First Nephi as envisioned by a Chinese AI

I had it generate a five-to-six-second clip for each of the chapter summaries for the First Book of Nephi in the Book of Mormon. It's a bit different from how I remember the story!

Whales and narrow roads

I think this must have been triggered by Debbie, who left a comment on "A hyena winning the Boston Marathon" -- a post which mentions no other animals than hyenas, zebras, and velociraptors -- beginning "And speaking of whales and dolphins," but last night I had another of my "Whale-watching from the shore" dreams. This was a recurring theme in my dreams circa 2016-2018, in which I walk along a coastline of rocky cliffs and look at the whales in the sea below. It's been many years since I've had such a dream.

Last night's dream was different in that the whale-watching was done not from a high cliff but from a low-lying rocky beach. It was still a sheer cliff underwater, though, as even the water immediately adjoining the beach was extremely deep.

It also differed from my past dreams in that I wasn't the one who saw the whale. Instead it was a small, conservatively dressed man of about 60, whom I thought of as "the professor." The professor was stooped down at the edge of the beach, staring into the water. For some reason there were absolutely no waves, and the surface of the ocean was as flat and limpid as a pane of glass. I was behind the professor, some distance from the shore, and couldn't see anything in the water from my angle. The professor could, though, and he told me not to come any closer, afraid that I might carelessly dislodge a stone or something, causing ripples in the water and obscuring his view.

"I see it!" the professor said. "I see the Humpback Whale! My God, it's enormous!"

Although I couldn't see the Humpback Whale myself, I had a telepathic sense of what the professor was seeing, and it was indeed enormous -- "the size of a railway station" is how I thought of it in the dream -- many times larger than any real whale. Here's the sketch I scribbled down upon waking:

Later it occurred to me was that what the professor had said was actually, "My God is enormous," and that he was using that word in its older sense of "outrageous."

In a later dream the same night, I was in the passenger seat of my car, navigating for my wife, who was driving. We were on our way to Washington, D.C., to see the Cherry Blossom Throne. (Mencius Moldbug used to use this as a facetious metonym for the U.S. presidency, but in the dream it was an actual tourist attraction.) However, we were driving though rocky, mountainous terrain quite unlike anything in that part of the country.

As we drove, the road became increasingly narrow and convoluted, making it harder and harder to follow. At one point my wife started to panic and said, "Where do I go? Where do I go?"

I said, "Just keep following the road. It's narrow, but just keep following it."

The road was slippery, though -- it seemed to have water or ice on it-- and she wasn't able to keep on it. The car went off the road and down a steep, rocky slope toward the sea below. I considered our now unavoidable fate with equanimity and said calmly, "Okay, brace for impact." I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, there was no cliff and no sea. The car was parked on a perfectly flat plateau of stone. Its perfect flatness reminded me of the sea in which the professor had seen the whale, and I thought for a moment that perhaps the sea had been turned to stone.

There were several people on the plateau, and my wife was standing out there talking to some of them. I got out of the car and asked her, "What happened? How did we survive that?"

She said, "Oh, I dreamed it. It was all just a dream."

"You dreamed it? But so did I! I was there!"

And then a few moments later I woke from my own dream.

Since I began with a reference to a marathon, I'll close with this. Early this morning, I happened to see someone wearing a T-shirt with this logo:

The name caught my eye because I am currently reading Words of the Faithful, and one of the characters is called Dyacôm.

Update (same day, 3:00 p.m.): In the dream reported here, the professor reacted to the Whale by saiyng, "My God, it's enormous!" -- and I wrote that my own sense of the immensity of the Whale was that it was "the size of a railway station." This afternoon, I stopped at a red light, and the motorcyclist in front of me was an old man (like the professor in the dream) with this on the back of his T-shirt:

Right at the bottom it says "Jesus! STATION!" Jesus with an exclamation point suggests that the name is being used as an exclamation, comparable to "My God!"

Bill Wright Mouse and Corn Pop popping on the apricot tree

In his recent post "Love Pop," William Wright interprets Pop as a reference to Jesus as our Father. We typically think of Jesus as the Son, not the Father, but the Book of Mormon gives him the latter title as well.

My own recent "pop"-related posts have referenced the Mormon children's song "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree." Although in modern American usage, corn refers only to maize, its original meaning is simply "seed." If Jesus is Pop, then Pop-corn would be the seed of Jesus. Interestingly, Mosiah 15, the same Book of Mormon chapter that most explicitly identifies Jesus as the Father, also holds forth at considerable length about how the holy prophets are metaphorically "his seed." This is also the same passage that talks about the beautiful feet upon the mountains, to which William Wright has so often referred:

And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son -- the Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son . . . .

And now I say unto you, who shall declare his generation? Behold, I say unto you, that when his soul has been made an offering for sin he shall see his seed. And now what say ye? And who shall be his seed? . . .

Behold I say unto you, that whosoever has heard the words of the prophets, yea, all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord . . . are they not his seed?

