Entry 4
I can't imagine this entry being too long. I have the same neck pain from last night but the twist is that now nothing I do is alleviating the pain. Yeah it's not really that bad but it's bad enough that I can't get into a comfortable position. At the moment I am laying on my stomach while resting my chin on two thin pillows. The fan is on high and I am staring at this bright screen that causes the surroundings to be cast in absolute darkness. Or the overexposure is making everything aside from the light source really dark. I'm not sure that applies to eye sight as I only know it as a camera thing.
I'm pretty sure I know where the neck pain is coming from. I have a few upcoming tests so I have spent most of my time awake either dealing with school or studying for my exams. I guess my body is starting to suffer. I'm not sure if any of you will find any of this interesting or just boring as it just consists of me complaining about life. I'll switch to something that I find interesting instead.
So today in my ecology class, it deals with organisms and their interactions with others and the environment, the professor mentioned a book and the ideas within it. So the book makes a point that Europe taking over the world in its imperial age was a result of pathogens. Ok now to explain, first a pathogen is anything that causes disease; second the concept mainly deals with livestock. So I'll add in a few connections I made so that this idea seems much clearer but I'll let you know what are my words and what it said... well what my professor said. So the book first.
Europe had a much larger amount of livestock than compared to the rest of the world. This caused disease to run rampant all over it until the Europeans became somewhat immune. Once they became they could have more livestock so then they had more food. When they left to take over other areas the diseases they carried on them did most of the work in killing wherever they went. This was especially true with North and South America. This was mostly what was said on the topic by my professor so this is where I'll add in my ideas.
Let's start with the rise of religion. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to be specific. Now each had rules over how food was dealt with. I've heard the idea that religions that had safer practices were most likely to flourish and the ones with unsafe, in terms of health, were likely to die out. Ok so people are not eating everything in every way at this moment. Then Europe starts to take in more animals than the others and boom this leads to the dark ages.
Now the way I see it these practices was spreading illnesses all over the place so people were dying. They were dying so often that they didn't have time for culture, philosophy or art. Then they started to get better. Those with better immunities were living on to spread their genes. And so they came to the point where the animals were not causing a great number of deaths but instead they created a surplus of food. Maybe not a surplus but they had greater options than compared to the rest of the world. So the population greatly grew and since they weren't dying they could focus on other matters. And so you can now include other stuff such as social matters and politics but I'll stick with the science point of view for now.
Europe had more people, they were less likely to get sick and die in an era where most soldiers would die of sickness rather than in battle, and since they could focus on more matters now that food and disease wasn't as large of an issue as before they would focus on money. Money that would be made through their conquests. My examples are the east India trading company, the Caribbean with their sugar, Africa because of the slave trade and salt (salt was worth a lot back then, not making light of slavery), North America and its furs, cotton, and tobacco, I could keep going but I think I've made my point.
If food isn't the issue then money is. If you take out the superior technology and moral culture that supported this conquest you would still have a greater population that doesn't have a lack of food (compared to the rest) and won't get sick (also in comparison to the rest). I'm not sure if that's really true but the logic makes sense to me and I'll support scientific reasoning before I support social reasoning (not that either is necessarily known to be true so far). Well that's enough writing its 4:07 am and I'll say bye for now.
Entry 5
I've been thinking more about posting these entries. I'm not sure if royal road is really the best suited medium for this type of writing. On the other hand while I'll still keep up the no edit constant wring project I may make this a request short story section instead. I think I've mentioned this idea before with flash fiction but now I'll add in the request type. Like if there are topics in the comments then I'll choose from them. If there are no comments then I may attempt older stories I know that I consider funny. Or like the past few days talk about this topic that I have done a modest amount of research into.
Ah in case any are wondering about the neck pain, I think what I did yesterday did the trick. Ok so what I've learned today comes in two parts. The first I heard on a podcast with Joe Rogan and Neil "black science man". So I don't remember how but they got onto the subject of infinity. Neil said to Joe that some infinities are larger than others. Now Neil put it into quite a lovely series of words but he didn't do a whole lot of explaining. So I started doing some digging into the matter and what I can say is that, yes some infinities are larger than others. I'll explain.
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First there are natural numbers and those are pretty much while numbers 1-2-3-4 so on. Whole numbers include zero, that's the only difference. Ok so after natural is integers which are all the whole numbers plus the negative versions of them. And then above that is rational numbers. They are integer numbers divided by integer numbers. So all integers are rational but not all rational are integers. My example being 1/2 or .5. And above all that are real numbers and they are numbers with decimals so all rational numbers are real numbers but not all real numbers are rational. My example being 12.0 and -4.4732. One can be shown as 12/1 and the other can't be shown with rational numbers (I think I just randomly wrote it out but I'm guessing you can't use a ratio of two rational numbers to make it).
