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Predicting the next word "only" is sufficient for language models to learn a large body of knowledge that enables then to code, answer questions, understand many topics, chat, and so on. This is clear to many researchers now, and there are nice tutorials on why this works by Ilya...

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Nando de Freitas

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130,179 views • 2 years ago •via X (Twitter)

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Language models predict the next token. Interactive video models predict the next video frame. We're in the 2022-era of these models, but video feeling sentient is imminent, along with an explosion of applications.
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Adaptyv Bio

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They did not take cursive from the schools because children no longer needed it. They took it because of what it was quietly building in them. Consider what the exercise actually is. A child, six years old, is handed a pen and asked to draw a single unbroken line that becomes a word. The wrist must float. The fingers must hold a living pressure, never quite the same twice, always correcting. The eye must follow the ink forward and trust the hand to finish what it has begun. There is no lifting, no stopping, no starting over mid-word. The loop must close. The ascender must rise and return. The sentence must travel from one margin to the other as a single continuous gesture, and at the end of it the hand must still be steady. Twelve years of this. Every day. Ten thousand small acts of sustained, self-correcting attention, carried out below the level of conscious thought, until the motion belongs to the body and the body belongs to the motion. This is not penmanship. It is the slow construction of an interior form. The hand that has learned to carry a line without breaking it is the hand of a mind that has learned to carry a thought without breaking it. The two are not metaphors for one another. They are the same faculty, trained in the same child, by the same daily discipline. Continuity of the stroke becomes continuity of the reasoning. The patience of the loop becomes the patience of the argument. The commitment to finish a word one has started becomes the commitment to finish a sentence, a paragraph, a life's idea, without reaching for the nearest distraction halfway through. Print is a different creature entirely. Print lifts. Print stops. Print assembles a word out of separate, stamped, interchangeable pieces, each one beginning and ending in isolation. A mind raised only on print learns to think the way print is made, in discrete tokens, in replaceable units, in fragments that can be recombined by any outside hand without the owner noticing the substitution. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model produces. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model can steer. Cursive is kata. This is the whole of it. A form repeated daily, for years, not for the sake of the form but for what the repetition lays down in the practitioner beneath the form. The swordsman does not train kata so that one day he may fight in kata. He trains it so that when the moment comes and there is no time to think, the movement is already inside him, older and deeper than thought, and it rises on its own. Cursive was the kata of the literate mind, the daily quiet drilling of continuity, of patience, of a line held steady under the long pressure of its own length. And the signature it produced at the end, that small flourished mark unique to a single human being on earth, was only the outward proof of an inward form no machine and no other hand could ever reproduce. Take the kata away and the practitioner is left with vocabulary in place of faculty. He can recognise a whole thought when he encounters one. He cannot carry one himself. He can admire a finished argument. He cannot sustain one long enough to close its loop. He begins books he does not finish, sentences he does not end, ideas he abandons the moment the screen in his palm offers him a brighter one. And when the machine begins feeding him tokens in the exact shape his schooling taught him to receive, he meets it with no interior resistance at all, because no interior form was ever built in him to push back with. They removed it quietly, across a generation, and they removed it in the last years before the machines arrived. Twelve years of daily practice in unbroken, embodied, self-authored thought, gone from the curriculum of almost every child in the Western world, just as the instruments designed to complete their sentences for them came online. The hand forgets. The mind, having never been taught the kata, forgets a thing it never knew it had. That is what cursive was. That is what was taken. And that is why the thought of anyone who still writes by hand, in long unlifted lines, remains, quietly, stubbornly, and without their ever needing to announce it, their own. Now the question stands open. What else has been banned, phased out, quietly retired from the curriculum and from common life over these same decades, under the same soft excuses? Mental arithmetic. Memorisation of poetry. Latin. Logic as a formal subject. Map reading. Knot work. The keeping of a commonplace book. The reading aloud of long passages in class. Singing in parts. What was each of those actually building in the child, beneath the surface of the lesson, and whose interest was served by its disappearance?
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They did not take cursive from the schools because children no longer needed it. They took it because of what it was quietly building in them. Consider what the exercise actually is. A child, six years old, is handed a pen and asked to draw a single unbroken line that becomes a word. The wrist must float. The fingers must hold a living pressure, never quite the same twice, always correcting. The eye must follow the ink forward and trust the hand to finish what it has begun. There is no lifting, no stopping, no starting over mid-word. The loop must close. The ascender must rise and return. The sentence must travel from one margin to the other as a single continuous gesture, and at the end of it the hand must still be steady. Twelve years of this. Every day. Ten thousand small acts of sustained, self-correcting attention, carried out below the level of conscious thought, until the motion belongs to the body and the body belongs to the motion. This is not penmanship. It is the slow construction of an interior form. The hand that has learned to carry a line without breaking it is the hand of a mind that has learned to carry a thought without breaking it. The two are not metaphors for one another. They are the same faculty, trained in the same child, by the same daily discipline. Continuity of the stroke becomes continuity of the reasoning. The patience of the loop becomes the patience of the argument. The commitment to finish a word one has started becomes the commitment to finish a sentence, a paragraph, a life's idea, without reaching for the nearest distraction halfway through. Print is a different creature entirely. Print lifts. Print stops. Print assembles a word out of separate, stamped, interchangeable pieces, each one beginning and ending in isolation. A mind raised only on print learns to think the way print is made, in discrete tokens, in replaceable units, in fragments that can be recombined by any outside hand without the owner noticing the substitution. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model produces. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model can steer. Cursive is kata. This is the whole of it. A form repeated daily, for years, not for the sake of the form but for what the repetition lays down in the practitioner beneath the form. The swordsman does not train kata so that one day he may fight in kata. He trains it so that when the moment comes and there is no time to think, the movement is already inside him, older and deeper than thought, and it rises on its own. Cursive was the kata of the literate mind, the daily quiet drilling of continuity, of patience, of a line held steady under the long pressure of its own length. And the signature it produced at the end, that small flourished mark unique to a single human being on earth, was only the outward proof of an inward form no machine and no other hand could ever reproduce. Take the kata away and the practitioner is left with vocabulary in place of faculty. He can recognise a whole thought when he encounters one. He cannot carry one himself. He can admire a finished argument. He cannot sustain one long enough to close its loop. He begins books he does not finish, sentences he does not end, ideas he abandons the moment the screen in his palm offers him a brighter one. And when the machine begins feeding him tokens in the exact shape his schooling taught him to receive, he meets it with no interior resistance at all, because no interior form was ever built in him to push back with. They removed it quietly, across a generation, and they removed it in the last years before the machines arrived. Twelve years of daily practice in unbroken, embodied, self-authored thought, gone from the curriculum of almost every child in the Western world, just as the instruments designed to complete their sentences for them came online. The hand forgets. The mind, having never been taught the kata, forgets a thing it never knew it had. That is what cursive was. That is what was taken. And that is why the thought of anyone who still writes by hand, in long unlifted lines, remains, quietly, stubbornly, and without their ever needing to announce it, their own. Now the question stands open. What else has been banned, phased out, quietly retired from the curriculum and from common life over these same decades, under the same soft excuses? Mental arithmetic. Memorisation of poetry. Latin. Logic as a formal subject. Map reading. Knot work. The keeping of a commonplace book. The reading aloud of long passages in class. Singing in parts. What was each of those actually building in the child, beneath the surface of the lesson, and whose interest was served by its disappearance?

