Stories By Van

Hey everyone. Welcome to another post on this blog that used to be about storytelling and has since evolved into delving into the "heeby-jeeby" spooky stuff in our world and beyond. I promise I want to add another story onto this blog in the near future. I'm getting distracted with work and laying around watching TV, but I'm working on it so don't worry. Anyway, on to the question at hand. Do aliens exist? And if they do, if they really did come down and say hello; how would we react? Would it be mass panic, or an awesome display of humanity taking its next steps into a brighter future? Let me first start with an unintentional experiment that took place back in the late 30s. On the night before Halloween in 1938, a strange story crackled over radios across the United States. An announcer interrupted the evening’s regular programming for a “special bulletin,” which went on to describe an alien invasion in a field in New Jersey, complete with panicked eyewitn...

"I don't think you are truly mean, you have sad eyes" Tormund Giantsbane ponders the true self of Sandor 'The Hound' Clegane in Game of Thrones, Beyond The Wall. Who are you really? Is there a "true you" beneath the masquerade? According to a trio of psychologists and philosophers writing in Perspectives on Psychological Science , the idea that we each have a hidden true or authentic self is an incredibly common folk belief, and moreover, the way most of us think about these true selves is remarkably consistent, even across different cultures, from Westeros to Tibet. "To thy own's self be true," the saying goes. It is often taken as a sage advice, a scrap of Elizabethan life coaching, but Shakespeare may have meant it to be heard as a stale and meaningless phrase. He gives the line to Polonius, a windbag given to hackneyed pronouncements. But what is this true self to which we should be true? The idea that we have true selves h...

AI is everywhere, and often dressed in sheep's clothes. The Snapchat filter that adds dog's ears to your selfie? That's AI, right there on your smartphone, and called face detection. Whether it's social media or medical imaging, most of us, if we like it or not, have grown dependent on AI systems. The main drivers of recent progress in AI technology are decades of exponential growth in computing power, availability of large data sets which are used to train learning systems, advances in the implementation of learning algorithms and increasing investment from industry. Has it had a largely positive net effect? I would argue probably yes.  So far the advantages have largely outgrown the disadvantages. We should be happy that a lot of smart people are doing amazing things with these systems. But even though potential risks of AI might seem unclear and somehow far away, I will in the next sections explain why they are in fact very imminent and require much more thought...

Existential questions are some of the most interesting questions to ask someone. The reason being is that we've all been there - in that state of mind. Let me ask you this: Do you ever find yourself wanting more  out of a conversation? maybe you've gone through all the standard getting-to-know-you questions, and you're wanting to spice things up a little with a conversation that is left with open-ended answers. I'm a BIG fan of these conversations. You really learn  about the person - or people - you're talking to. Existential questions are more thoughtful than deep  questions, and they're designed to make you ponder all the possible outcomes of a situation. They even have the power to make you completely rethink your perspective on life. Human history is marked with philosophies and theories that not only make us feel like we're nothing but puppets getting our strings pulled, but show us time and time again just how insignificant and petty our existence...

Which do you find more important: achieving a desired goal or the journey on the way to the destination? I usually fall into the "make it to the finish line no matter what" category. But, that path can be pretty miserable. It includes struggle and the never-ending belief that you must work hard to achieve success. But, what if you could experience joy along your journey instead of hardship? What if you believed that your path is there to equip you with the skills and opportunities you need to evolve toward living your life's purpose instead of something to trudge through to get to the good stuff? This is going to sound cheesy, or cliche, or whatever you want to call it, but after I began meditating a few years ago I came to a realization that my life - as well as everyone else's - is ever-changing and evolving. That’s when I perceived that traveling the road toward fulfilling my purpose is the sweet spot. The end result is actually still a little fuzzy around the ed...

I love clowns, and my favorite thing about them is just how damn scary they can be. I used to have a crippling phobia of these makeup-clad weirdos for most of my life. It all started back when I was five years old: I remember walking into the living room and seeing a movie on the TV. The movie was Killer Klowns From Outer Space (and no, I'm not making that up). This B-rated horror film scarred me for so long, and then when I was a senior in high school I found the movie again, so of course I watched it. It's laughably bad. Almost embarrassing to watch. Needless to say, my phobia of clowns is gone thanks to this movie, and it's now one of my all-time favorites to show people. Not my favorite movie with clowns in it, that's Stephen King's IT with Bill Skarsgård. Killer Klowns plot: beautifully bad, the acting: wow, and the clowns: I mean, look at this fucking monster. JUMBO from Killer Klowns From Outer Space It's easy to see why this  would give a 5-year-o...

Do you all know Cthulhu? If you don't, please continue reading. If you do, go ahead and keep reading anyway (you might learn something). Today I want to tell you all the history of one of my favorite ancient deity that looks like an octopus man: Cthulhu. But, there is so much more to the shared universe that H.P. Lovecraft created than just Cthulhu, and I will try and lay down some background history on how it all came to be. The Cthulhu Mythos encompasses the shared elements, characters, settings, and themes found in the works of H.P. Lovecraft and associated horror fiction writers. Together, they form the mythos that authors writing in the Lovecraftian milieu have used — and continue to use — to craft their stories. The term itself was coined by the writer August Derleth. Although this legendarium is also sometimes called the Lovecraft Mythos, most notably by the Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, it has long since moved beyond Lovecraft's original conception.  The Mythos As ...