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Open thread 5/13/23 — 16 Comments

  1. I immediately thought of an alternative evolutionary explanation to his results. That is to distinguish between bodily threat levels. Our ancestor is walking along and sees his arm brush against a thorn and feels the pain…ok, he knows it was the thorn. Walking along again and his attention is on his companion and again his arm gets punctured by the thorn. Now the pain is larger as it signals a threat that is unknown and could be more dangerous…wasp sting?, a snake bite??, a graze from an enemy arrow??? etc. The unknown threat should present a larger pain to get our attention more rapidly.

  2. Pain is an interpretation of sensory input. It can also be a remembrance of it: phantom limb pain.

    In my late teen/early twenties I delved into a lot of ‘mind’ stuff – walking on broken glass, fire walking, doing the Gordon Liddy ‘trick’, speeding and slowing my heart, iris dilation, etc, etc. It’s not hard, just takes time.

    These things did me well throughout life. It’s a helluva lot better to keep a rational mind when things happen – broken arm, 90o lateral dislocation of a knee, catching a stave to the frontal maxilla and so forth – than to thrash and scream.

    In those instances I knew the pain was there, I just turned off the responses, including the intensity (or as Liddy said, ignored it). Even without practice I believe the awareness of the proximity of danger/death can trigger the same survival response, as has been demonstrated many times by people in catastrophic situations.

    None of this is new. I think the video is an example of research pedantry. We already knew people could control pain in various ways, they just want to granularize (new word alert) it to make it publish worthy.

    My two cents. Sorry, seventeen (inflation).

  3. A few more weird French things you don’t need to know…

    Working my way through Francoise Hardy’s oeuvre, I got stuck on “Ma jeunesse fout le camp.” I can tell it’s something about youth, female youth, but “fout le camp”?

    Google Translate to the rescue. For stupid reasons I can’t copy/paste a song title directly from Amazon Prime to Google Translate, so I have to remember from the first window, then type in to the next. Being fast and careless, I took a while to get the title right.

    Here was my path to the proper translation. I was surprised how often the translation of my bad typing was rather raw and humorous.
    ____________________________

    me jeunesse fouit
    my youth fucks

    me jeunesse fout
    my youth doesn’t care

    me jeunesse fout de la camp
    my youth gives the fuck away

    me jeunesse fout le camp
    my youth is getting the hell out

    ma jeunesse fout le camp
    my youth is fleeing

    ____________________________

    If someone who knows French, especially slang French, can explain how “fout” is such a troublesome word or why getting “me” and “ma” mixed up should have such ramifications, I’d be delighted to hear.

    A more genera! take-away is that it’s a lot more fun these days to ask “What if?” questions of a foreign language one is learning.

  4. huxley–

    Here is a link to the complete conjugation of foutre, complete with a warning that it is a rude verb:

    https://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-french-verb-foutre.html

    And here, for your further enlightenment, is a Frenchwoman’s guide to the many meanings of foutre:

    https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-verb-conjugation/french-swear-words/

    She gives the same advice that my high school French teacher gave (no, I’m not so old that I or my teacher knew Guillaume le Conquérant personally):

    “I don’t mean to offend anybody, and I’m sorry to be using vulgar French swear words, but as a French learner, it is important that you understand these French slang expressions, and even more so the intent behind them. However, I would encourage you to stay away from them. If French slang sounds natural from a French native, slang is always stronger and has a much bigger impact when it is used by a foreigner.”

  5. “The mind can go either direction under stress – toward the positive or
    toward the negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes
    are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the
    positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly
    influenced by training.”

    – Bene Gesserit Axiom, ‘Dune’ –

  6. “The disciplines that hold men together in the face of fear, hunger, and
    danger are not natural. Stresses equal to, and beyond the stress of fear
    and panic must be laid on them. Some of these stresses are called
    civilization. And even the highest of civilizations demands leadership.”

    – T. R. Fehrenbach, ‘This Kind of War’ –

  7. “Fear is just one more weapon, no more dangerous in itself than a sharpened
    blade is. Treat it as you would any weapon. When it approaches, turn
    yourself to let it pass you by, then take and control the hand that guides
    it at you. The weapon without the hand is only one more thing in a universe
    full of things.”

    – Gordon R. Dickson, ‘The Final Encyclopaedia’ –

  8. “Fear is useful as a warning … [but] if you let it rule you, you’re its
    slave.”

    – S.M. Stirling/Shirley Meier, ‘The Cage’ –

  9. From the “Well it sure worked for Dominon!” File….
    ‘ Ex-Disinfo Governance Board chief sues Fox News for ‘immense suffering’ caused by ‘lies’ about her;
    ‘ Nina Jankowicz, who called the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation and Steele dossier true, claimed that Fox made “cheap, easy entertainment untethered from the facts” that provoked physical threats.’—
    https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/ex-disinfo-governance-board-chief-sues-fox-news-immense-suffering

    Clearly “just” another “Biden” gambit to intimidate the Truth tellers….
    (See, that way, they don’t even HAVE TO censor the news!)

  10. Sunday morning Open Thread: But what about France? You didn’t ask?

    French Defence Strategy & Rearmament – a new war economy, deterrence & strategic autonomy – Perun

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5eUh3_eo9E

    Timestamps:
    00:00:00 — FRENCH DEFENCE STRATEGY & REARMAMENT
    00:01:38 — WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?
    00:03:10 — FRENCH MILITARY HISTORY
    00:08:05 — napoleon’s France
    00:15:07 — cold war France
    00:17:03 — FRENCH STRATEGIC POSITION
    00:19:09 — setting goals
    00:23:15 — THREATS AND OBJECTIVES
    00:25:46 — THE FRENCH MILITARY
    00:34:12 — FRENCH NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES
    00:45:02 — A FRENCH ADVANTAGE?
    00:46:40 — selected French and German equipment graph
    00:48:11 — how?
    00:55:07 — INDUSTRY & SYSTEMS
    00:58:35 — European giants
    01:02:56 — protecting export
    01:06:04 — FRANCE’S PLANNED TRANSFORMATION
    01:09:04 — economic preparation
    01:12:02 — FRANCE AND “STRATEGIC AUTONOMY”
    01:12:17 — pursuit of autonomy
    01:13:49 — the challenges of autonomy
    01:16:03 — CONCLUSIONS
    01:17:41 — CHANNEL UPDATE

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