Giovanni Montano

Tim Holloway wrote:I think what you call the "grand mother" is what English calls the Great Mother. Or more frequently, its Latin version: Magna Mater. A concept that comes again from Mesopotamia and sweeps through Greece into Europe and counts the Catholic Cult of the Virgin as one of its modern descendants. An apparent legacy of more matriarchal times.

Ishtar provides a spin-off, hence to the Egyptian goddess Isis, although I don't believe that She ever reigned supreme there. Then again, the Egyptians re-worked their pantheons multiple times over history and not uncommonly for political purposes.

The Kundalini Serpent is internal, and not directly related to Asclepius, as the Geeks were using very concrete serpents and their venom externally. Hermes' serpents are more abstract, but likewise viewed as external. But serpents in general are often closely related to religion and magic. They have perpetually wise/evil (often viewed as the same thing) expressions on their faces, they move without legs, and they assassinate via poisons, often without apparent warning. In some American Indian cultures there are stories which may be only told in Winter, "when the snakes are asleep". It is commonly held that the snakes would steal the stories otherwise.

Interesting point the one about an external snake, they are figuratively used to indicate different things, I am thinking to the staff of Moses, a really riveting iconographic image. I would have a lot to say about the cult of Isis and the Catholic church, is noticeable that there are ancient artworks of the Virgo giving milk to his son, they are not known, and remand to the Egyptian tradition of Isis. Spoke with a theologist, university professor about this aspect, he was also even openly free-mason and so really interested to the mystery aspect of the religions, as I like this field he read me some ancient isis prayers 20 yeas ago, so do not remember exactly maybe this http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/royaltyr/AncientCities/web/rel%20372%20project/invocation.htm is really interesting to see how the invocations are similar to the ones of the texts from the Catholic tradition.

Tim Holloway wrote:The two different snake rods are symbolic of 2 different Greek gods.

The κηρύκειον (caduceus) is the often-winged double-snake staff held in the left hand of Hermes (it's not uncommon for trickster gods to be wrong-handed). It's actually supposed to indicate that the bearer is a herald (of the gods in particular). Hermes (Mercury) is the messenger and herald of the gods when he/she's not up to no good (Hermes is, and gives name to "hermaphrodite"). The wings are symbolic of Hermes' ability to travel at the speed of thought, as are the winged hat and sandals often portrayed.

The Rod of Asclepius (Ασκληπιού) is symbolic of the Greek god of healing and medicine and never has wings. The snake was originally part of healing rituals, and in fact, the Greek word "pharmakon" (φάρμᾰκον) means both medicinal drug and poison, indicating that even back then it was well known that the usage and dosage made the difference. Ivermectin is a famous modern example. Not because it can kill a virus, but because it can poison parasites.

Any attempt to specifically tie any of this back to Indian medicinal/spiritual concepts is probably pushing things, but there is evidence that some of the concepts and possibly god-prototypes may have come from Mesopotamia. Where they got it from one can only speculate.

When we speak about symbols, as the caduceus and the cross there are two out numerous factors I would like to point out, as I deem this discussion quite interesting.

The first one is linked to the historical roots the second one is the recurrence of the symbol in different geographies and times.

The first one is interesting  because allow to understand where originally a concept comes from. In this way the initiation mysteries (in the archaeologic and astronomic findings) appear historically coming from the old earth fertility cycles, the movement of the sun, the cult of the so called "grand mother". This is in my opinion like speaking about the history of the soccer! Knowing that English or Italians  founded this sport with some variation is not going to justify why is still so entertaining today.
A psychological, maybe Freudian approach may be preferable to understand this nuance.

In fact this second aspect can be explained at my advice with the second component i quoted at the beginning, namely the anthropological study of the recurrence of a symbol, even incorporating  the knowledge of the underlying philosophy as you do. For instance there are some treatises (in Italian) really beautiful  about the meaning of the farmakon  that you quote in Plato, by one of the best Platonist ever. https://www.amazon.com/Quindici-lezioni-su-Platone/dp/8806164414 Reading them can give some insights, food for thought to fantasize  about the recurrence instead of historical aspect. Fantasizing is at my advice a good approach  because as Umberto Eco said the fiction can be more interesting of the reality to understand the symbolical implication to the human psychology.

The indian approach linked to the kundalini is really interesting because brings inbuilt the power of a mystical experience, although does not have the certitude of  philological historical research that can be instead detached from the pathos of the experience itself. I am thinking for instance to the discrepancy between the Baccae from Euripides and the Dyonisiac rituals. The symbol instead because can have more linguistic significants without expressing solutions  gives me more fascination that the linguistic concept of significance, and I am not alone in that, I am thinking to the studies from de Saussure.