SiriusB

440,735 views • 2 months ago

The kind of Catholicism practiced by Italians is the result of a profound inculturation that has been ongoing for many centuries. Italians are not a rigid or logical people. Their world is one of deep passions, emotions, and festive exuberance. It's only natural then that the religion they practice would be shaped and influenced by that temperament. That the Catholic Church has successfully managed to do this is a testimony to its enduring ability to be a truly universal faith, not a narrow and parochial one. It's a tragic shame that so many outsiders seem unable to perceive this and instead hurl insults and condemnations because they are either too close-minded or ignorant to understand (or even desire to) how such a unique expression of a religion could have been created and continue to exist, nourishing those who partake in it.
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The kind of Catholicism practiced by Italians is the result of a profound inculturation that has been ongoing for many centuries. Italians are not a rigid or logical people. Their world is one of deep passions, emotions, and festive exuberance. It's only natural then that the religion they practice would be shaped and influenced by that temperament. That the Catholic Church has successfully managed to do this is a testimony to its enduring ability to be a truly universal faith, not a narrow and parochial one. It's a tragic shame that so many outsiders seem unable to perceive this and instead hurl insults and condemnations because they are either too close-minded or ignorant to understand (or even desire to) how such a unique expression of a religion could have been created and continue to exist, nourishing those who partake in it.

