The archive hosts its own weather. A mist that seems to come from the place itself.

i will not go into the plot in depth, but rather obliquely and nonlinearly. as such, the remainder of my writing assumes familiarity with the movie, and i’ll say up front that i’m providing an unalloyed recommendation. if i were to sum it up, however, its major thematic aspects relate to knowledge, faith, other-worldly forces, and the epistemic uncertainty that undergirds all of them. i’m struck by the movie’s refusal to take a clear stance on its major plot points, and thus places responsibility on the viewer to bring its own interpretation to bear. even in moments of it being at its most clear-cut — namely, the penultimate scene of ἀποκάλυψις, a razing of new york city by fire caused by climate change “solar flares” (i.e. “the wrath of god [that] burns against them” a la jonathan edwards) — an engaged viewer will most notably exclaim “what the actual fuck?” despite this ambiguity, this film is masterfully unsubtle, teeming with intertextual references to christian eschatology across multiple denominations and media, an embarassing use of skepticism as a kind of morality strawman-cum-punching bag, and extremely intense depictions of plausible(!) real-world disasters with mildly sickening CGI.

in terms of its focus on free will, KNOWING initially opens with the conceit of nicolas cage as john koestler, an MIT astrophysicist holding court in an undergrad class opposing free will with some sort of in-between hybrid of nomological determinism and predeterminism. it is here that john, says that he thinks “shit just happens,” and soon after we discover that he’s an atheist academic raised as preacher’s kid that had his latest crisis of faith after his wife died in a horrible hotel fire just days before his birthday. as he becomes obsessed with decoding and identifies the “real life” past and impending catastrophes, we see him bias towards predeterminism, but the as the truth itself is slowly revealed we are supposed to infer that every known cataclysm is delineated as a warning that something is coming for EE — everyone else. (it’s giving “this place is a message and is part of a system of messages; pay attention to it.” real “pick me” vibes.) as john dives into to try to stop or save people from terrible things happening (literally sticking his hands in flames to no avail in a failed attempt to save a plane crash victim), he is reminded and humbled by the great futility of his own existence, and his powerlessness in a cruel universe. why are all these things happening? and why do we know the exact predicted death toll?

as we start to realize this, it’s here that i see that the film begins shifting from predeterminism to predestination, and that perhaps, someone in the film is a messenger who will receive this message from the far beyond. it’s clear that the movie’s precocious child characters – john’s son, caleb, and abby, the granddaughter of lucinda, the girl who wrote the numbers that went into the time capsule – are the recipients of the gift of prophecy. but surprise: they’re also special in that they are the elect, bound to bearing the life of the world to come and imminently transported away by these celestial beings. and yet, are they angels? are they aliens? are they both? where does that leave poor old john? fucked in the end: he is not one of the elect. faced with his own spiritual damnation and physical annihilation, he returns to his ancestral home to be with his mildly estranged parents and heavily queer-coded nurse sister.

what’s fascinating to me about this movie is that it refuses to come out and really say what it’s about, and here’s where i disagree with roger ebert.¹ we are supposed to be unsure whether they’re angels or aliens because their depiction is ambiguous. what fascinates me is that the lead writer, ryne pearson, also deliberately plays at that ambiguity.² just the same, cage also believes it’s up to the viewer what to take from the movie, and expects that it might stimulate discussion.^{3 4} compare donald barthelme:

this is, i think, the relation of art to world. i suggest that art is always a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality or a jackleg attempt to “be” external reality.⁵

pearson is apparently a dedicated Catholic, too.⁶ these aspects combined make it also all the more fascinating to me that the movie’s themes feel particularly Calvinist: despite our faith and good works, most of us are truly and undeniably bound to suffer. yet as john says goodbye to caleb, and both as foreshadowed by john’s phone conversation to tell his father that the end is nigh and in the koestler family barbecue incineration and damnation, there is a presumption of being ready for that next life and being sure that you’ll be reunited in the world to come based on faith⁷ – which in some senses is a not-knowing.

however, a good Calvinist epistemologist (yes, i’m side-eying Plantinga) might not say this, and may well lead us down a path of something like the presuppositional apologetics of cornelius van til. in these cases, the world of KNOWING seems to suggest that we need to accept that world’s God that makes it possible for an atheist like john to be so rationally minded in the beginning of the movie. john operates in the discursive frame of science and the academy and thus has to perform rationality to be credible. caleb is disappointed when he realizes (early in the movie) that john doesn’t believe in heaven. despite thinking that “shit just happens” and that “we can’t know for sure” (i.e., that heaven exists), at some point in the past john has accepted a presuppositional mindset, which he slowly regains as he sees the truths in the messages. he specifically notes that he lost a form of faith in knowing what was coming while in the throes of grief, which in turn led him to be more nomologically oriented. however, the list of numbers was an intervention that led him to reconsider his loss of faith, because despite how unlikely it might be to an extremely rational astrophysicist, he was called back to accept the presuppositions that inform all of his underlying complexities.

