Taomeow

1 hour ago, Cobie said:

 

Nothing has been deleted, it’s all still there in the threads. You can search for it with Google.

 

I know.  I meant absence of access is, for practical purposes, equivalent to "deleting everything."  That theoretically this "everything" is still there is not the same as it being practically accessible.  

Google is great (insert a sarcastic emoji) -- in any event better than nothing -- but one has to know the exact title of the thread they're looking for?  Or not?   

1 hour ago, doc benway said:

 

my quarters are gone

shepherded by destruction

walking without legs

Walking without legs,

flying without wings, longing

without an object.

Without an object

to flesh out in a haiku,

it gets so Western.

It gets so Western,

a haiku set in the mind

instead of nature.

Instead of nature,

we observe figments of our

indoctrination.

4 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

 

They ushered the young one into the  middle  . 

 

Another example of how alien  they are to down  here . There was one in the 60s that shook our house . A woman had reported that an elephant must have escaped from the zoo and was rubbing up against her house .  It was the only reason she could fathom from the strange experience . 

One woman I know said exactly the same thing -- that it seemed as though a huge animal was trying to rub and scratch itself against the house walls.  Everybody had a different impression and came up with all sorts of metaphors -- in part because the distance, the which floor people were caught on, and who knows what other factors besides imagination contributed to perceptions.  Quite a few reported what I thought it was like -- a bomb exploding, but only because a bomb seemed easier to imagine and describe than a dinosaur falling on the roof, with a demolition ball tied to its tail and rolling about after the initial impact.  Which, on second thought, comes closer to describing the immediate personal impressions.  And to think that this one was still benign and didn't destroy anything.  Can't imagine what a destructive one might feel like.  

Elephants' reaction

40 minutes ago, Nungali said:

Like your coincidence with your  video  timing , when that 'bomb' went off , your hippy  neighbor  just finished  pulling a bong  ?  

 

  

 

The earth should not be moving around like that !   

 

It's all very strange and freaky to me ..... living on this big old giant 'slab'   - some of it has been stable for 4 billion years . Once, about 10 years back my skylight started vibrating a bit  and I felt  a subtle , far away, deep 'grinding' feeling .  

4 billion years of stability...  That's because you're down under, and stuff under our feet is always more stable than what's above it.  

Here, on the out-of-balance edge of everything (you can't go any farther West, e.g., without it turning into East...  and politically, you can't go any farther left without finding yourself on the right), it's different.  I lost track of a local meme but it was a chart explaining earthquakes magnitudes for non- San Diegans.  Beginning with 10 -- "congrats on your new beach, Santa Fe!" (in case you don't know exactly where Santa Fe is, it could realistically get a beach if California fell into the ocean), down to 2 -- "did the dog fart?" with all the in-betweens.  

Well, usually in our parts it's like, yawn, what else is new...  but this one felt, subjectively, like the strongest ever!  Even stronger than the one in 2010 that was 7.2, though reports about the magnitude inconsistently give it anywhere between 5.2 and 6.7, with the average consensus at 6.0.  My local acquaintances and friends reported the same impressions -- have never felt anything like it.  Someone even threw up and a couple more people reported nausea and dizziness.  Maybe it was just "the nerves," maybe some physiological effects, who knows.

The interesting part is, I was in the process of reviewing an old video of our taiji camp from the time I was learning pao chui aka cannon fist.  It's a fast and furious martial form, with jumps and stomps and war cries -- and just as me and the teacher and the whole group in the video did one of the most intimidating, thunderous hard-landing jumps, suddenly it was like a bomb exploding under the house, everything rumbled and shook and rattled.  Whoa, didn't expect that! -- for a second it totally seemed as though what we did in the video caused it.  But in the next second or two Emergency Alert on my phone started blaring.  Take cover yada yada.  My cat, who was already taking cover as a matter of fact, sleeping peacefully on my meditation cushion under the bed, jumped out goggle-eyed. 

