gut (n.)
… To hate (someone’s) guts is first attested 1918. The notion of the intestines as a seat of emotions is ancient (see bowel) and probably explains expressions such as gut reaction (1963), gut feeling (by 1970), and compare guts. Gut check attested by 1976.
—etymonline.com
Agent Feuerborn’s blue eyes shone even more so as the whites of his eyes became less so as they transitioned from light pink to very near red. Likewise, his red whites caused the relative hue of his strawberry blonde hair to appear orange. His internal discomfort, nay, the raging fire in his belly, was taking hold as planned.
I’d managed to smuggle a capsule inside my mouth. The privileged underestimated everybody, even each other, to my advantage. Throughout the early hours of the interrogation I’d learned when there’d be the maximum number of these self-styled agents in the room with me at one time, when its door would be open, when the best time would be to blow out the powder from the capsule to distribute my ventrem tractatori.
But it wouldn’t take much. My own viscera – Fuck! I still talk that way… *I* had already been viscerally talking to the agents in ways they could neither understand nor were even aware of, via intonations both basso and subsonic, for some time now. Distributing my own strain of Candida via the ventrem tractotori to the various people in this place was merely fulfilling a promise already communicated.
Agent Feuerborn could resist the voices in his head no longer. I sat perfectly still as he did my bidding. In a dysbiotic fury, this highly trained warrior rose, drew his weapon and began systematically shooting dead everyone in sight, as did every other agent present both here and throughout the facility. …everyone, that is but me, until they had all killed one another.
I walk intact from their “safe” house, stepping out into a sunny day, leaving behind bloody footprints and likewise all of the fucks I might at one time have given. I hum the relevant tune, “You can hear happiness staggering on down the street, footprints dressed in red.”
This region is called the tanden. We shall have much to say about the tanden later.
—Zen Training, by Katsuki Sekida
I’d known that yoga had been developed by the ascetics to facilitate meditation, but I only went along to please the wife: Himalia thought that yoga, more so than Pilates, would be best for my physical rehabilitation. I will remember that morning forever, the morning that it all finally came together for me.
We students were lying on our backs in the final pose of the session, the corpse pose. I wasn’t thinking of applying zen breathing techniques to yoga; it must have happened naturally. Suddenly I felt this intensely pleasurable point of energy in my frontal lobe, slightly off center on the right side of it. In that moment I understood all of my zen training – how important it was that the left and right sides of my body were mirror images of each other, that I was as close to being perfectly bilaterally symmetrical as possible. I immediately felt what was off, what was causing the energy in my frontal lobe to be off center. I corrected it, became more symmetrical; the energy moved leftward. I made another correction, another. Shift this arm, extend that finger, twist left at the waist, and so on. Slowly the energy moved toward the center line of my mind.
Then it hit me! As soon as I got the balance right, the energy exploded throughout my brain in a massive endorphin dump that even spread throughout my whole body, like an orgasm, a thousand orgasms of the mind.
Some psychoactive compounds made by gut bacteria, they believe, are detected by the enteric nervous system – a thick skein of neurons that runs the entire length of the gut. This network has more neurons than the spinal cord – hence its nickname, “the second brain” – and it connects to the big brain upstairs via the vagus nerve, a major route by which gut bacteria make their voices heard. Indeed, 90 percent of information transmitted by this cable goes from the viscera to the brain, not the other way around, as scientists for years had assumed.
—This is Your Brain on Parasites, by Kathleen McAuliffe
Looking back in this vein, I can’t help but feel blessed. Blessed to have been a slight boy, picked on, but with a mother who wouldn’t tolerate it. She made me study martial arts with a man who’d trained in a Buddhist temple. How many can be that fortunate?
Since those earliest days I’d been drawn to zen. Now, I’d say I’d been born with a proclivity for it, able to sit for hours as a child, staring at nothing, letting the world wash away to white, feeling oblivion looming, until now afraid to give in to it, always pulling back before what I felt would be the end of me. That edge was thrilling.
Now I crossed that line regularly. Experiencing what I would never tell anyone. How can one explain darkness within darkness, the unnamable, the eternally real?
