word – My Surreal Sketchbook of Reality

The Wrong Words – a 100 word story

There was a moment of awkward silence. All words stoped on their tracks, confused. Someone must have said something that lead to this, but no one knew what, no one seemed to remember. People were staring into each other’s faces in uncertainty. They were unsure about where to go from there until someone suggested pizza. It worked. Pizza was always a solution for moments like that. When the delivery guy came, he found a party without words, but with unsatiated hunger. Food made way to words and the party was continued as usual, until someone said the wrong thing again.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 30, Pizza Was Always a Solution

Wildcards and the butterfly effect can have a surprising influence on the future. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at wildcards and the butterfly effect. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical, and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about wildcards and the butterfly effect. It is said that you can study the probable possibilities of how the future will be, by following technological trends, seeing how they reflect on society and how people use technology. Two of the things that can throw a wrench on the wheels of those predictions are wildcards and the butterfly effect. Wildcards in future studies are unexpected events that take us by surprise and have unforeseen effects on our future before they happen, like the terrorist attack on New-York in 2001 and the pandemic of 2020.

Wildcards change the world in ways that cannot be predicted by simply following technological trends. Take the terrorist attack, for example. Before the attack, society, in general, seemed to be on the road of enhanced tolerance and acceptance of others. The attack seems to have changed that trend and now our society became more paranoia driven. Surveillance has become a norm for governments and information is not as free as it used to be, while tolerance towards the other seems to be going down. That’s the power of wildcards to change the world. I’ll have to turn a few cards and see what’s in my deck. I’ll be right back.

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Hacked Brain – a 100 word story

The hucker read the contents of the mind. The brain owner didn’t suspect a thing. Memory storage was always the easiest to decipher. It was the more abstract side of the brain that always proved to be more problematic, the part that stored emotions and sensations, things like that, but the hacker had a specialized program just for that. Another problem was getting close enough, within wifi range. He had to rent an apartment on an adjacent building, but he could always do that under a false name. In the end, his clients always paid good money for the information.

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Welcome back. Sometimes a wildcard can be created by a butterfly effect. In 1963 a mathematician and meteorologist called Edward Lorenz published a paper called “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. This article became the foundation of Chaos Theory. In December 1972, during the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Edward Lorenz posed the following question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The idea this question highlights is that tiny changes in data can over time cause big changes in output. The change is not immediate and takes time, sometimes months or even years. This can make predictions of natural phenomena, from weather to the evolution of life, hard to predict.

DNA can be seen as such input data, the blueprint of a living organism. The genetic make of a DNA strand is one of the things that are prone to change and that change can sometimes cause a butterfly effect, leading to completely new species. Many things can change DNA strands, things like radiation, and simple mistakes in the copying of DNA done naturally within a living organism during and after fertilization. When we have such a mutation of DNA leading to a new species of, let’s say, a virus, it can be the cause of a new pandemic. In that way, a small change in DNA can create a butterfly effect that changes the future in unpredictable ways.

Wildcards and the butterfly effect are two things that propel our future into the unknown. They make predicting the future into a less accurate of a science. In that way, they can make things more interesting, but interesting is not always equal to positive. The phrase “May you live in interesting times” might actually be a curse for all we know. This concludes episode 30 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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The First – a 100 word story

She was the first letter in the alphabet and she knew it. A quick look from her was enough to melt most of the alphabet away. People became muted as she walked by, viciously robbed of their speech. She had the upper hand in debate, leaving every other letter far behind. She was a countenance, a word, and a world on her own. She stood on a strong foundation and no one could collapse her. A coma was just a pause for her and no semicolon could keep her away. It was only at the full stop that she stopped.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 22, The Upper Hand in Debate

We use languages to communicate and words to understand each other. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at language. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about language. Words don’t really have a meaning from the get-go. Meaning is what we pour into words. Words, when spoken, are just sounds, and the written word is just squiggly lines on a blank piece of paper. It’s the meaning we pour into those words that makes them count, and those meanings, in turn, can make those words of ours very powerful. Words create our story, help us communicate with each other, exchange ideas. When we collect all those words together, they make up our language.

You might think your language is the same as the language of that guy living next door. You are not entirely wrong. Some meanings are almost universal and they are almost the same for everyone. The problem is that language has nuances and the meaning often gets lost in translation, even within the same language. Meanings might not be exactly the same for everyone. Part of this is because we sometimes find meaning between the lines, beyond the words. We might say something but the intonation of our voice can tell our listeners that we mean the exact opposite, even if we haven’t meant to. Someone can write a story that is completely clear to him, only to find out other people understood his story in a completely different way. As I understand this story, this is where my break comes in. I’ll be right back.

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The Traffic Witch – a 100 word story

She had her own vehicle, commonly known as “The Broom”, and she enjoyed driving it through traffic tunnels. The rush of cars coming out through the other side, bumping into each other made her giggle. Getting rid of the evidence was a little messy. Usually, it involved accurately targeted lightning bolts, directed at various witnesses, both in the cars and around them. She did enjoy the various commentators, both on television and on YouTube. She liked it when they called her “a force of nature”. It was when they started connecting her to global warming that she gave up though.

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Welcome back. There are many languages in this world. Some have words that other languages don’t have. Some miss words that seem essential in other languages. Not all languages are created equal, and some seem to define the people who speak them. You can learn several languages, then you’ll have an insight into the minds of nations, how they use words, how they connect them into sentences. The order in which words connect in a sentence might give you insight into what is more important to the people who use a certain language. The very sound of a language might suggest that the people using it have a certain temperament that goes well with the general sound of that language.

You think you understand your own language. You might learn another and think you understand that one as well. You would probably come across languages you don’t understand, and for someone who speaks a completely different language then you, your own language might be a mystery, a code to crack, an enigma. The problem is language in itself doesn’t have a meaning. You have to pour your own meaning into it as you grow up and understand more of your own language and any mistaken meaning gets embedded into your very own unique vocabulary. That’s where misunderstandings come from, and those can sometimes change the fate of nations.

Language can be used to change the course of history or just the life of one human being. Language can be used to write a novel, a symphony or just to order a pizza. Language can be mundane, or it can be magnificent, it can be everything or nothing or anything in between. Language can even be used to write a podcast. This concludes episode 22 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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