Oscar-Winner "My Octopus Teacher" Explores Unique Human-Octopus Friendsh...

Life is life's greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life's scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than the largest." -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

Russell. Whitehead. Relational v Intrinsic

Panpsychism and Idealism are similar ideas

Consciousness. Transcedent intruder.

Consciousness. Emergent physicalism

Consciousness. Hard core eliminative materialism. We will stop discussing abt it as langg improves

Sc. Consciousness is not observable

Philo. Consciousness value ethics agency

Philo. Why are we here

SANTOSHA

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While ivermectin has been widely vilified as either useless, dangerous or both, studies have repeatedly demonstrated its usefulness against COVID-19. Most recently, a study published in the March 2022 issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases again found that treatment with ivermectin reduced mortality in COVID-19 patients — and to a greater degree than remdesivir.

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SOFASANA X DUTY ASANA

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A  EXEMPLAR- PERFECT EXAMPLE

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We want to be in control. We want our life to follow the mental master
plan we’ve devised that ultimately leads to Real Happiness. But
circumstances—loss, illness, unresolvable problems, burnout, addiction,
monotony—often foil our plan. And we struggle to reconcile ourselves to
the limitations and the brokenness of our life.

WLAES AD TIRTHAJATRA

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Wu Wei – Doing Nothing 無爲

Wu wei means – in Chinese – non-doing or ‘doing nothing’. It sounds like a pleasant invitation to relax or worse, fall into laziness or apathy. Yet this concept is key to the noblest kind of action according to the philosophy of Daoism – and is at the heart of what it means to follow Dao or The Way.  A

BCHARYA SHUNYA

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Memory often worsens with age — it is a normal part of the aging process.

But, when do mild memory problems signal the onset of Alzheimer’s?

Ironically, people who realise their memory is getting worse are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, research finds.

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“But never forget that love is always stronger than fear. Love saved me, and I know it will save you, too.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Wish

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PATTON "Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."

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"When you slow down, you feel. When you feel, you heal. And when you heal, you grow. Sometimes slowing down is the most productive thing you can do."

-- Author Unknown

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STJ

In Advaita Vedanta, there is no thinker of thoughts, thoughts happen, then how do I shift my attention to "I am"?

I will suggest a simple technique.

Imagine that you know no language. Imagine that you are an ancient pre-language human being.

Now, if you are hungry, you are aware of the hunger. You don't verbalise within your own mind, ‘Oh, I am hungry. I need to eat’.

Get back to those instincts without verbalising them in your mind.

Very soon, you will realise the awareness which is ‘I am’.

If your hand is cut, you are simply aware of the pain.

If your lover smiles, you are simply aware of your gushing love.

It is just kicking out a old habit stuck to the DNA, with little conscious practice.

Just de-verbalise your self-communication. ‘I am’ is the immediately realised.

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Atma or you is brahma. It is only sakshi, or science or knower or vijneya. This turiya the you, never folded as prajna or Ishwar, swapna or hiranya gharba or jagrata or Vishnu or vaisvanara. If you able to escape from this avasta trayee, you get brahma jnana or Advait jnana.

your tadatma bhaava creating this universe. So by intellectually understanding it, constant practice of negation of body , creation, brahma is crystal clearly visible to you. Here itself it’s visible

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Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."

- C. S. Lewis a Higher intelligence reduces the risk of mental health problems, including depression, research finds. A higher IQ is linked to less self-reported depression symptoms, fewer sleep problems and better overall mental health. A

NISHKAM GOMATA SEVA X POSHU-BRIKSHA NARAYAN SEVA X ALAKH NIRANJAN

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PREM BUT NOT ASHAKTI

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ONCE ASHAKTI - JA NEHI SHAKTI 

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HKHKKKHH HRHRRRHH

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TWO WVES- SUNITI AND SURUCHI

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Estate. Council or Country

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude,” Mrs. Obama told a group of girls in London during the 2009 G20 Summit.

WEB OF MUTUALITY

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"It's all in your mind, but that's where you reside"

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Real understanding is not the mere accumulation of knowledge. Understanding cannot be realized bylistening or reading about the realization of others. It must be achieved firsthand via substantive direct perception in the moment.

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 Apparently, seventy percent of the words in the English language are nouns, whereas in Potawatomi, (NATIVE AM)the native language of the tribe from which its author - Robin Wall Kimmerer - comes, 70% of the words are verbs.