From a yoga instructor I learned what chakras are when she brought a singing bowl specifically tuned to the 3rd eye to a class one night. I was intrigued and began researching chakras, discovering that they were linked to specific organs, glands, locations in the body. They each had colors, sonic frequencies and symbols associated with them. My bullshit meter pegged with all that, but where there’s smoke there’s fire.
The crown chakra itself, so I read, is specifically associated with zen. It became clear that its location in my brain is the same one with which I was creating a feedback loop with my tanden when meditating. Could I stimulate the others similarly?
With some time and effort I found that I was able to stoke – as I called it – each of the seven chakras, or more specifically, my prostate, adrenal gland, pancreas, thymus, thyroid, pituitary and pineal glands. Beyond that, I found I could move this feedback loop anywhere in my body I chose, found that I could use it even to manage joint pain, of which a combat vet has a lot.
It was in one of these exploratory meditation sessions that I stumbled upon a most significant discovery. While moving my focus from the thyroid to the thymus, I felt a certain stimulation along the distance between these two glands. After some experimentation, I found that it was only while I *moved* the energy in this area that the excitation occurred, unlike with the chakras, for which I had to *park* the focus in a very specific location in order to stoke the feedback loop with the tanden via zen breathing. It took some time to cultivate this new technique of simultaneously doing my zen stoking and moving the energy up and down.
With some research I learned that I was stimulating the vagus nerve, or nerves rather. And that, too, was a new technique to master – that of splitting the energy in two and moving both streams simultaneously up and down along separate vertical lines. So much for the technique… What did all this do for me?
“My caution stemmed from several sources. From my gut I respond positively to the phenomenon of emergent structures from complex systems – it has the right ‘feel’ to it somehow. Nevertheless, I’m nervous when I can’t see exactly how the order is assembled.”
—Complexity – Life at the Edge of Chaos, by Roger Lewin
Principally, this new meditation method brought to me a heightened consciousness, a greater awareness of my sensory input, a better understanding of and a more rapid attunement to my surroundings. A deeper sense of reality. A deeper presence in this world.
But also I began to discern a pattern, an internally audible pattern, like when one talks to oneself and can “hear” the words. But these weren’t words. I mean, they were words, or meanings, but at the time I didn’t know what they were. I only knew that they were coming from my gut.
My civilian job was in electronics manufacturing, specifically in car stereo audio. So I had the usual equipment at work: digital oscilloscopes, frequency generators, AFC microphones, noise meters, multimeters… After hours I began recording my abdomen while I meditated, crudely, merely taping a mic near my solar plexus. But it was good enough. And it rapidly became clear that I was onto something, so much so that I reached out to a linguist at Cal State Fullerton and emailed him some recordings.
His excitement was immediate. My abdomen was speaking to me, and we both agreed that this might very well be that “little voice inside my head.” His deciphering of the grumbly tummy lead him to the subsonic realm, to the VLF and LF frequency bands used to communicate with submarines, to finding that there were naturally, organically, generated frequency and phase shifting, even multiplexing with various signals originating from different structures within the abdomen simultaneously to form more complex “words.” Somehow, he was able to reference research conducted in these ranges from work done by the military at HAARP and Kings Bay.
It was at this time that I was involved in a near-fatal incident. I’d unwittingly become involved in a love triangle. Long story short, my girlfriend’s lover shot me multiple times when I caught them in the act. I was shot both in the head and abdomen, a fortuitous occurrence that would profoundly change my relationship with that “little voice.”
*****
He’s been recording all of this, you know, and communicating our findings with the NSF. They know that we know what they already knew about me, about all of you and of us.
I watched over the good doctor’s shoulder as he fascinated over the live o’scope display while I chatted with my gut, with myself, with my second conscious, my true conscience.
They’ll come for us soon, yet we’ve more to do, and we don’t need him.
Suddenly I felt an intense hunger. My gut – *I* was making myself hungry; I wanted to eat, to eat meat, raw, and so drooled over the backstrap of Dr. Yost as his clammy weak fingers tapped on computer keys as if any of that fucking mattered!
At long last the enthusiastic bespectacled little dipshit translated his fate from my ramblings and turned to face me, wide eyed, his fear enraging me, justifying the murder of species across millennia of erroneous selection.
Yes, good, but do please start on his small intestines.
I need to go ponder now and reread this. Thanks Plisade!
