Fate or Self-Determination?

Many imagine that they have partial control over their lives, their circumstances and the trajectory of those lives. I have used the plural lives here which might be a moot choice for those who do not believe in reincarnation. Already people might want to debate singular or plural. Their own minds may not be certain, “do I cark it and that is it, or am I reborn?” This is quite fundamental in terms of outlook. They don’t imagine that the entire trajectory of life can pivot on a few tiny things.

If those marking my undergraduate exams in 1985 had given me one more mark and Sue one less. We would have tied for the last remaining SERC Ph.D. quota studentship. The organic section already had a lot of applicants, the inorganic chemistry section less. The decision would have been to grant the supervisor of my third year research project the studentship and I would have done a Ph.D. in the synthesis of Pt and Pd mixed valence compounds with X-ray, FTIR and Raman. I would have become an inorganic chemist of sorts at UCL and not gone to the Royal Institution nor helped moved the group to Imperial College. At some stage down the line the UCL trajectory could have led me to doing coherent Raman spectroscopy of GaAs growth at UMIST. Here the two possible trajectories could have remerged. This could have led me to the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electronic Materials and to Imperial.

But my life would have been markedly different in the meantime. I would not have formed the same “relationships”.

When Sue transferred to UCL part through her degree I helped her catch up on the course. In effect sealing my own fate by an act of kindness. Without my intervention I would have “beaten” her. Of course I could also have smoked fewer spliffs and not gotten so pissed on a regular basis too.

Seemingly innocuous happenstance can nudge life trajectory more than you imagine. Is it down to fate or is it down to the integral over all the decisions we make? I prefer the notion that fate has a considerable hand. Others do not like the idea that some external force has influence and control of their lives.

BUT.

If you choose your incarnation then you have in a way self-determined your fate by the choice of vehicle into which you incarnate. There may be a fate but it was caused by your choice.

At the moment the residual fate in this life looks pretty simple. No big deal, no big external dramas and marginal significance to the world at large. I am very unlikely to have much ongoing wider significance. If it is fated there is no intervention required of me. If it is fated otherwise something might happened outside the compound to change things. I don’t have to be in any way proactive in this respect. If it is fated, it will happen.

Tomorrow, I have a urology appointment to follow up on my elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. I don’t have cancer yet according to the guidelines of how these things are assessed. But the way the PSA numbers are going it will not be long before I fall into the right numerical regime to mean that I have cancer or at least warrant another hour long session in the high resolution MRI machine or an invasive biopsy. I may get a prostate exam. The trajectory of our lives might take another turn, if it is so fated.

There are many who really don’t like this notion of relying on fate. It is core belief and orientation for me. My dreams help me evolve my fate in accordance with what I, the indwelling dreamer, planned at birth. I have made huge life changing decisions based on dream interpretation. Some of which were very hard with difficult consequences. I was fated to dream and fated to use those dreams to guide this life.

Of course I may seem like a complete nut-job to some. But if so, it was always fated thus.

I am open to the fact that there is not much left fated for me to do in this life. Why would one not accept one’s fate? Even were my life entirely governed by self-determination there is precious little that I can do to alter life circumstance as it stands. It looks like fate has me “cornered” so to speak…

Shit happens… you may as well relax into it…take a deep breath… this will only take a few seconds…

Novel Conductors – Counts of Penthièvre – Tapestry Dream – 03-08-2025

Here is /are this morning’s dream(s). Had between 5 and 7:20 AM. The juxtaposition is notable.

The dream starts in abstract space. I am viewing a three dimensional crystal lattice, a molecular / atomic model with atoms as small, coloured spheres and “bonds” as lines. The model is not space filling. I can see a cage structure made out of group 1 metal ions which extends in a quasi-one dimensional linear fashion. Inside the cage are molecular halogens chlorine, bromine and specifically iodine. There are / can be different variations of group  1 and halogen. The halogens carry a negative electronic molecular charge and are in an extended multiple electron delocalisation brought about by the confinement caused by the ionic cage. There are Cooper pairs. Outside the cage are several strands of the charged delocalised halogen thread. Outside of this are more metal ion cages with halogen conducting cores. The whole is entwined like threads in a heavy duty wire with the halogen “fibres” providing electrical neutrality for the positive metal ionic cages. I know that the material is a very good conductor in one dimension as a wire. This is a new and revolutionary type of material yet to be made.

