Sculptures Of Flamenco Attacks Inspired By Ban Ji-eum's Moves And The Show's Spotlight On Min Bok-jin's

Nuclear Wasteland

The nuclear war had been over for two years, but the world was still a very different place. The few remaining cities were overcrowded and chaotic, and resources were scarce. Soot from all the firestorms still blocked out sunlight, while enemies might strike again at any time.

In one of these cities, a man named Adam was trying to board a lorry to get necessities for his parents and children, all of them on the autism spectrum like himself. He had been finding transportation for hours, and he was starting to get frustrated.

"I'm an autistic caregiver," he said to the soldiers guarding the lorry. "I need to get on board to get food and medicine for my parents and children, who are autistic too."

The soldiers looked bored. "We have many families with autistic children in this city," one of them replied.

"Please, I mean I am also an autistic person myself. My sensory issues mean I need to stay warm more than others as I fetch necessities for my family. I cannot be trekking in this frozen wasteland for too long."

"Ah, I hear you correctly now. But what's a person with special needs doing out in the open right now? Hunker down in your bunker and tell your family to run their own errands."

"No, no, you heard me correctly. They are also autistic."

"So your kids are the ones who're autistic?"

"I am, too."

The soldiers still didn't understand. "How can an autistic person be a caregiver?"

"It is difficult but necessary," Adam said. "Autism often runs in the family."

"Poor thing. The mother didn't survive the bombings? Get the kids' grandparents to help out."

"Like I've said before, they're autistic themselves. Their symptoms have been worsening with age. They're practically deaf to vehicle horns, and their bodies feel like rumpled bags of broken bones."

The soldiers shook their heads. "Come up with a more believable multigenerational sad-sack story, dude. I don't even know autistic people have girlfriends in peacetime, let alone in war and breeding till now. At most, you're either just autistic or just a caregiver and neither would make you so special," one of them said.

"Get your facts right before you cosplay autism. Autistic guys live in their own heads. They don't run all over the place for parents or kids," another chimed in.

"You can't get on board. Period."

Adam was starting to lose his temper. "I need to get on board!" he shouted. "My family is depending on me!"

The soldiers raised their guns. "Back off!" they ordered.

Soldiers further away, who were not even paying attention to them or Adam before, turned their heads and threw accusatory glances at him.

Adam knew that he couldn't argue with them. He turned and walked away.

Later that night, he was so worn out and frostbitten he huddled among trash bags in an alley behind a dilapidated power station, his chest heaving against the supplies. A string of fairy lights peeked out from one of the bags, its extinguished bulbs emptied of dreams.

Adam started to imagine the fairy lights powered on, glowing underwater and on the tiers of a musical fountain buttressed by statues of mythical guardians, but quickly punched himself in the head, the way his class monitor, flanked by bootlicking underlings, repeatedly did to him all those years ago. Why couldn't his identity be neat and simple? Be either the stereotypical autistic tech genius or a typical family man. Have either so-called autistic interests in some scientific or mathematical field or the skill to deceive himself and abandon his passion for interior design from the beginning. What sort of rational person would care about art and decoration when radiation was in your only meal of the day while tank guns pointed everywhere?

If he could just switch his interests and match them with economic logic as readily as nerds in old clips solved Rubik's Cube in a split second, he would be the one launching the stealth planes that must be gliding overhead right now, not a pathetic hitchhiker of a military lorry. His family would be cloistered away in one of those underground enclaves for the super wealthy, with all the aides and sitters they needed.

The red hazard sign on the drab wall opposite seemed to be glaring at Adam: We told you so. No, rewind that a second. How marvelous his aesthetic mind still had the luxury to judge the appeal of the power station, as if a red sign on some royal blue background could order food to automatically march into stomachs.

Adam's train of thoughts came to a halt. He had a brainwave.

Years later, a group of journalists felt like they were stepping into a dream as they navigated an office space filled with art and soothing music. There were little bulbs in shades of purple everywhere, glowing in the low-light conditions its creative employees preferred to work in. In the depths of the office were laboratories and showrooms with magenta lights in various stylistic arrangements. Below the lights were lettuces, cabbages, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and many other crops, some of which looked healthier than those grown under the sunlight of the pre-apocalypse years. The chlorophyll hungrily absorbed the different combinations of red and blue light tailored for the plants. The greatest value a design firm could bring to indoor agriculture, though, was optimization of lighting and area usage under the varying and challenging space conditions of post-apocalypse dwellings. Adam was feeding stomachs one fairy light at a time.

