And when it hunts underwater it is deaf and blind, sensing electromagnetic signals from its prey with the duck-bill.

Hamas was using the school as a human shield, I’m sure.

In Rat Park the rats who were alone and had a choice between the regular water and the drug water always chose the drug water but the rats living in healthy communities preferred the regular water so they could be sober around their loved ones. Although it’s just a joke, the cartoon rat feeling the need to say goodbye to the cocaine button it bonded to hit me pretty good today.

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In many circumstances the placebo effect is superior to common medical environments. I was completely dismissive of homeopathy until I came to understand its actual appeal. Obviously there is no proven physical mechanism of the substance itself; the water is just part of the ritual. The ritual of being cared for and being paid special attention to by another person who cares that you get better and can do nothing for you but give you that attention you need is 100% placebo oriented medicine and 0% drug.

I was dismissive about crystals as well, but the reality is that if you are aware of them they are in some way altering your awareness by being present. The way they alter your awareness could be as simple as noticing an interesting looking stone, a reminder that there is a vast unknown and many others trying to find their way as you are, or a meditation weight and focus. I don’t know about crystal effects on vibrations other than to know that mass is literally energy and different compositions of molecular structures could have effects on the immediate environment beyond our ability to yet measure. I’m most comfortable saying that crystals definitely have some effect, definitely have assisted others in their healing journeys in some form or another, and beyond that I do not know many specifics.

I think when people are afraid and confused they tend to depend on narcissistic psychopaths to do their thinking for them. That’s the part that’s nature. The reason so many people are afraid and confused is because we are trying to live in a highly unnatural way in a world guided primarily by narcissistic psychopaths whose only concern is to outdo the other narcissistic psychopaths in the world using their people as a resource toward that end. Religion is one of uncountable tools in this dynamic. Removing it would disempower some narcissistic psychopaths and create opportunities for other narcissistic psychopaths. Afraid and confused people want the assurance from the narcissistic psychopaths regardless of whether religion is an option.

My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” LOL

You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

Criticism of Capitalism is big business. Being against big business is big business. Laying out an actual plan to abolish the ability for massive organizations to leech off of the majority of people is much more difficult to establish as a stable market commodity.

The sleep thing highlights how little we know about the brain. We have no treatment whatsoever which can safely induce sleep. This cliché advice, which is meant exclusively for acute insomnia of those who typically don’t experience it, is the cutting edge of sleep medicine. Humanity and the most advanced scientific research currently available is totally ignorant of everything not covered by these tips.

When I finally accepted that I have absolutely no control whatsoever of my sleep latency and there is currently nothing in all of medicine that can be done about it, my nights became a lot less stressful and a lot more enjoyable.

Veritasium endorsed a known racketeer and as a consequence some portion of their audience is now going to be defrauded in an economy where there’s not a lot of room for that especially among those in need of therapy. Watching Veritasium videos causes the channel to have greater exposure, increasing the risk to the general population if engaged with by anyone. Therefore, engaging with this channel in any way is harmful to others.

There are probably more obstacles to my daydream than I’m aware of. That being said there is nothing static about science. Comparing what we’re doing now to what we were doing a century ago, two centuries ago, and three centuries ago we might as well be comparing completely separate enterprises based on almost completely different fundamentals. Academia has never been as organized and wide-reaching as it is today so it may seem like a monolith, but it’s a new monolith which I’m not sure will remain exactly as it is for long (relatively). I think there’s some room for experimentation.

Fortunately I don’t need to have all the answers in my imaginary journal. I imagine it more as a cooperative enterprise among scientists who have become disenchanted with established academic paradigms and are looking to do the research and experimentation in that zone which is of interest to scientists themselves but not necessarily supported by the need to publish in the areas most emphasized by the academic establishment. This is not anything against what exists and what is being produced which I personally consider to be important, only to provide additional avenues to serve science in ways it’s not currently being served.

You’re right that credentials in this model are fuzzy. At least at the beginning it would be composed exclusively of scientists already working in their field who would want something like this. It could be possible that these scientists answering only to their immediate guerilla journal peers may see fit to support the research of an individual with no doctorate but who has demonstrated their self-education has made them capable of designing an experiment which can be quantified, criticized, and re-produced. Whether this standard would be agreed upon by the greater community would certainly be controversial with plenty of politics involved, but that reality it outside of the scope of my daydream.

As for the sustainability, it’s as in question as any open source project. It lives and dies based on peoples’ desire to do it only because they want to do it and others want to support them doing it. This couldn’t be a career alternative to academia because making it into a business or non-profit would defeat the purpose as it would attain the same vulnerabilities to a much more severe degree than the much larger and stable existing model.

Not necessarily. Just because my theoretical journal wouldn’t be subject to the existing academic establishment it does not mean it would accept everything. This journal would be more rigorous because it would be composed exclusively by fidelity to the scientific process. I am not anti-academia, only acknowledging that the existing structures are so large and composed of so many egos that there is necessarily over-focus on some areas and under-focus on other areas as a consequence of the structure. My pretend journal wouldn’t be for everyone rejected from those institutions for explicit reasons of incompetence, it would be for those scientists who want to pool resources to do work that would not be easy to support on the current academic model.

I often fantasize about guerilla science done by serious people outside of official channels. While there are plenty of crackpots who desire this for political reasons, I would really like to see an open-source “journal” by and for those scientists who are in it purely for science and have become disenchanted with the current model which is compromised in some ways that prevents progress on certain concepts.

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Reading about state legislatures is always wild. They always use moon logic when debating and rarely mention the actual content of the bill. Driver deaths are spiking due to greater instances of inebriation on the road therefore to fix it the State of California needs to be able to track all drivers via GPS. Makes sense to me, why not.

28170. (a) As used in this article, “passive intelligent speed assistance system” means an integrated vehicle system that uses, at minimum, the GPS location of the vehicle compared with a database of posted speed limits, to determine the speed limit, and utilizes a brief, one-time visual and audio signal to alert the driver each time they exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour.

This better not be what it looks like.

On top of a depressed economy from endless war and poor management of state funds, the details of the lives of nobles started to get published for just anyone to read which was unprecedented. Although no single thing can be attributed to causing the revolution, I think that just learning about how the nobility lived really put a difficult situation over the top for them.

Your comment made me re-think this a bit, because I happen to know that the origin of “dad-bod” wasn’t patronizing but a word used by some straight women who find this body type attractive in men. I wonder if “short king” may have initially been used by people who were attracted to the attribute in men and wanted a nice sounding way to describe it. I’m totally with you when these phrases are used like you described, but I wonder how many people using these terms are genuinely attracted to the attributes they’re pointing out.

Companies actually factor in the fines for breaking the law in their accounting. Ford calculated that it would be more profitable to release a vehicle which was known to be deadly since being found guilty for negligence (if it got that far) the fine the corporation would have to pay would be covered by the profit from selling the dangerous vehicles.