> this "pandemic", which by definition is not a pandemic

> any thinking human being knows that masks are, at best, largely ineffective at preventing transmission, as is "social distancing"

> it becomes very questionable whether there even is a "novel" corona virus or whether it's the flu

You know, I live in Adelaide, where we haven't had a single locally-acquired case in several months. I've been wondering how almost every other city on the planet has been screwing things up so badly when we've not really done all that much apart from having a quick reaction and social distancing appropriately.

My question is now answered: those cities have people like you, willing to spout even the most blatantly abject conspiratorial nonsense for the sake of advertising your own website.

Please show some responsibility for the lives of those around you.

As someone living in Melbourne it's been frustrating to see this same nonsense spread locally by a very vocal minority, followed by "lockdowns don't work".

I'm celebrating that following the science here has taken us from > 700 new cases per day, to our second consecutive day of zero (and lockdown ending less than 3 hours from now)

.. where did you get all this nonsense from?

Been watching too much YouTube?

as the author of that article i obviously wouldn't disagree that there are serious problem with Moz, but my impression is that they are largely at the corporate level - the developers (at least some) seem to care far more about privacy which is why i personally recommend Firefox (along with a shit load of pref tweaks and a few add-ons) over any other mainstream browser, and especially G.Chrome

> The website's other articles are spammy conspiracy crud anyway.

provide evidence where i'm wrong and i'll be happy to correct, but rubber-stamping someones content as "spammy", whatever that means, is lazy

...or globally for those that care about privacy (then allow per-host as needed)

correct

> Disabling Javascript and cosmetic filters doesn't make any sense.

it does for those concerned with their privacy - i recommend to my readers to disable JS globally and allow it per-host where needed

as for cosmetic filters, processing them consumes more CPU

also these are suggested settings based on my experience and tailored to fit the Firefox config guides i wrote - i didn't state they were better than everyone elses

I suggest providing a beginner whitelist at least that includes popular cdns and such. People without umatrix will most likely put themselves at risk by blanket-allowing on uncooperative sites when all they need to do is allow Cloudflare.

you're painting "drugs" with a broad brush

psychedelics are not like cocaine, despite what the 'gubbmunt' would like you to believe - rather they are like a window into your 'self' - if you think of psychedelics in terms of frequency, you might better understand the tremendous potential they hold with regard to a laundry list of ailments, including depression, PTSD, etc.

I don't take LSD and go listen to electronic music because its a window to my 'self'. I take it because its fun and feels good, the same reason people take cocaine.

I downvoted you because psychedelic culture is about as anti-consumerist as it gets, and it takes a pretty incredible reversal to try and paint it as a product being pushed for people to buy.

I don't understand psychedelic culture, admittedly, but I can't wrap my head around why you think it's anti consumerist. Drugs are being bought and consumed, right? Isn't that the core of the culture? "Do this one thing, that costs money, to improve your life." I don't see the fundamental difference between that and purchasing any other product.

Thanks for saying why you downvoted, anyway.

Because drug culture isn't about buying things you don't need with money you don't have to distract yourself from the now so you wouldn't feel existential dread or have to face your runaway thoughts. Psychedelics take you to the NOW and almost force you to deal with YOUR shit.

It's impossible to try to convey what it is like to someone who hasn't taken them. You just won't know what you're missing or how it is until you try because it works on your core being and whatever it is that filters the reality that is experienced.

If that is the definition of consumerist, I'm not one in any way. I'm in my 40's, retired and living abroad in a small apartment. I have no car, and live well within my means.

I've met a lot of people who have done a lot of drugs, including, but not limited to psychedelics, including close family members who I knew well and could watch their descent. The ones I know are depressed, some have suicided, others are in huge amounts of debt.

If psychedelics are such a cure all, why have I never met anyone who took them who had their shit together?

Writing in a diary, talking to a therapist, and opening up to people can also be ways of dealing with your own problems in a direct manner, without so much risk.