I'm told people who were caught in the process of shopping at supermarkets were instructed to run to the center of the building but everybody rushed to the door anyway.  I also ran outside, where my intrepid pot-smoking neighbor, an old hippie, was already braced and holding on -- to a cup of coffee in her hand, with a glimmer in her eyes (she likes commotion -- any kind).  She seemed disappointed that it was over so quickly.  Me, I wasn't.  I don't like commotion...      

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

Especially when one considers the vast pharmacopoeia  contained within coca and its 8000 year old usage (in its natural form ) . 

Which reminds me of the peculiar instance of Edgar Cayce ("the sleeping prophet") saving his wife's life.  He was a very pious religious man who never smoked, drank, or used any drugs, so it shocked the socks off everybody present (including a concilium of doctors) when he went into one of his trances and emerged with a prescription of cocaine for his wife.  The wife was in the end stage of tuberculosis and the doctors gave her two hours left to live.  But due to Cayce's reputation -- no one suspected any foul play -- the remedy was reluctantly administered.  The lady recovered and the happy marriage lasted for many more years.   

Now it makes me wonder if she would ever contract tuberculosis to begin with if she had the coca leaves habit from the start.  

Incidentally, natural opium (not heroin and not synthetic opioids) cures diabetes...       

1 hour ago, forestofclarity said:

It looks like the search function is limited to 60 days. We can change it, but this may cause slowing down on the website. This was not initially set, so this may have been one way we previously addressed the slow down. 

 

So I would ask: longer search or faster board? 

Please make it possible to find old content.  If not via the search feature (which indeed was never quite functional), then via any other mechanism.  Right now it looks like 20 years of content have been demolished.  It sucks.  Don't know about now but in the past the owner used to be opposed to deleting anything -- so I hope no one is OK with deleting everything... and right now it de facto looks as though that's what happened.

45 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

Picky picky  .... Andeans didn't use cocaine they used coca leaves   . Cocaine wasn't synthesized  until 1855 . 

 

My old pet peeve.  I find it quite manipulative (to avoid using obscene language) that they deliberately conflated plants -- psychoactive, narcotic, entheogenic -- with synthetic drugs that imitate (usually poorly and often dangerously) this or that natural substance those plants contain.  Many nasty things follow from this premeditated confusion.  

Nooo...

37 minutes ago, old3bob said:

Didn't know this about the original source for the term:

Snake Oil—Salesmen and Doctors

"While today a “snake oil salesman” is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods, the use of snake oil has real, medicinal routes. Extracted from the oil of Chinese water snakes, it likely arrived in the United States in the 1800s, with the influx of Chinese workers toiling on the Transcontinental Railroad. Rich in omega-3 acids, it was used to reduce inflammation and treat arthritis and bursitis, and was rubbed on the workers’ joints after a long day of working on the railroad.

Enter Clark Stanley, “The Rattlesnake King.” Originally a cowboy, Stanley claimed to have studied with a Hopi medicine man who turned him on to the healing powers of snake oil. He took this new found “knowledge” on the road, performing a show-stopping act at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, where he reached into a bag, grabbed a rattlesnake, cut it open, and squeezed it. He labeled the extract snake oil, even though the FDA later confirmed that his products didn’t contain any kind of snake oil, rattlesnake or otherwise. That didn’t stop other unscrupulous doctors and fraudulent salesmen, who also started traveling the American West, peddling bottles of fake snake oil, giving the truly beneficial medical treatment a bad name."

It is still part of pharmacopoeia in many countries.  E.g., I used to always have the German ointment, Viprosal, on hand when attending our 6-hours-a-day weeks of taiji camp, to help my overworked leg muscles along.  It has viper venom.  Many participants used something like the tiger balm or what-not for the same purpose -- but theirs stank.  I'm sure some of them used that overpowering menthol-camphor/god-knows-what olfactory assault as a weapon in push-hands.  My snake oil, however, didn't have any smell, so I had to rely on skill only. 