Robert Kearney

184,717 views • 28 days ago

“Zionists aim was to change the Jewish Identity. They wanted to transform the Jewish people from religion to a nationality.” Israel was founded by a nationalistic movement that replaces the Jewish religion with Zionism. They wanted Jews to forget of G-d and Religion, & be united by land and language. To date, they have raised generations of Israelis who have a deep hatred for traditional Jews & Judaism The only responsibility for the dead Jews and Muslims is the racist and usurper government of the Zionist state of Israel. Israel is not the country of the Jews. Jews don't need a state. There is something that Zionists ignore: Jews already have many countries in the world where they live. Judaism is not a nationality. Judaism is a religion. Israel can call itself a Zionist state or a Herzlston state, but it cannot call itself a Jewish state.
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“Zionists aim was to change the Jewish Identity. They wanted to transform the Jewish people from religion to a nationality.” Israel was founded by a nationalistic movement that replaces the Jewish religion with Zionism. They wanted Jews to forget of G-d and Religion, & be united by land and language. To date, they have raised generations of Israelis who have a deep hatred for traditional Jews & Judaism The only responsibility for the dead Jews and Muslims is the racist and usurper government of the Zionist state of Israel. Israel is not the country of the Jews. Jews don't need a state. There is something that Zionists ignore: Jews already have many countries in the world where they live. Judaism is not a nationality. Judaism is a religion. Israel can call itself a Zionist state or a Herzlston state, but it cannot call itself a Jewish state.

Voice of Rabbis

398,864 views • 2 years ago

It is shameful to hear that the Congress party is asking, "Kashmir se kya waasta hai?" I would like to remind the Congress party that J&K is an integral part of India, and every state and citizen has the right over J&K, just as the people of J&K have the right over the rest of India. The Congress doesn’t know that many brave sons of Rajasthan have sacrificed their lives for peace and security in Kashmir. But it is not merely the fault of the Congress leaders. It is mostly the Italian culture of the Congress party that is to blame for not understanding the very idea of India. Such statements hurt every patriotic citizen who cares for the unity and integrity of the nation. People will certainly answer Congress. And for the kind information of the Congress, it was not Article 371, but Article 370, that was abrogated by the Modi government. However, it is only expected of Congress to make such horrendous mistakes. Such blunders made by it have haunted our nation for decades now.
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It is shameful to hear that the Congress party is asking, "Kashmir se kya waasta hai?" I would like to remind the Congress party that J&K is an integral part of India, and every state and citizen has the right over J&K, just as the people of J&K have the right over the rest of India. The Congress doesn’t know that many brave sons of Rajasthan have sacrificed their lives for peace and security in Kashmir. But it is not merely the fault of the Congress leaders. It is mostly the Italian culture of the Congress party that is to blame for not understanding the very idea of India. Such statements hurt every patriotic citizen who cares for the unity and integrity of the nation. People will certainly answer Congress. And for the kind information of the Congress, it was not Article 371, but Article 370, that was abrogated by the Modi government. However, it is only expected of Congress to make such horrendous mistakes. Such blunders made by it have haunted our nation for decades now.

Amit Shah

785,527 views • 2 years ago

CES was an enormous success. We saw thousands of people and a few dogs interacting with our agents and robots. We booked this booth at the last minute, mainly to book next year’s booth. Truly extraordinary what our team was able to put together on such short notice. Next year we reserved one of the largest booths at CES in the highest traffic location for AI and Robotics. We plan to unveil something extraordinary. Until the next show, we will be debuting the first custom models that will emerge from the first humanoid robotics hot rod shop. These models will be walking around, talking and interacting at tradeshows all over the world over the next few months. We are in the process of acquiring every humanoid robot available on the market to modify these as well. Stay tuned for more updates, the future is here and it’s rapidly accelerating.
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CES was an enormous success. We saw thousands of people and a few dogs interacting with our agents and robots. We booked this booth at the last minute, mainly to book next year’s booth. Truly extraordinary what our team was able to put together on such short notice. Next year we reserved one of the largest booths at CES in the highest traffic location for AI and Robotics. We plan to unveil something extraordinary. Until the next show, we will be debuting the first custom models that will emerge from the first humanoid robotics hot rod shop. These models will be walking around, talking and interacting at tradeshows all over the world over the next few months. We are in the process of acquiring every humanoid robot available on the market to modify these as well. Stay tuned for more updates, the future is here and it’s rapidly accelerating.