The scene changes and I am in the kitchen of a tall thin building. It has an “Amsterdam” or Dutch feel. The kitchen is on the ground or basement level. I am looking out the back window onto a small, enclosed garden / courtyard. The kitchen sink is in front of the window. The wife comes in dressed in the light green yukata. I ask her what she has been doing. She has opened the door to the “secret” room on the top floor of the house. It is the fourth floor at the very top of the stairs. I say that I didn’t know there was a room / floor. She say that yes there is, it is a bit messy and I should go to look for myself.

Wearing a white waxed paper disposable overall and with safety specs and small respirator, I go into the room at the top of the stairs. It opens up into a couple of rooms painted white with an open door into the second room. I run my hand along a small white painted beam which forms the strut for the roof. Some paint flakes off. There are some wardrobes in the far room otherwise the floor is empty.

I go down stairs and just as I near the front door an old style bell on a pulley door bell rings. I open the door and it is Elizabeth Hurley. I invite her in and usher her to the kitchen. It seems that we know each other from before. We go into the kitchen and the wife greets Elizabeth. They sit next to each other at the kitchen table, sink side. I ask the wife if there are any clean towels. Yes, in the bathroom. I go up to the bathroom and take the overall off wrapping a light blue towel around my waist with a white t-shirt on the top.

I go back into the kitchen and Elizabeth and the wife are wrapped up in luxurious rich fabric tapestry. One side is vibrantly embroidered and the other is of a very rich creamy-white velvet like support. The tapestry is several metres long and they are having a cwtch together like long lost sisters under the tapestry as if to keep warm on a winter’s night.

Elizabeth says that she has been investigating her forefathers some of whom were biologically related to the Counts of Penthièvre. I say that when we first moved here to Britanny, I looked into Breton history going back to the founding Welsh saints and St Illtud in particular. I say that the history of the Counts of Penthièvre is tied closely to that of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The times relate to my priest – crusader life in some way. We have been to Fontevraud Abbey where she, Eleanor, is said to be buried.

The scene changes and I am being ushered into the drawing room of a very plush mansion like house.  Very Brideshead. I am meeting a tall quintessentially English man. {Imagine Charles Dance as a movie villain.} The man is expensively dressed and is standing by a fireplace which is black metal enamelled and shut. There is an ornate flower pot with dried flowers and potpourri. There is also and old fashioned radio with a wooden outer cover and extendable aerial. The man welcomes me in and we are talking about funding some research into the Counts of Penthièvre. He is concerned that I am a gold-digger and in some way after his estate. I reassure him that I have no biological connection to his family. As we are talking a programme comes on the radio which is talking about the Counts of Penthièvre and Breton history. He sees this as a good sign and is well disposed to funding.

The scene changes and I am on the driver’s seat of an open horse and cart with a dark haired Greek man. It is sunny and cobbled. He has the reigns and the whip. We are going to meet some of his family down at the port. He reminds me to be Greek because that will help with my inquiries. I playfully gesticulate and grimace. He smiles and says that already I am perhaps a bit too Greek. We are like bothers who have known each other long. My antics make us both laugh.

The dream(s) end.

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From Wikipedia

In the 11th and 12th centuries the Countship of Penthièvre (Breton: Penteur) in Brittany (now in the department of Côtes-d’Armor) belonged to a branch of the sovereign House of Brittany. It initially belonged to the House of Rennes. Alan III, Duke of Brittany, gave it to his brother Eudes in 1035, and his descendants formed a cadet branch of the ducal house.

The geographical region of Brittany that constituted the holdings of Penthièvre correlate closely with the territories that constituted the early Breton kingdom of Domnonée.

The history of the title Count of Penthièvre included frequent dispossessions and restorations. Henri d’Avaugour, heir of this family, was dispossessed of the countship in 1235. The Duke of Brittany, Pierre Mauclerc, founder of the Breton House of Dreux, gave it as dowry to his daughter, Yolande, on her marriage in 1238 to Hugh XI of Lusignan, Count of La Marche. John I, Duke of Brittany, Yolande’s brother, seized the countship on her death in 1272. After the Breton War of Succession the title was dispossessed twice by the reigning Dukes of Brittany, once by John V and another time by Francis II.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine (French: Aliénor d’Aquitaine or Éléonore d’Aquitaine; Occitan: Alienòr d’Aquitània ; Latin: Helienordis, Alienorde or Alianor; c. 1124 – 1 April 1204) was Duchess of Aquitaine from 1137 to 1204, Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, and Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II. As the reigning duchess of Aquitaine, she ruled jointly with her husbands and two of her sons, the English kings Richard I and John. As the heiress of the House of Poitiers, which controlled much of southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages.

