On the 10th of December 2024 at about 4pm in the afternoon I had a sudden shivering attack. The room wasn't cold, but I was, so I took to bed and shivered on the electric blanket until I napped for a few hours.
Woke up groggy, and never got better. Feeling light headed and occasionally dizzy and half stoned all the time. Can't handle booze or dope at all any more. Doing the job feels like trying to program drunk, concentration shot and short term memory failing.
Various doctors have ordered batteries of tests and put me on drugs to reduce my blood pressure but nothing that's really helped.
They did an MRI last week. Apparently everything looks normal which is good I guess, but still leaves symptoms unexplained.
There are worse fates than feeling half drunk all the time I suppose.
Given no visible brain damage, about the best suggestion anyone has is to stay off booze and drugs (which is easy, since I can't handle them any more) and get back to meditation. If it's damage so small the MRI can't pick it up it'll get better slowly probably. 🤷
Anyway, they gave me the MRI data upon request, so I spent most of yesterday importing it into Blender and making some visualization.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present: My apparently completely normal brain in an MRI selfie.
#blender #mri #selfie
When Brooke Nichols plugged in the data, she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.
The mathematician and professor of infectious diseases at Boston University had created a model to predict the human cost of the Department of Government Efficiency’s (Doge) USAid funding cuts.
As Elon Musk, the head of Doge, arrived at the White House on Friday afternoon
to be congratulated by President Trump for his work slashing the federal budget,
the number of deaths on Nichols’…
Damn! I wanted X-ray vision! 😉
Seeing infrared: scientists create contact lenses that grant ‘super-vision’;
Breakthrough could lead to range of wearables that extend range of vision and help people with colour blindness
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/m
Used this plugin to import the data:
#blender #mri #visualization #blender3d
Series C, Episode 06 - City at the Edge of the World
VILA: Because you can't like someone without them liking you back. And I like you, Kerril, more than anyone. Anyone I've ever known.
KERRIL: The difference is, I love you.
VILA: Kerril.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/306/592
COSMIC CODA had a nice blend of science and a “day in the life” of the subject scientists. Could have been mega dry but was good. #IFFBoston
A wish granting god baby, granting Conrad's wishes in service of the Rani, turns London into a misogynist utopia and The Doctor into a good husband and insurance worker.
Hard to say why misogynists are so keen on the American 50s. Perhaps because it was before blacks had the vote and women could do banking.
And if anyone doubts this ridiculous tale, their table stops working and their family might call the doubt police, so they soon learn not to. All very oppressive and subversive.
Ruby manages to doubt anyway. And all the disabled people who simply never enter into Conrad's mind. Nice touch that. Great scene in the tent city filled with the dispossessed. They don't seem to have actually done anything so far but maybe they'll get more useful in part two.
Conrad is on TV telling a story about a man named Doctor Who.
Giant dinosaur skeletons walk the city, stepping over sky scrapers, and a bone palace towers above the city. Because I guess Conrad wishes for it to be so in order to give the Rani somewhere to live.
The palace is beautiful and Gothic.
But doubt is seeping in. Rogue is back, on the TV in hell, telling the Doctor that tables don't work like that. So he investigates. Gets himself reported to the doubt police who take him and Belinda to the bone palace.
The Rani's split from Miss Flood gives the pair of them a good chemistry. Queen and her maid of honour. Seems like Mrs Flood is likely to be the Rani's downfall. She doesn't like being told to make a sandwich.
A lot of exposition going on, but they at least put a hat on it: "Isn't just exposition, I need you to doubt"
So that's the reason for the strange wishes: To make the doctor have doubts so severe that the reality collapses, and Rani can rescue Omega. Omega is the dude in a Mask from the first 3 doctors episode, who gave the timelords time travel and got trapped in the underworld in the process. Timelords forgot him and never mounted a rescue, but presumably Rani is now hoping he'll bring back Galifrey.
And with London collapsing into the underworld and the doctor falling from the sky, we get the episode break and have to wait until next week.
That's not a cliff hanger, that an already-falling-from-the-cliff hanger.
Poppy really is his daughter he's shouting as he falls. And you know what that means?
🤨🤔
Back in Space Babies, the worst episode of the Nchuti seasons, that space baby asked if he was her parents and he said he wished that he was their parents.
That wish has been granted somehow?
Is this space baby Susan's mother? They have very different skin tones, but that doesn't matter much in a regenerating species.
Never have found out much about The Doctor's child. When he traveled with his granddaughter everyone assumed he'd met his own kid, the grandchild's parent.
But that doesn't have to be true for a time traveler. Maybe he met the granddaughter before he met his own kid, and maybe his own kid was just wished into his family line 60 years later (or billions of years in his timeline I guess).
Pretty fun episode but not sure it makes much sense. Why doesn't the Rani just wish for Omega to be back instead of all this doubt and underworld bollocks?
Last one next week. Super long episode. Hope it's all cleared up. Good chance we'll meet Susan again I think. And maybe see Omega's mask once more.
Series C, Episode 06 - City at the Edge of the World
VILA: Because you can't like someone without them liking you back. And I like you, Kerril, more than anyone. Anyone I've ever known.
KERRIL: The difference is, I love you.
VILA: Kerril.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/306/592
Series C, Episode 10 - Ultraworld
DAYNA: And if we agree?
ULTRA 1: We shall reconsider the fate of your friends. And, of course, yourselves.
TARRANT: Is that the best you can do? No deal.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/310/506 B7B5
Series C, Episode 10 - Ultraworld
DAYNA: And if we agree?
ULTRA 1: We shall reconsider the fate of your friends. And, of course, yourselves.
TARRANT: Is that the best you can do? No deal.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/310/506 B7B5