Reasons to be cheerful

[doc benway]

David Byrne of the Talking Heads launched a "non-profit editorial project" that shares inspiring stories. Mainstream media for me is unreliable, untrustworthy, and unbalanced. If you are not yet familiar, take a look at the Reasons to be Cheerful site and perhaps it will give you a lift.

 

I'll keep this thread open, dedicated to good news, sharing of our own inspiring stories, and things that we find supportive in our own lives. There is more than enough information out there to reinforce fear, hopelessness, frustration, and other negative states of mind. The good news is that it is possible to feel good about oneself and the world, even in the most challenging of circumstances. Especially in a community of supportive friends. 

 

My love to you all!

 

[thelerner]

We got rain yesterday.  There's been a drought in the Midwest and we really needed it.  

As much as we curse the drought we need to appreciate the rain.

Best of all is when we appreciate the weather we got.  

[doc benway]

The cicadas in my area are nearing the end of their active cycle. I’ll miss them but many people in the area are quite afraid of them. While they are harmless, they are everywhere and the noise can be deafening, up to 85dB if your are surrounded by active trees. The noises they make are fascinating and I find them to be beautiful. My wife says she wants to be a cicada in her next life - 17 year nap followed by all the sex and food you can handle…

 

 

B4A9BFCE-AD56-4D89-9CF0-DDB06E44BE8E.webp

[S:C]

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/faraway-nasa-probe-detects-eerie-hum-interstellar-space-2021-05-11/

"Instruments aboard NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, which nine years ago exited our solar system's outer reaches, have detected a faint monotonous hum caused by the constant vibrations of the small amounts of gas found in the near-emptiness of interstellar space, scientists said."

 

--

 

revokes memories of john cages - atlas eclipticalis. might be cheerful to someone else, too, or maybe not. at least i hope so. 

 

-- 

"Atlas Eclipticalis represents a map of the stars, evoking in a pointillist manner the multiplicity of the voids and the pools of light that make up the heavens. The title, Atlas Eclipticalis, was taken from the astronomer Antonín Bečvář. Working from maps created by Bečvář and after multiple chance procedures guided by the I Ching, Cage draws his own celestial map — a starry sky, immutably slow but continually in motion."

(source: http://smcq.qc.ca/smcq/en/oeuvre/21540/Atlas_Eclipticalis)

 

 

 

---

 

Quote

 automatic translation by a geman newspaper article:

^{(https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article160310020/Einsteins-spukhafte-Fernwirkung.html)}

Einstein's ghostly long-distance effect Published on 07/29/2015 | Reading time:

5 minutes From Prof. Dr. Ulrich Walter

 

 

The physicist Albert Einstein once set up the special theory of relativity. The physicist Albert Einstein once set up the special theory of relativity.

Source: N24 There are things in our world that are absolutely contrary to common sense. Albert Einstein therefore did not want to admit it. But they exist and they even make sense. 0 The world is too complex for us to ever fully understand. We already know this today thanks to Gödel's incompleteness theorem. We can measure the world and derive theories on how it works. However, these theories - our pictures of the world - always remain incomplete and it is sometimes wrong to apply them to other areas by analogy. Analogy works here After so much abstract preliminary talk, two examples. The sun pulls the earth gravitationally and thus forces it on a circular orbit around the sun. By extending this experience to atoms, we are trying to understand why electrons revolve around an atomic nucleus like planets. Science has shown that this extension of our experience from our macroscopic to the microscopic world is roughly permissible. This is the only way we can understand how atoms work as humans. Cause - medium - effect = locality Such an extension doesn't always work, however. The following example shows this. A hunter shoots, hits, and kills a rabbit with his rifle. We understand the death of the hare as the result of a bullet that flies from the rifle to the hare and takes its effect there. This cause-and-effect principle is called the locality principle in physics, because a local cause creates a local effect via a medium. This medium can be a particle, but it can also be a wave. If a physicist does not understand a transmission mechanism (and this is mostly the case), then he suspects an as yet unknown particle or wave (because of the particle-wave dualism there is no difference between the two in the microcosm anyway) as the excitation of a field that one but cannot see. For example, the Higgs particle, as the excitation of the Higgs field, is the transmitter of mass to every other particle in our world. François Englert and Peter Higgs received the Nobel Prize in 2013 for this rather wacky idea. Non-locality = nonsense? This locality principle, which we perceive as absolutely necessary in our macrocosm, does not necessarily have to apply in the microcosm. Two events, which are dependent on one another, can happen over any distance without a transmission mechanism and instantaneously, i.e. at the same time. Quantum physics has been postulating that this could be the case since the beginning of the last century. Einstein had weathered against this, because there could be no such ghostly long-distance effect (so-called non-locality), that would contradict common sense. In addition, it would contradict the basic assumption (namely locality) of his general relativity theory, which is a gravitation field theory. In the last few decades, however, tricky experiments have proven the existence of non-locality of events in our world. The prime example are two entangled light particles (photons). What does that mean? In this so-called quantum entanglement, one light particle has a rotation (spin) in relation to a direction specified by the experimenter and the other exactly the opposite. So your sum is zero. Such entangled light particles arise simultaneously in special (so-called non-linear optical) crystals from a single photon that entered the crystal with twice the energy. Contradiction to the special theory of relativity? Strange things happen to these two light particles. If you measure the spin of one light particle, you naturally know the spin of the other at the same time, because both must result in zero. But, and this is the crux of the matter, the measurement can be taken at any point in time, around five hours after it was created. Then one of the particles would already be at the dwarf planet Pluto and the other particle I could run in a circle in a light guide the whole time. Because the particle does not yet know which direction I am specifying, the spin result will be purely random, once like this, once like that. If the random result is available, however, then the other photon in Pluto no longer has a choice, it has to set the opposite state and instantaneously. So somehow, despite the huge distance, it has to communicate with the measured particle practically without delay. Scientists at the University of Geneva were able to show in an experiment that when they communicate, they do so at at least 10,000 times the speed of light probably even without delay. However, that would contradict Einstein's special theory of relativity.