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Ildut (forme bretonne courante) ou plus correctement Iltud (d’après la forme galloise), ou Iltut ou encore Elchut (voire Ideuc), est le nom du moine breton (soit insulaire, soit armoricain) Illdut de Llantwit, devenu saint.

Considéré comme le père fondateur du christianisme celtique, saint Ildut est fêté le 6 novembre.

Origine du nom

Le nom breton Ildut se retrouve dans le nom de lieu Lanildut, et le nom de l’Aber-Ildut, tous deux situés sur la côte nord du Léon.

Le nom gallois Illtud, parfois transcrit en anglais Illtyd ou Eltut, est associé au monastère de Llanilltud Fawr, au pays de Galles, lieu anglicisé sous la forme Llantwit Major qui est le nom de la ville qui s’est développée autour.

La forme latinisée du nom est Hildutus de Iltutus qui évoque qu’après la baptême l’enfant est ainsi appelé car protégé, en sureté, mis à l’abri (cf. tutus).

Coming Home to Roost Dream and Preparation 02-08-2025

Last night in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, in the cusp between here and yet to come, I had yet another coming home to roost “slide show”. In that, things come home to roost for some people whom I once had acquaintance of. I take no joy or glee from these happenstances, these scenarios, rather a tinge of sadness at folly and adamant folly to boot. For example if you falsify any official document there is a chance down the line that it could come back to bite you on the arse like a rabid chihuahua. If you succumb to temptation and allow the tendrils of evil to find purchase, they rarely let go and your relationship becomes symbiotic. Without knowing it you supply the food. Short of a full blown exorcism it is game over in terms of liberation for this lifetime. Nobody involved in such a symbiosis will ever believe or accept such a statement.

Everything seems normal to them. Their playbook seems to work and they have success in the world and among peers. They can handle whatever mini-crises are sent to them. Or so they think.

The thing about karma is that it can be subtle. People who believe they are thoroughly entitled do not imagine that it exists. When something happens that is “bad luck” , “unfair” and not an effect which they have had a hand in causing. One day, perhaps in a lifetime to come, people get to have the penny drop whilst incarnated and they see with irrevocable clarity the outcomes and consequences of their actions, their emotionally charged bile and punitive vengeful thoughts. Theory has it there is a review at the time of death too. I witnessed bedside my father struggling with his. It was not pretty.

I have started mentally preparing for my operation and other commitments later in the year. It has become reasonably obvious in the twilight that I need to return to the A-U-M meditations and revisit Phowa practice just in case. I probably need to start doing more stretching exercises and work at building back some muscle in my legs and hips. At the end of the month I start a new birth-year, leading me further into my final pinnacle. Who knows what is in store aside from some hippie action in the operating block.

My understanding is that when people incarnate, they choose all the circumstances of their birth to enable them to learn from a “lesson plan” that might help them best evolve and work at karma. They made this plan themselves. For example I was born into a family in which the education mantra was strong. I was sent to boarding school in another country, education was more important than any close familial relationship. I subsequently ended up working  in “education” for a couple of decades. I planned this before birth.

In the birth lesson plan trajectories of whom you are “meant” to meet are bullet pointed. The possibilities exist. These individuals have the wherewithal through which you might learn. Human choice must be allowed. Thus it is possible to completely screw up the lesson plan which you yourself wrote. Literally miss the boat by miles. You can fuck up a life and badly so, through your own arrogance. The moot point is were you always destined to fuck up or did you simply act that way out of bloody-mindedness? Did you cut off your nose to spite your face or had you zero choice in the matter? In the grand scheme of things learning will inevitably ensue. But it may be many lifetimes later that such a great learning opportunity re-presents. People learn painfully yet effectively through loss.

It is the karma of snakes and ladders.

The thing about dreaming is that timing is never atomic-clock accurate. But when the dreams increase in frequency it does mean that the event is getting nearer in time, it will happen sooner. It also means that the likelihood or probability is increasing.

Dreaming by its very nature cannot be an exact science….

Easterly Stalkers – Tarot 12 – Dream – 01-08-2025

Here is last night’s short dream.

The dream brings to mind the images of two tall women whom I have never met in real life yet who are public figures of different degrees. Their images are known. They hold positions of power, of different type. They are both based in London for their professional activities.