Parallel

16,823 views • 1 year ago

Then the map of power changes: the "Mihail Kogelnicanu" base in Romania, one of the main strongholds of NATO in the region, comes within the range of Russian systems like "Iskander". And that changes everything. But the reality is that for now there is no quick way to Odessa. The Black Sea Fleet cannot carry out a large landing, and advancing by land complicates the terrain and the enemy's resistance. The key for Odessa is not in negotiations, but in a complete change of the situation on the ground. Or everything - or nothing. In any scenario, one thing is clear – if Russia gives up Odessa now, it will become hostage to the next crisis. And then the stake would be even higher, and the price – even higher. The question is not only whether it is worth fighting for Odessa. The question is: what is lost if one does not fight?
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Then the map of power changes: the "Mihail Kogelnicanu" base in Romania, one of the main strongholds of NATO in the region, comes within the range of Russian systems like "Iskander". And that changes everything. But the reality is that for now there is no quick way to Odessa. The Black Sea Fleet cannot carry out a large landing, and advancing by land complicates the terrain and the enemy's resistance. The key for Odessa is not in negotiations, but in a complete change of the situation on the ground. Or everything - or nothing. In any scenario, one thing is clear – if Russia gives up Odessa now, it will become hostage to the next crisis. And then the stake would be even higher, and the price – even higher. The question is not only whether it is worth fighting for Odessa. The question is: what is lost if one does not fight?

Djole 🇷🇸

15,290 views • 1 year ago

The Hidden Language of Diffusion Models paper page: tackle the challenge of understanding concept representations in text-to-image models by decomposing an input text prompt into a small set of interpretable elements. This is achieved by learning a pseudo-token that is a sparse weighted combination of tokens from the model's vocabulary, with the objective of reconstructing the images generated for the given concept. Applied over the state-of-the-art Stable Diffusion model, this decomposition reveals non-trivial and surprising structures in the representations of concepts. For example, we find that some concepts such as "a president" or "a composer" are dominated by specific instances (e.g., "Obama", "Biden") and their interpolations. Other concepts, such as "happiness" combine associated terms that can be concrete ("family", "laughter") or abstract ("friendship", "emotion"). In addition to peering into the inner workings of Stable Diffusion, our method also enables applications such as single-image decomposition to tokens, bias detection and mitigation, and semantic image manipulation
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The Hidden Language of Diffusion Models paper page: tackle the challenge of understanding concept representations in text-to-image models by decomposing an input text prompt into a small set of interpretable elements. This is achieved by learning a pseudo-token that is a sparse weighted combination of tokens from the model's vocabulary, with the objective of reconstructing the images generated for the given concept. Applied over the state-of-the-art Stable Diffusion model, this decomposition reveals non-trivial and surprising structures in the representations of concepts. For example, we find that some concepts such as "a president" or "a composer" are dominated by specific instances (e.g., "Obama", "Biden") and their interpolations. Other concepts, such as "happiness" combine associated terms that can be concrete ("family", "laughter") or abstract ("friendship", "emotion"). In addition to peering into the inner workings of Stable Diffusion, our method also enables applications such as single-image decomposition to tokens, bias detection and mitigation, and semantic image manipulation