There's quite a few preparations in wide use in Asia and, to a lesser extent, in Europe, also in Mexico and probably all over South America too.  The commercial ones are used for exactly the same purposes they were used in the 1800s.  But if you want to, e.g., cure severe arthritis to the extent that you're desperate enough, then travel to Hong Kong and hire a cobra hunter who will catch one, bring it to you alive, kill it in front of you, retrieve its gallbladder, and have you swallow it.  Reportedly it cures arthritis in one go.  (Snake gall successfully dissolves whole animals swallowed by the snake without damaging the intestines of the snake...  must be an interesting substance, tested in vivo daily for 150 million years...)     

1 hour ago, Sanity Check said:

 

 

Wonder if a modern moat.

 

Might deter wild pigs and unwanted visitors.

This reminded me of a friend of mine who lived in the neighborhood, who had an arroyo behind his house.  I don't know if this is something known outside arid areas like ours -- a waterway that is dry much of the time but turns into a moat of sorts after enough rain.  This friend fed a few local stray cats in front of it, and when the arroyo filled with water after a rainy season, it didn't deter them.  They jumped right over.    

3 hours ago, Nungali said:

 < fake cough >   

 

Quick !   I need some of that ! 

Three of the ingredients are OK, but chloroform and those undisclosed "other essentials" would definitely give me pause.

I'm sure it was effective -- hardly anyone retains the ability to cough under general sedation.  But what it did to grammar was atrocious. 

3 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

Wait !  How many tigers are in Texas  ?   

Up to 5,000 is the estimate.  India has something like 3,500.

3 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

I remember once my elder brother came home  'charged up ' - electric .... looked like he had 'seen a ghost ' or a UFO or something . He had been out fishing on the ocean in his tiny little boat ( he was often admonished for going out on the open sea is such a small boat ) . He was fishing and 'the bottom came up '  - that's what he said it looked like ... all of a sudden the water got shallower and shallower  and stopped just under his boat , moved to the side and he realized it was a whale , it rolled over and bought its eye out of the water and eyeballed him . He said its eye was as big as a dinner plate and about as far away as one of his oars length . He said he sat there dumbfounded  looking right  into its eye and  he couldn't move . 

Amazing.  I wonder what was on the whale's mind.  Probably something more profound than, "I wonder if I can get a treat from this biped."

The wolf who kept eye contact with me for a long time -- can't tell how long -- was also centimeters away, behind bars alas, but up close.  It was incredible every which way, very large, I didn't know they are so large -- it probably weighed fifty pounds more than me, but lean, and even though the fur was very thick, I could tell it's all muscle.  The eyes seemed to glow, the color was like honey mixed with something like moonstone, and so intense.  There were two of them there, I hope they were a married couple.  The second one was pacing close behind the one that was looking at me, just throwing sideways glances, sort of keeping an eye on me.

42 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

Portugal is the land of a thousand yapping dogs  

A thousand is nothing.  There's officially 500,000 dogs in San Diego.  I've never seen so many anywhere else. 

I love dogs but I would only get one if I lived somewhere rural, otherwise you're each other's prisoners, plus you're the dog's personal waste collector and I don't feel the calling.  We have Dog Beach though where all those half a million dogs are allowed to roam off leash, a very fun place.  People don't swim in the ocean there, dogs do.  I sometimes go there to play with other people's dogs.

1 hour ago, oak said:

 

I wish you weren't 🙂. Anyway, maybe time traveling import will bring them back one day. There are infinite ways as the universe.