Yea, and are not the prophets, every one that has opened his mouth to prophesy, that has not fallen into transgression, I mean all the holy prophets ever since the world began? I say unto you that they are his seed.

And these are they who have published peace, who have brought good tidings of good, who have published salvation; and said unto Zion: Thy God reigneth! And O how beautiful upon the mountains were their feet! (Mosiah 15:1-3, 10-15)

In "Love Pop follow-ups: Joseph and a Rainbow Stick," William Wright discusses a "rainbow swirl unicorn lollipop" which his son bought, decorated with pictures of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. This type of candy, which has a twisted shape like a unicorn's horn, is typically called a unicorn pop -- or you could abbreviate it further to 'corn pop. In my post "Of the Faithful," I mentioned that William Wright considers Words of the Faithful to be "the work of one bad dude channeling another bad dude." WanderingGondola left a comment about "bad dude" memes, and I replied with a reference to Joe Biden's famous "Corn Pop was a bad dude" monologue. When William posted about a 'corn pop, then, this made me curious enough to look up a transcript of the Corn Pop monologue. The Corn Pop news cycle was long before I was aware of the existence of William Wright -- who except on his blog goes by Bill -- and so I never noticed this part of the story:

There was a guy named Bill Wright Mouse, the only White guy, and he did all the pools.

It is Bill Wright Mouse that arms Biden with a six-foot chain and instructs him to tell Corn Pop, "You may cut me, man, but I'm gonna wrap this chain around your head."

Bill Wright Mouse? What the hell kind of name is that? Searching for the name brought up this brief bio of a Bill Wright who used to do Mickey Mouse comics for Disney -- but not only Mickey Mouse:

Wright was one of the main inkers on the daily and Sunday 'Mickey Mouse' pages. From 1943 on, he also started to do penciling on the Mickey Sunday pages. Bill Wright continued working for Disney until his death in 1984, drawing daily pages with such characters as 'Scamp', 'Br'er Rabbit' and, of course, 'Mickey Mouse'.

Besides Mickey, the Uncle Remus character Br'er Rabbit is mentioned. William Wright's post with the Mickey Mouse unicorn pop also mentions Uncle Remus -- specifically the Disney adaptations of his stories, which the other Bill Wright would have drawn -- and ties him in with the interpretation of the Love Pop logo.

Coming back to apricots, they are closely related to almonds, so much so that the Chinese language does not distinguish between the two, and many Chinese products using the word almond in English (such as "almond tofu," which contains neither almonds nor soybeans) are actually made with apricot kernels. This is possibly relevant in connection with the rod of Moses. We don't know what kind of wood it was made of, but we know his brother Aaron had a rod of almond wood, so that seems as good a guess as any.

One Pop it's okay to hop on

The syncs are entraining again. This is wild.

My last post, "Assorted syncs: Damn it Gym, Ace of Hearts, Imlahil," mentioned seeing the Ace of Hearts symbol as the picrel for a post on /x/. I provided a link to the thread but said I hadn't found much of interest there.

William Wright just posted "Love Pop," about this logo he saw:

It's for a company that makes pop-up greeting cards, and so the logo, while it doesn't look quite like the Ace of Hearts, represents "a Red Card with a Heart in the middle of it" -- a description which also fits the Ace perfectly.

It's interesting where William went with the "Pop" angle:

When I first looked at the sign, it was William's posts or references to "Hop on Pop", the Dr. Seuss book, that came to my mind. . . . William wrote about the warning to not "hop on pop".  That some Pops are not to be hopped on. . . . But where there are false "Pops" or Christs, there is also a true One.  And in looking at this sign, and in thinking about it now, that is kind of what I see in that logo symbolism:  Love Jesus (your Father).

Implied in the above is that Jesus, the true Father, is "to be hopped on." Hopped on, though? Isn't that a strange way of expressing it? What sort of person, or animal, might we imagine hopping on Jesus?

I'm going to guess that William didn't click through to the /x/ thread. (I mean, my screenshot, juxtaposing it with a thread about "Haunted Vagina's From Alien Hybrid Abortions," didn't exactly frame it as quality reading material!) It's not a very long thread, but one of the images posted in a reply was this:

This is the post it was illustrating:

You will know, just understand that others can love you, then it will happen naturally, just like hunger or yawning, its natural.

To understand love and all of its facettes to their fullest extend understand how muc god loves you personally and god loves all of us generally.

Any love you can send or receive is amplified hubdredfold by the love that tethers you to jesus christ. Its weird i know, but it will get easier.

Just like forgiving others will be essier once you have been forgiven and therefore can forgive yourself.

William Wright's post goes on to discuss Joseph. Pepe is a diminutive for the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese forms of that name.