Gutsy move posting this immediately before the evening links.
He was just listening to his gut and ran with it.
I’m not sure I can stomach cannibalism fiction.
Alimentary, my dear Watson.
Seems like a waisted opportunity.
Is Swiss going to belly up to thread and White Knight or listen to his inner voice and narrow his gaze at our navels?
Narrows graze.
I’m lost between here and Mex’s article. Wandering, wandering, where do I go next?
Plisade got me kinda scared, I admit
I really liked the story so far.
It has elements of Vitals by Greg Bear and The Kundalini Equation by Steven Barnes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitals_(novel
Gut bacterium used to control people
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/640302.The_Kundalini_Equation
Using meditation and training to awaken an ancient warrior mode in humans.
Sweet! Good to know I’m not alone. I’ll check them out.
I know it’s not one of his top rated books, but Vitals was fascinating to me, and took hold of my brain for weeks. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I know some disliked his shift from huge in scope and big concept books to the more character focused books with smaller scale and less grandiose concepts. I liked both. His short stories demonstrated quite a range from fantasy to very hard sci-fi.
I still have City of Angels as one of my favorite books of all time. Darwin’s Radio was an interesting book with a creative interpretation of the next stage in human evolution.
Queen of Angels? Yeah, that was great. Still need to read the sequel one of these days. Need to read Darwin’s Radio, too, somehow I missed that one.
The sequel was worth a read, pretty good but not great. I really liked his short story collections. Some of the stories have wacko concepts that are alot of fun.
One story, Scattershot, was bout a space ship made up of parts of ships and occupants from multiple dimensions and locations in the universe. The ship formed by a weapon that sends parts of a ship to another dimension. They are all fighting, conspiring, and dealing with new sections added and removed periodically.
‘Honorary Degree in Darwinian Expediencies’
This line is starting to make more sense.
I still hadn’t read the first installment when this came out. I went back, read it, and now read this one.
This is really interesting. I’m trying to figure out the statement about being shot by “girlfriend’s lover” here vs what happened in the previous one. And how
Hmmm…
Hm, I hadn’t ruminated on that much, but can think of a few possibilities.
I didn’t realize the two were connected until you mentioned it. I thought the first story was a stand alone. I actually started reading at lunch without looking too closely to the title and author.
I thought that begining was a continuation from the Isolated incident series.
It was a standalone, but some comments got me thinking.
My mistake. Afternoon links were rescheduled to a more appropriate time.
Insert RACIST comment about Mexicans usually being late.
Now I feel cheated.
You should know better.
Glibertarians is no better than Spotify as they remove posts…
This censorship will not stand.
BTW: this is well-done. Just within the line that separates interesting and disturbing.
^^^ Totally
Sunday Night Football sideline reporter Michele Tafoya was on After Hours With Amy Lawrence last night on CBS sports radio. I guess the Superbowl will be her last game as a sideline reporter. While I was on break I heard her talking about not being on Twitter because she didn’t agree with, she didn’t say, but she did say, Cancel Culture. Then she mentioned Identity Politics. And, to be honest I couldn’t remember exactly who she is, sideline reporters not named Pam Oliver slip my mind. So I looked her up this morning, according to Wiki:
I don’t watch anymore, but I can still root for an end of sideline reporters.
Oh snap. She’s fucked.
I like it, creepy and weird, not too far gone.
Thanks
Thanks and btw I got through the first Musashi flick sober. It follows the book pretty well!
Cool, all three are worth watching.
Yep, wierd, creepy and I want more. Thanks Plisade
Ew, get a room.
If you don’t want to S my female D you’re a bigot.
Not wanting to date a trans person is transphobic
“Super straight is just made up…”
Do these people hear themselves?
They are so far up their own asses, this is normal to them.
*hurk*
Yet another reason to make me happy I dropped OkCupid.
I can get the internal logic on some of those, but wtf is the climate change one?
‘Our love is like climate change.’
Ending life in earth?
Imaginary?
Completely natural?
I don’t get it.
A virtue signal
Damnit, nine minutes too slow!
In 100 years, it might heat up enough to notice?
I’ll wait
Oooooh, R C Dean from the top rope!
