also a challenge for global space governance.

There are almost 3,000 active satellites in orbit around Earth today, and this is set to skyrocket in the coming years. The European Commission, for example, recently announced plans to launch thousands of satellites into orbit around Earth, adding to a growing list of planned mega-constellation launches.

As companies and governments around the world continue to pursue mega-constellations, it is critical that the governance framework is able to support the rise in activity. There are a number of important problems that need to be considered.

Satellites are regulated at the national level and through licensing, guided by the principles of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Though the terms constellation or mega-constellation are not found in the treaty, they are considered space objects, like all other satellites.

As procedures and regulations vary from country to country, the challenge is how to govern mega-constellations without creating legal fragmentation. It is imperative that the topic is discussed at the international level.

Yet currently, there is no legally binding definition for a satellite constellation, nor for the newer term mega-constellation. Exactly how many satellites make up a mega-constellation is unknown, and each country could consider the term to mean something different. Clarity at the international level could pave the way for creating guidelines specifically for mega-constellations, which could aid the safe and sustainable use of low Earth orbit.

Most satellites in low Earth orbit are operating between 600 and 800km above sea level. This is considered a congested area, as there are lots of satellites there already. Small satellites have shorter lifespans than the larger satellites, which typically orbit above low Earth orbit.

However, it can still take up to about 150 years for satellites to be removed, by re-entering the atmosphere and burning up, if they are about 750km above sea level. Some are removed purposefully, through controlled re-entry, and others are designed to fall in an uncontrolled way. Satellite and mega-constellation operators must consider ways of reducing the debris caused by these satellites above and beyond the usual procedure, in order to maintain a sustainable use of low Earth orbit.

Given the amount of future mega-constellations currently planned, the space around Earth termed low Earth orbit could easily become a limited resource.

This is not only true when it comes to physical space, but also radio use. To communicate, satellites use the radio spectrum. With the increase in mega-constellations, there is a danger of operators warehousing radio frequencies, stockpiling them before they actually need them.

To prevent this, a United Nations specialized agency for satellite radio spectrum use has recently updated its regulatory framework, dealing with the issue separately from other space regulation. Mega-constellations will be put on a flexible timeline, only being granted use of the frequencies they need at the time.

If low Earth orbit becomes overcrowded with satellite and mega-constellations, avoiding collisions will become more difficult. In September 2019, the European Space Agency had to fire the boosters on one of its satellites to get it out of the way of another satellite, otherwise the two wouldve collided.

As the orbit becomes more congested, there may be need for more collision avoidance maneuvers and better communication between satellite operators.

There are national endeavors, predominately in the United States, for satellite tracking and collision avoidance maneuvering. A system alerts satellite operators to potential collision paths and allows for course corrections where possible.

Hopefully, mega-constellations will be discussed by member states at the UN as soon as they are able to do so. Though work in the committee can be slow and highly political, international guidelines along with national licensing procedures need to add considerations for mega-constellations.

The benefits of constellations and mega-constellations in low Earth orbit for socio-economic and environmental purposes are great. Because of this, it looks likely that the numbers of constellations will increase in the near future. To make sure we avoid problems arising, the rules and definitions surrounding mega-constellations should be made clear, on an international scale.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Starlink Mission/Wikimedia Commons

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Thousands More Satellites Will Soon Orbit EarthWe Need Better Rules to Prevent Space Crashes - Singularity Hub

It is the pain and suffering that over shadows almost all human endeavours, and keeps the pot boiling for the endless stretch of agonies for mankind. The galleries of art, carvings on stones, and various other manifestations of human feelings and emotions paint the elegy of human suffering. Pleasure is an ephemeral break that fails to last long. Ghulam Rasool Josh, one of the remarkable modern poets of Kashmir, weaves his poetry around this phenomenon. Pain and grief constitute the major motifs of his poetics. He sings pain! He doesnt celebrate it though. He has a strong aspirational tendency that prevents him from acceding this pain as something divine and predetermined. Nevertheless, procrastination prevails his poetic discourse. He makes a bold confession to this cunctation:

Labi ander taam gashi zechun manz ti fehlay yoos

Shahre manz aaes baang dapan me oos gomut cheer.

In the interiors of walls I spread through rays of light

Adhan was raised in the city, and I was late!