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BAY WATER V BAYING 

To get an indication of what this means, she gives an example: whereas we refer to a ‘bay of water’, Potawatomi speakers would instead refer to the process of ‘baying’. In other words, life, in this particular moment and location, is expressing itself in the formation of a bay.

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BAYING

Although the two ways of speaking refer to the same thing then, the emphasis is very different. Whereas the English language denotes a static, identifiable, separated phenomenon, the Potawatomi emphasis on process evokes an unfolding, where the subject of the sentence does not need to be mentioned because it is life itself, simply in a particular instantiation.

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chit x jodo

We see here clearly how languages shapes the way we think, since the two different ways of expressing the same thing entail two completely different worldviews! Potawatomi, like all Native American languages, arises within an animist culture and worldview, which is to say a worldview where everything, from rocks to stars to spirits, is alive, interconnected, and interacting. Modern English, on the other hand, is a product of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on rationality and objectivity (as well as individual sovereignty, ‘progress’ etc, all of which have important connotations for how we then experience the world, as well shall see), and denotes a world exterior and other to me, composed largely of inanimate -  ie dead - matter

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This Blew Up My Mind

“When pregnant, the cells of the baby migrate into the mothers bloodstream and then circle back into the baby, it’s called “fetal-maternal microchimerism”.⁠

For 41 weeks, the cells circulate and merge backwards and forwards, and after the baby is born, many of these cells stay in the mother’s body, leaving a permanent imprint in the mothers tissues, bones, brain, and skin, and often stay there for decades. Every single child a mother has afterwards will leave a similar imprint on her body, too.

Even if a pregnancy doesn't go to full term or if you have an abortion, these cells still migrate into your bloodstream.

Research has shown that if a mother's heart is injured, fetal cells will rush to the site of the injury and change into different types of cells that specialize in mending the heart.

The baby helps repair the mother, while the mother builds the baby.

How cool is that?

This is often why certain illnesses vanish while pregnant.

It’s incredible how mothers bodies protect the baby at all costs, and the baby protects & rebuilds the mother back - so that the baby can develop safely and survive.

Think about crazy cravings for a moment. What was the mother deficient in that the baby made them crave?

Studies have also shown cells from a fetus in a mothers brain 18 years after she gave birth. How amazing is that?”

If you’re a mom you know how you can intuitively feel your child even when they are not there….Well, now there is scientific proof that moms carry them for years and years even after they have given birth to them.

I find this to be so very beautiful.#

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hawkins

ON TRANSCENDING THE EGO'S CLAIM TO AUTHORSHIP To sense one's reality is simple, it's only a matter of knowing where to look. If you look over here, you're looking at the written word. 35 years of the written word. Where is what you're looking for? You can all sense, right in this instant (there are people already destined … I see it, aha, to become enlightened, yes). What you do is you catch the experiencing of the world just prior to the mind's commentary about it. If you back off from the mind, you'll find an inner stillness which hasn't said anything yet. You live in the space before the world has said anything yet. When you walk outside, you're struck by the beauty of the surroundings. You haven't said anything about it yet! You live in that space. The space is pre-verbal. Prior to mentalization. The difficulty with verbalization is one has to come out of that space and come forward into that verbalization, because that's what the world expects. You have to do “worldspeak” (laughter) or the world doesn't understand, because nothing is being spoken. Right at this moment, to sense within yourself that which hasn't had a second yet to make a comment about what the speaker's saying yet. The mind's commentary is a delay. There's a split second delay, and you live in that experience before any comment. Even as you think you're not getting it, you're there right now. Right now, within everybody's consciousness, is the presence of consciousness itself, prior to any kind of content. So you draw back and you live in the space right before the mind starts to make commentary. And you hold back in this space beyond the mind's thinkingness. Thinkingness should be voluntary. I think when i'm forced to think. The world is forever asking you to think and comment and oh jesus, there's no end to it! You're always exhausted by coming out of the infinite peace and beauty of silence. You see what i'm saying? You get dragged into this complexity. It pulls all your energy and interest and you're survival gets pulled out there. Ramana Maharshi said it correctly, the mind gets pulled into the world, away from the Self, and ones reality is prior to the self. Ones reality is prior to the self as what? As a condition, as a field. So you're reality is a field. It's the innate field out of which, just prior to thinkingness. I always think of the Holy Spirit as within that 1/10,000ths of a second between two thoughts that the Buddha talked about. I remember when I first read that, that was so frustrating. I was really mad. I tried meditating and finding a tenth of a second between thoughts and you can't do it. It's like a dog chasing its tail. The harder you try to create a space between two thoughts, the more impossible it becomes. And yet the Buddha said that's where you glimpse eternity, and it is a fact. And in that instant, the Holy Spirit takes advantage of that space, and leaps in with that knowingness. When you wake up first thing in the morning, the field is there. You don't even know who you are yet, you don't know what your name is, you don't know where you are. There's just the awareness of awareness itself. And at that point, all you know is that you're awake, period. You know that phase when you wake up? You know you're awake and that's it. So that's what the condition is that you're looking for. It's always present. In thinking that which I am that is talking and thinking is real, the identification of self as reality as the ego, when that goes away, in an instant, there's deadening silence. Then the question is (laughter) how to be in the world of dead silence when the world is talking all the time, its hard." ~ David R. Hawkins (From: Lecture 4 - 2002) a