I think I meant to write a couple lines at first but the text just kept increasing and then I went into notepad to really put a spin on it. Oops.

I can't say for the whole psychedelic using population what their motivations are but as far as I can tell there is a clear distinction between users who are doing spiritual practices or trying to find meaning in their lives and so on versus slamming the heroin needle or hitting the crack pipe to get the craziest dopamine rushes you have ever experienced. Not to mention the latest meme to hit the mainstream, the microdosers, who use it as performance enhancer.

Psychedelics as a broad group of chemicals all with similar action in the brain and body contribute to thinking patterns and removing filters on your consciousness. Some people find after one or more trips that they've uncovered something that gave them a new lease on life or something. Some junkies who 'take anything they can get' even avoid psychedelics because it puts into focus the state they are in. They don't want to face that for whatever reason. Maybe that's why they are there in the first place.

One meme in the psychedelic culture goes "when you get the message hang up the phone". You don't need all the pleasures in the world. You certainly don't need to get those huge dopamine rushes daily and you don't need to or likely want to keep constantly tripping in search of the craziest visions and highest peaks, especially if you don't take the hint and start working on bettering your 'sober' self.

Of course there is a whole scale of motivations in between and it's reasonable to except people can function in society despite occasionally using catalysts to trigger pleasurable experiences, as long as their whole existence does not become only that at the expense of maintenance. There is some science on that when your other needs are covered and you're doing pretty well you don't end up in a downward spiral like that and won't get addicted or at least not in the same proportion as when you're trying to fill a void with external catalyst induced neurotransmitter rushes.

I'm not the one to overtly preach or advertise indiscriminant psychedelics use because they can reveal or really put into focus all the bad shit you've been avoiding or traumas you have pushed deep down that you kinda forgot they existed or never dealt with. If you're unprepared or already on the edge bad trips might push you past it and you may end up with something that seems like permanent mental problems. Instead of increased clarity and awareness you may end up at least temporarily in the shitter, and if you have no coping mechanisms you could be fucked.

In my experience I think they contributed to giving me an ability to 'see beyond' the every day reality and from that the motivation to really pay attention to and hone the way I live and act towards myself and others. It's as if for a long time I was a hostage to the depression in this body and couldn't take the steps to fixing the situation back when it was less dire. I used to hit the bong every day all day and slowly cause ruin to my body in many other ways. I became more aware of what I was doing wrong and where my anxiety was coming from.

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” ― Nikola Tesla

I hate to break it to you, but brainwaves are very much a physical phenomenon. What is the point of that quote in this context exactly?

Perception runs on hardware, but it's software. It's importance is non-physical. Penrose[1] divided the realms of reality into 3: platonic-mathmatical, physical reality and the mind. I think Tesla is also suggesting scientific study of the mind is distinct from physics. I agree too. Perception is bad representation of reality, but it shapes all of the human experience.

Edit: I miss attributed to Mandlebrot originally. Both like tessalation!

1 https://astudentforever.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/roger-penro...

Except that the structure of neurons and their physical connections with each other in the brain is very much physical, and we don't have the understanding of those systems on a conceptual 'software' level yet, so observations such as those made in this article are based purely on observation of the physical phenomenon.

Except that the concept of friends is non-physical

This article compares the physical structure of the brains of friends.

Are abstractions a physical phenomenon?

Are brain waves abstractions?

Only if you consider being kept alive on life support a sufficient implementation to back the main interface of "alive.h"?

Yes.

Interesting quote. I have often wondered what would happen if there were more studies into the benefits of the placebo effect, it seems it is only studied as a side effect of other studies.

> I have often wondered what would happen if there were more studies into the benefits of the placebo effec

We might eventually find that the placebo effect is a measure of how bad we are at doing science

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200105243442106

There are some interesting studies that focus on the placebo effect, e.g. http://n.neurology.org/content/early/2015/01/28/WNL.00000000...