Surprisingly when the stalwarts of Kashmiri poetry and his contemporaries explored the theories of aestheticism and pleasure in poetry, Josh maintains his singularity. When Prof. Rahman Rahi, an icon of Kashmiri poetry and mentor of Josh, could not escape the luring attractions of life and wrote:

Su golaab roie deuthum bay az golaab chavaan

Me chi ven misaalene manz rambe ven khayaal ravaan

Josh remained unmoved.

Yi chu Josh zindagi huend jate josh vuchni Aamut

Nate harde kale kansta tsaraan bahar aasiya

Josh has come to discern the glitter of life

could there be someone searching Spring in Autumn

Thus the themes of isolation and grief are very dominate in his poetics. They may not be radically new or exclusively his own, nevertheless his treatment and perennial association with these themes make him an out-standing poet of grief.

Brought up in the second half of the 20th century when the fabric of family and society was thinning away and individuality overtook all earlier corporate and social dimensions of society the poet laments the loss of human feelings:

Bihith majlisi ander kanh lari ne kaansay

Akis akh kun tavy kathe kari ne kaansay

Together, yet all apart from each other

None talks to each other now

Josh is an anti-romantic and an iconoclast who shatters all hypocrisy, and illusion by the rod of truth:

Faaqae het lukh intizaaras manz stagus kun vuchan

Ishtihaaras peth lekhith oosukh azab te dilberi

Starved souls waitingly looking at the Podium

The Poster had been printed on; penance and romance.

He propounds a realism that is unromantic and unsentimental and thus devoid of any great outburst of emotions and sentiments. As Emerson sets off his aims in poetry:

I will not read a pretty tale

To pretty people in a nice saloon

Borrowed from their expectation

But I will sing aloud and free

From the heart of the world

Josh sets to unpack the mysteries of the heart of the world. He unravels his loneliness that seems enveloping him day in and day out. In his poem Saffar Saffar Tanha he espouses:

Siriyes kariha kancha thour

Zameen ti nachiha ruch khand lot

Be ti dev labeha

Sani khamooshi manz

Ani gati

Pan ni tanhayee hund voont.

May someone shield the sun

May the earth slow her rotation

So I may find

In the deep silence

And utter dark

The depth of my loneliness

The depth is unfathomable and a mere material and physical outreach cant make the poet discover it. This loneliness is the common denominator of all mankind. An individual is caught in a fix in the modern age. As Firaq Gorakhpori puts it as:

Is door mai zindagi basher ki

Beemaar ki raat hogaye hai

The life of an individual in this age

Has become the night of a sick

Bade chi dapaan aasaar chi tith ven taraqee karo

Shure chi lamaan hagrus te dapaan hay rail vuchiv

Elders say that that signs of development there are

Street boys pull the cart and call it a rail!

The poet personifies the pain and agony outside and struggles against it. This struggle is painstaking and at times suffocating, however, the poet is not disappointed by such things. He says:

Chu ketihaan hoosh ravan yaam deshaan kainatek rung

Magar as Josh hoshus thaph kerith zagaan chu shaitaanan

Many lose consciousness at the sight of facets of the Universe

But Josh is now cautiously ambushing the Satans!

The socio-political injustices that have added miseries and woes of the masses disturb the poet. To deconstruct the power structure and outdo the authoritative establishments, the poet makes some daring choices. The poet, nevertheless, maintains his cool and saves himself from becoming a political sloganeer. He didnt let the poetry become subservient to physical and material needs. He didnt look down upon these needs though. He espouses the tyrant structures be pulled down with inteligence and inner power that every human being possess within. The poet laments all those structures that discourage the aspirational tendencies of mankind. He writes:

Sawala kor jawaba diyut te pake brounh

Vuniyuk taamuth dalaan chu ne ame neber kanh

Here is a question, there is an answer, and thus we move

Till now this is the limit of all the human movement

The poet is not, however, a Niobe figure. Niobe , as per greek mythology, lost all her sons to Leto. The poet, on the contrary, rises phoenix-like. Through out his ouvere he never succumbs, and surrender is never an option in the scheme of things he devises. He doesnt make his reader fall in a bottomless gorge. He finds him already fallen. He has his own approach to make him out and that is not self destruction or self annihilation. That is the Self Realisation! However, the journey to the Self Realisation is not an easy go. It needs a strong, unflinching and unwavering character that shall overcome all the miseries and challenges on this path. The development of such a character is evolutionary. The poet believes that there is a metaphysical and spiritual force that guides one in this voyage of self. This voyage demands Sacrifice. Sacrifice is an antithesis to Self Anhilation.