Your Love is Like Oxygen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRgWvvkSvfk
Our relationship is like climate change…
It exists only in your imagination?
Inevitable yet unworthy of emotional investment?
How ’bout “I don’t want to date the mentally ill. I got enough baggage of my own”
Personally, I find a girl with a mustache and a deep voice to be unattractive.
*cries*
c’mon, Tulip, you don’t have a mustache.
If her shoulders are broader than mine, I’m out.
No?
(NSFW-ish)
(TBF, they’re not really that broad on that broad)
Ok, she’s hot.
But those abs are a dead giveaway that this is not a person you want to be around.
Eh, just makes me think “gymnast”.
I have no beef with gymnasts.
Me neither, in spite of hitting on a few.
It feels like there’s an implicit “ask me how I know” in your statement, Tundra.
Maybe he lost his penis in an unfortunate ab flexing accident.
(This seems like an apropos spot to repost my totes NSFW workout video)
Tundra is holding out for this gal (and it isn’t Liz Hurley).
I think that she doesn’t have the abs that the gal in the pic above has, but I can’t be sure because I haven’t been able to focus on her abs yet. Maybe if I watch it another couple thousand times.
Lol!
Thanks, Jimbo!
No problem Tundra. Just remember that Left Arm Day is just as important as Leg Day.
Don’t want to get all asymetrical.
You’re my new personal trainer. Where do I send the check?
I’d go for her.
On the one hand the abs make her a bit too hard. On the other hand she could fight my battles…
Silje Torp would break me.
So no Dr. Girlfriend for you?
They don’t just want tolerance, they want celebration, and now they want participation.
Ok then, I’m transphobic, leave me the fuck alone.
This. This is the proper answer. “Yeah, and?”
Why would a transexual want to date a transphobe?
For all their ranting and raving about the patriarchy, rape, harassment, etc…, they really crave the power to make everyone conform to their whims. And the more outrageous that whim is, the better.
They’re the power freaks.
Evident in their political leanings and views. You would think libertarianism would be their default setting, but once you apply your comment to it, it makes sense that they are not.
So there is one non-crazy person in the relationship?
I am pretty sure at that point, they are both crazy
Don’t let them have that ridiculous framing. Making concessions in these kinds of word-redefining games is how they win.
There’s nothing transphobic about not wanting to date the mentally ill. I’m not going to date someone that I know to be a schizophrenic who believes that instead of being treated, they should be celebrated either. Phobias are irrational fears and not wanting a crazy pants as a partner is perfectly rational. If you’ve ever stuck it in crazy, you’ll know what I mean.
Oh, for crying out loud. I’m so damn glad I’m not single.
I’m so damn glad I’m not single and even gladder I’m not dating that person.
Old news:
https://ibb.co/5RQc5gY
These people are convinced they’re really clever and smart.
It is like the original poster saying “you won’t date trans because you want a family? Well then you better not date infertile women!”
How is that a gotcha? I’m pretty sure guys who want a family wouldn’t date women who can’t have kids. Sure there might be exceptions, but for the most part dudes who want kids will date women who can have kids.
Sort of like the gotcha of pro-lifers who support the death penalty (spoiler: a lot of pro-lifers are also opposed to the death penalty).
Yup, used to get into this argument back when I thought there was a point taking to the extreme left.
Couldn’t imagine life without my son, what a crock of shit.
They have something in common with Arab culture.
This is where postmodernism really loses me. They’re so full of it. In phase one, you accept that there are no truths. No biological sex. Mathematic is a system that doesn’t represent observable, measurable universal truth. Then they immediately turn around a build new truth statements like “that’s a woman’s penis” and “math is made up by white men to oppress woman and minorities” and if you disagree, you’re in denial of the facts. There either is truth or there isn’t. Pick one. If you’re going to decide there is truth, you’re going to need empirical proof and my side of the argument has hundreds of years of rigorous documentation on it’s side.
Those are compatible per postmodernism.
But that is simply delusional.
How absolutely DARE you!
Color me TERF.
How is it compatible. It’s either an expression of universal truth or it’s entirely made up. That’s like conflating physics and copyright law. One is true whether or not we as a species exist to observe it, the other is physics.
I just stare blankly when they claim math isn’t real. It’s the real universal language and so beautiful.