Yes, I also hope for time travel, the multiverse, reincarnating in a more pristine version of reality, something...  I would like to live when these great big things were here.  And no predator, mind you, ever drove our species to extinction (unlike the other way around), so our ancestors were likely to have known how to coexist with them.  There's some historical accounts of Native Americans having friendly relationships with wolves even in recent enough times (I'm not talking the movie, I remember a 19th century photo I've seen).  And before the habitats got devastated by "civilization," I doubt direwolves or cave lions or saber-toothed tigers had a particular need of hunting humans -- except maybe in retaliation (who knows what we did for their fur coats!)  Personally, I'd love to hang out with the great felines, but wolves are amazing too.  I hate zoos (a lifelong prison sentence has to be deserved, not unfair like this!) but in the present, there's no other way I'd ever look a wolf in the eye -- and I did once, it was just unbelievable.  So much intelligence, sadness, understanding, beauty, strength...  I swear I've never looked into more sentient or more enlightened eyes in my life.   And I've looked into the eyes of some celebrated gurus.

26 minutes ago, oak said:

 

I guess I was a teen feeling lost and not being able to relate to school and its usefulness. Ended up quiting school to be at home and in libraries studying the things that really mattered to me. Destiny I guess. By chemical way I'm just talking about Colgate here 😁 there are more desperate ways which soldiers use so not to go into battle.

Yes, I know those desperate soldier ways...  My grandmother also told me about something Ukrainian girls did in the Nazi occupied territories during WWII to avoid being sent to forced labor in Germany.

I hope quitting school worked out for you.  I used to have a close relationship with someone who quit school at 15 (in England) -- he was spectacularly uneducated, I don't think he ever set foot in a library in his life, but he was a talented musician and managed to make a living right away -- and have many adventures we the school goers missed out on.  

On 4/8/2025 at 11:49 AM, Taomeow said:

 

It reminds me of something...  something about breeding some other species out of the wolf...  don't we call it a dog? 

  

Turns out I was right.  Why are the new puppies white?  Well, based on the two direwolf DNA samples used, the creators hypothesized there's a chance they were -- the coat gene appeared to have been producing pale fur.  Yet, white Arctic Wolves are brown as puppies and change to white only later, while these were born white.  Turns out the geneticists had to use white dog DNA instead of the white  gene in wolves, because if they used the wolf's white gene, the puppies could have been blind and deaf. 

My conclusion: this is a new hybrid doggie.  Likely to wind up in some wealthy bastard's personal zoo.  (There are more tigers in Texas than in India...)  

Just now, oak said:

Indeed...

I've learned as a child chemical ways with home items to induce fever. That would help me skip school. Won't share them as teenagers may reed this 🥶

Congrats for your talent 🔥

I don't think I can do it anymore.  Haven't tried in a long time anyway...  I think the last time was in college.  We had compulsory attendance, so it wasn't possible to just not show up the way college students do here and now.  But the last year and a half I had the privilege of free attendance (due to a combo of being top of the class and personal circumstances) so I didn't need to fake being sick anymore -- I only showed up for exams anyway. 

It was brave of you (or desperate?) to go about it the chemical way.  I was afraid of chemistry so I never tried.  The reason I was afraid of chemistry back then was twofold -- a horrible relationship with the teacher (a bribe taking malicious bitch -- and my parents never bribed anyone), and this classmate who always messed with my labs to get my attention.  He was our nerdiest chemistry expert (and later professional) so I had no idea what he managed to sneak into my reagents, but the moment I'd mix something with something everything would start crackling and then exploding, sparks flying, burning holes in notebooks and so on.  The teacher blamed me.  I tried to argue that I don't know enough chemistry to pull off something like this, but she didn't believe me.  Horror of horrors, chemistry.       

Where I come from they take the body temperature under the armpit rather than in the mouth (to this day I don't think I ever stuck a thermometer in my mouth -- just have to adjust the reading, since under the armpit it's about 0.5 degrees Celsius or 1 degree Fahrenheit lower).  So in my teens I trained myself to raise my temperature under one armpit, just while I was waiting to see a doctor with the intent to fake a cold.  It usually took about 10 minutes of visualiziation.  I assembled a very realistic fire under the armpit -- miniature imaginary logs, kindling, tinder, exactly the way I did it in real life while camping.  Strike a match, start the fire, feel it burn hotter and hotter.  Then the doctor would take my temperature and hey presto... solid no-nonsense fever, and the rest was up to the doctor's imagination -- which never failed, since the objective reading from a device -- the thermometer -- told them I was sick.  