AK

41,746 views • 3 years ago

Today I was visiting the exceptionally beautiful Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium (one of the only museums in the world that is itself listed as UNESCO World Heritage), which is one of the oldest printing shops in Europe, with the oldest surviving printing presses in the world. I stumbled upon an old 16th century atlas - written in Old French - and I was pretty amused to read their understanding of China at the time, which was surprisingly accurate, maybe even more than today's! A translation of some of the most interesting passages: - They call it "China" in French (it's now called "Chine") and they write that the locals call it "Tangis", which probably refers to the Tang dynasty but which is strange given that by the 16th century the dynasty had already ended for about 600 years - They write that to its North China is bordered by "tartares" (which I guess means Mongols) whom they describe as "very warlike people from whom it is separated by a wall made by hand" - The Chinese work ethic was already legendary: "those who live there are not at all lazy but devoted to labor and work, because it is there a shameful thing to be idle" - They share a number which must have seemed astonishing at the time: "in the city of Canton, one of the smallest in the entire country, some ten or twelve thousand ducks are eaten daily at table". And then they marvel during a good proportion of the text about the abundance of food in the country, which probably made a big impression on travelers at the time. - They write that "there are in this kingdom two hundred and forty famous cities, whose names end in this syllable FU which means a city: like Cantonfu, Panquifu: the small towns, which are in great number, end in CHEU [undoubtedly refers to "zhou"]. There are infinite villages, heavily populated, because of the continuous agriculture." - China's infrastructure and engineering capabilities were also already legendary at the time: "The city gates have entrances magnificently and marvelously well made, the streets are made level, not sloping this way or that, but following their straight line. They are so wide that ten or fifteen men on horseback can march abreast and are everywhere marked and separated by triumphal arches that marvelously ornament the cities. Portuguese say they saw in the city of Fuchco [probably Fuzhou] a tower set on forty solid marble pillars, the height of which was forty palms (masonry measure) and the width twelve: that this work is so grand, so exquisitely made, so beautiful to see, so sumptuous and so pleasing that it far surpasses all the magnificent buildings of all Europe." - Already at the time, China was very wary of safeguarding its sovereignty: ""[The Chinese] rarely or never leave their country and do not easily let foreigners enter it, especially into the interior of the province, unless they first have safe conduct from the king." - On moral and cultural habits: "They put adulterers to death. There are no brothels in the cities, all manner of prostitutes being sent to the suburbs. They celebrate their weddings at the time of the new moon and around the month of March which is their first day of the new year, and they make these celebrations, like us, very magnificently. They show themselves valiant in banquets and entertainments, in which they owe nothing to the Flemings or the Germans. They eat at tables like us in Europe, on chairs or on benches, and not on the ground as other peoples of Asia do." - On justice: "Bandits and murderers are kept in perpetual prison. Theft, which is a very odious crime, is punished by whip strokes in this manner: they put a man belly down, tie his hands behind him, striking him on the fleshy part of the legs with a whip made of reeds or canes." - On China's naval capabilities at the time: "This kingdom has an infinite number of ships, galleys and vessels of all sorts, with which they cross the seas and rivers. So much so that when they want to show through vainglory the power of their king, they are accustomed to say in a common proverb that he can make a bridge of ships joined together, which can reach and extend from China to Malacca, which is a distance of five hundred leagues and more." - On the emperor and China not being warlike (already back then): "All this region is subject to a single king, like a monarch; whom they call lord of the world and son of the sun. He holds court at Paquin [Beijing], which is a city toward Tartary. He never leaves it, except in time of war. It is said that when he makes war on the Tartars he leads an army of three hundred thousand soldiers and two hundred thousand horses, although it is also said that this nation is not very warlike. This king has under him fifteen very large provinces, which they call governments, and he alone surpasses in power all the other neighboring princes of Asia; and his annual revenues exceed all the riches of Europe. Antonio Pigafetta [the chronicler of Magellan's voyage] calls this king the most powerful of all the universal earth and says that the royal city is fortified and ramparted with seven walls, having ten thousand soldiers for the guard, and that the king commands seventy other crowns of the royal diadem [likely refering to the tributary state system]." Reading these passages, it seems that the further we've come in our ability to know China, the more obscured our vision seems to have become. These 16th century observers, working with fragments brought back by explorers, merchants and missionaries, managed to capture the essential - the industriousness, the engineering mastery, the administrative sophistication, the careful sovereignty. They approached their subject with the humility of the genuinely curious. They had no framework to force China into, no predetermined narrative to fulfill. They simply watched, counted ducks in Canton, measured city walls, and wrote it down. Their errors were errors of transmission - a dynasty name lingering centuries past its time, numbers perhaps inflated through retelling - but the spirit was one of simply describing unknown territory, not to convince anyone of anything. Today however, drowning in information, we're somehow seeing less of what's there and more of what we expect to find. Each observation must fit into existing narratives, serve predetermined conclusions, advance familiar arguments. So much so that we must ask ourselves: have we actually moved backward from those 16th chroniclers? Maybe we need to re-learn to approach China - and others in general - like those old cartographers, pen in hand, ready to be surprised? What might we discover if we stopped explaining and started counting ducks again?