Yi chi aze kathe mashemech yi chu shooq raaase gomut

Nate wante cha yi mumkin Mansoor khasi ne daarus.

Its a forgotten tale and the Love has been eroded

Otherwise, is it possible that Mansoor kisses not the gallows

However, the poet doesnt ignore the physical dimension of being in this supernatural foray. He achieves the self realisation through this physical and material orbit.

Banan tufaan bazay shooq miyounoe

magar chapi tati panun zuu jaan dede

My longing turns at times into a storm

It needs my immolation though.

The poet undoes all these things with a cool mind. In this journey his register is marked with soberness and there is no sense of urgency unlike most of the reformists and revolutionaries. This journey is one of metaphysical and transcendental nature, thus free from any hubbub and bedlam.

This Realisation leads to Reconstruction. The Self-effulgent nature of human soul shall illuminate the darkness that prevents the soul to reach its perfection. This stage is one of utter celebration and utter joy. The Realisation does not land you into some Utopean landscape. It makes you to live and live with your physical self. However, an immense reservoir of spiritual strength makes you to undo all the rough edges. Josh writes in poemThor:

Zameen nachaan nachaan

Gov langi piyounta akh

Akhtabus thor

Te

Banev

Shehjar me kiyut

The Earth while on rotation

A mere twig became

A shield to the Sun

And

A shade for me.

Mohammad Shafi Rather is Lecturer in English, Govt Higher Secondary School Pakherpora.

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GR Josh: Reading the grief - Greater Kashmir

'Hitman 3' screenshots by author

I found Hitman 3 to be an uneven experience, but I cannot lie to you: theres one level thats got me excited enough to dive back into it over and over again. Club Hlle is a dance club thats tucked into the forest outside Berlin in the remains of a nuclear facility, and its an aberration of a map. But its this singularity, this weirdness among its cohort, that makes it something worth traveling back to over and over again.

Berlin just doesnt work like any other Hitman level. The first time you play it, youre not given targets that glow red through when you hit your investigative vision button. Instead, you have to simply wander through the level waiting to see if another assassin will be foolish enough to use their radio and give away their position. Thats because Berlin is a cat-and-mouse game. Youre hunting the people who have been sent to hunt you, and youre locked in this little cage where you can all ping-pong off each other until youve completed your mission of assassinating five of a possible ten opponents in the club and its surrounding facilities.

This works in the campaign. I found it exciting and thrilling, but like so many things in Hitman, this assassination mission takes on a whole new register when you revisit the location and start working on its challenges and different story missions that show off the whole level to you (something we talked about extensively in this episode of Waypoint Radio).

Er, uh, except that Berlin doesnt have any story missions. It does not have a mode of directing you around the level. You are entirely left to your own devices to discover the different ways of hunting down your enemies, and thats balanced by now being able to access their red highlights when youre using your Hitman Vision (I honestly have no idea what this ability is called, and I will never learn).

You still have challenges, though, and they give you strong hints about what you need to do in order to trigger some pseudo-story missions. A challenge to electrocute two assassins by using an EDM light show that has been overloaded with power gives you a sense that you need to be around the light show, but it doesnt give you any direct markers about what you need to accomplish, and I spent 30 minutes or more fumbling around a big, weird lighting setup to figure out what I had to sabotage and then, later, how I had to manipulate the music as a DJ to setup a perfectly...electrifying...crime.

There are more of these little situations. You can deliver food to a biker gang, and you can poison the fan system of a grow op. Theres a sword made of salvaged materials, and you can find that bad boy and start slinging it around. You can serve juice.

While all of these things are signaled in the challenges, how they are accomplished is all up for your personal discovery, and to me this makes Berlin a keystone map in the entire World of Assassination Trilogy precisely because it trusts that youve done all this enough that you can recognize opportunities without being directed to them. Watching a food delivery guy mill around talking on a cell phone is Hitmans visual rhetoric for something wild is possible here, and you need to see where it leads you. This is the freedom that I love so much about the Hitman games across the board. If you see something happening, you can probably intervene in it, and that is most often going to open up newer and weirder pathways of action or movement that will allow you to accomplish your goals in ways you might not have thought about.

