Randomly Posting Stuff Cause You Feel Like It

[Orema]

Originally Posted by ksrainbow

Overall all 4 games were well played! Honestly I was all in for the Lions vs Chiefs!

Congrat’s to you!

It would have been fun going up against the Chiefs. We’re in a bit of a funk from losing but we’re so proud of our Lions. What a year!

I’m rooting for the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Here’s hoping y’all win!

[Kätzchen]

I just found a better brand of CBD today, in the health and beauty aid section of my favorite grocery store. I thought I’d leave a link here for others to check out. I like this company (ethical & responsible ). I actually paid $44 for a bottle of the cbd-cbg tincture blend and will probably order from the company because it’s cheaper, to me, to buy it directly from the Bluebird Botanical company. I love how hemp products help me to feel better.

https://bluebirdbotanicals.com/

[Orema]

Caitlin Clark moves into second on NCAA all-time scoring list, becomes Big Ten all-time leading scorer.



A glimpse into Clark’s historic day

Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan had a famous bit of logic: scoring 32 points a game was easy because it was just eight points a quarter. With just a little offensive aggression — only five shot attempts — Clark outdid that math by two points Wednesday.

Clark scored 10 in the first quarter with a pair of deep threes and four free throws to get her close to the Big Ten scoring record. After a brief rest to start the second quarter, she immediately scored on a layup. And with just under 5 minutes to go in the first half, she broke the Big Ten scoring record on a layup.

But with all the attention and build-up to her game Wednesday, there was no mention of it happening and no reaction at Welsh-Ryan Arena, despite it being mostly made up Iowa fans.

Iowa fans started waiting in line for general admission seats at 10 a.m. Wednesday. Nearly three hours before the 7 p.m. CT tipoff, the line to get in stretched down the street. Northwestern only has two sections with assigned seating for women’s games, with one being the upscale Wilson Club — so it created a bit of a logjam for a massive crowd. (Northwestern’s women’s team averages 1,671 fans a game.)

When Clark arrived to warm up, she was met with a nearly full house and fans were shrieking as she was announced with the starters and walked to the bench at the game’s end.

Clark carries with her the vibe of a barnstorming basketball hero, but she didn’t have a particularly memorable first half, despite scoring 18 points. She went 4-for-11 from the field, missing 5 of 7 3-point shots. She did go 8-for-8 from the line, though people weren’t lining up for the better part of a chilly day to watch her hit free throws. It wasn’t Clark’s best shooting performance, but she did a good job of getting her teammates involved early and leading Iowa to the big win.

“I didn’t shoot it very well from 3 tonight,” Clark said, “and I’ve been shooting the ball pretty well, so you’re due for one of those nights here and there. I was just a little short. So, you know, that happens. But I got to the free-throw line and hit all 10 of my free throws. That’s just kind of what you have to do.” — Jon Greenberg, Chicago sports columnist

This excerpt is from the The Athletic.

[Kätzchen]

https://www.attachmentproject.com/attachment-theory/

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So, on the podcast for Dating, there is an episode about attachment styles and do they matter, in dating.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000552969114

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So, I did a google search on attachment theory and came up with the link at the top of this post. The Attachment Project is a community of social scientists who study attachment processes and on their website you can take their test to find out your attachment style.

I’m doing my own type of research into my own attachment style and trying to help myself as my guy and I weather our first relationship issue, which involves us both and our attachment styles.

I thought leaving the Dating episode link on attachment styles and if it matters, and the link to The Attachment Project might help others who are curious about their own attachment style and what steps you might could take to improve your attachment style and life.

[Orema]

[Orema]

“If you don’t understand yourself, you don’t understand anybody else.”

[GeorgiaMa'am]

"When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain."
-Andrea Gibson

[Orema]

There used to be a time when I’d do an image search for “lesbians” and the results would be mostly pornographic material. I’d have to do deep searches to find the kind of images I wanted.

I did a search today looking for some BF images, and this link with free images was one of the first ones to pop up. The only requirement to use this photo is to include the link with the photo.


https://www.freepik.com/photos/lesbian

[Stone-Butch]

Early this morning they showed "Lady Sings the Blues" after years of only seeing it once it made my night. Diana Ross is amazing as Billie Holiday. Noone else could have done that part as well as Miss Ross. Her voice was always captivating but her acting is untouchable. Happy to see this wonderful movie again.

[Stone-Butch]

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY TO ALL THE LADIES WHO HAVENT BEEN TOLD YET!!!

[Orema]

The remarkable power of holding hands with someone you love
Studies show that holding hands can reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences. But its impact on brain activity suggests something more profound is going on.

Advice by Trisha Pasricha, MD


(Washington Post illustration; iStock)

Q: I’m curious why humans hold hands. Is there a biological reason it’s such a common part of relationships across so many cultures?

A: Holding hands exerts striking effects on our emotional state, especially when it’s with a romantic partner: It can help lower blood pressure, reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences. A 2021 experiment confirmed the soothing effect of holding a spouse’s hand while watching scenes from horror films such as “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” The simple gesture can limit the impact stress has on our autonomic nervous system, which regulates unconscious bodily functions such as pupil dilation. When people feel they are under threat, holding the hands of a loved one calms parts of the brain responsible for vigilance and emotional response.

But the research also suggests something far more profound about our need for connection.

“If you really understand hand-holding — what it is and how it has its effects — you begin to understand just about every single facet of what it is to be a human being,” said James Coan, a clinical psychologist and director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. “It expresses all the things that we are for each other.”

The hand-holding experiments

Coan and his team have conducted several experiments on the effects of holding hands. The first set involved 16 married women who were placed in an MRI brain scan and confronted with the threat of an electric shock. The brain scans showed that when these women held a stranger’s hand, it lowered the stress of being shocked.

