toxoplasma
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On happiness and mind control.
We could change our brains enough to feel happy with the world as it is … or we could use our unhappiness as a motivation to fix things.
abusive research, addiction, America, animal emotions, animal empathy, asylums, bad medical advice, bioethics, biomedical ethics, brain modification, brain parasites, brain stimulation, brain’s pleasure center, Carl Elliott, cat shit, chemically modulated happiness, cocaine, consciousness, conversion therapy, DCS, deep brain stimulation, depression, direct current stimulation, dopamine, drug abuse, drug crisis, drug use, eating cat shit, electrical brain stimulation, electrochemical stimulation of desire, empathy in rats, evolutionary rationale for pleasure, fighting depression, Frans de Waal, free will, happiness, homosexuality, human choice, human free will, Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, induction of empathy, Lone Frank, love potion, Mama’s Last Hug, mind control, nucleus accumbens, opiate use, painkillers, parasites, parasitic mind control, psychiatric patients, psychiatric wards, psychiatry, psychological crisis, psychology studies, psychosurgery, rat empathy, rats free their friends, research ethics, research subjects, review of The Pleasure Shock, Robert Heath, science, scientific ethics, scientific progress, sex in a laboratory, suicide, toxo, toxoplasma, toxoplasmosis, unethical experiments, unethical research, unethical science, United States
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On mind control versus body control
In jail last week, we found ourselves discussing mind control. Ants that haul infected comrades away from the colony – otherwise, the zombie will climb above the colony before a Cordyceps fruiting body bursts from its spine, raining spores down onto everyone below, causing them all to die. Several parasites, including Toxoplasma gondii, are known…
body control, brain, consciousness, free will, infection, jail, magnetic pulse, mass incarceration, mind control, neurobiology, parasites, parasitic mind control, perception of free will, phantom limb, teaching in jail, toxoplasma, toxoplasmosis, transcranial magnetic stimulation, zombi, zombie, zombie ants, zombies
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On a guaranteed basic income.
No one among us created the world.
computers, consciousness, correspondence collaboration, creditworthiness, criticizing social studies of finance with Lazzarato, Digital subjectivation and financial markets, exhaustion, free will, guaranteed basic income, gut bugs, hireability, human augmentation, implicit violence, intestinal fauna, market design, microbiome, narrative explanation, neurological consequences of tools, neurology, no cloning theorem, philosophy, physics, prostitutes, quantum mechanics, sex work, stock market, testosterone, the human drive for storytelling, the perception of freedom might well be good enough, Tim Christiaens, tool use, toxoplasma, uncertainty principle, wealth tax, welfare, working parents
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On humor (and bad medical advice).
In which I write a bodybuilding-mag-style paean to eating cat feces.
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On toxoplasma.
I was talking to K and she pointed out that I missed the point of this whole “internet” thing. Apparently the goal of writing for the internet is not to sound like a pedantic stuff-bucket? This is something I hadn’t yet realized – I mostly use the internet to watch videos of Louis Scott Vargas…
Frank Brown Cloud 