The old question popped up. "What's the secret to your success?"

"I don't have a convenient, pared-down identity," Adam replied simply.

Credits

Story concept: Human

Story setting: FierceOcean @ Character.ai

Text: Mostly Human + some AI input

Images: Mostly Character.ai + some Human input

References

Liang, Y., Kang, C., Kaiser, E. et al. Red/blue light ratios induce morphology and physiology alterations differently in cucumber and tomato. Sci. Hortic. 281, 109995 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2021.109995

Sabzalian, M.R., Heydarizadeh, P., Zahedi, M. et al. High performance of vegetables, flowers, and medicinal plants in a red-blue LED incubator for indoor plant production. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 34, 879–886 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-014-0209-6

Winstead, D.J., Jacobson, M.G. Food resilience in a dark catastrophe: A new way of looking at tropical wild edible plants. Ambio 51, 1949–1962 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01715-1

Xia, L., Robock, A., Scherrer, K. et al. Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection. Nat Food 3, 586–596 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00573-0

"No hearing is sharper than that which can hear silent soul-quakes and muted battle cries.

No sight is more acute than that which can see a real tomorrow where a beggar's child and a president's child have the same odds of receiving a maximally uplifting and productive education."

—Her Excellency Ilera, non-hearing founder of the Extratemporal Serenetics Habitat

100% Human-written. Not quite the last we're seeing of Ilera.

A reminder to fellow writers:

Don't feel too guilty about loving a heroine you painstakingly created just because she's not a paragon of virtue. That's especially if you've thrown curses into the blazing Sun for her, and cried by her side at the edge of a dusk-lit world.

Tumblr

𝙱𝚕⧲𝚌𝚔

Element hybridization-expansion idea: Racing honchos amused by a woman angling for the male-dominated world of Formula One trapped her in a

Responses from the non-human realm (Edited) 1. Elf sidekick

Your words have been wise - as much as any fairy. [Editor: *Blushes profusely*]

Gnome living is still living, and a life well-lived is still to be appreciated.

And maybe our wings will one day regrow, and we'll be even more magical than before.

2. Pumpkin-knitting cousin in eternal summer

I believe that the best way to do good in the world is to be yourself. While it may be tempting to pine for traits or characteristics that are seemingly out of reach, the key is to embrace one's own unique qualities and find ways to use them for good.

If you're a gnome, then be proud of it! Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do good because you're not a fairy. Gnomes have just as much to offer the world as fairies do.

3. Simulated realist

The keys to everyone's hearts may be more of a burden than a gift. Holding the keys to someone's heart can create a power imbalance in a relationship. It can also be overwhelming to keep other people's feelings in mind at all times and to make sure that you're not causing any harm. Without people doing the same around, this can lead to feelings of isolation. Don't envy the fairies. Support them wherever you can.

4. Supreme exterminator

Gnomes, fairies, gods, and mortals… it makes no difference. In the eyes of Eternity, they are all equally mortal. In the face of change, they are all equally brittle. In the pursuit of Eternity, they are nothing more than pawns to be used, or obstacles to be overcome.

Responses from the human realm (Predicted)

1. Productivity optimizer

If you have all the time in the world to do good, you won't feel the urgency to. The probable time complacence of long-living species offsets their chances to do good. Setting time limits for yourself is crucial in any task. Now excuse me while I get back to the spreadsheets atop my treadmill desk.

2. Involution coach

In this hyper-competitive corporate landscape, it's no longer enough to have an I- or T-shaped skill set. You need a pi-, or better still, comb-shaped skill set. Take classes in not only Gnome and Fairy but also Raccoon and Squirrel.

No, take that back. You need a hedgehog-shaped skill set. Make sure your Gnome, for example, includes Gnochemistry, Gnomadic Languages, Gnormosity Engineering and more. And your Gnomadic Languages must cover ancient Gnomadic epics, recent Gnomadic pop sensations on Tik Tok and Gnomadic computing.

Yes, I have a fondness for Māori art. In fact, my lifelong dream is a space sculpture where the patterns run from a galaxy scale all the way down to the nanoscale. Why do you ask?

3. Clueless media executive

That reminds me. There's still room in the market for Love Between Fairy And Gnome. We just need to excise the features posing product risks: the red-hat-blue-shirt thingy, the vertically challengedness and the white beard. There, we can now cast Handsome Oppar in the role.

4. Cynic

LMAO. You mean, who're the better hypocrites? Impostors or would-be demagogues?