Now within real numbers are also irrational numbers which are numbers that don't end and don't repeat like pi and e. Now there are a lot of these more than infinity as we think of it. No really like imagine you use 10 symbols to illustrate all natural numbers well with irrational numbers you don't want to repeat patterns so you want to use the infinity of numbers to then create a bigger infinity of numbers. If that one's weird I got an easier one. So there are more real numbers in between 0 and 1 than an infinity of natural numbers. Don't get it?
Then think of this, you have 1-2-3-4 so on so then with real numbers you can have a corresponding, .1-.2-.3-.4 going on with .145235 and so on. Now with that you get equal to natural infinity but then you can do this .01-.02-.03-.04 and so on. Now you have a second infinity of corresponding numbers. So just keep adding zeros right after the decimal and now you have an infinite number of infinities. Crazy right? Well with simple algebra you set infinity to x and you know that real numbers are not only infinite but they are also uncountable. I think that's an actual phrase they use.
I really recommend looking into this yourself. Oh and it doesn't end there. There are imaginary numbers that are at least equal to real numbers and complex numbers that are greater than all of the about and even greater than that are hyper complex numbers. Those are outside my level of expertise to explain. I can only say that I've working with those systems within calculus and physics. Now I know their origin. I guess I can only say imagine if everything I've talked about was only on a straight line then hyper complex numbers would be 3 dimensional coordinates with another line for time.
Yeah it keeps getting bigger. Mind blown! Oh well I've written more than I thought so next time I'll mention the other thing I learned today and mix in whatever else I learned that day. It's 3:57 am and goodnight casualties of abstract math.
Entry 6
Yesterday I finally finished my story. It really did start out as a private diary until I was around five lines in. I spoke about a possible inferiority complex of mine which I didn’t feel like I really did have. I kept writing and this character came alive through my writing. I don’t mean for this to be pretentious but that’s actually how it felt like. This character was living my life and so it told my story through its perspective. A perspective slightly darker and more nihilistic than my own and by the time I was have way down the entry a new idea was birthed through that vision that is not mine.
This scene came out in which a man murders a women. Not due to passion or anger but, as far as I the viewer of that vision thought, simply because he thought to do so. After that section I ended with a meaningless goodnight. I mean meaningless in the connection to the previous section not in that the story could do without it. I feel that it made that intense dream much more meaningful. And so I read what I had written and began to write some more right away.
Quickly the true story came to me as I had always had a fascination with the devil. I mean that not in a biblical sense but in a social sense. Why is he/she bad? If I were to assume that the devil does indeed do bad things then I can conclude that the devil is bad, but why does the devil do such things? What purpose could motivate someone to fight against someone they know can't be beaten? If the purpose can be boiled down to fighting because they want to be free then I can't disagree with that.
I've gone on a little tangent but what I mean is that I am enthralled with such a character and in some respects I can relate to such an impossible mission. If you have ever read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley then you know that the monster also feels a great likeness between himself and Lucifer after reading Paradise Lost by John Milton. I have quoted both stories in my story as clues as to what was really happening. Actually I quoted a lot that would hopefully help the reader understand who the insomniac was. I added so many so that people would have the greatest chance of at least finding one and if they found more, then even better.
Ok this is around a decent length for this entry but I want to emphasize a few things. I am not a devil worshiper. I simply love the use of the character whether it is in literature, art, movies, television, or music. I guess I should include that I love the blues and if you know anything about the blues then you know about its connection with the devil but that’s more of a coincidence for me.
My username comes from a server that I used to play on back when medal of honor was the main FPS game. Lucifer's playground it was called and so both my father and I decided on the name Devilswork. My first story, which was about the devil, I decided to do because after writing a list of plots or ideas most of my friends liked the one about the devil. I'll probably keep using version of the character if they fit in my stories but for now I plan on writing short stories, I mean between 500 and 2000 words. So if you have any ideas that you like written about then go ahead and write them in the comments.
They can be any genre, even if they don’t seem like something I would write about. Just know that I will probably take a different spin of it. I like realism and darkness but I also like absurdism and other crazy things. I guess a way to put it would be something like existentialism in the method that Kafka does it. Something crazy that would never happen happens and you get a gritty realistic reaction to it. So I may give you either one or something else that you might find equally as weird. Regardless, feel free to give me your nightmares and dreams. Oh and I've started and finished rather early today… it's 12:19 am.