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The only remedy for bad habits is counter habits; all the bad habits that have left their impressions are to be controlled by good habits. Go on doing good, thinking holy thoughts continuously; that is the only way to suppress base impressions. Never say any man is hopeless, because he only  represents a character, a bundle of habits, and these can be checked by new and better ones. Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits alone can reform character."

~ Swami Vivekananda

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“To be loving means also to make allowance for limitations. And that can’t really be done without humor. There’s no way you can handle some of the extreme negatives of life without humor. So humor is a spiritual tool, one that’s underrepresented in the world’s great religions. They seem so grim about everything, you know what I’m saying, Jesus, like to crack a smile would kill em, you know what I mean. (Doc chuckles) Without a sense of humor then, you’ll have a hard time maintaining spiritual principles. How can you remain loving towards life when you see some of the absurdities that go on, and represent the ultimate cruelties. So the last thing we need to save our sanity, then, is an explanation for those things that cannot be handled by humor, etc. and therefore an understanding of karma is essential, I think, for serious spiritual students. Because there’s no other way to contextualize things that are inexplicable that happen to you. You can be the most saintly person on the planet and get run over by a cab. (Doc chuckles some more)” ~ David R. Hawkins

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hawkins

"What is the world, and how does it serve the evolution of consciousness? There are myriad views of the world, and they can be calibrated according to their level of truth: - The world as karmic opportunity: 600. - The world as karmic expression: 575. - The world is actually an opportune place for redemption and salvation: 575. - Human life is an expression of God’s Will by which the Godhead fulfils the actualization of infinite potentiality: 560. - The world and humanity were created by God and are therefore divinely inspired and intrinsically holy: 545. - The world is a rare opportunity for maximum spiritual growth and evolution by the undoing of bad karma and the earning of spiritual merit: 510. - One’s view of the world is consequent to the observer’s level of consciousness: 485. - Survival is due to natural selection by survival of the fittest: 440. - “I have invented the world I see”: 350. - This is a purgatorial world of hardship and suffering; therefore, seek heaven: 350. - The world is a comedy, a tragedy, a political game board, and more: 240. - The world and the universe are merely passing illusions created by the ego to keep itself separate from God: 220. - The world as unfair: 200. - The world and human life are the consequence of the fall of Adam and Eve due to disobedience and succumbing to the temptation of curiosity. Life is therefore penitential for original sin: 190. - The world is merely a physical product of the physical universe: 190. - Life and therefore humanity are purely accidental products of Darwinian biological evolution (mechanistic reductionism): 190. - The world as exploitative: 180. - Humanity descended from the stars and fell from the heavens: 160. - Humanity descended from monkeys: 160."

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Nakamura Sensei’s realization led him to state that human beings are “lords of creation” because only humans are aware of their births and their mortality. Even more important, while plants and animals are undoubtedly one with the universe, equal to men and women, only humans have the capacity to consciously realize this fact and act upon it. Within humanity are reflexive characteristics common to plants and emotional characteristics witnessed in animals, but unlike plants and animals, humans have a highly evolved capacity for reason that is rarely duplicated in the animal world. This “thinking ability” can lead humanity away from its original, naturalistic state, but it also gives us the capacity to consciously and directly realize our innate unity with the universe, an ability that Nakamura Tempu Sensei called uchu-rei, the “universal mind.” In 1919, Nakamura Sensei returned to Japan …and he never coughed up blood again.