And, you know, maybe thats not all that special across the trilogy. There have been plenty of moments of improvisation and opportunity-exploitation across these three games. But in a lot of ways, I feel like the Berlin levels hands-off approach and large number of targets is the apex of what Hitman is doing, and it would have made so much more sense as a big finale than the deeply disappointing train level that actually caps off the game. This trilogy ends in what is essentially a plodding score challenge, and it would have been so much more fulfilling to be given this strange social space, with its Florida Man, drug dealer, security guards, drug-dealing biker bros, and juice servers, and told to accomplish something complex and unguided. It would have felt like Agent 47 was really doing the damn thing.

That didnt happen, though, so instead we have this excellent little playground thats smack in the middle of the game. And I am so glad for it, because it really is a highlight for me, and I keep diving back in to see what other strange playthroughs I can accomplish after unlocking secret entrances and new starting points. I havent reached it yet, but I am eager to attempt the Terminator challenge in which Agent 47 takes on the whole level in a biker costume with a shotgun, warping two fictional worlds into each other with clothes and weapons.

Im sure that well see Agent 47 again sometime in the future, and Im hopeful for more Berlins. More small operations with complicated tasks, please, and fewer big missions with huge stakes.

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The Astonishing Berlin Level in 'Hitman 3' Is a Landmark in the Series - VICE

Epic Games Reveals The Mandalorian Mandos Bounty Mode for Fortnite

It appears that Mandalores way has taken over theFortniteUniverse.In a recent press release, Epic Games announced a new limited time mode inspired byThe Mandalorian. For a week starting today, Mandos Bounty will allow the players tocompete with and out-hunt all their opponents. Things get interesting when a player becomes the lead, because thats when theFortnite version ofDin Djarinstarts the top player hunt. Should a player survive all his opponents including Mando and win the Victory Royale, he or she will receive a specially-forged Beskar Umbrella bearingthe signet of a clan of two.

Like in the TV series, players have to eliminate their Bounty Puck target tocollect galactic credits.The first one to reach the credit goal while keeping his or her three lives wins the match. And to immerse everyone even more into theStar Warsatmosphere, fans canvisit Kits new cantina on the Island, located in the desert. Epic Games has also released a funny Mandos Bounty trailer. You can see Peely gettingencased in carbonite after a close encounter with Mando.

Take a look at the video in the player here below.

Star Warsfans have been pleased since they heard that the Mandalorians skin had been added to the game starting with the fifth season of ForniteChapter 2. Of course,Din Djarin made his debut flanked by the ever-presentBaby Yoda, a.k.a. Grogu. InForniteChapter 2 Season 5, the story follows the Zero Point exposition, the extremely dense singularity in the game. Agent Jones has gathered some of the best hunters across all universes to prevent people from escaping the loop.

You can playForniteon PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The new Mandos BountyLTM is available from Feb. 2 to Feb. 9 at 9 a.m. ET.

Are you going to playMandos Bounty onFortnite? Let us know in the comments section below.

Recommended Reading:The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season One)

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Epic Games Reveals The Mandalorian Mandos Bounty Mode for Fortnite - Superherohype.com

Planet Earth Report provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.

Astronomer Avi Loeb Says Aliens Have Visited, and Hes Not Kidding In conversation, the Harvard University astrophysicist explains his shocking hypothesisand calls out what he sees as a crisis in science, reports Lee Billings for Scientific American.

How Universes Might Bubble Up and Collide What lies beyond all we can see? The question may seem unanswerable. Nevertheless, some cosmologists have a response: Our universe is a swelling bubble. Outside it, more bubble universes exist, all immersed in an eternally expanding and energized seathe multiverse, reports Charlie Wood for Nautil.us.

New Liquid AI Learns Continuously From Its Experience of the World, reports Singularity Hub. For all its comparisons to the human brain, AI still isnt much like us. Maybe thats alright. In the animal kingdom, brains come in all shapes and sizes. So, in a new machine learning approach, engineers did away with the human brain and all its beautiful complexityturning instead to the brain of a lowly worm for inspiration.

A new frontier is opening in the search for extraterrestrial life, reports astrophysicist Adam Frank for The Washington Post. The reason we havent found life elsewhere in the universe is simple: We havent really looked until now. Something remarkable is happening in the science of life and intelligence beyond Earth. The age of technosignatures is dawning.

