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 The debate about plant intelligence is quite interesting. However, from having just a cursory look of a little bit of reading and one class session about the topic, and a much larger background in computing and artificial intelligence, the resemblance between plant intelligence and AI was quite striking. Plants were described as not being human in intelligence, but still being able to make decisions, and learn. Well, a computer could do that as well! Just as a plant may track towards the sun or learn to not be afraid when it was dropped, a machine learning model can learn to give better outputs, or even in an applied robotics sense move its' limbs in such a way until it figures out how to walk. Just like how plants evolve over time, machines do as well, with both either producing new offspring with slightly more optimal genetics or running through algorithms to slightly fine tune results. There are a few other similarities as well.  The above graph describes how plants act ba...

 Talking to my roommate one day, while wondering through the woods around town, the topic eventually came to the zombie apocalypse. We discussed potential tactics, and how the two of us would definitely be the exception and live, rising up above the rest of the unfortunate masses to lead the new world order. However, what he said after the usual fun chat stuck with me. He said he actually wanted to be in the zombie apocalypse. I of course objected. It would be really difficult, and a lot of people you love would probably die. He agreed, but said that the romance (in the traditional sense) and sudden change in everything would still be exceedingly interesting. There is some reason to want an apocalypse. There are plenty of easy methods to say modern day society is rotten to the core, plenty of reasons to be bored of modern comfortable life, and perhaps many ways to decry modern humanity's environmental impact even. So, why not just let it all collapse and live in a zombie apocalypse...

 House of X has a lot of interesting topics to discuss within it, but as I am myself, the thing that instantly stuck in my mind was a list of countries. A lot of these make sense. Iran, a religious caliphate, would reject the mutants due to a fundamentalist  interpretation of Islam. The Wakanda one is especially humorous. However, Brazil stood out to me. While part of the BRICS alliance, Brazil is still at least nominally aligned with western interests, and stands out as the strangest of the included nations as being against Krakoa. Trying to pursue this thread led to three separate theories.  Theory 1: This was Revenge  It seems like the only other people who noticed this were the Brazilians themselves. Riotimesonline, the largest English language newspaper in Brazil, published this story about the comic:  https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/entertainment-brazil/brazil-becomes-an-x-men-enemy-in-new-comic-book/ The article interestingly cites anoth...

 Africa is one the largest continents, boasting hundreds of millions of people, over fifty countries, hundreds of languages and cultures, and a rich history going back several thousands of years. However, ask the average westerner about Africa, and chances are that it is sort of a black hole of knowledge for them. Still, due to a rise in awareness of foreign locations, especially due to the recent conflicts within Ukraine and Palestine, the overall trend line is for the average person to be much more aware of what happens in the world. This is surprisingly well outlined, in Africa's case at least, by the treatment of the natives in X-Men and Storm comics.  In the 1975 version of Storm, Professor X sees a group of primitive African tribespeople make a sacrifice of livestock for better rain to Storm. After doing her duty as their god and idol, he has the above conversation, referring to her situation as a complete fantasy. While there are still parts of Africa which are quite te...

  This is one of the more memorable scenes in Godzilla: Minus One, a meeting of the Japanese civilians who volunteered to fight Godzilla. The large conflict between the Japanese civilian forces and Godzilla was about to begin tomorrow, but instead of insisting on additional preparations, the head of the project, Dr. Noda (central figure in the above picture), says that all soldiers should return to their families for the night. He says "I'd take pride in a citizen led effort that sacrifices no lives at all! This next battle is not one ventured to death, but a battle to live for the future." This portrays a complete reversal of the way Japan handled life in World War 2, with actions such as Kamikaze pilots and poorly planned supply lines giving very little regard to human life.  Now, to completely flip subjects, Super Sentai is one of the most underrated television series for many reasons, but there are a lot of aspects repeated across many series. The villains are always ...

While reading the honestly quite compelling first issue of The Hulk, one panel in particular was extremely grabbing.  These comments by the main love interest of a Hulk comic in 1962 are honestly quite poignant. It speaks to a changing society, one filled with some of the romance of Golden age comics, but with the freshness and change of the Silver Age. The parallels to war are quite interesting, since what war is changed quite rapidly during this period. In World War 2, which is still the defining event of modern America, war was the stereotypical war, boots on the ground, planes in the sky, etcetera, etcetera. Then, during the era of this comic, and especially in modern times, war became much more mystical. Battles are less and less fought on the field and are struggled with in the mind, in the airwaves, in the popular consciousness. Describing modernity and its' influences as supernatural forces, like the heroine does in the above panel, really gets to the heart of it. Just as t...

 All-Star Superman released in released in 2005. It was a different time, although the undercurrents of many current political and cultural movements were just starting to rear their heads. In 1994, despite Ross Perot's repeated objections, NAFTA was put into law, and the great sucking of American industry began. Despite having declined from the dizzying heights of American industry in the 1950's, the industrial base of America was still  quite powerful. Incensed by the victory in the Cold War, though, American political leaders promoted free trade and neoliberalism, fueled by Fukuyamist thought and the embrace of the end of history. It did seem quite peaceful, but as anti-establishment social movements once again began bubbling back into prominence throughout the early 2000's, and now with the rise of populism and the quite interesting events of the past decade or so, it does seem like history has not really ended and we are simply transitioning into a new era of problems,...