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How different must the world be for me if I understand it as constituted by fundamentally separate, inert, mechanically determined objects as compared with as a living breathing interplay? And what are the ensuing consequences of such a perception of reality?

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Thus here language shapes the way I think and perceive the world, but also the way I act in the world, which then further reinforces that perception. That is, if I begin to see the world as a collection of dangerous ‘others’, it implies that I will interact with it defensively and aggressively, and thereby will establish a dynamic of competition and aggression which will be mirrored back to me. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind and all that.

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Whereas the Potawatomi language encourages us back into connection with the world, all of the modern European languages do the opposite. They atomise the world into ‘me’ and a trillion ‘not mes’, which I am either striving to consume or obtain or run away from. It creates a universe of separation and thereby antagonism and competition, because we exist under the illusion that I could possibly acquire something to my benefit at your expense. (As opposed to understanding that everything is just an instantiation of an ultimately indivisible process called ‘life’).

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This process has sped up exponentially since the birth of the Enlightenment, often dated to the publication of that famous phrase: ‘I think therefore I am’. This is the phrase par excellence to demonstrate exactly how much language shapes how we think. Because it says that the first and most fundamental reality is I. The mind reflects, whereupon it discovers the self. From here it proceeds outwards to the world.

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COGN PHENO

 Cognitive phenomenology is just a fancy way of saying ‘conscious thought

 For there to be anything meaningful, we need consciousness, not just conscious thought. If you couldn’t grasp the punchline of a joke, understand words of poetry or feel the sadness of minor chords, then those things (jokes, poems, music) would be devoid of meaning. Th e chord couldn’t be sad , the poetry couldn’t be beautiful and no joke could be funny if they’re not consciously experienced. With consciousness, these otherwise meaningless entities (soundwaves and scribbles) are imbued with meaning. Without it, they’re nothing (they’re not even soundwaves or scribbles).

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 "I think therefore... I am trapped within the confines of a grammar that makes it impossible to say anything objective" was what he really meant to say

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PHILOCURIOUS

 A CHETANA - FPE FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCE 

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There are several reasons why NDEs are not considered mere dreams or hallucinations:

1.Consistency: Many people report similar experiences regardless of their cultural or religious background, suggesting a common underlying phenomenon.

2.Clarity: NDEs are often described as more vivid and real than anything experienced before, unlike the distorted and surreal nature of dreams and hallucinations.

3.Veridical perception: Some NDErs report verifiable perceptions during their experience that they could not have known about through normal sensory channels.

4.Transcendence of time and space: NDEs often involve a sense of timelessness and a feeling of being outside the physical body, which is not typical of dreams or hallucinations.

5.Transformational impact: NDEs can have a profound and lasting impact on a person's life, making them less afraid of death, more compassionate, or more spiritual.

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An article published by The New York Times dated December 8th, 1903

9 days later the Wright Brothers had their first flight.

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Is it possible that everything we’ve been told is a lie?

JM 

This question was asked by Rene Descartes in Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641.

I know. Philosophy. Boring.

If you read this book, I promise you won’t be bored.

He asked:

What if an evil genius cast a spell on us so everything we experience is a lie?

Under the influence of this spell, everyone we encounter is part of the ruse and everything they tell us is crap.

Every book we pick up - even mechanics or scripture - is full of absolute nonsense.

Mechanical and scriptural truth exists somewhere outside our enchantment, but we can’t access it.

Even our body isn’t our body.

Sure, we probably have a real body somewhere, but the spell has convinced us our body has an appearance and sensations it doesn’t have.

What, in this nightmare, is real?

Is there any truth that can’t be taken away?

Descartes said if there is one, this must be the basis for all other knowledge.

Every other form of knowledge can be removed or distorted by the sorcerer’s spell.

All logical reasoning must start with a truth that can’t be removed, whether by sorcery, perceptual illusion, hallucination, or dreaming.

He said there’s a truth that meets this criterion:

Cogito, ergo sum.

(I think, therefore I am.)

He didn’t mean the content of our thinking is true.

Thoughts reflect and analyze what we see and hear, so the content of our thoughts would be dead wrong.

We could even be wrong about the fact that we’re personally thinking.

The sorcerer might be projecting his megaphone-voice in our head.

But the fact that we are having a subjective experience is real.