 

Where is the problem?

 

We actually have two problems with that. One is, if the two particles communicate with faster than light, then this effect could be used to transmit information with much faster than light, which would destroy the foundation of the theory of relativity. The other: How can two photons be instantaneously related to each other, since in classical physics only photons with the speed of light are available for fast communication? In other words, the nature of the vacuum, which determines the speed of propagation of photons, does not actually allow a faster than light speed! The first problem is quickly resolved. Since the spin result of the measured photon is random, that of the second photon on Pluto is also random, just the other way around. With random states, however, it is not possible to transmit predetermined information bits, only noise. The other question is trickier. A coupling with superluminal speed can only be understood if one considers that a moving particle has an intrinsic time that deviates from ours, as I described earlier. A photon traveling at the speed of light has zero proper time. In its own time, an entangled photon is created in the crystal and decays at the same time, i.e. instantaneously, somewhere in the universe. In this sense it is "always" in contact with the entangled twin photon. No wonder that it then always "knows" what the other is "doing". Instantaneous coupling is therefore not a phenomenon of quantum mechanical wave propagation in a vacuum, but a question of extreme time dilation in the context of relativistic physics. Even what we do not understand can be useful! However, time dilation is a phenomenon that is far beyond our everyday understanding, just like particle-wave dualism. Hence, we will never really understand quantum physical entanglement. But we can grasp it mathematically and then it works splendidly and even makes sense. Our world sometimes exceeds the human imagination: curved three-dimensional space, conditional probabilities or time dilation. Then the only thing that helps is mathematics, which is imperturbable. That's why we scientists love them so much and often distrust common sense. VGW Guest article by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Walter, graduate physicist and well-known space expert, has been presenting the documentary series "Spacetime" since September 2016. more on the subject

 

not sure I understand completely, but maybe another reason to be cheerful for someone

Edited July 10, 2021 by liberale.ironikerin
another reason

[Nungali]

6 hours ago, steve said:

The cicadas in my area are nearing the end of their active cycle. I’ll miss them but many people in the area are quite afraid of them. While they are harmless, they are everywhere and the noise can be deafening, up to 85dB if your are surrounded by active trees. The noises they make are fascinating and I find them to be beautiful.

 

 

B4A9BFCE-AD56-4D89-9CF0-DDB06E44BE8E.webp

 

 

Here they come in various cycles , I noted this during a 'cicada year' ;

 

a drought, even the rain forest was drying out , the palm trees in my grove split up the trunk from the ground to the top (it didnt kill them, they still have this healed open gash ) and the huge turpentine trees started loosing and browning off their leaves  - I have never seen that before . These trees are rooted deep in the subsoil, so if they are drying out the subsoil is drying out . I thought , even if it rains heaps right now, it will never  get down to where the roots are - my trees are going to die !  ( The soil here is of a type that when it dries out it repels water and does not want to absorb it .)

 

Then 100s of cicadas emerged , I thought ' Oh no, not this as well . "  There where so many, probably the 2nd 'worse' year I have ever experienced  with them . I could not believe the amount of cicada burrows where they emerged , all through the grove. Then the rain came , pissed down . I went outside and then noticed, as the rain flowed down the surface it ran into the cicada holes .   Cicadas feed on tree root sap when underground, so when they dig out, their tunnels go down straight to the tree roots . The rain ran straight down to the tree roots and the tips of the trees sprouted new green leaves in a few days .