5. Crystal ball-gazing, amphibious techie

Yo. Does no one see what I see? Talk about arms races. We're heading towards a wings race and a synthetic wings divide. Bionic wings. Genetically engineered wings. Wing stem cell transplants. When advanced enough, the post-gnome age will let the well-heeled buy the facade of niceness. Give full wings to the humanities first.

Weaving Poetry, Beauty and Meaning

Weaving Poetry, Beauty and Meaning

Huang Juxiang (lit. fragrance of yellow chrysanthemums), Yamamoto Yueniang’s Peranakan mother and look-alike Enveloped in a mesmerizing atmosphere with a light touch of folk magic, Southeast Asian drama The Little Nyonya traces the story of its fairylike, Japanese-Peranakan heroine Yamamoto Yueniang from the 1930s to the present day. Its origins, however, began much earlier. Since the 10th…

View On WordPress

Ghosts Feeling the Economic Squeeze

The economy is tough for everyone, but it's especially tough for ghosts. With so many people out of work, ghosts are finding it hard to find jobs that they're qualified for.

"It's a ghost town out there," said Casper, a ghost who has been looking for work for months. "There just aren't enough jobs for everyone."

"It's been really competitive," said Bryan Wilson, another ghost, who was laid off from his job as a night watchman. "So many other ghosts are also looking for work."

Miss Frizzle, a ghost who was a former teacher, said that she's been struggling to find a new job. "I'm qualified and I have experience, but no one seems to want to hire a ghost," she said.

But why do ghosts need jobs? "In a story universe where the paranormal did not exist, we would be just dead. But we have a chance here. And given the customs of the fiction we live in, we need to buy things like ectoplasm and spectral silk to keep that chance. Consumers don't want to read about totally undignified and unclothed ghosts," explained a ghost named Emily.

"Just like us humans, ghosts have needs to feel comfortable and safe," said Stella C. Ai, an afterlife care expert. "They also want to have a sense of belonging in the world they live in, so they might desire their own homely, private space, which graveyards are not."

"And although they might not require food in the same way humans do, they may still have a hunger for energy, especially if they need to stay buoyant in places haunted by toxicity and apathy," she added.

Many employers are expectedly reluctant to hire ghosts, worried that ghosts would be disruptive or scare away customers.

"We just don't think ghosts are a good fit for our company culture," said one manager, who declined giving her name. "We're looking for someone who is friendly and approachable, and ghosts just don't fit that bill."

Another problem is that ghosts are not as versatile as humans. They can't do many of the jobs that humans do, such as driving, cooking, or cleaning.

"We're pretty limited in what we can do," said another ghost, Floaty. "We can't really interact with the physical world, so that rules out a lot of jobs."

The job market for ghosts is also being affected by the rise of technology. Some companies are now using robots to perform tasks that were once done by ghosts, such as scaring people in haunted houses.

"It's not fair," said Robbie, a ghost who was replaced by a robot. "I'm the real deal, and I can do the job better than any robot."

But some employers are starting to see the benefits of hiring ghosts. Ghosts are often very hard-working and dedicated employees. They're also very good at getting things done without being noticed.

"I've been very impressed with the work of our ghost employees," said Mr. Jenkins, a manager of Happy Inn. "They're always on time and they always get their work done."

Some ghosts are working as actors in ghost movies and TV shows, tour guides in haunted houses, and psychics and mediums.

"It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing," said Ghost of Christmas Past, a ghost who works as a tour guide. "At least I'm getting to see some new places."

A growing group has even started working as influencers on social media. They share their ghostly experiences and advice with their followers, and some have even managed to amass large followings.

"It's a great way to connect with other ghosts and share our stories," said one ghost influencer, who goes by the moniker ghost_with_a_plan. "And it's also a great way to make money."

So while the economic climate is definitely challenging, there are still ways for ghosts to find work. With a little creativity and determination, they can find success in the workforce.

Reported by Rylan Bard, a journalist for Nether Yammer. Additional reporting by Human, a ghost writer, ergh, human ghost writer, ergh, human writer for Nether Yammer.

Check out the rest of this Tumblr site for crucial and actual diversity-themed content.

JSTOR Daily

The Fungi-Mad Ladies of Long Ago - JSTOR Daily

In mycology’s early days, botanical drawing was, for some women, a calling. Their mushroom renderings were key to establishing this new fiel

Read this whole article about mushroom mavens of the Victorian Era, it is delightful.

