IT lists

 “In C” is a work of Western contemporary music, but it shares key qualities with Buddhist chanting and shōmyō: a layered overtone resonance and a ritual sense of time. The continuous high C pulse and sustained tones create a drone, similar to how steady pitch in sutra chanting turns the entire room into a resonating chamber. Multiple players repeat the same patterns with slight timing differences, producing interference “beating” — a thick, swelling vibration you feel in the body, much like group chanting. The piece is designed not to tell a dramatic story or drive toward a destination, but to sink the listener into the present moment. Its rhythm is collectively breathed rather than mechanically enforced. As a result, “In C” can feel less like a concert and more like shared invocation. Terry Riley's In C: Performance Guidelines Summary. All performers play 53 patterns from the same score in sequence; ensemble size and instrumentation are flexible (ideally around 35 players). Vocal...

  1. One-Chord Vamp (single harmony, funk / modal feel) "SERIOUSLY Funky Backing Track For Guitar (Dm7 Vamp)" A Dm7-only groove that keeps a steady funk feel. The track invites you to solo using D Dorian / D minor pentatonic over one repeating chord. This is a textbook example of “stay on one chord and improvise indefinitely.” "Dm7 (140 bpm) Jazz Backing Track / Single Chord Vamp" A swing-oriented Dm7 one-chord vamp. The purpose is to keep talking (soloing) over the same harmony without any form changes, which is ideal for modal phrasing. 2. Two-Chord Vamp (call-and-response tension) "TWO CHORD VAMP D DORIAN - Dm7 to G7" A two-bar loop that just cycles Dm7 → G7. The soloist shifts color between the two bars, often using D Dorian or D minor pentatonic. This is like a ii–V that never resolves, which keeps tension alive. "Funk Groove Jam Track (Dm7 to G7 Vamp 80 BPM)" A funk / fusion groove based only on Dm7 an...

 "Suma no ura" (the shore of Suma, near present-day Kobe) appears in both The Tale of Genji and The Tale of the Heike, but it carries very different meanings. In The Tale of Genji, set in the mid-Heian period (around the 10th century), Prince Genji is forced to leave the capital for political reasons and temporarily lives in exile at Suma. The roaring sea, storms at night, and the lonely coast express his fall from glory, his anxiety and longing for the capital, and the turning point that will eventually lead to his return. This establishes Suma as a place of "isolation and rebirth." In The Tale of the Heike, Suma appears in the context of the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani in 1184 (Juei 3 / Jūei 3, commonly known as the Genpei War). Here, the Heike are defeated by Minamoto no Yoshitsune, retreat westward, and young warriors are killed on the beach. Suma becomes the stage of collapse and the symbol of impermanence and the fall of the proud. Both in the internal chronolog...

Reinforcement learning and evolutionary computation share the same overall goal. Both try something in an environment, evaluate the result, and use that feedback to move toward better behavior or a better solution. In this sense, they are not from different worlds; they can be seen as two approaches within the same broad family of learning methods. However, the way they improve is quite different. Evolutionary computation prepares many candidate solutions (individuals) at once, tests each of them, scores them, and keeps only the high-scoring ones to form the next generation. A key point is that it does not need to analyze in detail why a certain individual was good or which specific decisions made it succeed. It simply treats the strong individual as a parent, applies crossover and mutation, and passes on that design to the next generation. In this sense, it is a method for deciding “which individual is good.” Reinforcement learning, on the other hand, focuses on training a single agen...

 “Manzairaku” is one of the most prestigious celebratory pieces in gagaku (Japanese court music and dance). It is performed as bugaku (dance with music) to praise peace in the realm and long life, and is considered an auspicious rite. Alongside “Taiheiraku,” it is presented at the most formal state ceremonies such as the enthronement of the emperor and imperial banquets. It belongs to the “left dance” tradition, meaning it traces its lineage to music and dance forms transmitted from the continent (Sui/Tang China). Rather than being a forceful military-style dance, it is a refined civil dance (hiramai), characterized by calm, dignified movement. Typically four dancers (sometimes six) enter, arrange their formation, and slowly circle the stage while spreading their sleeves in a gesture that evokes a phoenix descending as a good omen. The phoenix is said to appear in the age of a virtuous ruler and cry “ten thousand years,” blessing the ruler’s reign; this encodes a political message ...

