might start a collection of nonliving forms of life as a new special interest
- https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/trovants.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
are the two i can think of off the top of my head (plus viruses ofc)
publishing my controversial thesis "stars are alive and trying to talk to us" in order to prepare the scientific community to accept my even more controversial paper, titled "im going to fuck the sun"
@nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death Zip drives have a transmissible failure mode equivalent to a prion disease
> In rare cases, a Zip cartridge with damaged disk edge could rip off the heads in a Zip drive. The damaged disks could go on to damage the heads of any other drive they were used in. A previously good drive would click as if a mis-written cartridge had been inserted.
@nova https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/24/dvi/ a similar example with DVI cables and ports. i'm sure other examples exist in the domain of mechanical engineering proper but i wouldn't know where to start looking.
@vyr wow i love it
@nova buddy,,
:pluralrings: 
@alienskyler i dont think i would personally because egregores require consciousnesses as a substrate to exist within. it's the same question to me as "are my thoughts alive." i think i might classify those things as "meta-life" since the aliveness of their substrate is a requirement of their existence.
that said, human consciousness could be said to be a meta- property of the aliveness of out neurons so. maybe im just splitting hairs or looking at it from a very anthropocentric perspective.
@alienskyler you could argue that the bodies of egregores consist of anything in the physical world that exists or acts for its purpose. e.g. the "america" egregore has a body consisting of at minimum (some parts of) US soldiers, army bases and vehicles, etc
@nova wait what
@minervissa well i guess technically they are things that meet some but not all of the criteria for life
@nova I haven't heard of trovants before, that's really interesting. It reminds me of a theory that before there was anything that could be described as life on earth, rna might have begun conserving information in chains within clay, and the physical properties of those rna chains could influence the propagation of structures within the clay and give selection advantages to particular types of mineral particles
i think stars would also qualify