J. Sands Loch

2025 Day 8: Kali in Cali

2025-0108W-0708 Radio East, Austin, TX

I called one of my Cali friends last night and she told me that there were fires LA. I checked in with another Cali friend who lives in Santa Monica and she had evacuated to Orange County. I am still waiting to hear from my brother who is also in LA to SF area now. Sending gratitude to the firefighters in CA and prayers to them and others for their safety during this time.

I’m reminding of Kali (or Kalika), the Hindu goddess of the paradoxical union of destruction and creation. The name ‘Kali’ is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘kāla’, which means time. Kali is often connected with time, death or destruction, transformation, and liberation. She is also one of the Mahavidyas (“Great Wisdoms”), ten powerful goddesses who represent different aspects of the Divine Feminine. Kali guides devotees to ultimate freedom through wisdom and destruction of the ego. She symbolizes the eternal void and the cyclical nature of life and death.

Image of Kali generated using AI (ChatGPT, 2025-01-08)

Diving Deeper: Here are the ten Mahavidyas, with their aspects of the divine feminine and their symbolism. Which are you feeling most connected with today? In reading through these, I wonder if Bhairavi is perhaps more associated with the Cali fires. In Sanskrit, fiery energy is “tejas”, the inner spiritual fire that drives transformation and enlightenment. Bhairavi represents the impermanence of life. She is a fierce protector of the cosmic order (dharma). She guides us back to spiritual truth when we stray.

1. Kali (Time, destruction, liberation) – Destroys ego and ignorance, represents the eternal cycle of life and death.
2. Tara (Compassion, guidance, protection) – Savior goddess, guiding through distress and symbolizing ultimate knowledge.
3. Tripura Sundari (Beauty, grace, ultimate truth) – Unifies material and spiritual realms, embodies supreme bliss.
4. Bhuvaneshwari (The cosmos, space) – Universal womb, goddess of creation and the material world.
5. Chinnamasta (Self-sacrifice, courage, transcendence) – Cuts ego and attachment, symbolizes divine bliss and transformation.
6. Bhairavi (Wrath, destruction, purification) – Burns away ignorance, represents fiery energy and penance.
7. Dhumavati (Widowhood, detachment) – Embodies the void, teaching detachment from material desires.
8. Bagalamukhi (Control, stillness, focus) – Paralyzes negativity, silences enemies, and brings mental clarity.
9. Matangi (Speech, learning, music) – Represents thought and communication, associated with unconventional paths.
10. Kamala (Prosperity, fertility, abundance) – Tantric form of Lakshmi, symbolizes wealth and worldly blessings.

2025 Day 7: Censorship, Sensorship, and a Timeline Check

2025-0107T-0707 Austin, TX

What universe are we in now? If you are Canadian, is Trudeau your leader and is your social media still censored? Is Canada a 51st state of America? If you are American, is Trump your leader and is your social media still censored? And can you travel to Greenland without a Visa? Which public technology company has the largest market cap in the world – NVIDIA, Microsoft, or Apple? Does NVIDIA sell desktop computers? Is Micron partnering with NVIDIA on the huge memory requirements of AI? Has NVIDIA built a sensorship yet, or just providing technology for sensor-based cars? Does your phone run Linux and have a physical keyboard? Can you distinguish between a real video clip and an AI generated one?

In terms of economics of your universe: Can you buy an ounce of Silver for under 30.00 $USD? Can you buy a Bitcoin for under 37.18 oz Gold? Can you trade an oz of Gold for more than 35.67 barrels of WTI crude oil? Is the gold-to-silver ratio still as high as 87.93! Can you mine one Bitcoin for between 0.5GWh and 1GWh of energy? Note: 1 GWh is roughly 600 barrels of oil, 150 tons of coal, 100,000 cubic meters of natural gas, 40 micrograms of Uranium-235, 4 months of running a 1 MW wind turbine at 33% capacity, 7 months of 1 MW of solar panels at 20% capacity.

Diving Deeper: Estimated costs of 1 MW of wind power is $1.5M-$3M plus $4K/month. Estimated costs of 1 MW of solar power is $1M-$1.5M plus $1K-3K/month. Since the capacity of wind power is normally higher than solar power, these costs are roughly equal. Excluded in these costs are land costs, which are roughly 50 acres (say $500K) per 1 MW of wind power and 5 acres (say $50K) per 1 MW of solar power, although dual use of land is more feasible with wind power. So, I need roughly 7 MW of solar capacity to produce 1 GWh in one month, which is roughly $10M in initial capital investment, including land. If I borrow the $10M at 0.5% interest per month, that is $50K per month interest. If I also have monthly maintenance of $10K, that’s $60K total cost monthly to mine one $100K bitcoin. Now, you just need to find some land and a banker to loan you $10M.