 SLAPP lawsuits are lawsuits filed by powerful actors against critics, activists, or journalists mainly to silence them. The goal is not necessarily to win on the legal merits, but to burden the target with cost, time, and fear so that they stop speaking out. This chilling effect on free expression and public oversight is considered a serious social problem.

 Modern AI models (such as ChatGPT) are built on an architecture called the Transformer. It did not appear overnight; it emerged through three stages. First, LSTMs addressed RNNs’ weakness with long-range context by using gating mechanisms, making practical language understanding possible. Next, Seq2Seq with attention let models learn which parts of the input to focus on for each output step, greatly boosting translation quality. Finally, the 2017 Transformer removed recurrence and used self-attention to process all tokens in parallel, enabling both massive scale and high performance. This became the foundation of today’s large language models.

 “Tonal” means an order giving tones gravitational relationships. In classical harmony, V–I defines this pull. George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept redefined tonal gravity, making C Lydian—not C major—the natural center, since its stacked fifths form an acoustically stable field. Coltrane and Miles expanded this into modal and post-tonal worlds. Monk, rather than destroying tonality, twisted and relocated it, creating poetic gravity through dissonance and silence.

 “Bio Garage” is a life-science “research-implementation” platform run by Leave a Nest Co., Ltd. It began with the quarterly magazine Bio garage (launched in 2008) sharing industry–academia and real-tech insights, then evolved around the renamed core lab “Bio Garage Institute,” which advances joint university–industry projects and contract analyses while operating open labs that entrepreneurs can use. Recently it has linked equivalent-spec sites in Japan and overseas (e.g., LiSH Lab and Singapore) to accelerate R&D and commercialization outside universities. Bridging researchers, startups, and corporate R&D, it integrates funding, equipment, collaborators, and testing venues to support end-to-end social implementation. Focus areas span cell culture, synthetic biology, biomaterials, and food/medical-adjacent domains. By tying together media, sites, and networks across the pipeline—topic discovery → PoC → scale-up → regulation/quality → market validation—and standardizing eq...

Name Main Papers / Research (Links) Current Achievements / Activities Notes Ashish Vaswani “Attention Is All You Need” (2017) → arXiv PDF “Bottleneck Transformers for Visual Recognition” → DeepAI Profile Co-founder and CEO of Essential AI . Former Google Brain researcher. Now focused on efficient AI infrastructure and social impact. ( Wikipedia ) One of the lead designers of the Transformer architecture. Noam Shazeer “Attention Is All You Need” (2017) → arXiv “Switch Transformer: Scaling to Trillion Parameter Models” (2022) → JMLR Paper Technical co-lead for Google’s Gemini AI project. Previously founded Character.AI before returning to Google. ( Softwarereport ) Deeply involved in multi-head self-attention and large-scale model design. Niki Parmar “Attention Is All You Need” (2017) → arXiv Research scientist at Google and co-founder of Essential AI . ( Communications Today ) Transitioned from research to entrepreneurship in AI. Jakob Uszkoreit “Attenti...

