Default mode might have been called ego once, an unhelpful term. What are some of its characteristics? A sense of inevitability, an apparent certainty of boundaries, even though they change from hour to hour. It is an anchor for moods and affective weather; it might chatter away but it's not all talk, the talk might be no more than a smug reinforcement of the feels. Moods can swing negative as much or more than positive, but in spite of that a certain kind of enjoyment persists, of a secret and unavowable kind - like smelling your own farts. Highly embodied and temporalised in clock-time, or at least clock-time is its always valid numeraire. Conviction of its self-referential good faith. If you've lost the thread it pretends to search for it, but knows beforehand that it won't be found. It loves the idea of doing away with itself and earnestly studies how to do so - insists that it is the reference for all states, especially those it labels 'altered'. It is extraordinarily shallow yet seems to contain all the depth formerly ascribed to the Freudian unconscious. It achieves this by the use of mirrors - is filled with mirrors.