As Claude Levi Strauss, one of my favorite structural thinkers of the past century express in the astonishing introduction of the second volume of the raw and cooked : the symbol has variations and we can read them not as a musical score, an historical succession of notes (a coding sequence of instructions) but ..vertically.  There are libraries of studies about the greek mysteries (and their possible influence on Christian religion) and their derivation from the west through so called sarmatic plain and the thesis of the Indoeuropean linguistic roots but still is not possible as you remark to prove the influence of the vedic spiritual texts as cornerstone of the middle age and renaissance European culture. Without internet and television a curious person had only one way to improve his cultural needs to test the content of the books, and that was traveling.

well regarding my to do list leisure(because have dozen of them) I have a trick really useful, as is leisure time, instead to go through the list and see only the first 200 items, I scroll the maps(freeplane) and pick up one item as 1200th or something, and also have another parallel map for leisure typologies so that if I first decide what I want to do, for instance a scientific documentary, a recipe, a psychological book, some music, and then from there have subtopics so that can do what i feel more good for my mood of the moment

gong tji wrote:
Could someone mention name and meaning of this symbol ?

Thanks

Stays for symbol of immortality, health, is an hermetic symbol, I guess  and is my guess deriving from the two current of energy in the spine, the so called ida and pingala in the indian tradition, and imported in the west. Is popular because represents an invariant of all the life, that is transformation.

Ciao Ranchers,
I have zero time and eons of interest. Here is spoken a lot about hobbies

Once upon a time
When I was young, was going to the book shop asking to the owner about a subject I was curious and after he would go in the magic room, would bring me 3 books I could see 5 minutes on the sales counter table near to him, seeing the table of content, peeking in the pages without ruin the books, then would make my choice would pay what is today 20eu/25dollars and would be with my new friend in my hands for the next weeks page by page.  What an amazing experience, relaxing, exciting, darwinian significant

Today
I look for a guitar lesson, a chess opening,  a painting tutorial and log(n) other things on the internet and after I finish to see a video with that contents I see a lot of other suggestions and I have to open vim and/or other tool to put them in my to do list. I open a movie popular streaming service and i get dozens of movies, and tv series that take much more time than a movie and so 80 percent of my one hourish free per day I write todolist for things outside coding that i should do instead to relax and doing it

What I mean
I even tried to write todolist in mindmaps or my org mode to establish priorities but even the priorities are never ending
I think I should find with some meditation some calm and just enjoy the moment instead to be always projected to some thing to do in the future

Do you sympathize or is just me?

Hi compliments for the book, the index looks quite exciting because I can see you are aware of the difficulty to write this book for the huge complexity of the android ecosystem, but still in the section of what you do not cover link to really key nice insights and most important you get our fantastic fantasy head first hand from the linear layout, to the internals to compose. bravo!

I have to start a new project and have to be really fast, Compose has a learning curve, so I would like to know what are the limits at the moment, namely which views are not ready enough to be built in compose i At this regard I saw you cover the RecyclerView with the DiffUtil mehtod as well that is quite an advaced topic, so in general I am curious about interoperability as well between some feature in compose and interoperability. I really want to learn compose cause I heard Jack Wharton and IntelliJ are trying more o less to make Kotlin Multiplatform integration with compose even for iOS.
Thank you again to make possible an head first updated in Android!

Tim Moores wrote:It was always possible to use Java code in Flutter apps; why should it not be possible to use Kotlin as well, or why should that be new? A quick search brings up many writeups on this very topic, like https://medium.com/swlh/make-an-android-app-with-kotlin-flutter-and-react-native-32333041b9e8, https://blog.kotlin-academy.com/flutter-and-kotlin-multiplatform-relationship-890616005f57, https://www.calloftechies.com/2019/06/how-to-use-java-or-kotlin-with-flutter.html and https://www.nplix.com/2019/09/flutter-how-to-start-android-activity.html.

I am busy with this subject because want to convince my lead to move to flutter instead to have two separate swift kotlin code bases  or using Kotlin multiplatform. Is true that was always possible to use in native, then also that there is the channel possibility to access to native code, but was a painful process. Still today there are some limitations, https://flutter.dev/docs/development/add-to-app. I heard from not official voices that the google team should come up around december with a more official plugin to make the implementation process easier. I am quite a fan of this platform, and I am optimistic about his future adoption.

