Today of all days, and for reasons known only to themselves, the Smithsonian Magazine decided to publish an article on class warfare and schemes of execution.

“Highwaymen were broken on the wheel, witches burnt at the stake and thieves hung,” wrote Eamonn Carrabine, a sociologist and criminologist at the University of Essex in England. Aristocrats, on the other hand, were usually beheaded with a sword, a privilege that “was not extended to most commoners, who were decapitated by an unwieldy ‘heading axe’ that bludgeoned its way through the neck, often requiring several attempts.”

"Once you’ve found the pleasant sensation, you fully shift your attention to it. If you can do that, the sensation will begin to grow in intensity; it will become stronger. This will not happen in a linear way. At first, nothing happens. Then it’ll grow a little bit and then hang out and grow a little bit more. And then eventually, it will suddenly take off and take you into what is obviously an altered state of consciousness.

In this altered state of consciousness, you will be overcome with rapture, euphoria, ecstasy, delight. These are all English words that are used to translate the Pali word piti. Perhaps the best English word for piti is “glee.” Piti is a primarily physical sensation that sweeps you powerfully into an altered state. But piti is not solely physical; as the suttas say, “On account of the presence of piti, there is mental exhilaration.” In addition to the physical energy and mental exhilaration, the piti will be accompanied by an emotional sensation of joy and happiness."

"At first glance, however, the available literature on brainwave entrainment effects due to binaural beat stimulation appears to be inconclusive at best. The aim of the present systematic review is, thus, to synthesize existing empirical research. A sample of fourteen published studies met our criteria for inclusion. The results corroborate the impression of an overall inconsistency of empirical outcomes, with five studies reporting results in line with the brainwave entrainment hypothesis, eight studies reporting contradictory, and one mixed results."

Reading this book convinced me the modern day United States is about to commit a second holocaust at the Mexican border within the next, like, decade.

This is the article that coined the phrase "male gaze", originally a strict academic definition, now a muddied culture war thing? I don't know. The article is good.

"reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled.

And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle."

" But we are concerned here with much more than simple intellectual influences. The concept of alienation belongs to a vast and complex problematics, with a long history of its own. Preoccupations with this problematics – in forms ranging from the Bible to literary works as well as treatises on Law, Economy and Philosophy – reflect objective trends of European development, from slavery to the age of transition from capitalism to socialism. Intellectual influences, revealing important continuities across the transformations of social structures, acquire their real significance only if they are considered in this objective framework of development. If so assessed, their importance – far from being exhausted in mere historical curiosity – cannot be stressed enough: precisely because they indicate the deep-rootedness of certain problematics as well as the relative autonomy of the forms of thought in which they are reflected."

"The occasion for this piece is a seemingly straightforward question: why did Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime so quickly declare war on the United States just four days after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor? There is nothing self-evident about this. Moscow had not fallen to the Wehrmacht during Operation Typhoon, Britain was still very much in the war, and resistance against German rule had burgeoned from France to Greece. The late Fritz Stern characterized Hitler’s rush to support Japan on December 11, 1941 against the United States as “a move historians still find puzzling.”

Conversion disorder, also known as functional neurological symptom disorder (FND), is a psychiatric disorder characterized by symptoms affecting sensory or motor function. These signs and symptoms are inconsistent with patterns of known neurologic diseases or other medical conditions. Although conversion disorder has no organic basis, the symptoms significantly impact a patient’s ability to function.

This is a study of the nootropic drug Bromantane, showing long lasting epigenetic changes after a single dose. Although there is no evidence the drug has a similar effect in humans, the anecdata in /r/nootopics and /r/nootropics tends to report long lasting effects even after discontinuation of the drug. There are many reports saying things like "this is the best ADHD drug I've ever tried", etc, suggesting the obvious conspiracy theory that sub-par drugs are prescribed because they are patented and profitable, compared to this Soviet drug from the 80s.