 

The wonders of nature and its cycles give me a reason to be cheerful .

[doc benway]

We are able to change our minds far more easily than it often feels.

Changing our mind changes reality.

Imagine the power to change reality at will...

It's always in our grasp!

 

https://wearenotdivided.reasonstobecheerful.world/are-you-liberal-are-you-sure/

[manitou]

On 6/21/2021 at 3:31 PM, Nungali said:

 

 

Here they come in various cycles , I noted this during a 'cicada year' ;

 

a drought, even the rain forest was drying out , the palm trees in my grove split up the trunk from the ground to the top (it didnt kill them, they still have this healed open gash ) and the huge turpentine trees started loosing and browning off their leaves  - I have never seen that before . These trees are rooted deep in the subsoil, so if they are drying out the subsoil is drying out . I thought , even if it rains heaps right now, it will never  get down to where the roots are - my trees are going to die !  ( The soil here is of a type that when it dries out it repels water and does not want to absorb it .)

 

Then 100s of cicadas emerged , I thought ' Oh no, not this as well . "  There where so many, probably the 2nd 'worse' year I have ever experienced  with them . I could not believe the amount of cicada burrows where they emerged , all through the grove. Then the rain came , pissed down . I went outside and then noticed, as the rain flowed down the surface it ran into the cicada holes .   Cicadas feed on tree root sap when underground, so when they dig out, their tunnels go down straight to the tree roots . The rain ran straight down to the tree roots and the tips of the trees sprouted new green leaves in a few days .

 

The wonders of nature and its cycles give me a reason to be cheerful .

 

 

I love it when the cicadas are screeching in the trees!  For one brief shining moment, I can pretend that my ears aren't ringing.

[doc benway]

Magical creatures…

cicadas and humans

[Lairg]

33 minutes ago, manitou said:

I can pretend that my ears aren't ringing.

 

When I markedly reduced my exposure to RF radiation (towers, phones, routers, smoke detectors, Bluetooth, dirty electricity) after a couple of months my tinnitus was hardly noticeable.

[Iliketurtles]

On 6/21/2021 at 12:08 PM, steve said:

The cicadas in my area are nearing the end of their active cycle. I’ll miss them but many people in the area are quite afraid of them. While they are harmless, they are everywhere and the noise can be deafening, up to 85dB if your are surrounded by active trees. The noises they make are fascinating and I find them to be beautiful. My wife says she wants to be a cicada in her next life - 17 year nap followed by all the sex and food you can handle…

 

 

B4A9BFCE-AD56-4D89-9CF0-DDB06E44BE8E.webp

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgxyqw/sex-crazed-cicadas-psychedelic-orgies-fungus

 

Cicadas in the United States are infected by fungal amphetamines that will drive them yet again to engage in sex-crazed mating orgies. Massospora cicadina, a yellow-white fungus, grows in the insects’ bodies and boosts their sex drives to the point of mania. It also makes their genitals fall off.

 

This isn’t a new phenomenon; VICE News has covered the sex-crazed cicada summer for the past two years. But the 2021 iteration is upon us, and billions of Brood X cicadas are currently emerging, for the first time in 17 years, in 15 states across North America, where they’re expected to spend four to six weeks mating before all of them drop dead.

 

And Massospora – laced with psilocybin, the same chemical as psychedelic mushrooms, and capable of producing compounds of an amphetamine called cathinone, or “bath salts” – is making some cicadas want to mate more than usual.

 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Iliketurtles

[Cleansox]

So now people will eat cikadas to trip? 

[Iliketurtles]

26 minutes ago, Cleansox said:

So now people will eat cikadas to trip? 

 

Well I wouldn't risk it, it turns them into nymphomaniacs after their genitals fall off and are replaced by mushrooms.

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Iliketurtles

[Cleansox]

When did that stop anyone from getting high? 

 

An O. A. D. doesn't require genitals anyway 😁

Edited February 16, 2022 by Cleansox

[Iliketurtles]

4 hours ago, Cleansox said:

When did that stop anyone from getting high? 

 

An O. A. D. doesn't require genitals anyway 😁

 

I like T.O.A.D.

[Cleansox]

Yes, but licking a Bufo Alvarius/Incilius Alvarius isn't really an improvement to eating cikadas, except for the genital thing. 

[Iliketurtles]

T in toad stands for Telekinetic.

[Cleansox]

Not in this thread, you must learn to stay on subject 😁

[zerostao]