again, we need to remember this was most likely not intentionally a Calvinist apocalypse film. the statements of pearson and cage don’t jive with that. if anything, KNOWING indeed puts the onus on us to observe and dissect the discursive and epistemological frames we look through to square religion and the world. this is perhaps, indeed, why the movie is so baffling - that not even the angel/iens ever describe how or what ever directly to the audience. one cannot simply anticipate what will happen, and that in itself, leads to the revelatory experience of watching this film itself. without prior knowledge, without that grounding, you really have no fucking clue what you’re getting yourself into. with apologies to barthelme, this is the combinatorial agility of knowledge and belief, the exponential generation of meaning, once they’re allowed to go to bed together… ⁵ — the liaison where we can experience the epistemic jouissance of KNOWING.

MELODY is a place where you can make sense of Linked Open Data and publish beautiful data stories.

In these territorial movements, which build across the span of years rather than months, shared commitments tie different groups together without producing any simple unity. Such movements require what Hugh Farrell has called “the strategy of composition,” which “proposes that the multiple segments of a movement remain multiple, while simultaneously weaving the necessary practical alliances between them.” Such a strategy is neither a synthesis, resulting in a new mass subject, nor a simple coalition, in which each group exits the same as it enters. As Farrell writes, “in order to maintain the composition of a movement, each of its component parts must be willing to step away from their identities to some degree.” … Collective strategy emerges in some way other than any one group could have conceived it.

what tipped the scales, however, was the decision to see The Doobie Brothers about a year and a half ago. it was a ridiculous decision to go see them in a huge outdoor amphitheater in november in the pacific northwest. right then and there is when i decided i could truly no longer judge others for doing so, and it was enough to let my own resistance or boundaries crumble to the ground. that begat more options - like going to Unwound and Tara Jane O’Neil in Los Angeles while already out there for Numero Twenty, which was a full on festival for gen x/millenial cuspers to relive their 20s, and perhaps even their teens. today, i’m fresh out of seeing Kicking Giant (plus TJO and Sara Lund from Unwound) last night to the point where the ink is still drying.

i told my companion to the show last night about all these feelings and preemptively prepared her for the fact that she might be getting “emotional maría”: the one who might shit her pants, scream, and cry if a band plays a specific song. (for those playing along at home, this might be similar to emo maría, but isn’t quite the same. and in this case, the song in question was “she’s real” by Kicking Giant.) i was told not to apologize, and to be fair, i knew that i shouldn’t even apologize to myself. but of course, when the first few notes twinkled through the air, i was transported to the sad 15-year old girl who leveraged this song in a utilitarian manner for any affective catharsis: love, breakups, loneliness, misplaced adolescent frustration not otherwise specified.

Link to video

what i realized last night while i was coming down from the high while also feeling severely spent is that i didn’t want to return to anything because i am immensely happy in the present. instead, this connection with the past through music that was important and remains as such, is a way for me to heal, to connect with that part of me who lost her way, who needed someone else’s words and voice to articulate herself. that 15-year old girl is still here and she is learning how to grow, how to be an adult, guided by the loving sister she never had: herself. this is not nostalgia because there was never a home to return to, but rather a connection to a lost history, an apocryphal one that could have played out differently. i should not be sad about that either, and focus on constructing who i am, and who we will be in a time much closer to now. it is a mistake not to be ginger with our past selves, which is a lesson i’m being asked to learn over and over forever.

if it’s not, you’re not trying hard enough.

TIFA uses a language model (LM), a question answering (QA) model, and a visual question answering (VQA) model. Given a text input, we generate several question-answer pairs with the LM and then filter them via the QA model. To evaluate the faithfulness of a synthesized image to the text input, a VQA model answers these visual questions using the image, and we check the answers for correctness.

The Entropic Self, in this context, represents a departure from the humanist ideal of a stable, autonomous, and rational subject, and an embrace of the fluid, fragmented, and distributed nature of human subjectivity in the age of AI.

while i like pithy communication for some things, sometimes deeper thoughts need a broader expression of one’s own voice. a turn of phrase that feels wasteful in a text message no longer has the pressure of economy and parsimony. in an e-pistle, i can let the real me come out ever so slightly. i don’t worry if closing a message with “best” is passive-aggressive; i don’t fret about miniscule things. the power is in the whole: header, body, attachments.

we see them rusting,
     but they never strain
     until the hammer strikes.

do you remember
     our conversation
     about all the freedoms?

let us break shackles
     sooner than seven
     cycles of shmita.

trumpet lessons be
     damned, we buzz lips
     to absolve each other.

we will no longer
     owe one another;
     only serve as needed.