I see them in turn and know that they are both Easterly Stalkers. I have a knowing in the dream that I may meet them one day. One is more likely than the other.

I know this dream to be about time and the stalker’s in and of time.

The image of Tarot 12 comes to the fore. I know that this is again about forbearance. When things cannot be changed and are outside one’s ability or sphere of influence one must forebear. This is the jewel of the Easterly Stalker.

The dream suggests that things sophisticated and outside my “ken” or experience are afoot. They are socio-political. I know that I would be out of my depth in that happenstance and shenanigan but that I have zero need to fear it because I am not directly convolved or convoluted in to it.

In the dream I remember that I have felt one of these women at the edge of consciousness for a while and she has been getting closer over time.

The dream ends.

I hold Tarot 12 to consciousness on waking and bring it through to mind. It is here in the mind’s eye now.

“Job” Interview  – IP – Patents Dream 30-07-2025

Here is this morning’s dream had between 5 and 7 AM. I did not think I would go back to sleep but had this from which I awoke exhausted and grilled.

The dream starts in South West London, with a feel of Richmond Wimbledon etc.. I am with a younger man, mid-late thirties. He has bright blonde hair and is tall and slim. He is immaculately dressed in an English suit, overcoat and with expensive English shoes. He is smooth and accustomed to handling people. He is privately school educated and has a crisp posh accent. He has not seen much sun and is a pale indoors person from a high social class family, hence a part of the firm. He is skilled in meet and greet {think main character Pine in The Night Manager only better}. We are in his shared house and getting ready to go into town. There are two other men and one Serbian or Bosnian woman who live there. The hallway to the house has very small black and white tiles and the door is of a large ornate stained glass kind. The implication is that they all work together. They are all high functioning.

The woman is in the kitchen and opens the door out. Bibi our adopted stray cat runs out into the garden. We need to get the cat in because they are all returning to work. In the garden there is a golf style sand bunker. Bibi is in it and wants to play. I go over and sweep her up onto my shoulder as is customary and bring her back into the kitchen. The house is period with original features. It has an Aga over which is a wooden slats clothes dryer, raised by a pulley and cord. The kitchen is massive and decked out for cooking and entertaining. I let Bibi off my shoulder onto the kitchen table and say that I will be back later to drive her home. The woman speaks with an accent to the cat. She is also tall and lithe, gymnastic even. To an extent they are all humouring me as they have been told to do.

I go outside with the young man through a tiled entrance area from what once was the scullery up to street level. I comment that it is nice that all the original enamelled tiles remain. We are running a little behind schedule and we make our way to the ticket office of the over ground railway. The man in the ticket office hands me a small bundle of documents hand sized ~4 by 6 inches. In this is a cardboard “wallet” of yellowed colour and age. In it are old photos of the male side of my family some of whom are in their military uniform. He has gotten them out of records and I must give them to the blond man. The documents contain old out of circulation Sterling banknotes. I hand them to my “guide”.

He takes them and gets two old school train tickets for us. The man form the ticket office says that the next train is at 4:30.  We look at the clock it is nearly an hour to wait. He says that “they” are waiting for us upstairs.

We go up into a busy bar come waiting area. It is lively, there is a hubbub and people are drinking. At one end of the room there is a long rectangular table around which are sat a number of people, less than ten. They are all male ranging in age from mid-thirties to my age. Most of them are wearing suits. They are going to interview me for a “job”. The notion it is for a glass company like Pilkington. The whole things seems weird to me because I have made no job application. They are sort of “head hunting”. The “guide” ushers me to the head of the table and sits me down. The man in charge at the other end of the table welcomes me and says that they are going to ask me a few questions. There is a lot of interplay between panel members. I have a knowing that at least two people on the panel are from the security services, they are British. There is a possible third who says nothing but who had a distinctly American air. He is the only black person on the panel amidst the nondescript white men. He is focussed and attentive.

The chair asks me about patents. I say that I have three granted patents, two on Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV). He asks me how these were filed. I say that when were knocking the ideas of a company about I started the ball rolling by going to Kilburn and Strode to draw up the first patent application. I look to one of the men to my left. The penny drops I have met him before very briefly at Kilburn and Strode. He is a government patent attorney. I claim him and he says that yes, he was there, I too looked vaguely familiar. They want to know who I worked with at Kilburn and Strode. I can’t remember the name except that it was Welsh sounding and that he has gone on to be a senior partner. I suggest that they look him up on the internet. They take over the entertainment screen in the bar and give me some new fangled clicker to run the search. I do not know how to use it. This bemuses them. I say that I have never seen a device like this before. They are disappointed in me. The chair says why would I have used one of these things before.