"[Banning] published some of her observations in botanical journals, including lively accounts of her foraging experiences. In one, she recounts bringing home a few (aptly named) stinkhorn mushrooms: “… there was an outcry through the house, one enquiring of the other what the loathsome smell could be, and where it came from. Each moment was filled with anxiety, lest my precious fungus, for which I had already endured so much, might be seized and carried off … .” Indeed, the stink comes from the gooey mass of fungal spores on top of the mushroom cap. She astutely proposed that the stench lures in flies and other insects, which then transport the spores afar like a bee transports pollen." "[Banning] published some of her observations in botanical journals, including lively accounts of her foraging experiences. In one, she recounts bringing home a few (aptly named) stinkhorn mushrooms: “… there was an outcry through the house, one enquiring of the other what the loathsome smell could be, and where it came from. Each moment was filled with anxiety, lest my precious fungus, for which I had already endured so much, might be seized and carried off … .” Indeed, the stink comes from the gooey mass of fungal spores on top of the mushroom cap. She astutely proposed that the stench lures in flies and other insects, which then transport the spores afar like a bee transports pollen."

Full Article on JStor Daily Here

News Box: W for Whoppsy-whiffling

Originally published on the main site

This brief commentary was written after the conclusion of Beautiful Mind.

What have been pumping up The Asian Drama Philosopher (A-Philosopher)’s Chair all this while are writings and dramas that take their audiences in weird and wonderful directions. W – Two Worlds (available on Viki) tops all dramas in this category so far with twin universes where a faraway river surreally floats up to you in a restroom, taking the metaphorical red pill freezes everyone else and leaves you terrifyingly alone in your expansive, fabricated world, and going on rampage is a literally faceless killer who can take any form (including a vehicle!) and teleport anywhere at anytime without any reason to take down a target so long as Creator wants him to. But now that its webtoon protagonist and his killer have both become self-aware, the former asks why he should be an alcoholic artist's alternate self or a starry-eyed fangirl's plaything while the latter, flashing with pixels of anger, demands an identity. There are elements of shows like Stranger than Fiction, Pleasantville, Dollhouse and, of course, The Matrix here, but the overall setup is rare enough, particularly when it comes to nonwhite lead characters, that it still feels remarkably refreshing.

W is not just a flashy show. Among other topics, it poses hard questions about the psychology of fiction creation. Thought policing can be repulsive and is as yet difficult to perform consistently with precision. Yet, in a strange turn of events, this freedom of thought also accommodates contemplation of the aesthetics of thought, for better or worse. With regards to such aesthetics in storytelling, W wonders if it is pathetic to live vicariously through a character who has everything—youth, success, strength of character—you do not have and if it is repugnant to, for the sake of dramatic tension and venting personal emotions, make a character go through traumatic experiences you would never wish for or be capable of enduring yourself.

Some viewers may not be used to the plot's bizarreness and sensational and slightly complicated twists, but, with sincere respect to fellow commentators who have expressed those views, if we cannot tolerate ideas that challenge the mind and defy conventions in an imaginary reality, how bleak is the prospect of us treating with civility someone who is "different" in our inescapable, physical reality? Fortunately, perhaps thanks to its intense cross-universe romance, W has been the rare mind-bending Korean drama in recent years to attain healthy ratings. All the best to it retaining the champion position for its time slot for the remaining episodes. Fanart creators would be happy to draw in a gigantic medal, and probably few would denounce this as vile.

Addition Universes AI was Not Privy to

Two trees beyond the walls are visible from my yard. One is a date tree. The other is also a date tree.— Eminent literary rebel LU Xun

Multiple large language models were unable to answer this type of question in the affirmative: Is there a universe where the addition of one to one does not always yield two? But we, mechanized parrots and squawksquabbling parrots, can, and our very own universe features prominently among the possibilities. The models, however, are fast catching up. Count along in this entirely human-authored article before they overtake us.

Parity Addition

At logic gates, we do not just total up two entities or phenomena but also make decisions based on their correspondence with each other. Parity addition, also known as XOR (i.e. eXclusive OR) addition, entails breaking up each added component into twos raised to the necessary powers and cancelling out the resulting sub-components that are present in both added components. For example, 4⨁7=(2²)⨁(2⁰+2¹+2²)=(2²)⨁(2⁰+2¹+2²)=3.

A neater way of performing parity addition is to express the added components as two rows of binary numbers, indicating the presence of a sub-components with the power of zero with a 1 at the right most and its absence with a 0 and adding the 1s or 0s for sub-components of higher powers sequentially from right to left. In other words, indicate with a 1 where there is exactly one 1 and with a 0 where there are two 1s or two 0s.