If it has a Y chromosome I’m not interested. Nothing personal or anything.
For everyone here, the answer is, as always, in Sunny.
Dennis learns to manipulate Millenials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOVJ3zaQnYo
Finger on the pulse…
This is awesome Plisade!
The talent in this hive of scum and villainy is truly humbling.
Some of the lot do scare the hell out of me though…and I like it.
Our missed opportunity with our very own Mojeux
https://twitter.com/michaelmalice/status/1490755190630277124?s=20&t=y8rB-c124n8MZE2tXNbQEg
It bugs that he classifies them as “porno” because as far as I have gotten in the book, it feels more like urban fantasy than romance, and urban fantasy usually doesn’t have that much sex. Mind you, I haven’t gotten very far into it because urban fantasy is not my cuppa, but I did promise a Glib review.
Better than wordle:https://www.mathler.com/
No, it’s not. I was told there would be no math.
Fun! Got it in 4 🙂
Officially 3, but really 2 because of Commutative property. A x B = B x A
Ah, nice! I suppose there is some luck involved with that issue.
I would say in general that luck is involved, I only got it so quick because I happened to put multiplication in the right spot on guess 1.
The real interesting thing is how quick you can go from the same first guess to the correct answer. There is obviously some strategy to what you put in first, but that seems fairly limited.
Good to see you ScoobaSteve! It has been a while!
Commutative property
Go pound sand you Pinko!
2 tries.
I such at wordle though.
Passing on the math thingie and went to wordle instead for the first time. I enjoyed it.
Just tried it for the first time, too. Got it in 6. Phew!
#metoo
I don’t get it. 18 / 1 + 5 definitely equals 23. But it says my guess is wrong.
You have to guess their correct combination, not just any one that works. If your first guess (on line one) isn’t correct, it tells you which of your numbers/operators are correct and whether or not they were in the right position, and you try again on line — repeat until it is completely correct.
Yeah, I got it eventually. I was just being a dick.
I wish it was smart enough to recognize the commutative property as ScoobaSteve noted above.
I would hope that they have a rule to eliminate that happening, such as in a multiplicative or additive series, the numbers are listed least to greatest.
They need to make an app for that. It was fun, but I’m not gonna remember to navigate to their site every day.
That’s pretty interesting. I’d keep going with it.
This is interesting.
Trudeau Demands Protesters Stop Shutting Down City So That He Can Shut Down City
Holy shit, that’s funny right there, I don’t care who you are.
that was a winner
Ley Lines. You are talking about anthropomorphic Ley Lines.
Diggin’ this shit, well done.
Rifts?
Airbnb is assho.
Michelle shared not only HER experience being banned by Airbnb, but her husband as well. It’s frightening enough to think a company would refuse to serve someone based on their political ideas but to punish a spouse? What about kids? Siblings? Parents?
Don’t worry there will be accommodations for the whole family. Unless they inform on you first that is.
Wait, Airbnb is going to be running the camps, too? I guess that makes sense.
The concentration camps will be private companies!
Hold on. I have to bake a gender transition cake, but not an America first cake? Is that right?
Some cakes are more equal than others
Yes. Wokecake is mandatory. Hatecake is prohibited.
Trudeau was on the news at the gym this morning. Fortunately, the sound was off. But- just looking at that smarmy little weasel spiked my blood pressure. Whatever he was saying, there is no doubt it was pompous self-obsessed bullshit. I’m guessing “L’etat est moi” would be a fairly accurate rough translation.
That’s what you get for working out.
This was pleasantly weird, Plisade.
Looking forward to making my saving throw vs. sanity when you and SugarFree collaborate in the future.
Oops…
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/a-health-public-policy-nightmare
I’m not sure what this means: ‘Vaccination confers broader IgG binding of variant RBDs than SARS-CoV-2 infection’
Anyone translate that for me?
I think it means Epstein didn’t kill himself.
IgG = antibodies in the blood
RBD = receptor binding domains on the virus
That means that the vaccines confer a broader immunity to COVID variants in the near term after vaccination. The paper does not address what happens over time (which we know from Israel, et al)
The critical parts are the last two lines. The amount of spike protein released from vaccination is massive and persistent, and we know the spike protein itself is toxic.
