documentary

1843 – My Octopus Teacher (2020)

timespace coordinates: 2010, free-diving in a cold underwater kelp forest at a remote location in False Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa. The location was near Simon’s Town on the Cape Peninsula, which is exposed to the cold Benguela current of the Atlantic Ocean.

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My Octopus Teacher is a 2020 Netflix Original documentary film directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, which documents a year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with a wild common octopus in a South African kelp forest. At the 93rd Academy Awards, it won the award for Best Documentary Feature. (wiki)

imdb   /   netflix

games

1801

Black Myth: Wukong is an upcoming action role-playing game by Chinese indie developer Game Science, based on the classical 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. (wiki)

books

1793 – The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust #2 – 2019)

timespace coordinates: – journey across Europe and the East The setting is a world dominated by the Magisterium, an international theocracy which actively suppresses heresy. In this world, humans’ souls naturally exist outside of their bodies in the form of sapient “dæmons” in animal form which accompany, aid, and comfort their humans.

The Secret Commonwealth is a 2019 fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, the second volume of his planned trilogy The Book of Dust. The story is set twenty years or so after the events of La Belle Sauvage and ten years after the conclusion of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

Pullman took his title The Secret Commonwealth from a 17th century book of the same name by the Scottish clergyman Robert Kirk, about encounters of country folk with supernatural creatures. (wiki)

goodreads   /   jesussotes

Uncategorized

1791

Machine in the ghost 

Can a robot pray? Does an AI have a soul? Advances in automata raise theological debates that will shape the secular world (read on aeon)


“… With some exceptions, this conception of automata and biotechne preceded the actual construction of robots, with legends about artificial life existing centuries before the accomplishments of a Renaissance engineer such as Turriano. Still, automata and artificial intelligence couldn’t help but have certain religious implications, whereby the ‘magical and mechanical often overlap in stories of artificial life that were expressed in mythic language’.

Even while simple mechanical beings were constructed in Ancient Greece (and the Islamic and Chinese worlds as well), legends about artificial life proliferated across cultures and centuries, and inevitably had a theological gloss to them. Kevin LaGrandeur, a professor of technology and culture, has written that ‘modern cybernetics is at least partially the product of a very old archetypal drive that pits human ingenuity against nature via artificial proxies.’ Witness medieval legends about constructed men, such as homunculi or the golem. In such stories, the emergence of an artificial intelligence allows for the exploration of creation more generally, where we can ask how unique the human mind is and in what way our cleverness can act as a surrogate for the divine.”

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games

1786 – Valheim (2021 Early Access Game)

timespace coordinates: Valheim, the tenth Norse world.

A brutal exploration and survival game for 1-10 players, set in a procedurally-generated purgatory inspired by viking culture. Battle, build, and conquer your way to a saga worthy of Odin’s patronage!

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Valheim is an upcoming survival and sandbox video game by the Swedish developer Iron Gate Studio, released in early access on 2 February 2021 for Windows and Linux on Steam. It was made by five people. 

The premise of the game is that players are Vikings in an afterlife where they have to craft tools, build shelters and fight enemies to survive.  The game uses stylized 3D graphics with a third-person perspective and a combat system inspired by action games. Co-operative gameplay with up to nine people and optional PvP gameplay are also supported. 

The game was a surprise hit. Three weeks after its release, it had sold three million copies and was one of the most-played games on Steam.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (Windows / MINIMUM): Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system / OS: Windows 7 or later / Processor: 2.6 GHz Dual Core or similar / Memory: 4 GB RAM / Graphics: GeForce GTX 500 series or similar / DirectX: Version 11 / Storage: 1 GB available space

steam   /   valheimgame

books

1754 – La Belle Sauvage (2017 novel)

timespace coordinates: Oxford > London, parallel ~Edwardian era Britain (or Brytain) // “The Trout”  inn, the Priory of St. Rosamund, Jordan College

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The setting is a world dominated by the Magisterium (commonly called “the Church”) an international theocracy which actively suppresses heresy. In this world, humans’ souls naturally exist outside of their bodies in the form of sentient “dæmons” in animal form which accompany, aid, and comfort their humans.

La Belle Sauvage is a fantasy novel by Philip Pullman published in 2017. It is the first volume of a planned trilogy entitled The Book of Dust and is set twelve years before Pullman’s His Dark Materials. It presents events prior to the arrival of the six-month-old Lyra Belacqua at Jordan College, Oxford.

The story follows 11-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon Asta, and a village girl named Alice and her dæmon Ben, who become the protectors of the infant Lyra Belacqua and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, in Malcolm’s canoe, La Belle Sauvage, during a flood. Malcolm forms a friendship with alethiometer specialist Hannah Relf, allied with the secret freedom-seeking organisation Oakley Street, and is drawn into their fight against the growing strength of the Magisterium, which has learned of a prophecy concerning Lyra. Malcolm and Alice are pursued by the maniacal villain Gerard Bonneville, an ally of the Consistorial Court of Discipline (CCD), as they struggle to reach London and Lyra’s father Lord Asriel, in order to gain the protection of Jordan College for the baby. (wiki)

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goodreads   /   The Golden Compass (2007)

books

1749 – Human Animals (2012 EBook)

The Project Gutenberg EBook of

Human Animals, by Frank Hamel


(originally published in 1915)


This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org