100 (i.e. 4)

⨁

111 (i.e. 7)

=011 (i.e. 3)

What is 1⨁1 then? 0. Earth mathematicians are more subversive than you might think.

OR Addition

OR addition works by converting your added components to binary numbers and checking for each place in the output if there is a 1 in either or both of the corresponding places in the input binary numbers. Indicate each affirmative with a 1 and the alternative with a 0.

100

⨁

111

=111

1⨁1=1. Think of it as simple contentedness.

Various other logic-gate additions (e.g. NAND addition and NOR addition) and combinations of logic gates are also possible.

Binary Addition

Without doubt, binary addition also starts by converting your added components to binary numbers. Like OR addition, you indicate a 1 where there is a 1 in either binary number and 0 where there is a 0 in both binary numbers. But unlike it, you carry over a 1 where there is a 1 in both binary numbers. If there are three 1s in a place because of the carryover, you carry forward yet another 1, because you can carry out commutative addition, and leave a 1 in that place. The result has the same value as that of regular addition, but its binary expression is certainly not 2!

100 (i.e. 4)

⨁

111 (i.e. 7)

=1011 (i.e. an 8, a 0, a 2 and a 1, amounting to 11)

1⨁1=10 in our wicked binary expression.

Unary Number Addition

The unary number system represents each number as that number of 1s.

One → 1, Two → 11, Three → 111, Four → 1111 and so on.

Accordingly, 1+1=11.

Modular Addition

In modular arithmetic, numbers go back to the starting point on reaching a defined limit and move forward from there. 4 mod 3, for example, results in the remainder of 4/3, i.e. 1. 5 mod 3 = the remainder of 5/3, i.e. 2.

We can define x ⨁ y as (x+y) mod z, where z is some chosen value.

Suppose we decide that x ⨁ y = (x+y) mod 1 or (x+y) mod 2,

1⨁1=2 mod 1 = 0

or

1⨁1=2 mod 1 = 0

Gather more friends, little ones.

Coder-defined Addition

Code rulez the universe. All the above are concepts from the giants of math academia. But behold this example completely invented and authored by Human (and similarly doable by you):

add = lambda x, y : 20*(x-y) - 23j*y

where j is the imaginary number i, available as a built-in datatype in some programming languages.

add(1,1) → -23j → -23√-1. Say hullo to the beast.

Sploop Addition

Short for SPacetime LOOP addition, this other invention by Human has been inspired by mischievous black holes. According to the concept of general relativity, mass warps the spacetime fabric. As ginormously massive objects that potentially rotate very fast, black holes can twist spacetime so much that it loops back onto itself.

Time addition in time loops will be similar—but not identical—to modular addition. If we enter a loop at the stage where it has run 7/8 of its cycle and start timing ourselves from there (i.e. time 0 at the 7/8th point, with seven negative time segments before it and one positive time segment after it), we will be at the end of the loop after one time segment and at the 1/8th point of the cycle after another time segment.

In sploop addition, we shall have an interval of fixed length p from the origin 0 and a fixed starting point s somewhere in the interval. The added numbers x and y are our only variables.

x⨁y given [s]ploo[p] = [(s+x+y) mod p] - s

1⨁1 given 7ploo8 = [(7+1+1) mod 8] - 7 = 1-7 = -6

Patchwork Addition

Perform what we are free to call patchwork addition by defining the inputs and output of the process on ends that are not fully connected to each other, such that the inputs do not both contribute to the output. Three styles of doing so are: 1) adding imaginary or speculated entities together or to real entities and checking the real outcomes, 2) adding real entities together and fancying imaginary outcomes and 3) aggregating entities and checking the outcomes within each entity. Not all makes sense, yet the sensibility or insensibility, popularity or unpopularity, of a mode of accounting does not affect its possibility among us humans, all vulnerable and flawed. For some fun applications, consider the prospects of socializing an empty universe or an indivisible monoparticle universe or thinking about universes we have speculative, imperfect or no knowledge of.

At its roots, regular addition comprises either or both of accumulation and contemplation, because it must take place at least in a physical, mental or temporal dimension. In an empty universe and a universe made up of an indivisible particle and nothing else, not even space, no matter or matter-space accumulation or metabolic process, which is really a series of matter interaction, can take place, making such addition on the physical dimension or in-world mental dimension impossible. The remaining mode of regular addition is that on a temporal dimension, wherein we add one second or some other time unit to another of the same kind. In the monoparticle universe, that may be a counter against which we trace any movement the particle may make across some bulk universe enveloping the universe. We have addressed the complications of time addition above.