On the way back home I would still feel realistically sick for another 15 minutes or so, headache and body aches and sniffles and all that jazz, but then my body would snap out of it, realizing that my mind had fooled it, and indignantly get back to normal to enjoy those days off.

I know...  a waste of talent.  But the title of the thread is "Pain management techniques," and school was always a huge pain in the ass.  

4 minutes ago, oak said:

 

No faith in the gods, "as above so bellow" in a bad way. 

I am theistic the taoist way -- and I would probably hold similar ideas about gods if I was an ancient Roman or Greek or Sumerian, or a modern Hindu.  Meaning, to us, gods can be good, bad or neutral toward humans.  There's all kinds.  There's no generic god or gods, they are specific.  Some are rather compassionate and kind, some are ill-tempered, irresponsible, or cruel. 

But I'm not sure our designers were gods at all.  Not even sure they were demiurges.  They may have been some kind of CEO or generals employing genetic scientists.  There's one version I know from someone who presented himself as one of the reptilian aliens that's pretty fascinating.  According to him, among other things, humans were of interest to several warring species of aliens and one of them bred us (not the modern version of us but what we used to be before) into supersoldiers to fight their wars for them.  Which is why there's a bunch of advanced alien species out there that hate us -- it's a little like hating some race for the crimes of its ancestors, not very logical but it happens.  So those in particular don't have anything but our worst nightmares planned for us, but they believe they're in the right because those supersoldiers were apparently horrible to their ancestors...

It's a long story though.   

1 minute ago, oak said:

 

Ii get it. I see it as some version of an old Ford model, something still experimental. It gives me hope though 💚

I suspect this already happened to our species in the distant past.   We have a lot going on in our genome that's hard to explain otheriwise.  E.g., 

Chromosome 2 Fusion: Two ape chromosomes (2A and 2B) fused into one big one in humans.  No one knows why.

Centromere Shifts: Centromeres moved a bit on chromosomes like 1, 3, and 11 and no one knows how or what for.

Pericentric Inversions: Flipped sections on chromosomes 1, 7, and 10.  It's like parts of chromosomes doing somersaults and flipping backward.  No one knows the reason. 

Shorter Telomeres: Our chromosome end-caps are shorter than in apes.  This means accelerated aging.  

More Heterochromatin: Extra packed DNA on chromosomes 1, 9, 16, and Y.  This means we have a larger amount of non-coding DNA (scientists call it "junk DNA" -- it may or may not be junk but it has no known function and we have way more of it than our closest evolutionary relatives.)   

Shrunk Y Chromosome: Our Y is smaller and leaner than in other primates.  This one is in charge of sex determination.  Compared to the Y chromosome of other primates with their much more developed and functional counterpart, in humans it's stripped down to bare essentials. 

To name a few which make me suspect we've been GMO from the get-go.  And those ancient alien geneticists don't seem to have been any more ethical than our modern ones.  Any and all GM modifications are designed to serve the modifiers, not the species subjected to them.  The meddling entities only want to find out whether they can -- not whether they should.

The puppies are adorable but they are not dire wolf, contrary to the way the story has been presented by the MSM.  In reality they are a novel hybrid, and possibly -- just possibly -- a novel breed (assuming they are able to mate with each other, which remains to be seen.)  20 gray wolf genes were edited and dire wolf DNA inserted toward this modification, so they are genetically modified gray wolves with some dire wolf phenotypical features derived from those inserts.

It reminds me of something...  something about breeding some other species out of the wolf...  don't we call it a dog? 

Meow.