2022 has been a year of tectonic shifts in my life, and there’s no use recapping them here because i already have. i also don’t love year in review posts and am bad at resolutions. so let’s not dwell in the past; let’s dwell in the now and think about tomorrow.

if you’ve talked to me lately in any depth, you know that i have been centering myself in the real world. that’s right, your favorite extremely online anarchist archivist girlfriend is increasingly offline, not really an archivist, and not your girlfriend. (at least we still have anarchy.) the real world is replete with sensory excitement that centers me in the now of my local café as i write this. the grayness of the Seattle skies visible through the plateglass windows. the wood of the chair and table pressing against my body. the smell of cleaning products and roasted coffee beans wafting through my nostrils. the taste of my now-lukewarm latte that i’ve been nursing for the last hour. the sound of conversation competing with Godley & Creme’s “Cry” on my headphones, steaming milk, barking dogs, and whatever’s on the cafe’s speakers.

the real world’s physicality is satisfying, yet i also find myself basking in the light and warmth of imagination as it shines through the stained glass of my mind-palace. there are things i hold onto precisely in my head because i have a lack of a physical analog: experiences of beauty now far from me. not distant memories but things i try to live and relive, a ceaseless cycle of rebirth of experience even as i have amazing new experiences every single day. not everything gold can stay, despite it being a noble metal. neither the memories nor the desire for the new new corrode, really, but they end up getting turned into fulminating gold, which has the tendency to explode with the slightest touch.

fulgeo: i shine. fulgebimus: we will shine. fulgetote: we shall shine. all i want is for us to shine together. let us make a commitment to do that — to stand side by side at the barricades, arm in arm at the museum, hand in hand on the shore. through our successes and failures. let us inject, will, manifest, and demand the beauty into our lives not just for ourselves individually, but for each other. it is owed to us mutually. the world is a terrible place but it’s far less terrible with both of us in it. let us gas each other up when we are feeling ourselves as the beautiful creatures we know ourselves to be. let us manifest the art, music, and culture we want to see together and create it and consume it in each other’s presence, even if that only means pressing “play” at the same time if we are miles and miles apart. let us not expect much, but be graced by what we receive and grace others what we give both in the physical world and in our imaginations. let us defend each other and our communities.

there is no future but ours. i love you. i love us. let’s do this all together, bringing about the real state of exception. we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to all of us.

this was my first #TDoR since coming out. i found trans joy where i could get it this last week: new friends, new sights, writing. and saturday night i went out with a group of other gender misfits from around town and we danced, danced, danced. inadvertently i spent a chunk of the evening in what i call “trans denmother” mode: leading people to new spots, making sure people didn’t get fucked with, and ensuring people got home safely.

of course, this was the same night as q club shooting in Colorado Springs. i got home late and didn’t check the news until the morning. i was numb to it at first. then i felt hopeless, and felt my anger burn brighter than the heat of a thousand suns. it stings to know that i can’t protect my friends and family, let alone myself. i shouldn’t have to pack a stop the bleed kit in my totebag when i go out just like i shouldn’t have to leverage deescalation tactics when walking through Capitol Hill, much less anywhere else. but it’s starting to feel like i don’t have a choice.

hopelessness turned into roiling blue flame, one that allowed me to get my blood burbling. i had been avoiding dealing with my name change petition for months, scared of commiting to something in the eyes of the law, that would render my identity visible to the state. “fuck it,” i finally said, and dug up the forms from county court websites and the SSA. i filled out the paperwork, tucked it neatly into a manila folder, and headed to the bank for the fee. when the clerk helped me with the filing i couldn’t get a date for another week, because they’re not holding hearings this week because of thanksgiving.

disappointment is not the word i would use. apathy, maybe, or abjection. it hits me in the gut again. but through all this hot, rancid garbage, i finally know what i have to give the world: my love, my care, myself. to be there the way that my queer trans siblings and family have been there for me. this is for all of you. i love you. i do this for us, so you can do the same for the next crop. replenish yourself when you can, because this world will use you up and hang you out to dry.

This is the practice of being-with the kinships we do not choose—human and more-than-human. This is the practice of living inside of contradiction and contamination.

Reminds me a lot of Cracked by Bill Orcutt.