If we didn’t exist, there would be no one for the sorcerer to fool.

Even the fact that we can be deluded must mean we’re real.

So yes, it’s possible everything we’ve been told is a lie.

If we dream we’re on planet Wqoptu and attend a lecture on Wqoptuan history, everything we hear isn’t true.

Whether our experience points to real, objective facts or not, nobody can tell us we’re not conscious or we don’t exist.

(They’d require our existence and consciousness to tell us!)

This is now the starting point of all logical and scientific arguments.

They must acknowledge we can be fooled, even by our senses.

The understanding that sensory experience, which feels very real, isn’t acceptable proof, arose from the “Cartesian turn” in philosophy.

Scientific experiments and mathematical reasoning cannot rely on what “seems true” by cursory examination.

This also challenges the idea that scripture contains truth literally like a shoebox contains shoes.

We’ve all had dreams in which we read books.

What if this is a dream, and the statements in this book are nonsense?

The dream-book describes events in Wqoptu, and we have no external context to remember that Jesus was from Nazareth.

No problem!

We can still distinguish truth from falsity by our direct apperception of what the fundamental reality of existence and consciousness is and logically implies.

It does imply love and equality.

But we must evaluate the objects of the world by our own-most fundamental reality.

We evaluate their truth by the criteria of our own reality, not the other way around.

We can’t derive truth from objects, because their “truth” is always - at least technically - provisional.

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Attachments and DESIRES are the TWO that we have to OVERCOME, so that we do not have to keep coming back here. Even Christ said, “Him that OVERCOMETH shall make a pillar in the temple of my god and he shall go no more out” Rev. 3.12. Anyway, who really wants to keep rebrthing here? All we have is 1. Traumatic Birth 2. Ignorant Childhood 3. Youth full of Folly. 4. Middle age regrets and struggle 5. Old age filled with sickness and finally when just some lucky ones are beginning to ENJOY life comes - 6. Death

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Rising Pressure

The people around you generally  appear sane and in control of their lives. But put any of them in stressful circumstances, with the pressure rising, and you will see a different reality. The cool mask of self-control comes off. They suddenly lash out in anger, reveal a paranoid streak, and become hypersensitive and often petty. 

Under stress or any threat, the most primitive parts of the brain are aroused and engaged, overwhelming people’s reasoning powers. In fact, stress or tension can reveal flaws in people that they have carefully concealed from view. It is often wise to observe people in such moments, precisely as a way to judge their true character.

Whenever you notice rising pressure and stress levels in your life, you must watch yourself carefully. Monitor any signs of unusual brittleness or sensitivity, sudden suspicions, fears disproportionate to the circumstances. Observe with as much detachment as possible, finding time and space to be alone. You need perspective. Never imagine that you are someone who can withstand rising stress without emotional leakage. It is not possible. But through self-awareness and reflection you can prevent yourself from making decisions you will come to regret.

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WAKING UP

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fallacy of the first cause

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When someone new is hanging out with you and your friends, call your friends by their names so the new person has a chance to memorize them.

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🌿स तु दीर्घकाल नैरन्तर्य सत्काराअदराअसेवितो दृढभूमिः ॥१४॥

Success can definitely be achieved via continuous practice over an extended period of time, carried out in a serious [devoted] and thoughtful manner.

~Patanjali Yoga Sutras, 1.14

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1826 - first ever photograph- France 

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Water can have three existing forms at the same time! It is also termed the 'triple point'. It is the only temperature at which water can exist in all three states that are solid, liquid and gas. The temperature should be exactly 0.01°C.

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"Some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next."

-- Gilda Radner

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Intervulnerability: “Psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan uses the term intervulnerability to describe the need for this mutually held space. When asked about this idea in an interview, she replied, When I say we are “intervulnerable,” I mean we suffer together, whether consciously or unconsciously. Albert Einstein called the idea of a separate self an “optical delusion of consciousness.” Martin Luther King Jr. said that we are all connected in an “inescapable web of mutuality.” There’s no way out, though we try to escape by armoring ourselves against pain and in the process diminishing our lives and our consciousness. But in our intervulnerability is our salvation, because awareness of the mutuality of suffering impels us to search for ways to heal the whole, rather than encase ourselves in a bubble of denial and impossible individualism. At this point in history, it seems that we will either destroy ourselves or find a way to build a sustainable life together.”

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