Beyond The Zero: ICE floats

[rich]

you may like this book, friend. I'm close to halfway through this behemoth
which among other things has some parallel vibes with AtD. political
intrigue, black physics, underground cities, mammoths in the permafrost,
madcap revolutionaries and mystics, bureaucrats all enthralled by what
appears to be living ice

rich (chilled out in NY)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/25/ice-by-jacek-dukaj-review-a-dazzling-journey-to-an-alternate-siberia

On Sun, Feb 1, 2026 at 9:40 AM jody2.718 via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
wrote:

> Surviving these frigid times reminds me...
>
> In GR, the paradoxical phase during the psychological extinction of a
> usual stimulus, be it a previously one associated with causing fear or
> loathing, comes to be associated not just with neutrality, but
> paradoxically, becomes with a pleasurable one, or one even sought out.
>
> As a physical metaphor for the paradoxical behavior of this psychological
> phenomenon, when water responds to coldness and becomes solid ice, and
> almost uniquely in the universe, it becomes lighter as a solid than in its
> liquid phase- as if it were rejecting Gravity's embrace- and floats.
>
> This unique effect of water is a large part of the how life evolved on
> earth. I'm reminded of the paradoxical Slothropian response to the effect
> of Gravity's raining down on death and destruction.
>
> From my own studies I've discerned that much of Abiogenesis- the evolution
> of life from inorganic matter- was probably in large part by the process of
> enclosure or embrace by opposites, that then managed or spontaneously
> became balanced within.
>
> A philosophical trend in that direction might be the Jungian idea of
> Enantiodromia
>
> "in Jungian terms, a thing psychically transmogrifies into its shadow
> opposite,"
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiodromia
>
> Shadow indeed.
>
> Chillin'
> jody
> --
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>