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A Post-COVID Revival for Community Shopping? Sharing Expertise with “Machizemi”
On the Japanese practice of "machizemi" where shop keepers hold learning seminars on things related to their business specialty resulting in increased sales and visitors, revitalization of shopping districts etc. An effective way of competing with malls. A knife shop teaches customers how to sharpen their knives, a restaurant teaches visitors how to cook their speciality, a tea store teaches people who to properly brew tea, etc. So many great stories and ideas here. Should be applicable anywhere in the world.
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Sakhalin (Сахали́н, 樺太) - "The strangest place on the planet"
Russian people often call Sakhalin "the strangest place on the planet", here many plants seem to fall ill with gigantism. Burdocks and nettles grow taller than a person, meadowsweet bushes are higher than 3 meters, and so on. Scientists do not yet know the answer to this riddle.
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'This is not science fiction,' say scientists pushing for 'neuro-rights' (Reuters)
Scientific advances from deep brain stimulation to wearable scanners are making manipulation of the human mind increasingly possible, creating a need for laws and protections to regulate use of the new tools, top neurologists said on Thursday. A set of “neuro-rights” should be added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations, said Rafael Yuste, a neuroscience professor at New York’s Columbia University and organizer of the Morningside Group of scientists and ethicists proposing such standards.
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What happens in the brain when people make music together? (Bar-Ilan University)
Neuroscientists highlight 5 brain functions that contribute to social connection through music
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"Great resignation" wave coming for companies (Axios)
"Surveys show 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs."
#Comment: A core of capitalism - the corporation - is collapsing from within. This industrial age model of organization is being rapidly superseded by new forms of human-to-human relationships, that are less militaristic and far more dynamic. Good riddance! A somewhat related trend is the ongoing collapse of the nation-state and its institutions.
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Had to leave a comment on (yet another) stealth ad video about self driving cars..
"While you US guys keep making sleek payed advertising clips for (self-driving) cars, the rest of the world had enough of cars, full stop. Self driving cars are still cars - dangerous, polluting, city destroying, loud metal boxes mostly filled with air - Highly inefficient legacy methods of transportation. A future worth aspiring to are cities free of all cars: Cities for people, not machines. The Europeans and even more so the Chinese have gotten the message, tripling down on high speed trains instead, which have a far superior space utilization profile than any car will ever have. Think bicycles, remote-working and walkable cities - not even more cars with just with some AI magic on-top which takes away the last few driver jobs (Uber & co) from people who are already struggling to make a living."
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Practicing Taiji Qigong Shibashi (十八式) in a Forrest is quite magical - highly recommend!
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Music is contextual, like everything else...
Moving from Berlin to the Swiss countryside, a surprising thing has been music: Tunes and playlist that sounded brilliant in the big city, simply do not work here at all. Yet other tunes suddenly are really interesting. A constant is Dub, which seems to work universally.
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Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow
This is a placeholder post for all current news (about pandemics, politics, economics, wars, etc.). In a nutshell, 'It's all bullshit, folks and it's bad for ya', as George Carlin once put it. The level of insanity, stupidity, dishonesty and maliciousness is currently so high, that it is the duty of any sensible person to consciously tune-out and direct ones attention to more sane, important, productive and joyful issues. Enjoy life today - it's precious and short.
