incoming
more or less of something does not make it better or worse. more, less, better, worse, things, doing, making, being — these are all illusions
we assume our assumptions often without questioning them. why should being adrift in the world be better or worse than anchoring to someone or a place? should we try to keep our friends if we truly love them, should we bind them to us? how do we tell what is right, or even that thinking that something is right is somehow a value that we should cherish? or that if we believe in a story, an explanation, an understanding of something, that this is better than something else? just because we may never really understand or value something or somebody, does not mean we cannot cherish them.
our perspective is sometimes narrows, and it is then that we are more likely to abuse.
when our perspective narrows, it becomes harder to break out of our current outlook, to learn of the changing shape of reality, to look beyond what we already believe.
gary snyder is name from within dream, obtained by dream–me trying to recall to friends the name of a person who played a character in a film. suddenly as we pass the bottom left corner of a spectacular display of film posters a hundred feet tall, but gossamer thin so that they waft in the breeze, we come across the corner of a film we used to love but that I cannot remember. the others are awed and wish to examine all the extras that hang on display regarding the film, like torpedo–like life savers. I get a nervous feeling and question whether we should be doing this, as we don't know what is included in the package… and before me stands a girl, baring her teeth, showing her long fangs. I am frightened for a moment, then realise she is grinning because she finally found me again.
toxic air pollution particles found in human brains
damian carrington 2016
Link: toxic-air-pollution-particles-found-in-human-brains-links-alzheimers
- especially interesting as evidence of effect through nasal delivery — all things we breathe have possibility of similar delivery to brain
complexity is not what it seems. reality is much simpler than it seems to be. it is complex not because it is intricate — though it is intricate —but because its simplicity is obscured, hidden, not understood by us
if you use bolas or other cables and need to know which parts are nearer the ends, for example for quick unwrapping, you could apply a gradient from the ends to help you identify them, perhaps even a different colour thread wrapped from each end to help differentiate them, with the thread more densely wrapped nearer the ends
steam generation under one sun enabled by a floating structure with thermal concentration
george ni, gabriel li, svetlana v. boriskina, hongxia li, weilin yang, tiejun zhang, gang chen 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.126
Link: nenergy.2016.126
put compost out before flies have warmed up in the morning, if you have flies in the compost bin
opposing effects of fasting metabolism on tissue tolerance in bacterial and viral inflammation
wang et al. 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.07.026
Link: j.cell.2016.07.026
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•Fasting metabolism is protective in bacterial, but not viral, inflammation
•Ketone bodies limit ROS-induced neuronal damage during bacterial inflammation
•Glucose utilization prevents UPR-mediated neuronal damage during viral inflammation
Acute infections are associated with a set of stereotypic behavioral responses, including anorexia, lethargy, and social withdrawal. Although these so-called sickness behaviors are the most common and familiar symptoms of infections, their roles in host defense are largely unknown. Here, we investigated the role of anorexia in models of bacterial and viral infections. We found that anorexia was protective while nutritional supplementation was detrimental in bacterial sepsis. Furthermore, glucose was necessary and sufficient for these effects. In contrast, nutritional supplementation protected against mortality from influenza infection and viral sepsis, whereas blocking glucose utilization was lethal. In both bacterial and viral models, these effects were largely independent of pathogen load and magnitude of inflammation. Instead, we identify opposing metabolic requirements tied to cellular stress adaptations critical for tolerance of differential inflammatory states.
humans display a reduced set of consistent behavioral phenotypes in dyadic games
poncela-casasnovas, m. gutierrez-roig, c. gracia-lazaro, j. vicens, j. gomez-gardenes, j. perello, y. moreno, j. duch, a. sanchez 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
Link: sciadv.1600451
collaborative consumption: strategic and economic implications of product sharing
baojun jiang, lin tian 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2561907
Link: ssrn.2561907
- Recent technological advances in online and mobile communications have enabled collaborative consumption or product sharing among consumers on a massive scale. Collaborative consumption has emerged as a major trend as the global economic recession and social concerns about consumption sustainability lead consumers and society as a whole to explore more efficient use of resources and products. We develop an analytical framework to examine the strategic and economic impact of product sharing among consumers. A consumer who purchased a firm’s product can derive different usage values across different usage periods. In a period with low self-use value, the consumer may generate some income by renting out her purchased product through a third-party sharing platform as long as the rental fee net of transaction costs exceeds her own self-use value. Our analysis shows that transaction costs in the sharing market have a non-monotonic effect on the firm’s profits, consumer surplus, and social welfare. We find that when the firm strategically chooses its retail price, consumers’ sharing of products with high marginal costs is win-win for the firm and the consumers whereas their sharing of products with low marginal costs can be lose-lose. Further, in the presence of the sharing market, the firm will find it optimal to strategically increase its quality, leading to higher profits but lower consumer surplus.
do we have nightmares not because we need them but because for some reason our bodies are uncomfortable during that particular sleep and we need to make a self–convincing reason why we were uncomfortable, so we create one — the nightmare
- links to parasite theory of authoritarianism — if a person is authoritarian it may not be because they are inherently that way, but are so because of their response to an ostensibly hostile environment. something as simple–seeming as not being allowed to sleep well — leads to psychosis
- does enlightenment consist therefore of realising that this is a response to environmental cues —a response that we can choose to change?
- understanding how to displace a runaway feedback loop
story of fighting amongst ourselves to follow and enforce rules when actually it is those who manipulate others to make arbitrary rules that benefit the manipulators — those are the ones we need to fight. but what is making those manipulators? is it a never–ending recursion, or is there an ultimate source?
our misunderstanding of the process of change makes it much more difficult to make useful changes in our lives