One of the junior members of the panel asks me about my exam results. Somehow, he has a file about me open on his desk. It has my photo and multiple sheets of paper therein; it is about half a centimetre thick. He has withdrawn the file from records for this purpose. I say that I got four “A”s and four “B”s at “O” level and BCC at “A” level. He tuts unimpressed. I explain to him that this was before rampant grade inflation. He inquires what about the recent “E” grade. I say that I have no idea what he is talking about. I joke that it was my self-taught grade for computer science. One of the panel gestures for him to desist. He backs off.

One of the security people wants again to know whom I worked with at Kilburn & Strode. The name still escapes me. For some reason it is very important for the security guy. I say to him that I have a relatively recent patent grant for a patent entitled “Electric Field Induced Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion” * . He really wants to know who I worked with all those years ago.

At the far end of the table there is a discussion, which I am not privy to, going on. It is very animated. I remain pretty unsure as to why I am there and what they could possibly want from me. I am incongruous in their company and the plush opulent bar like setting. I can feel that somehow it is important to them but I have no notion of why. It is tiring all that stress.

As I come to, I remember that it was Gwilym Roberts, all those years ago.

The dream ends

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* The full patent title is “Increasing the probability of generating entangled photon pairs using Electric Field Induced Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion”.

From The Kilburn an Strode Web Site

Arguably the highest profile patent attorney in Europe, Gwilym Roberts advises clients on all aspects of the patent process including IP audit and capture, IP filing strategies and patent portfolio management techniques. He acts for a range of clients including individuals, SMEs, Universities, and spin outs through to multi-nationals and handles a broad and diverse range of cases before the UK Patent Office, EPO and WIPO.

Candle Vigil – Koyaanisqatsi – Jaguar Shaman – Strange Group Dream 25-07-2025

Here is last night’s dream, strangely out of context with our current life and way of living.

The dream starts in South America on the mainland, perhaps Western Caribbean, on the connective peninsula. I am walking along a path cleared into the jungle at dusk / early night. I come upon a sunken built structure which has downward going stepped stone seating, a bit like a Greek theatre

The construction is totally circular and the “stage” area is of the same grey stone at the rest of the amphitheatre. The construction is ancient South American, Maya or Aztec or some such. The radius is about 50 metres and there are at least half a dozen seating rows. It seems very familiar to me. On each step / seat is spaced a circle of lit candles in tumbler size glasses of various shapes and colours. There are hundreds of them. On the stage there are concentric circles of similar candles around a central circle empty void. The candles flicker lightly in the wind. I know this place to be a reliquary of living souls, each candle a spark of life. They have gathered to meditate on the state of the world. Against the darkened backdrop of the surrounding noisy night time jungle, here is a sanctuary.

The scene changes and I start to see scenes like from the film Koyaanisqatsi where rushing images of “normal” hectic life with its chaos and destruction are playing out on a “screen” in the mind’s eye. I hear chanting of Koyaanisqatsi over and over in a deep low voice as per the film. I know beyond any doubt that the world is badly out of balance, out of whack and out of kilter. The madness of the human “dream” is in full flow, justified to itself and thoroughly destructive. Unaware and largely uncaring. Caught up in a ceaseless rhythm of hectic.

The scene changes and I am now in a large open native kayak. There are two boats. We are paddling along the shore past jungle and two large settlements. It could be the sea or it could be a wide part of the Amazon River. We are around twenty metres from the “beach” and the jungle behind. I know we are being tracked and I catch sight of a magnificent jaguar easily keeping pace with our boats, jogging slowly in the forest. She is watching and observing. I can feel her muscles and see through her eyes. She is a totem of THE jaguar shaman, a spirit of the jungle, free and untrammelled. I see back through time to a ritual in a clearing of the jungle where I am enacting the convergence of the jaguar shaman. I have a jaguar pelt on my shoulders. As I enact I become and am the jaguar.

The scene changes to an urban setting; there are a group of people seeking to join or affirm their membership in a wider group. People have been accepted but must now make their public telephone call with their “mentor”. The sense of people wanting to be a part of is strong. I see one black man roughly my age make his call which we can all hear. In that the mentor slowly gets him to submit verbally. I think that this is coercive. Others make their call to belong to the “wonderful” organisation. The do decamps to a large pub near Hampstead Heath. People are queuing out of the door to buy their drinks. The black man is there and his mentor is going to buy him a drink, in a wait your turn fashion. I walk straight up to the bar and buy two pints of beer from one of the bar staff who know me well. I usher to the black man to join me in the beer garden. He follows and I explain that this has been cult like behaviour and he had better get the out sharpish.