2025 Day 6: Memory Problems with Humans and AI

2025-0116M-0830 Austin, TX

This morning I was started my day listening to a Robert W.B. Love podcast with Dr. Dale Bredesen about Alzheimer’s Disease.

Actually, my day started earlier with a short clip from this Nate B Jones (@nate.b.jones) video about AI having a half-trillion dollar memory problem:

Both of these topics are on my mind right now as I struggle myself with memory and focus. So, starting my focus practice this morning by not watching these videos now and instead writing.

One of my first thoughts on watching the AI half-trillion dollar memory problem was to buy more Micron Technology ($MU). I was apparently not the only one with this idea. The market cap on open rose over 9% from $100B to $109B. I bought some more anyway to remind me of this moment. My stock portfolio of mostly technology stocks is up about 58% over the last three years. It looks now like it’s either about to fall off the cliff are shoot higher. Learning to hold both of these conflicting possibilities and be with them is my practice.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day in silence. I ecstatic danced with a few hundred people and shared a few hugs. I talked to brother B for a while, breaking my silence for the day. I also talked to a couple other friends. Otherwise, I stayed focused on trying to solve a programming bug in a toy program I created for my learning.

I hesitate to go into it. But then, maybe it will be helpful for anyone who reads my blogs to help them sleep. I’ll say this much. I had spent over 12 hours the prior day pleading with OpenAI ChatGPT-4o to help me fix my code. When I finally put AI to bed and wrote the code from scratch myself, the code worked. Of course, as all programmers know, then I uncovered a new bug! But, at least I had the fundamentals working. The new bug seems to be beyond my current abilities to debug. Actually, I have the abilities to learn, so that statement is not really true. I feel like I just finished a 2048 piece puzzle and want to wait before starting the 8192 piece puzzle.

Going Deeper: Here is an analogy for the puzzlers on my struggle to add tiling to my matrix multiplication code. My current code is a naive approach. A family of four with each family member working on their own corner of the puzzle. Everyone is grabbing a random puzzle piece from a single shared box of pieces. They check if it fits in their corner and either place the piece or put it back. Everyone can work independently but it wastes times because many pieces are grabbed repeatedly by different people. The new code I am working on is a tiling approach. The analogy for the new code is the family of four work together. They all focus on a smaller section of the puzzle and first find the pieces for that section. Then they finish that section of the puzzle and repeat for new sections. This is more efficient!

2025 Day 5: GIST Prayer of Manifesting

2025-0105u-1005 Austin, TX

I remembered my GIST prayer practice this morning – Gratitude – Intention – Support – Thanks.

Today, I am grateful for my mind. I use it everyday and it is a source of continuous fun for me. It entertains me, comforts me, surprises me, challenges me, and sometimes shuts down to allow me to rest.

Today, my intention is to take care of myself. The holidays have been a stressful time for me and I am still feeling emotions that sometimes overwhelm me.

Today, the support I need from a higher power is to help me stay focused on improving my environment. I also need support from friends to check in with me and let me know they care.

Today, I thank you for hearing this prayer.

2025 Day 4: Silo and Time Travel

2025-0104S-0930 Austin, TX

A few days ago AZ and I watched another episode of Silo, a dystopian Apple TV series. The setting is on Earth in the future in a huge underground silo. The surface of Earth is apparently not supportive of life. Whenever someone requests to go out, they are forced to leave the silo. Everyone watches a presumed live feed. It shows them walking outside. They clean the outside camera and then fall to the ground after they walk away. I relate to Martha, the reclusive electrical engineer and mentor to Juliette. I also relate to Juliette, the determined seeker of truth.

The dystopian future presented in Silo is like a parallel universe. It’s a realistic potential future for us living in the timeline we are in. It exists as a potential in the same way as the multitude of other potential futures.

Our minds and nervous system are trained to predict possible futures. This internal sensing of the futures near and far is a trait seemingly shared by all life. We then react based on our beliefs about these potential futures. We have free will to focus our attention on certain beliefs and away from other beliefs. Our external senses give us real-time information about our environment. We internally classify our external sensory experiences. Due to the limited fidelity of our external senses, we can erroneously interpret these experiences. We can also erroneously interpret these external sensory experiences due to our internal sensory experiences.

I highly recommend watching Silo!

Going Deeper: Imagine a reality in which time travel was not only theoretically possible, but a normal action available to all. Many movies have explored time travel. In my imagined time traveling reality, I can only travel energetically and not physically. I can energetically experience any time and can also have influence in that time. It’s exponentially easier for me to time travel in my own experienced time line, past or future. I can silently whisper messages to my past or future self, and similarly hear messages. It’s enough for me now to explore this timeless communication with myself. I have not tried to do it with others.