What’s the difference between igG and igM and igA?
That’s where I got the distinct sense that there was a profound difference being discussed, but I didn’t have enough info to recognize it.
IgA is the one of most discussion. It’s antibodies in mucosal membranes such as the nose, lungs, and female reproductive tracts.
As such, it is the first line of defense against a respiratory virus. The obvious question that was not asked is “How does a vaccine introduced into the interior of the body generate IgA antibodies?”
Short answer is “It doesn’t.” Which is why these vaccines could never prevent infection and transmission.
An inhaled vaccine might have had a chance.
At approximately what point in time will I drop dead from being vaccinated two summers ago?
Avoid strenuous masturbation.
Well, FUCK! What am I supposed to do with the rest of the day?
Define strenuous. How high up on the scale can I safely go?
You’ll shoot an eye out!
Blood-vessel popping
Strenuous
Vigorous
Enthusiastic
Indifferent
Time-killing
Self-pitying and tear-soaked
Wait . . . “Self-pitying and tear-soaked” is only one option?
Man, I’ve been doing this wrong for decades.
1) If you’re doing it correctly, yes it is only one option. 2) The charming him/her/xer from the video at topic 10 will be happy to show you how in gratuitous and graphic detail and to turn down the offer means your transphobic and deserve death.
Riiiiiiight now!
…
Now!
….
…
Now!
….
…
…
Ill get back to you on that.
Hey, it might have worked.
You’re already pickled. Does it matter?
I read that, but some of the medical discussion was going over my head. Broad strokes seem to be that they did lymph node biopsies on vaxxed and covid positive patients and found evidence of immune reaction to spike proteins in vaxxed people even 60 days after the shot was given. Also, it’s a different immune response (I’m out of my depth at this part of the article) than natural covid infections generate.
This is great! Looking forward to more.
What a maroon.
STOP RESISTING
He looks like he is still flustered from his encounter with the “PULL” door.
He does look rattled.
On one hand, good! On the other hand, scared people make bad decisions. Hope he doesn’t do anything stupid.
He seems like a Kabuki actor who suddenly finds himself on an open stage with an amateur improv troupe.
All his training is for answering the “correct questions” with the “correct answers”. Now he’s standing there with everyone watching and he realizes that there is no script anymore and he will have to think on his feet.
That’s a really good analogy. It’s what happens when the scripted gives way to the unscripted. The fact that he’s having to respond at all to this means a) his grip is slipping, b) the media is failing to protect its favored anointed ones, and c) it can happen anywhere, as long as people stand up to oppression and BS
It looks like the other politicians are starting to distance from him, too.
He may be toast.
If he orders a crackdown on the truckers, I could see Canada going nuts.
I think he will and I think it will.
I fear he will decide he has no choice.
If you decide not to decide, you still have made a choice.
He SHOULD be paying more attention to his countrymen’s wisdom, shouldn’t he.
He’s supposed to Represent his people, not Rule them.
That’s the whole thing about “representative democracy,” right?
You can tell he’s flustered because he has one lock of hair out of place.
Maybe he unwrapped his turban too quickly?
Is that a euphemism?
I would have paid DTEAS* money to have someone pop a paper bag while he was talking. He looks so high strung, I’m pretty sure he would have shit himself.
Of course, since there was no pope there, his shit wouldn’t have been as epic as Brandon’s.
*Dora The Explorer Anal Sex
Resisting the urge to DDG DTEAS
We need some of these in the US Congress: https://twitter.com/Wealth_Theory/status/1490901419666272257
Would.
Damn. Any chance she’s single?
*Straightens imaginary tie*
She is also not bad
https://twitter.com/CandiceBergenMP/status/1491142538228547590?s=20&t=D4B5zkYrAaOp44E-URivqg
If you like a little big of aged fine wine.
I would have her babies. As many as she wants.
The current beatings are going to prevent future beatings.
Bigger maroon
FUCK OFF SLAVER
Gordi bringing another update
https://twitter.com/GhostOfGord/status/1491147280564424704?s=20&t=ldHRZZsskllel17y7FTdrg
Another border crossing closed.
Man, do not piss off truckers.
God bless them.
Good. Shut ’em all down. Let’s see how long The Hair That Walks Like A Man™ survives this.