( via / via )

"There is a ton of work being done pursuing the grand goal of inverse design - name some desired properties, and have AI/ML formulate a material that fits those requirements and is actually synthesizable. ." Also: "This is certainly a worthy challenge, and it may well succeed in a lot of systems, but then we may have the added meta-challenge of trying to understand how our tools did that."

"TO ONE UNNAMED II

A misty rain comes blowing with a wind from the east,
And wheels faintly thunder beyond Hibiscus Pool.
...Round the golden-toad lock, incense is creeping;
The jade tiger tells, on its cord, of water being drawn
A great lady once, from behind a screen, favoured a poor youth;
A fairy queen brought a bridal mat once for the ease of a prince and then vanished.
...Must human hearts blossom in spring, like all other flowers?
And of even this bright flame of love, shall there be only ashes?"

—Li Shangyin via

Goat in Snow.

"Even for her it was getting not for-real, as the war-showers still lingering acidly in the old alleyways, curled into her and she too dug the spectrums of thought made visible, leaping up exclaiming from a lonely blanket to see herself sometimes surrounded by the wavering igneous racks of baleful colour: or at gentle moments able to watch bushes and elms erupt in crusty outline singed by the glow of cerebral sundowns, in which climbed and chuckled a fresh unbeaten generation of mammalphibians, toads with sprightly wings and birds of lead and new animals generally that with feral stealth stayed always out of focus." —Barefoot in the Head

"When I was on location in Germany, I asked people how they live with the history, how they carry it. And the answer was always the same: it’s a burden they bear to make sure it never happens again. They carry it so they don’t repeat it. It’s in the architecture. It’s in the memorials. It’s in the education system. It’s not something they got over. It’s something they committed to never looking away from."