 Newton’s picture of gravity assumes flat Euclidean space and absolute time, and gives gravity as the gradient of a potential Φ. The equation of motion is a = − ∇ Φ \mathbf a = -\nabla \Phi a = − ∇Φ , and the field equation is ∇ 2 Φ = 4 π G ρ \nabla^{2}\Phi = 4\pi G\rho ∇ 2 Φ = 4 π Gρ . In this basic scheme there is no notion of “spacetime curvature.” However, phenomena like tides from the Moon and Sun—spatial variations of gravity—are treated via the second derivatives of the potential, i.e., the Hessian (tidal tensor) ∂ i ∂ j Φ \partial_i\partial_j \Phi ∂ i ​ ∂ j ​ Φ . Thus the geometric idea that “curvature is gravity” comes only after Einstein: general relativity describes gravity by the metric and its curvature. Newton, within mechanics, viewed forces as bending orbits , organizing them with curvature radius and centripetal acceleration, while the underlying space remained flat. In contrast, GR takes free fall as geodesic motion without force , and tides correspond to curv...

  The Lesser Key of Solomon (Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis) is a 17th-century grimoire compiled in the English sphere and traditionally attributed to King Solomon, collecting rites and catalogues of spiritual beings. It comprises five parts—(1) Ars Goetia (72 spirits—often called “demons”—with ranks, sigils, powers, and conjurations), (2) Ars Theurgia-Goetia (a system of directional and airy spirits), (3) Ars Paulina (angelic work keyed to hours and stellar positions), (4) Ars Almadel (angelic conjurations using a wax tablet, the Almadel), and (5) Ars Notoria (prayers for memory and the acquisition of knowledge). The direct author is unknown; its contents synthesize Testament of Solomon and medieval–Renaissance sources (e.g., Heptameron , Liber Juratus ). Hallmarks include strict ritual protocols: divine names, sacred verses, protective circles and the triangle of art, the lamen worn on the chest, and spirit sigils . In the Goetia , ranks (king, duke, marquis, etc.), number...

In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, killing 14 people and injuring over 6,000 in a random act of terrorism. The attack was aimed at disrupting a police raid and was part of the cult’s plot to overthrow the state. The incident shocked society and led to stronger counterterrorism and cult surveillance measures.

 In Germany, the WaterFoundation (WasserStiftung) and industrial designer Peter Trautwein developed the CloudFisher, a device that collects drinking water from fog. It uses a double layer of fine mesh with mixed hydrophilic/hydrophobic patterning to promote droplet formation, and a geogrid with rubber tensioners to withstand strong winds. Power-free and low-maintenance, it can yield tens of liters per m² on good days when placed in marine-fog corridors. In Morocco’s Anti-Atlas, it has been deployed with NGO Dar Si Hmad to supply villages. Aqualonis manufactures and scales the systems, while universities monitor weather to optimize yield and durability. Units are set vertically or slightly tilted on windward ridges; droplets are guttered to pipes and stored in cool underground tanks. UV-resistant PP/PE mesh on stainless frames, simple cleaning, and bird guards enable long service. Gravity distribution improves hygiene and reduces water-fetching labor, and the approach is spreading a...

 Trends in watchmaking artisans from the 19th century to today differ by country. Switzerland grew on cottage industry and subcontracting, peaking at ~90,000 in 1970, then shrinking to 33,000 in 1985 during the Quartz Crisis (1970=1.00 → 0.37). It later recovered with high-end mechanicals: 59,000 in 2019 and 65,000 in 2023 (index 0.72). The U.S. expanded with mechanization—6,880 in 1900 and over 30,000 in the 1970s—but declined to 4,400 by 2008. Germany, centered on Glashütte, rose from 2,000 in 1951 to 4,000 in 2016 (index 2.00). The index compares each year to a base (e.g., 1970=1.00). Note that early figures include seasonal and cottage workers, so variability is high.

 In a bankruptcy, shareholders are last in line, so equity is typically wiped out. In liquidations, any surplus after creditor payments is (rarely) distributed pro-rata. In reorganizations, shares are often canceled or massively diluted. Liability is limited, and listed shares may allow realizing a tax loss.