The missing link that triggered the ice ages -Melting icebergs from Antarctica are the key, according to a new study, reports Science Norway. Researchers have suspected that the Southern Ocean and Antarctica were crucial to global climate, but this has not been documented in the geological data until now, according to Margit Hildegard Simon, a researcher at Norce, the Norwegian Research Centre.

Building a Higgs Factory the highest priority collider after the LHC, reports CERN. Despite this great success, the Higgs boson is connected to many of the most troublesome aspects of the Standard Model. It is for this reason that the recently concluded update of the European strategy for particle physics advocated an electronpositron Higgs factory as the highest priority collider after the LHC, to allow detailed study of this novel and unique particle.

Did a Supermassive Black Hole Influence the Evolution of Life on Earth? asks Harvards Avi Loeb for Scientific American The idea isnt as crazy as it might sounds. Traditionally, the Sun was thought to be the only astronomical source of light that affected life on Earth. But it is also possible that the black hole, SgrA* played an important role in shaping the history of terrestrial life.

The Enduring Mystery of Earths Water New clues have emerged about exactly where your last drink came from, reports astrophysicist Caleb Scharf for Scientific American.

How to redesign COVID vaccines so they protect against variantsLineages that can evade immunity are spurring vaccine makers to explore ways to redesign their shots, reports Nature.

Why Anthropology MattersIts the antidote to nativism; the enemy of hate; a vaccine of understanding, tolerance and compassion tha

Orca Outcasts Is Now Dominating an Entire SeaKiller whales that feast on seals and hunt in small packs are thriving while their widely beloved siblings are dying out, reports Katherine Gammon for The Atlantic.

No Trees Harmed: MIT Aims to One Day Grow Your Kitchen Table in a Lab,reports Singularity Hub.MIT researchers will soon publish a paper describing a proof-of-concept for lab-grown plant tissues, like wood and fiber. The research is early, but its a big vision. The idea is to grow instead of build some products made of biomaterials.

Parisians want to recover a legendary river now buried under concreteThe Bivre flowed through Victor Hugos Paris. Conservation efforts may bring the historic river back, reports National Geographic.

The Complete Morons Guide to GameStops Stock Roller Coaster, reports Kyle Orland for Ars Technica. The WallStreetBets subreddit (WSB) describes itself as like 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal, and thats not a bad description. WSB is a generally disorganized mess of posters throwing up memes and slang that can be hard to parse for an outsider. At the center of it, though, are members who analyze the market for opportunities so they can try to rally the subs millions of subscribers (2.9 million as of this writing) to a potential value play.

The Galaxy Report brings you exclusive, twice-weekly news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.

Yes, view and sign me up for my free subscription.

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Planet Earth Report --"ET Visitation Hypothesis Creates a Crisis in Science to Age of 'Technosignatures' is Dawning" - The Daily Galaxy...

I am often asked the question as to what technical game-changing innovations are around the corner in the marine industry, be that in the superyacht, defence or commercial marine sectors. These questions tend to arise at the start of new projects, when the foundations of design intent are being laid, and how engineering will serve to deliver them.

We operate in a mature industry, where significant innovations have happened over a long period of time. Many have in fact come, gone and come back again. Some many times over, and with every cycle, are often even held up as new innovations. It would be slightly arrogant to suppose that further significant advancements are not there to be innovated; however, the reality is that innovation is (in the main) incremental and progressive in nature.

I would suggest that asking such a question is to only see part of the answer. We live in a period where change is accelerating, both in a technical and social context. I for one enjoy, in my world of engineering, this pace of change; I enjoy that capitalism drives the search for a competitive edge, which in turn drives the advancement of knowledge and progress. There is a theory called the Technology Singularity, which suggests that eventually the pace of change will be so advanced that it will happen instantaneously.

Whether or not you believe in that being possible, we all experience that change (driven by innovation) finds its way to market at an increasingly faster rate. Consumer products that would typically have had several product generations on the same fundamental platform are now achieving market penetration at an accelerated rate, in turn driving a faster market response and a rapid need for the next generation product.

