Cool Sh!t
- Thread starter STKR
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“Put a rat in a cage and give it 2 water bottles. One is just water and one is water laced with heroin or cocaine. The rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself in a couple of weeks. That is our theory of addiction.
Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do. Let’s try this a bit differently.” So he built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything a rat could want is in Rat Park. Lovely food. Lots of sex. Other rats to befriend. Colored balls. Plus both water bottles, one with water and one with drugged water. But here’s what's fascinating: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use it.
None of them overdose. None of them use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. What Bruce did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
Now, we created a society where significant numbers of us can't bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drink, drugs, sex, shopping... We’ve created a hyper consumerist, hyper individualist, isolated world that is, for many of us, more like the first cage than the bonded, connected cages we need.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not people. You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. In fact, we are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that."
Credit: Johann Hari
#Addiction #MentalHealth #Recovery #Community #FYP #WorkingTogether #TeamWork #Moncton #Dieppe #Riverview #NewBrunswick #Canada #LifeAfterAddiction
Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do. Let’s try this a bit differently.” So he built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything a rat could want is in Rat Park. Lovely food. Lots of sex. Other rats to befriend. Colored balls. Plus both water bottles, one with water and one with drugged water. But here’s what's fascinating: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use it.
None of them overdose. None of them use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. What Bruce did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
Now, we created a society where significant numbers of us can't bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drink, drugs, sex, shopping... We’ve created a hyper consumerist, hyper individualist, isolated world that is, for many of us, more like the first cage than the bonded, connected cages we need.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not people. You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. In fact, we are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that."
Credit: Johann Hari
#Addiction #MentalHealth #Recovery #Community #FYP #WorkingTogether #TeamWork #Moncton #Dieppe #Riverview #NewBrunswick #Canada #LifeAfterAddiction
In 1993, Émile Leray, a French electrician, broke down in the middle of the African desert while driving an old Citroën 2CV out of Morocco to join a military site.
His car was seriously damaged after hitting a rock. Unable to repair on site, and too risky to walk in this hostile environment. So he came up with this crazy but genius idea to turn his wrecked car into... On a motorcycle!
With the tools he had with him and recycling car parts, he built a functional motorcycle in 12 days, using the supplies (water and food) he had in the trunk.
Shortened the chassis, fitted two wheels, moved the engine to the center... and it worked!
Thus he managed to leave the desert and join civilization, but was welcomed... by a fine from the Moroccan police for driving a vehicle that did not match the official documents!
His improvised motorcycle still exists today, preserved as a symbol of ingenuity and adventure in the heart of the desert.
His car was seriously damaged after hitting a rock. Unable to repair on site, and too risky to walk in this hostile environment. So he came up with this crazy but genius idea to turn his wrecked car into... On a motorcycle!
With the tools he had with him and recycling car parts, he built a functional motorcycle in 12 days, using the supplies (water and food) he had in the trunk.
Shortened the chassis, fitted two wheels, moved the engine to the center... and it worked!
Thus he managed to leave the desert and join civilization, but was welcomed... by a fine from the Moroccan police for driving a vehicle that did not match the official documents!
His improvised motorcycle still exists today, preserved as a symbol of ingenuity and adventure in the heart of the desert.
Physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have done what ancient alchemists only dreamed of: transmuted lead into gold. Using the ALICE experiment, scientists observed a rare nuclear process during near-collisions of lead ions, where intense electromagnetic fields knocked out three protons—leaving behind gold nuclei.
But there’s a catch. These gold atoms existed for only a fleeting moment before smashing into the collider walls and disintegrating. Even with 86 billion gold nuclei produced during LHC’s Run 2 (and nearly double that in Run 3), the total mass is still trillions of times too small to be commercially useful.
So no, we’re not getting gold wedding rings from particle physics just yet—but we are getting a fascinating glimpse into how elements form in the extreme conditions of the early universe.
But there’s a catch. These gold atoms existed for only a fleeting moment before smashing into the collider walls and disintegrating. Even with 86 billion gold nuclei produced during LHC’s Run 2 (and nearly double that in Run 3), the total mass is still trillions of times too small to be commercially useful.
So no, we’re not getting gold wedding rings from particle physics just yet—but we are getting a fascinating glimpse into how elements form in the extreme conditions of the early universe.