 In his 1923 book A Tract on Monetary Reform , John Maynard Keynes famously wrote, “In the long run we are all dead.” With this remark, he criticized economists of his time who downplayed short-term problems like unemployment and recessions by claiming that markets would eventually self-correct in the long run. Keynes argued that governments must actively intervene through fiscal and monetary policy to address immediate shortfalls in demand and alleviate real human suffering. This principle lies at the core of Keynesian economics and has been carried on by modern "New Keynesian" economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. These scholars emphasize the importance of government spending during financial crises or economic downturns and have helped revive interest in Keynes’s ideas in the 21st century.

 The reason Thelonious Monk’s “dissonance” feels pleasant is not due to mistakes but to his deliberate design of tension and release. He intentionally shifted harmonic conventions, grounding his music in blues and stride traditions while employing unique timing, pauses, and phrasing. This makes listeners sense unresolved tension and derive pleasure from its delayed resolution or unexpected turns. Monk’s chords often clash or sound harsh, yet within the overall structure they gain inevitability, transforming dissonance into beauty. His innovation echoes the classical lineage—from Bach’s counterpoint and Wagner’s “Tristan chord” to Debussy’s harmonic colors and Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique. In jazz, too, Armstrong’s blue notes, Ellington’s orchestrations, and Parker’s use of tensions paved the way for Monk’s aesthetics, where silence and spacing made dissonance beautiful. Like Coltrane, who linked tonal limits to transcendence, Monk elevated dissonance into the very core of lis...

  The Influence of Fumiko Takano on Chainsaw Man Introduction Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man is renowned for its explosive violence and unpredictable storytelling. Yet beyond its chaos lies a visual and structural sensibility that recalls the aesthetic lineage of Fumiko Takano , a key figure in Japan’s manga nouvelle vague of the 1980s. Critics have often remarked that Chainsaw Man feels “un-Jump-like”—closer to Afternoon magazine or the experimental realism of alt-manga. This observation situates Fujimoto, consciously or otherwise, within a lineage that Takano helped to define: an approach emphasizing compositional rhythm , minimalist line work , and poetic fragments of daily life . Composition: Distortion and Spatial Tension Fumiko Takano’s comics are famous for their spatial irregularity. She often distorts linear perspective deliberately, achieving an uncanny sense of space that feels more real precisely because it resists technical precision. Manga artist Hiroaki...

  1) Public-domain, free downloads (PDF originals) F. T. Piggott, The Music and Musical Instruments of Japan (1893/1909) Early Western-staff transcriptions and examples for shamisen genres (useful background for jōruri–related styles). Full PD scans available. survivorlibrary.com +2 Internet Archive +2 Note: Complete Western-staff scores of gidayū-bushi (jōruri proper) in the public domain are effectively nonexistent; most early sources provide excerpted examples only. JSTOR 2) Free MIDI / free scores (license varies; check each page) mu-tech.org (traditional Japanese songs/genres) Per-piece pages offering printable scores and MIDI files (includes nagauta/folk items; good for study or arranging). Rights are case-by-case—verify page notices. Mu-Tech 3) If a full Western-staff score is required and no PD/free source exists → purchase William P. Malm, Nagauta: The Heart of Kabuki Music Authoritative study with complete Western-staff scores for select nagauta w...

  • スベリヒユ (Suberihiyu / Purslane) Food use: Widely used in the Mediterranean and Mexico — eaten raw in salads or cooked with pork. Rich in omega-3 fatty acids. University of Florida IFAS Extension – Purslane overview In Japan: Classified as a prehistoric naturalized plant and grows nationwide. Shigei Medicinal Plant Garden – Purslane entry • シロザ (Shiroza / Lamb’s Quarters) Food use: Known as “quelites” in Mexico and “wild spinach” in Europe; eaten boiled or sautéed. Clemson University Extension – Lamb’s Quarters fact sheet In Japan: A long-naturalized species; young leaves and seeds are edible. Japanese Wikipedia – Shiroza entry • セイヨウイラクサ (Seiyou Irakusa / Stinging Nettle) Food use: Popular in Europe for soups and herbal teas. Cooking removes the sting. Forager Chef – Nettle Soup Recipe In Japan: Naturalized and listed by the Japan Medical Herb Association. JMHA – Stinging Nettle Herb Profile • タンポポ (Tanpopo / Dandelion) Food use: In E...