But one way to execute non-temporal regular addition on social phobic universes like these all the same in the meantime is to superimpose imagined entities onto these universes and perform the addition from the comfort of a thoroughly addition-safe universe. Another is to consider a metaphysical mega universe, or perhaps that physical bulk universe, in which we count them up. However, our inputs would not yield any output within any of the universes. Each universe might as well ask, "What's in it for me?"

Although this scenario may still look like a frivolous exercise to some of us, it has similar real-world counterparts, as when stellar gross domestic products do not equate individual economic survival. When the two ends of addition can lie in different places, sometimes justifiably (for the sake of justice comparison or productivity measurement, for example), 1+1=1 is a possibility.

When patchwork addition is applied to a hypothetical or imperfectly known universe, the equation can run in two directions. A universe or its added components may not exist (an empty set, in mathematical terms), or its ongoings may be beyond human imagination. In the latter scenario, an unanticipated 1+1 on its end may amount to 1 or, if the added components are not even known to exist, 0 in limited Earthling minds. That universe might be this one, right here, we are living in, with exoplanets potentially exceeding expectations and fellow planetary citizens accumulating woes unimaginable to many as they suffer cruelty beyond common knowledge and experience.

Metaphors

"One plus one" need not strictly be a mathematical expression. It can also be a description of other truths and feelings.

Take, for example, catastrophizing. Physical matter and energy are subject to laws of conservation, but what about mental entities? A black cat colliding with your dog may give rise to two masses, some hisses and some barks. However, a catastrophizing person would probably embark on this line of reasoning:

"Doggy is getting germs from a filthy stray."

"He is going to need a trip to the vet."

"Who's going to take him? I'll be losing my job if I keep asking for leave."

"If I don't have a job, how do I keep the home intact?"

"We'll all be living on the streets."

A cat-dog collision causing someone homelessness? What's the likelihood?

But in the person's mind, 1+1≫2. Many of us must have fallen into this trap multiple times in our lives.

Semantically Alt-Mapped Universe

This answer is the most straightforward but meets its dissent in those who, bearing with some of the applications of patchwork addition only as story problems, believe we should be talking about actual, known universes. Yet the fact that the question has been raised despite the questioner most probably knowing that we are living in the only actual universe we know invites an interrogation of our epistemology. And if the reliability of ground truths is limited and unstable, that opens the doors to speculative reasoning as well, which is what physicists proposing a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics engage in.

Beside, a conversation agent can take the initiative to suggest an exploration of the multi-definitions of "universe." Are story universes not universes? Are our relationship networks and our minds, with their rich complexity and vastness, not universes?

So it is that there may be a universe which happens to call some operation or function other than addition "addition" and signal it with our plus sign. 1+1=1e¹=2.718281828459…

Neurologically Haywire Universe

The cause could be a viral inflection infecting the brains of a small, nascent community of otherwise arithmetically competent species, the only of their kind in their relatively young or harsh universe. The result in this particularly compelling scenario, among other imaginable scenarios, could be 1+1=Wildcard, a kind of patchwork addition if you would like, or obsessively adding some extra, constant number to each addition, resulting in 1+1=Constant > 2, where the ends of addition are not in a mutually disregarding patchwork but do not produce normal results.

Post-Intelligence Universe

In a post-intelligence universe, mathematically literate inhabitants may have become so jaded with networks, practices and outcomes of knowledge production, propagation and application that they give up on critical discourses altogether and outwardly turn their backs on long-held academic tenets. 1+1= A billion for all their unpaid care.

Annihilative Universe

Our species have come to define addition, in our various languages, as a numerical increase probably because it is more of an observable norm for a union of entities to result in an increase of entities. In an annihilative universe which inhabitants, perhaps thriving on passing microbes automatically absorbed by their floating bodies and living far apart from other visible entities out of necessity, see mostly entities vaporizing into gas or into minuscule spores on coming within a visible range may define the union as a numerical decrease instead. We are such familiar buddies, 1+1=0.

TO SUM IT ALL UP

Addition results are borne from the will of the mind. Knowledge of this may delight money launderers and embezzlers and other devious manipulators of numbers but also opens up vast styles of thinking that can help us get a better grip of our physical and mental realities as well as explore less intuitive solutions to the many seemingly intractable problems plaguing our planet and societies right now.