This reminds me of Sheldrake testing the dog who knew when its owner was heading home, and studying "the sense of being stared at," etc. Institute of Noetic Sciences? Or is that too soft a science? No idea, just things that popped up as I read the quote.

He made a really nice google talk about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hic18Xyk9is).

First, he noted that some of the tests he did got results that were past random chance. But he said he didn't know why and wouldn't dare trying to make up an explanation.

Then he said something really interesting:

if we don't investigate scientifically those things, only charlatans will, and not only will we never know the truth, but the field will be filled with lies and misunderstanding, ruining the reputation of the topic. Even now, if you try to get a grant to study something like that, you bear the mark of delirium in your community, no matter how serious you are.

Tesla made some interesting breakthroughs to be sure, but he was also a nut-case who fell in love with a pigeon. Not everything he said is some form of holy writ.

Science made the rapid progress it did precisely because it at long last ignored "non-physical phenomena".

I suppose non-physical phenomena is currently studied by mathematicians, computer scientists, IT security researchers, psychologists and monks.

Sometimes, no, no, probably, certainly.

I wonder, if he didn't fall in love with that animal, what would be your response then?

It would be some other perceived flaw. People always do this. For example, someone wants to make the environment better and starts working for it. Then he gets to hear 'he drives a car!'. Suddenly he is not credible anymore.

To me, this all or nothing attitude is what makes most humans quite dumb.

Mathematics?

Human being operates at three layer. Physical, mental and spiritual. Modern science is focused almost entirely on the physical. While mystics (largely from the eastern traditions) have been focused on mental and spiritual since antiquity. Especially mystics/monks of India have written thousands and thousands of books on these two levels, including systematic and scientific approach to learn, acquire and practice powers/capabilities of the mind and consciousness. [0]

0]: http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_2/...

>>> In very remote times in India, thousands of years ago, these facts used to happen even more than they do today. It seems to me that when a country becomes very thickly populated, psychical power deteriorates. Given a vast country thinly inhabited, there will, perhaps, be more of psychical power there. These facts, the Hindus, being analytically minded. took up and investigated. And they came to certain remarkable conclusions; that is, they made a science of it. They found out that all these, though extraordinary, are also natural; there is nothing supernatural. They are under laws just the same as any other physical phenomenon. It is not a freak of nature that a man is born with such powers. They can be systematically studied, practiced, and acquired. This science they call the science of Râja-Yoga. There are thousands of people who cultivate the study of this science, and for the whole nation it has become a part of daily worship.

>>> The conclusion they have reached is that all these extraordinary powers are in the mind of man. This mind is a part of the universal mind. Each mind is connected with every other mind. And each mind, wherever it is located, is in actual communication with the whole world.

>>>> Have you ever noticed the phenomenon that is called thought-transference? A man here is thinking something, and that thought is manifested in somebody else, in some other place. With preparations — not by chance — a man wants to send a thought to another mind at a distance, and this other mind knows that a thought is coming, and he receives it exactly as it is sent out. Distance makes no difference. The thought goes and reaches the other man, and he understands it. If your mind were an isolated something here, and my mind were an isolated something there, and there were no connection between the two, how would it be possible for my thought to reach you? In the ordinary cases, it is not my thought that is reaching you direct; but my thought has got to be dissolved into ethereal vibrations and those ethereal vibrations go into your brain, and they have to be resolved again into your own thoughts. Here is a dissolution of thought, and there is a resolution of thought. It is a roundabout process. But in telepathy, there is no such thing; it is direct.

>>> This shows that there is a continuity of mind, as the Yogis call it. The mind is universal. Your mind, my mind, all these little minds, are fragments of that universal mind, little waves in the ocean; and on account of this continuity, we can convey our thoughts directly to one another.

Complete BS. Here, I conveyed a thought to you over a really long distance through the ocean, that is called the Internet.

i meant no offense - i used the term "freaks" because a lot of people who don't give a crap about privacy may consider us 'privacy freaks' - sine the article is about privacy however, i think it's obvious that it's just a poke in the ribs, if you will