 After Japan’s asset bubble burst in the early 1990s, the nation entered a long era of low growth and low inflation. Interest rates fell to the world’s lowest levels. The zero-interest policy (1999) and quantitative easing (2001) became permanent fixtures, driving long-term yields below 1%. In 2013, Governor Kuroda launched “unprecedented monetary easing,” and by 2016 the Bank of Japan introduced Yield Curve Control (YCC), fixing the 10-year yield around 0%. Even 30-year bonds yielded under 1%, supporting high equity and real-estate valuations while keeping government interest costs minimal — the foundation of a “quiet world.” From 2022 onward, global inflation surged while Japan’s policy remained an outlier. The BOJ’s “fixed-rate operations” to cap yields distorted market function and dried up liquidity. In December 2022, the yield band widened from ±0.25% to ±0.5%; in 2023 it was effectively raised to 1.0%, signaling gradual flexibility. In March 2024, the BOJ ended its negative...

 “The surplus becomes the firm’s profit.” — That’s the starting point. In modern terms, the Fundamental Marxian Theorem (FMT) says that, within a linear-production framework, if the value added created by labor exceeds the wage bill—i.e., there is a surplus—then a positive uniform profit rate exists in the price system; conversely, if a positive uniform profit rate exists economy-wide, there must be a surplus of value over wages. These two claims are logically equivalent. Morishima first gave a precise formulation; Roemer and others later generalized it. In parallel, Okishio’s theorem makes a different point: if the real wage is held constant and firms adopt cost-reducing techniques, then the new competitive equilibrium features a higher general rate of profit. Okishio is thus about comparative statics of technical change and the profit rate, not about the surplus-profit equivalence itself. Both strands sit on the Sraffian long-period price theory, where a uniform profit rate emerg...

In mathematical physics, “oblique” refers to non-orthogonal coordinate systems or bases that imply interaction and interdependence. Orthogonal coordinates assume flat Euclidean space, whereas oblique coordinates feature tilted axes, introducing off-diagonal components in the metric tensor ( g_{\mu\nu} ). These components express curvature—space where time and distance vary depending on the observer. Thus, obliqueness is a mathematical sign of curved or non-inertial space, representing gravity itself in general relativity. In such frames, time and spatial axes mix (( g_{0i} \neq 0 )), meaning time and space are no longer perpendicular. In quantum mechanics, non-Hermitian systems also exhibit non-orthogonal eigenstates, forming “biorthogonal” pairs that capture non-conservation and irreversibility. In field theory and differential geometry, oblique coordinates describe couplings like electromagnetism and gravity, where torsion or gauge connections arise from these non-orthogonal terms. ...

 Both the Lydian Chromatic Concept and Takashi Yoshimoto’s Theory of Expression reject fixed norms and instead reconstruct order through the placement of a center. Just as the Lydian center (F♯) creates a gravitational gradient among pitches, the expressive subject generates a psychological and social field within language. Both emphasize an “oblique” structure in which independent axes interfere—modulation or contextual shift becomes the source of new meaning and resonance. If the LCC is a theory of gravitational harmony , Yoshimoto’s is a theory of linguistic gravity , each portraying a generative field where freedom and order coexist.

 Einstein’s theory is gradient-based in that it explains gravity not as a force but as curvature of spacetime. In general relativity, the curvature tensor arises from the second derivative (gradient) of the metric tensor  g μ ν g_{\mu\nu} g μν ​ , forming the gravitational field. In special relativity, conservation laws ∇ μ T μ ν = 0 \nabla_\mu T^{\mu\nu}=0 ∇ μ ​ T μν = 0 show that all physical changes are expressed as gradients. Philosophically, time, space, and mass are not absolute entities but relational gradients. Thus, Einstein’s theory presents the universe as a structure of relational gradients.