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Today I was visiting the exceptionally beautiful Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium (one of the only museums in the world that is itself listed as UNESCO World Heritage), which is one of the oldest printing shops in Europe, with the oldest surviving printing presses in the world. I stumbled upon an old 16th century atlas - written in Old French - and I was pretty amused to read their understanding of China at the time, which was surprisingly accurate, maybe even more than today's! A translation of some of the most interesting passages: - They call it "China" in French (it's now called "Chine") and they write that the locals call it "Tangis", which probably refers to the Tang dynasty but which is strange given that by the 16th century the dynasty had already ended for about 600 years - They write that to its North China is bordered by "tartares" (which I guess means Mongols) whom they describe as "very warlike people from whom it is separated by a wall made by hand" - The Chinese work ethic was already legendary: "those who live there are not at all lazy but devoted to labor and work, because it is there a shameful thing to be idle" - They share a number which must have seemed astonishing at the time: "in the city of Canton, one of the smallest in the entire country, some ten or twelve thousand ducks are eaten daily at table". And then they marvel during a good proportion of the text about the abundance of food in the country, which probably made a big impression on travelers at the time. - They write that "there are in this kingdom two hundred and forty famous cities, whose names end in this syllable FU which means a city: like Cantonfu, Panquifu: the small towns, which are in great number, end in CHEU [undoubtedly refers to "zhou"]. There are infinite villages, heavily populated, because of the continuous agriculture." - China's infrastructure and engineering capabilities were also already legendary at the time: "The city gates have entrances magnificently and marvelously well made, the streets are made level, not sloping this way or that, but following their straight line. They are so wide that ten or fifteen men on horseback can march abreast and are everywhere marked and separated by triumphal arches that marvelously ornament the cities. Portuguese say they saw in the city of Fuchco [probably Fuzhou] a tower set on forty solid marble pillars, the height of which was forty palms (masonry measure) and the width twelve: that this work is so grand, so exquisitely made, so beautiful to see, so sumptuous and so pleasing that it far surpasses all the magnificent buildings of all Europe." - Already at the time, China was very wary of safeguarding its sovereignty: ""[The Chinese] rarely or never leave their country and do not easily let foreigners enter it, especially into the interior of the province, unless they first have safe conduct from the king." - On moral and cultural habits: "They put adulterers to death. There are no brothels in the cities, all manner of prostitutes being sent to the suburbs. They celebrate their weddings at the time of the new moon and around the month of March which is their first day of the new year, and they make these celebrations, like us, very magnificently. They show themselves valiant in banquets and entertainments, in which they owe nothing to the Flemings or the Germans. They eat at tables like us in Europe, on chairs or on benches, and not on the ground as other peoples of Asia do." - On justice: "Bandits and murderers are kept in perpetual prison. Theft, which is a very odious crime, is punished by whip strokes in this manner: they put a man belly down, tie his hands behind him, striking him on the fleshy part of the legs with a whip made of reeds or canes." - On China's naval capabilities at the time: "This kingdom has an infinite number of ships, galleys and vessels of all sorts, with which they cross the seas and rivers. So much so that when they want to show through vainglory the power of their king, they are accustomed to say in a common proverb that he can make a bridge of ships joined together, which can reach and extend from China to Malacca, which is a distance of five hundred leagues and more." - On the emperor and China not being warlike (already back then): "All this region is subject to a single king, like a monarch; whom they call lord of the world and son of the sun. He holds court at Paquin [Beijing], which is a city toward Tartary. He never leaves it, except in time of war. It is said that when he makes war on the Tartars he leads an army of three hundred thousand soldiers and two hundred thousand horses, although it is also said that this nation is not very warlike. This king has under him fifteen very large provinces, which they call governments, and he alone surpasses in power all the other neighboring princes of Asia; and his annual revenues exceed all the riches of Europe. Antonio Pigafetta [the chronicler of Magellan's voyage] calls this king the most powerful of all the universal earth and says that the royal city is fortified and ramparted with seven walls, having ten thousand soldiers for the guard, and that the king commands seventy other crowns of the royal diadem [likely refering to the tributary state system]." Reading these passages, it seems that the further we've come in our ability to know China, the more obscured our vision seems to have become. These 16th century observers, working with fragments brought back by explorers, merchants and missionaries, managed to capture the essential - the industriousness, the engineering mastery, the administrative sophistication, the careful sovereignty. They approached their subject with the humility of the genuinely curious. They had no framework to force China into, no predetermined narrative to fulfill. They simply watched, counted ducks in Canton, measured city walls, and wrote it down. Their errors were errors of transmission - a dynasty name lingering centuries past its time, numbers perhaps inflated through retelling - but the spirit was one of simply describing unknown territory, not to convince anyone of anything. Today however, drowning in information, we're somehow seeing less of what's there and more of what we expect to find. Each observation must fit into existing narratives, serve predetermined conclusions, advance familiar arguments. So much so that we must ask ourselves: have we actually moved backward from those 16th chroniclers? Maybe we need to re-learn to approach China - and others in general - like those old cartographers, pen in hand, ready to be surprised? What might we discover if we stopped explaining and started counting ducks again?