However, there is a problem with comparing superyachts with the generalities of consumer products. We are building artisanal products (on a grand scale perhaps), mostly all unique prototypes, in a very niche market, with multiyear delivery timescales. Our throughput is tiny by comparison. The result of this is that progress will continue to be incremental. We should embrace that, because it will drive investment in a long-term view.

But is our industry responding to change in the right way? We seem to be selling pretty much the same product we were 10-plus years ago. Many are significantly better, in design, engineering, materials and quality terms, but in essence its the same. Are we limited by the incremental pace of innovation in our industry?

The seemingly frustrating technological limitations of the present should force us to reflect on our actual needs, and whether our perceived needs are based on real facts or ingrained paradigms.

The seemingly frustrating technological limitations of the present should force us to reflect on our actual needs, and whether our perceived needs are based on real facts or ingrained paradigms. Change the question and perhaps we can answer it well with the technology we have today, and better serve the real needs of our customers, while advancing science and engineering and driving progress.

To give this some context, lets look at some ingrained paradigms. Yachts have developed over many centuries; today, we have some broad labels we apply, principally motoryacht and sailing yacht. Our industry has certain narratives around each type of vessel; the customers who might buy them and what they might enjoy about them. Alongside this, we point to certain specifics and hold them up as the future, such as hydrogen and other alternative fuels for example.

Imagine now a world with no ingrained paradigms. A yacht is a yacht, if you want carbon neutral propulsion, then that technology exists in the wind. Go apply it. Dont misread me, I am not promoting sailing yachts (although that is a passion), I am promoting adjusting our perspective. Perhaps the next game-changer lies not in what answer we are going to apply to our existing question; the game-changer may lie in looking at the whole question from a different perspective.

The challenge here is making it compelling in the market, because it is unlikely to sit well with the majority who wear the spectacles of existing beliefs and perceptions. Taking this example, why cant we make sail a compelling proposition to those who see a focus on zero emissions? The answer is not to sell them a sailing yacht. Im not sure what the answer is, but it will lie in act of innovating.

Of course, this is a fairly fluffy cloud example. In the real world our clients do have ingrained paradigms. They know what they want (largely) and while wanting to be unique they dont want to be the wildcard. But it serves to highlight that not all innovation lies in new answers. It equally lies in new questions as well.

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Design - Innovation and changing perspectives - Superyacht News - The Superyacht Report

Ctrl IQ, Inc. is officially unveiling its first full technology stack that merges the key capabilities of enterprises, hyper-scale, cloud, and high-performance computing (HPC).

Founded to meet the growing global demand for securing and orchestrating computational-intensive workflows, Ctrl IQs multi-cloud, multi-site, and performance-focused orchestration solution opens access to artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, and scientific workflows everywhere, according to the vendor.

Machine learning, artificial intelligence, scientific computing and large-scale data analytics common in research and HPC are becoming a requirement in enterprise, said Gregory Kurtzer, founder and chief executive officer at Ctrl IQ, Inc. Ctrl IQ was founded to integrate key capabilities in enterprise, hyper-scale, cloud and HPC technologies necessary for performance-intensive workflows. Were thrilled to be introducing orchestration that is intelligent, secure and performance-focused and accessible everywhere, from onsite to the cloud to the edge, and across multiple architectures.

Ctrl IQ was formed by Kurtzer, high performance computing (HPC) veteran and creator of open source projects CentOS and Rocky Linux, and debuts with $4 million in Series A backing from OpenDrives Inc. and IAG Capital Partners.

Ctrl IQs fully supported technology stack was created to accelerate speed and efficiency of multi-prem, multi-cloud, multi-architecture orchestration of workflows. The solution fits within existing enterprise architecture and infrastructures, and will include:

With experience rooted in performance and security, Kurtzer architected the technology for HPC and scientific computation groups at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and UC Berkeley. He also founded Warewulf and Singularity, in addition to CentOS and Rocky Linux. Kurtzer is joined by former Dell Inc. technologist Robert Adolph as VP of Strategy and Business Development, in addition to a software and architecture team with expertise in HPC and cloud architectures.

Ctrl IQ is currently working with customers and organizations in the military, aerospace, chip manufacturing, national labs, oil and gas, pharmaceutical and enterprise organizations. Demos and early build-outs are available starting today.

For more information about this news, visit http://www.ctrliq.com.

Continued here:

Ctrl IQ debuts solution for performance intensive workflows - KMWorld Magazine