Assorted syncs: Damn it Gym, Ace of Hearts, Imlahil

Two of the main characters in the story William Wright is developing are known as Gim Guru and Gim Githil. In "Prince Imrahil and Moses," he proposes a third Gim, Gim Rahil, whom he tentatively identifies with Moses and the Brother of Jared. He also identifies these three characters with the Chipmunks. Gim Guru is Alvin, Gim Githil is Simon, and in "Theodore as Moses and the Brother of Jared," he connects the third Chipmunk, Theodore, with the being he would later dub Gim Rahil.

In the post about Theodore, William spends some time on the Star Trek character Leonard "Bones" McCoy, including a discussion of the name of the actor who played him, DeForest Kelley. I had some syncs about DeForest Kelley here some time ago, and William's post led me to search my blog and reread those posts. One of these, "Working out with Bones, and Colonel West," included this meme:

This is of course a reference to one of McCoy's trademark lines, "Damn it, Jim!" Now that both Kirk and McCoy have been identified with characters bearing the name/title Gim, though, it takes on an additional synchronistic meaning.

This morning, after several weeks of not browsing 4chan, I had a sudden urge to check /x/. One of the picrels jumped out at me:

Of all the images that could have been chosen to represent the abstract concept of "love," this anon went with a simple red heart icon on a white background -- i.e., the Ace of Hearts yet again. The thread is here, but I didn't find anything particularly interesting in it. Just a reminder from the sync fairies not to forget about that Ace of Hearts theme. The first comment was "baby don't hurt me," referencing the Haddaway song, which also includes the line "Give me a sign."

Less than an hour after seeing the Ace, I did a bit of reading, starting with the 22nd chapter of 1 Kings in the Old Testament. Going back for a moment to William Wright's "Prince Imrahil" post, although he will ultimately parse that name as Gim Rahil, he first mentions how others have attempted to analyze it:

It has been guessed by some that Imrahil's name is Adunaic, since he is of Numenorean descent.  At the same time, however, these same people take a very Elvish interpretation or guess as to the last part of his name, which is hil.  Hil would be Sindarin or Quenya for "Heir, son, or child".  Because of this, some have guessed that his name means something like "Heir of Imra", with the identity of who this Imra being unknown.

So Imrahil potentially means "son of Imra."

Here's something I found in 1 Kings 22 -- the very first chapter I read today:

And Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides, that we might enquire of him?

And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may enquire of the Lord: but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.

And Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say so.

Then the king of Israel called an officer, and said, Hasten hither Micaiah the son of Imlah (vv. 7-9).

The /l/ and /r/ sounds are closely related -- classified together by linguists as "liquid" consonants -- and the one often morphs into the other as languages develop.

Note added: Hours after posting the above, I was tutoring a high school student on her English pronunciation. We were going through a list of words with the "short u" sound, and I was having her read them out to me. Although our main focus was on getting the vowel sound right (English makes a lot of fine vowel distinctions that don't exist in most languages), I also checked that she knew the meaning of each word. It went something like this:

"What's the next word?"

"Bahg."

"No, it's bug. Bug."

"Bug."

"And what's a bug?"

"蟲."

"Right. Now read the next word."

"Love."

"What is love?"

I didn't realize until it was out my mouth that I was quoting Haddaway and the anon on /x/. Incredibly, she got the answer wrong!

"Uh . . . 住?"

"No, that's live. Come on, you know this. Love, as in 'I love you.'"

"Oh, 愛!"

Virtually everyone, no matter how rudimentary their English, knows the word love. It's right up there with OK, Coca-Cola, and shit. It's rare to to find a student for whom "What is [the meaning of the English word] love?" is a real question.

A hyena winning the Boston Marathon

Chinese text-to-video software is getting pretty good.

Still not perfect, though. Try following any one animal in this video, and watch what happens when a raptor enters the morphogenetic field of a zebra or vice versa.

And you probably shouldn't look to closely at the crowd of spectators in the background of the hyena video.

Of the Faithful

Yesterday I decided that, after all these months of my syncs entraining with William Wright’s, it’s time I came to terms with his underlying worldview, which treats both the Book of Mormon and the works of Tolkien as true and interprets each in terms of the other. That means tackling the source of that worldview, Daymon “Doug” Smith’s Words of the Faithful and its sequels.

I’d been putting this off because on an earlier attempt I had found the book basically unreadable, and because even William Wright now considers it to be the work of one bad dude channeling another bad dude. Last night, though, I bit the bullet, downloaded the constituent chapters of the first two books as free PDFs, combined them into a single document, and sent it to my Kindle.

Today, as is my custom, I looked around a used bookstore in Taichung. As I was walking into the shop, a mental voice that sounded like Claire said, laughing, “Suppose one of Doug’s books turned up here!” That struck me as a ridiculous suggestion, and I answered (mentally) in my Jeeves voice: “The contingency is a remote one, miss.”

Then I saw this on a shelf and did a double take:

It’s not actually the same book, of course, but the title is so extremely similar that it’s still quite the coincidence. Claire apparently knew in advance that it was going to be there.