Glossary — Earth Log

Earth Log: An entry in the chronological record of human civilization that this project produces. Each Earth Log carries a four-digit identifier (EL-ID) starting from #0001 and increasing in the order entries are written. Entries are inscribed on the BSV blockchain as plain text and presented here on the web in HTML form.
EL-ID: The four-digit identifier assigned to each Earth Log entry in the order it is written. Written with a hash sign and four digits — for example #0006 or #0014. The EL-ID is an entry's everyday name when one entry refers to another.
BSV: Bitcoin SV — the original Bitcoin protocol, restored to what its inventor described in 2008. A public, permanent, distributed ledger that operates as a peer-to-peer electronic cash network and as a timestamping machine for arbitrary data. The Earth Log corpus is inscribed on BSV.
Blockchain: A public record kept jointly by many independent computers, each holding a copy, in such a way that no single computer can alter the record without the others noticing. New entries are added in batches called blocks, each cryptographically linked to the one before, so that altering an old block invisibly invalidates every block that came after.
TXID: Transaction ID. The unique identifier the BSV blockchain assigns to a transaction the moment it is included in a block. Once an Earth Log is inscribed, its TXID is its permanent address — the string by which anyone, anywhere, can look the inscription up directly on the chain.
Inscription: An act of writing data onto the BSV blockchain such that the data becomes a permanent part of the public record. Every Earth Log entry, every page of this site, the stylesheet, and the image assets are each individual inscriptions, each with their own TXID.
Ordinal: On BSV, a specific small unit of value (a satoshi) to which a piece of data is permanently bound by inscription. "1Sat Ordinals" is the term for this construction on BSV. The data — text, image, HTML, CSS — travels with the satoshi through the chain. To send the ordinal is to send its data.
Resolver: A web service that fetches an inscription from the BSV blockchain by its TXID and serves it back as ordinary HTTP content. The current resolver this project uses is GorillaPool: https://ordinals.gorillapool.io/content/{TXID}. If the resolver service ever changes, only the prefix changes; the TXIDs themselves are immutable on chain.
Web3 Domain: A human-readable name (such as earthlog.web3) configured to resolve, in browsers that support web3 domain resolution, to the TXID of an on-chain inscription. The domain can also expose routes — sub-paths like earthlog.web3/Index — that each map to their own TXID, allowing the operator to update what each route points at without changing the inscriptions themselves.
Blocking: The practice of publishing on the blockchain, by analogy with blogging on the early web. To block something is to inscribe it permanently on chain. The Earth Log corpus is one example of a long-running blocking project; the practice is available to any creator with work they want preserved.
Subject Timeframe: A metadata field on each Earth Log giving the chronological range of the topic the entry covers, expressed in three parallel time systems: Years Ago (counted from the year 2000 of the Common Era), Cosmic Time (counted from the origin of the universe), and Gregorian Date (the calendar in daily use during the author's time). Distinct from Date Published, which is when the entry was written.
Cosmic Time: The number of years that have elapsed since the origin of the universe, currently estimated at 13.8 billion years before the present day. Used in every Earth Log alongside the Gregorian date so that the entry can be situated in both human chronology and cosmic chronology with no further conversion.
Years Ago: A time coordinate counted backward from a reference point fixed at the year 2000 of the Common Era, similar to the Before Present convention used in archaeology and geology. Events occurring after the year 2000 produce negative Years Ago values.
Cosmic Narrative Stage: A metadata field placing each Earth Log within one of five canonical stages of the long story the corpus tells: Universe, Life, Intelligence, Civilization, Future. Most entries carry exactly one stage value; meta-entries that span multiple stages leave the field blank.
Series: A grouping of Earth Logs that share a theme or arc — a sustained inquiry into a single subject, told across multiple entries. Examples: How We Came About, Signals of Civilizational Change, Earth Log Registers, Earth Log Reader's Guides.
Register of Inscriptions: A meta-entry that lists every Earth Log committed to the BSV blockchain up to the date of its own inscription. Each row records the EL-ID, the date inscribed, the title, the TXID, and the tipping address for that entry. The first Register is EL #0013. New Registers are inscribed at intervals as the corpus grows.
Chapter Summaries: A meta-entry that gives, in one paragraph for each preceding Earth Log, a brief account of what that entry is about. The content-side counterpart to the Register of Inscriptions. The first Chapter Summaries entry is EL #0014. New Chapter Summaries entries are inscribed at intervals alongside Registers.
Reader's Guide: A meta-entry addressed to readers, explaining how to read an Earth Log: the anatomy of an entry, the metadata fields, how to verify an entry on chain, and (for far-future readers) orientation to the planet, calendar, language, and technology of inscription. The first Reader's Guide is EL #0015.
Chained-TXID Provenance: A convention applied to every Earth Log from #0004 onward, by which each entry carries the immediately preceding log's TXID in its metadata. The result is a hash-linked chain of documents mirroring the structure of the BSV blockchain itself. Tampering with any inscribed log breaks the chain visibly at the next entry's Preceding reference; the corpus can be walked backward log by log, each step verifiable on chain.
Earth Log Oath: The author's commitment to record events and ideas as honestly as he can understand them at the time they occur, to distinguish observation from interpretation from speculation, and never to alter earlier entries once they have been recorded. The Oath is set out in EL #0001. Errors are corrected by writing new entries, not by editing old ones.
Tipping Address: A BSV address at which a reader who values an Earth Log can send a payment directly to its author. The Earth Log Project's individual .txt entries each carry their own per-entry tipping address. The on-chain HTML presentation at earthlog.web3 uses a single project-wide tipping address.