Arnaud Bertrand

19,380 views • 10 months ago

Is Baphomet really the Devil, and what does the depiction mean? The Knights Templar were prosecuted in the fourteenth century, and under pressure it was written that they worshipped a deity from the East known as Baphomet. They were prosecuted by the elites who were threatened, the King of France and the Pope. The depiction of Baphomet comes from the French occultist Lévi in the nineteenth century as the Goat of Mendes, and it's an alchemical depiction of the balance of opposite forces. Later, in the twentieth century, that depiction was used by Satanic movements for something that has no connection to the real meaning of the depiction. The Goat of Mendes is actually the ancient ram-headed deity connected to Osiris and resurrection, known as Banebdjedet. Ba means soul, and Djed is the ancient name of Mendes, which also means the pillar spine of Osiris, so in a sense Banebdjedet means the soul that is climbing on the pillar. Before we go any deeper, you need to understand that Jesus was also connected to the ram, as He is the Lamb of God. The depiction of Baphomet is knowledge, not something that needs to be worshipped, but the Royal Families and the Pope wanted to forbid that knowledge that the Templars wanted to spread.
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Is Baphomet really the Devil, and what does the depiction mean? The Knights Templar were prosecuted in the fourteenth century, and under pressure it was written that they worshipped a deity from the East known as Baphomet. They were prosecuted by the elites who were threatened, the King of France and the Pope. The depiction of Baphomet comes from the French occultist Lévi in the nineteenth century as the Goat of Mendes, and it's an alchemical depiction of the balance of opposite forces. Later, in the twentieth century, that depiction was used by Satanic movements for something that has no connection to the real meaning of the depiction. The Goat of Mendes is actually the ancient ram-headed deity connected to Osiris and resurrection, known as Banebdjedet. Ba means soul, and Djed is the ancient name of Mendes, which also means the pillar spine of Osiris, so in a sense Banebdjedet means the soul that is climbing on the pillar. Before we go any deeper, you need to understand that Jesus was also connected to the ram, as He is the Lamb of God. The depiction of Baphomet is knowledge, not something that needs to be worshipped, but the Royal Families and the Pope wanted to forbid that knowledge that the Templars wanted to spread.

Open Minded Approach

29,090 views • 17 days ago

🌍 Physical AI, Large Geospatial Models, and OVRMaps LLMs understand language. But the next evolution of AI is about machines that can move, see, and operate in the physical world. This is Physical AI, and it’s already happening. 🧵👇🏼
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🌍 Physical AI, Large Geospatial Models, and OVRMaps LLMs understand language. But the next evolution of AI is about machines that can move, see, and operate in the physical world. This is Physical AI, and it’s already happening. 🧵👇🏼

Over the Reality 🌐

100,941 views • 10 months ago

WE NEED TO MAKE THIS GO VIRAL!!! California is quietly removing statues of Saints and of Christian importance across the state. The Saint Junipero Serra statue was a local landmark that was widely loved and traveled to by many. IT HAS BEEN THERE SINCE 1976. They removed it without a trace in the middle of the night! Not even so much as a warning to the Church… This is an attack on all of us. We must stand United against evil. BRING BACK THE STATUE!!!
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WE NEED TO MAKE THIS GO VIRAL!!! California is quietly removing statues of Saints and of Christian importance across the state. The Saint Junipero Serra statue was a local landmark that was widely loved and traveled to by many. IT HAS BEEN THERE SINCE 1976. They removed it without a trace in the middle of the night! Not even so much as a warning to the Church… This is an attack on all of us. We must stand United against evil. BRING BACK THE STATUE!!!

Matt Wallace

381,644 views • 8 months ago