Thushan Ganegedara wrote:Hi Giovanni,

Yes, that's one of the pain points of TensorFlow; lack of backward compatibility. Unfortunately, the only way is to roll up our sleeves and deal with it.

There is some support for doing this migration https://www.tensorflow.org/guide/migrate but I don't think it's a one-stop solution for all problems.

I see thanks was really useful

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Today is the centenary of women getting the vote in UK, but not all of them; on the same day all men over twenty‑one with a few exceptions, e.g. those incarcerated, got the vote too. Strange to think we need such an anniversary; even when I was young I took it for granted that all adults vote.

Not quite a snakepit subject, and not quite an MD subject, sort of half‑and‑half.

In these days I bumped into a book that offers criticism to Freud is called psychoanalysis and women, a collective gathering of academic views on the subject . Actually I read it because is a critic to Freud, but I am half way now and it changed my opinion about how is important for the society that women have equal rights. Actually according to most of his authors the neuroticism in this society is heavily due to the role subordinate of the women. Well it was written in 1970, is a bit anachronistic because today the society is much more equalitarian, but still opened my eye on how is essential for the evolution and well being of the society a less unconscious individual burden on these kind of topics.

it looks as a fantastic topic, and I M really enjoying the structure of the book, and the introduction available on line.
A small remark: for what concern linear algebra foundations there is a book called math from Programmers from the excellent Manning editions as well, and it covers the basic of linear algebra, could be a good introduction if a bit rust with vectors and matrix, even because gives some math example in python and slightly introduce data science, anyway all the spotlight on this fantastic book from Thushan and his exciting chapters

Somebody playing with flutter plugin in Android? I really enjoy dart/flutter stack, and is production ready, now is possible to implement in Android kotlin code, do you have some experience to share at this regard?

Hi I did an hackathon building in one day a chatbot using tensor flow, the tutorial I followed was with TF 1.0 and could not apply TF 2.0. I do not get why being such an important library is not retroompatible, but to learn I needed to downgrade the library for such an easy use case.

Monica Shiralkar wrote:I read that data structures in Java include Stacks , Queues. How is it decided whether a particular member of collections interface is a data structure or not. Thanks

I see you want to understand why are used and asked in the interviews?
Imagine you have a class  called Monica that has a name and age variables. or an array.
Your family say hey Monica to book the flight we need your name and age, and also of your husband and your 3 children.
So you will create a kind of mini database(that is not a real database), where you can store these informations while you need , and when somebody will ask you I do not get your husband age, you are going to get from the list the name of your husband only. A data structure is where more than one item is stored but usually not in a database but in the scope of your program.
You have List, arrayList HashMap and so on, why `you should use one instead of another? Because if you should have one million of items the choice of one instead of another will have a big performance effect, so in general every data structure serves a purpose.
Secondary they are asked in the interview because they are build with algorithms, a concept advanced that help you to solve problems. For instance if you need from a list to take only the age you need  the program will have to go trough  the list and find the particular item you need. This look easy but in reality MR  List class to do this in the proper way is going to do a lot of work for you, is going to load the list of names, see in which position have to go, take what is inside that LIST at that specific position and come back to you.

Knowing algorithms and data structures is not essential to build the majority of the programs because there has been already somebody that thought about this, usually the language you use has data structures. but knowing data structures, algorithms and also design patterns is what will make you a competent developer, and also you will be able to write your self the building block you need if your use case is not common, and finally you will be better in general to write the code because you know what miss machine needs to execute her orders, well almost because miss machine has an unconscious formed by bytes sequences, but this is another fantastic adventure

Reflection what a great feature! as far as I know is quite slow as counterside because the compiler cannot optimise all the operation

I understand now about declarative as an abstract concept, I am getting more and more into the file rouge that link all the code methodologies, there is a common thread indeed in the thought of the pc pioneers, anyway I see more and more the resemblances across different declarative languages, final variables to encourage immutability, and a flow feeling with code that goes from a mutation to another(map usually) are the first indicators to me. Still functional does not make any sense to me, as I reckon that Object Oriented is functional.
Nice to learn about Anthony Fokker, really interesting for me, still a lot to learn for me about habits of Dutch people.  Koln is really cosy and really close to the Netherlands. Yeah Italians abroad live of stereotypes. I found some really beautiful Dutch restaurants, not too mention that you can find really good products in the supermarkets, and you can taste every kind of international flavor in North Holland, also Italian cuisine in the last 10 years is improved a lot for my really picky standards.