WooWoo Stuff - All Things Woowoo

Well, it’s actually not partisan talk. I prefer it not to be. That was the point. I didn’t want it to be another area yet infested with politics. Let the science be science, where ever the science may lead, so long as it is the science grabbing the rudder and not someone’s agenda.
What I found is the rabbit hole was infested with politics. That was the turn off, not politics I agree or disagree with it just shouldn’t be there.
Science is amoral and apolitical as it should be. It tells you how it is, not how it ought to be. And the ‘is, is not ought’ proposition gets trampled on like a possum on the road.

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I wore one of those once, but I promptly collected a bunch of apostles, which was a real pain in the ass, and I heard that kind of thing generally ends badly for Jewish guys.

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You guys know nothing about woo-woo until you’ve dealt with Kabbala wackos seeking “energy” in your vineyard.

Speaking of said vineyard, I will post some pictures/videos of Iranian missiles getting shot down (very distantly) over my head when I get my camera hooked up to the computer. Bad for your chakra, but amazingly beautiful. The “crack” from the anti-missile batteries breaking the sound barrier about 20ft off the ground will knock you on your ass from a mile away.

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Didn’t you say you owned property in multiple countries? Maybe time for a 1 year sabbatical with the family?

Stay safe anyway.

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Nah, it was miles away. The Golan is beautiful this time of year, and Iran can stuff it. I am pretending to be a farmer there. It’s good for me.

(Also, no just houses in the US and Israel. Condo in Tel-Aviv that a daughter has appropriated.)

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What are the chances (in your opinion) this Iran/Israel thing becomes a hot war?

And why the hell would anyone vote for Hamas who deliberately keeps them poor and blockaded?

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Grow me some olives please. Haha.

Just grapes. Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignan and Shiraz. We bottle a bit, but mainly supply the Rothschild winery with kosher grapes for some uppity kosher wines. It’s kind of a make-work project for religious students with zero money.

We’ve placed in some competitions, which is pretty exciting. We have a similar micro climate as parts Napa (and, yeah, I bought some expensive French cuttings by way of Napa), so in 20 years we should be a properly-respectable wine-making country again.

No olives, at all. We do have some cork trees, but I haven’t a clue what to do with them, other than rip off the bark and say “hey this is where cork comes from” to visitors.

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Hate is a powerful thing.

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@The_Myth, I found this a little bit comical. Interesting how we can twist something relaxing into a competition. Just completely missing the point.

Excerpts from article -

Alan Stein Jr. is on his 324th straight day meditating—a streak he is tending with the mindfulness of a monk.

The 42-year-old performance coach from Gaithersburg, Md., has kept his record using the Headspace app, despite early-morning flights and travel across time zones. On a recent work trip to Atlanta, he remembered to meditate only just after the clock struck midnight. Worried he’d blown his record, he closed his eyes and quickly tried to meditate on the hotel bed for 10 minutes.

“The whole time I’m just waiting for the 10 minutes to be over to see if my streak was alive,” he said. Thanks to the app’s built-in grace period, his frantic attempt counted toward his total. He was, in the words of the mindful on social media, #Grateful.

Type-A people are descending on the ancient practice of meditation and tweaking the quest for inner peace to suit their hard-charging needs—racking up streaks and broadcasting their running tallies to the world. The result, for some: Meditation has never been more stressful.

In one online group, members regularly check a leaderboard to see who has meditated the most days in a row. A habit-tracking website charges the credit cards of meditators if they miss their sessions too often. One company is pitching meditators on a wristband that reminds them to practice and, if they don’t, gives them a mild electric shock.

Streaks are rampant on apps such as Headspace and Calm, which are designed to log and display the consecutive days a user has meditated or practiced mindfulness.

“There’s something deep in the human psyche about wanting to compete and keep a streak going,” said Calm co-founder Michael Acton Smith.

Pavlok, which sells wearable electronic shocking devices to help people change their behavior, suggests meditation as one of the top uses for its wristbands, which cost $145 to $245.​

Nicholas Rozier, Pavlok’s 37-year-old director of operations based in Moscow, Idaho, said he cranks his device to 100% to remind himself to meditate at 7 a.m. for 10 minutes six days a week. If he fails to log a session, which he self-reports, he gets two zaps of 450 volts of electricity on the inside of his left wrist. He said it feels like a bee sting.

This is fairly WooWoo, IMO. Have any of you heard of ASMR?
Video from The New Yorker.

Wow, no, I had not, but spent an interesting hour with it last night. I watched the above, went to youtube and found the woman pictured and watched a video of her making “sleepy sounds” that had me doing, like, a labrador head tilt, then went off to read about it. I fell asleep to some weird haircut video and slept like the dead.

I get that tingle thing occasionally. I always assumed everyone did and just sort of accepted it as a pleasurable, fleeting thing. The videos didn’t make that happen, but could see what they were going for and once I got past the WTF head-tilt factor they certainly were relaxing.

Not a labrador, but how I looked:

(Edit: How I often look reading T Nation, actually. That’s why I like it so much. 2nd edit: But I don’t look like a pug. I look like a lab, a breed with dignity.)

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LOL. I hadn’t heard of it either, Emily. At first, I thought of some strange people with a fetish for sound. I really like to have my hair brushed and now I’m wondering if part of that is the sound. In the video above, that one is my favorite. I never thought about primate grooming behavior, but that’s interesting, right? That maybe there’s something in our biology, some evolutionary response.