The scene changes and the images of and sounds of Koyaanisqatsi close out the dream in a repetitive sequence.

The dream ends.

Radiation – Dying Inside – Iridium – Radiant Dream 24-07-2025

Here is last night’s dream, a night when I made it all the way through to 5:20 AM without being woken  by my body’s grumbles.

The dream starts in a shop / storage unit which is choc-a-block with scientific instrumentation of various ages and types. They are piled high  and it is difficult to walk down the aisles without tripping over some cable or other. There is a man in a light brown linen overall behind a service desk there. He is in charge of the store. He encourages me to explore and offers me an extension lead distribution box with four UK plug sockets. I can test any instrument that I want.

I find what looks like a seismograph with several needles and data tracks. There is some chart paper in it. I go to plug it in and the paper advance works. I lower one of the data write ink heads. At first there is no line drawn but then the pen starts to work and the needle moves back and forth a little with the channel noise. There is ink. The signal level starts to decrease and decay. In the dream I know this to be a toxic radiation within the heart of someone I thought I knew. I was acquainted with this person but we have not spoken for around twenty years. Something in his heart is decaying and eating him up from the inside. The radiation in his heart is slowly deadly and his inner beingness is dying and decaying because of it. He kind of knows it but is unwilling to do anything about it.

I continue my walk around the store and set off a radiation detector tube. It has some residual power. I take the detector and power supply to the front desk and plug it in. The radiation detector goes off at a high count rate. The man says that I am radioactive and that is why people don’t want anything to do with me. I literally glow and radiate. They do not understand that this is good, light, radiation. He says that it is because of a special isotope of Iridium which I have in me. This isotope was a part of an interstellar meteorite which I found as a young boy. I was out walking in the desert-bush and came upon the Iridium rock. I touched it and incorporated the Iridium. Ever since I have had a radiant radioactivity. I am made of stardust – interstellar Iridium. People are afraid of my radiance.

In my mind’s eye in the dream. I see a young boy finding a small shiny “rock” in a red-brown earthy cupped palm shaped depression in the land. He is wearing a light blue-white checked sleeveless shirt and dark navy-blue shorts. His socks are pulled up to the knee. He picks the rock up and examines it. I know that he too will incorporate the irradiance. As he starts to incorporate, I put my hand on his shoulder and say to him that he is not alone.

I am now back in the shop. The man behind the counter shows me a radiation trace of me versus time. The radiation instead of decaying over time is in fact growing. I am becoming ever more radiant.

The dream ends.

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From Wikipedia

Iridium is a chemical element; it has the symbol Ir and atomic number 77. This very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, is considered the second-densest naturally occurring metal (after osmium) with a density of 22.56 g/cm3 (0.815 lb/cu in) as defined by experimental X-ray crystallography. 191Ir and 193Ir are the only two naturally occurring isotopes of iridium, as well as the only stable isotopes; the latter is the more abundant. It is one of the most corrosion-resistant metals, even at temperatures as high as 2,000 °C (3,630 °F).

Iridium was discovered in 1803 in the acid-insoluble residues of platinum ores by the English chemist Smithson Tennant. The name iridium, derived from the Greek word iris (rainbow), refers to the various colors of its compounds. Iridium is one of the rarest elements in Earth’s crust, with an estimated annual production of only 6,800 kilograms (15,000 lb) in 2023.

The dominant uses of iridium are the metal itself and its alloys, as in high-performance spark plugs, crucibles for recrystallization of semiconductors at high temperatures, and electrodes for the production of chlorine in the chloralkali process. Important compounds of iridium are chlorides and iodides in industrial catalysis. Iridium is a component of some OLEDs.

Iridium is found in meteorites in much higher abundance than in the Earth’s crust. For this reason, the unusually high abundance of iridium in the clay layer at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary gave rise to the Alvarez hypothesis that the impact of a massive extraterrestrial object caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and many other species 66 million years ago, now known to be produced by the impact that formed the Chicxulub crater. Similarly, an iridium anomaly in core samples from the Pacific Ocean suggested the Eltanin impact of about 2.5 million years ago.