I like quiet, but I’ll try some of them for meditation.

I was cracking up a little bit with the role playing Optometrist tapping on the eye chart. @ Bob Ross, one of my kids is crazy about him, watches his old shows, has a Bob Ross book. She’s an artist, but she likes to watch him when she gets home from school and now I wonder if it’s the relaxation factor. His show is incredibly zen.

It made me think of a book I read about the slow movement, In Praise of Slowness. People taking time to just be in the moment rather than rushing around all the time, trying to be super efficient, glorifying busy. Also, I thought that this ties into the minimalist movement a bit in the slowing down the pace of life, taking time to notice things like sounds. I’m into having less clutter, living with less stuff, concern with loosing time in pursuit of consumerism, eliminating mindless busyness with stuff that doesn’t really enrich my life.

Yeah, I was all “ew, fetish” when I started looking at it, and to be honest am not convinced it’s not a fetish thing. Having people mess with your hair is I think a fairly standard pleasure and I suspect the sound is pleasurable as an association. I love having mine played with, but it’s curly, so I think of the tingly pleasure coming when little kids are “styling” it or during the cutting part of a haircut rather than brushing, which can be unpleasant. I fell asleep before I got to the scissors part of the video - I’m curious to see if it does anything for me.

I once came across a white noise site that had things like pencil on paper and typewriter sounds, and thought at the time that they were lovely, but didn’t have a physical reaction to them.

Me too, and pretty much all of the women I know. I noticed it first when I didn’t want to be enclosed by hundreds of books any longer, needing more clean space, and the need for simplicity seems to keep expanding. I can’t decide whether I think it’s just a style thing, along the lines of shoulder pads being in or out, or a genuine cultural shift.

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IWell I obviously have mesophonia because I got tingles alright, like fingernails on a chaulk board with that whispering and clicking. Couldn’t make it thru the whole video. (((Shivers)))
5 mins later… still have goosebumps.

This song is supposed to reduce anxiety. Not sure about the song, but the lights dancing in the video might.

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The video gave you the creeps? Huh. I heard the sounds as pleasurable, but there was no physical response for me.

I’ve tried to listen to the Marconi Union song a couple of times and am irritated by it. I was hopeful when I read that there was a measurable positive response for people in the study group, but didn’t find it relaxing at all.

Parts of it did yes! But so does sandpaper, so that don’t mean much…lol

Thats it. I have tried to listen to the song many times, but to me it is irritating as well. I keep waiting for a rhythm that never shows up. It sounds unfinished to me. I do like the video though. Just have to turn the sound down :slightly_frowning_face:

@anon71262119 I can watch Bob Ross for hours…lol

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Since we are talking about sensitivities I’ll share a story about Jed.
We have a ceiling fan that takes the intermediate light bulbs. The only place that consistently has them anywhere close to here is Walmart. It has 4 bulbs and when one burns out it drives him batty. He is autistic and likes all four of them to be on. I buy several packs for this reason, so it’s been a while since I have had to pick any up.

The last time I went, they only had LED bulbs. Not my first choice. Grrrr! I bought them and replaced the burnt out bulb. About 5 minutes go by and he calls me into the room because the new light bulb “smells funny”. He could smell that weird burnt electrical smell that all that stuff has. Wow! I had to get one out of the package before I could smell it. Hypersensitivity at its finest.

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He is super mellow. I don’t drink, but I can picture a glass of wine and some Bob Ross would be a good way to chill.

@ Cultural trends toward minimalism, or less stuff. I wonder that too. I read the Marie Kondo book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up a couple of years ago. I think a lot of people have gotten into that kind of thing, along with minimalism as a way to have more time, less stress. It goes along with some of the Eastern philosophy stuff that Myth has been talking about. People who aren’t constantly craving things, or trying to fill a void with stuff because they’re content, living in the moment. Also, I was thinking about the millennials being more into travel and life experiences instead of stuff. Concern about the environment, but also just different life goals, less related to buying homes, or a desire to live more simply.

On the other hand, I read a couple of articles about how cheap fast fashion has a lot of people hooked into buying way more clothes. There’s something about feeling like you’re getting a good deal that makes it almost irresistible to some people, lights up the reward centers like gambling.

I’ve always loved getting rid of things, and I’m probably the opposite of a hoarder. I like organizing things, having empty table tops, or having shelves and cupboards neat, so some of this just ties into my natural personality. I’ve helped neighbors and family organize their homes a few times, and I find that kind of thing really fun.

Back to topic, I took a Shakti Yoga class last week and really, really liked it. It was mostly this slow, flowing type of yoga rather than holding poses, more movement. Similar to Tai Chi. And we did the pranayama breathing like you talked about, @The_Myth. And I did a lot better. The last part was just meditation. It was fantastic. Also, let me just say I’ve never seen a group of more gorgeous women together. There was this woman in her 60s with flowing white hair. She looked like a retired ballet dancer. So graceful. I want to be here when I grow up!

Don’t you sometimes wish you could spend the day with his sensory system so you could know what his experience is like? He can smell things that we don’t normally smell. Or notices really subtle differences in light or sound. One of my children can’t speak and I’ve wished I could spend a day in her body just so I would know what her experience is like. I’ve had dreams where she talks to me. We often assume that people are sensing or perceiving things in exactly the same way.