But the effect was even more pronounced when they held their husbands’ hands. Notably, the quality of the relationship mattered too. The benefit of holding hands was strongest among women with the highest scores on marital quality tests. Later studies showed reduced stress in other kinds of relationships, including people who were dating or were just friends.

According to Coan, the findings suggest that holding hands actually helps the brain offload the work of confronting stress. So when you reach out to hold a loved one’s hand in a difficult time, it’s like you’re sharing the burden with them.

Why do people hold hands?

During the experiments, Coan and his team kept bumping into an odd finding. Emotional regulation had been established by many in the field to be managed by the prefrontal cortex. It’s the part of the brain that helps us control our instincts and see reason — telling you, “Relax, it’s only a movie!” when you’re watching a horror film, Coan explained.

Coan hypothesized that holding the hand of someone close to them would cause an increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex as the participant relaxed and felt more secure. With more activity in the prefrontal cortex, he thought, less emotional activity — like those involved in fear or anxiety — would occur elsewhere in the brain.

But that’s not what happened.

When couples held hands, Coan did observe a decrease in all the emotional regions of the brain as he had expected. However, in experiment after experiment, there was no associated increase in prefrontal cortex activity — instead, there was a decrease.

What was going on?

At first, Coan couldn’t account for what part of the brain was responsible for the participants’ stress relief when they held hands. It was as if people were getting snacks out of the vending machine without paying any money.

Finally, he arrived at a new conclusion: What if he had gotten the baseline and experimental states backward? Maybe the brain didn’t perceive holding hands as something new he was adding to a baseline of being alone. What if our neuropsychological baseline was feeling connected to someone? Perhaps feeling alone was the deviation all along — one that would require the metabolically expensive activation of our prefrontal cortex to cope.

“To the human brain, the world presents a series of problems to solve,” Coan said. “And it turns out being alone is a problem.”

He called this phenomenon social baseline theory: It’s the idea that the human brain expects access to relationships and interdependence because without them, the world’s problems are mammoth and we need to expend so much more physiological and psychological effort. But when we know we’re not alone — as is conveyed through holding hands — it’s as if we can access snacks freely with no vending machine at all.

The complexities of the human hand

Hands are a key part of how we explore the world from the moment we’re born — and for good reason. Newborn babies are nearsighted (they can’t see beyond a few inches from their faces) and also can’t process colors. But our hands — even before we develop any motor skills — can process sensory information when they brush against the objects around us. Our palms are a tiny fraction of our skin’s total surface area, yet they hold about 15 percent of our tactile nerve fibers. Because of that incredibly high nerve density, our hands can discern between the myriad stimuli the world offers: a warm muffin, a soft puppy’s fur or cold raindrops.

Also, the palms and especially fingertips contain special nerve endings called Meissner corpuscles. These give palms the power to react to the finest of touch even at a depth of less than 10 micrometers — or about the width of a strand of a spider’s web. They allow our hands to process Braille and are the reason we immediately sense if something is slipping so we can tighten our grasp.

We use touch to communicate our feelings as well. A 2009 study observed 124 pairs of strangers: one was blindfolded and the second was asked to convey an emotion to the other simply using touch. Participants were able to recognize — without ever hearing or seeing the other person — emotions such as gratitude, disgust, happiness and fear. In a recent study from the University of London, participants were able to correctly identify another person’s emotion just by looking at their hands without seeing their face.

What I want my patients to know

During the pandemic, when I was caring for hospitalized patients in the days when even shaking hands was unfathomable, many confided in me a deeply felt void from the lack of physical touch with other humans. One morning, I held an elderly woman’s hand in the emergency room as my resident prepared to do an exam, and the woman said, “It feels like you’re the first person I’ve touched in months.” I still think of that encounter and of that visceral hunger for contact many of us didn’t know existed until it was taken away.

Don’t be afraid to offer a hand to someone who is struggling — we’re clearly wired for it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/welln...ands-benefits/

[Kätzchen]

For the first time since I was seriously hurt back in November of 2016, I booked out my first vacation. My first vacation from work in over 8 years. I’m turning 65 in May and will take time off to get Medicare up and operational for my medical needs, then I’m staying home to jump start my summer by spending every day at the gym to establish a good workout and kick start my way to better health.

My sweetie and I are going to disappear for a bit too. ☺️😁🥰😍❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Orema]

[Bèsame*]

Super stylish luggage. I found it and it's in my closet now!!

[Orema]

I love abstract line art.

[Orema]

In the end only three things matter:
How much you loved,
how gently you lived,
and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.
—Buddha

[Bèsame*]

[Orema]

Don’t think it can’t happen again.

[Orema]

I dream a dream that dreams back at me.
—Toni Morrison—

[Kätzchen]

A very rare pair of monumental fahua Buddhist lions on stands
Late Ming Dynasty, 16th/17th century

From Bonham's website:

This pair has survived remarkably well and each assembly is presented imposingly in three parts with the lion resting on a matching two-piece pedestal 90 cm (36 in) high. They announce in many ways their Buddhist association.

The male lion, traditionally positioned on the right as one faces the hall, sits open-mouthed and staring ahead with his left front paw, as is customary, resting playfully on an embroidered brocade ball. The female sits to the left with her mouth nearly shut and, as is also customary, has her right paw clasped protectively around her cub. The ball and cub are strongly embedded in traditional styling, and explanations for their meaning are offered in the folklore of different East Asian countries. However, their origin and true significance are now obscure.

Similarly, the 'one mouth shut and one open' convention is seen often in guardian figure pairs, and explanations are offered throughout Asia for its significance. Many agree that 'mouth open' signifies vocalisation of the first character, 'a', of the Sanskrit alphabet, and 'mouth shut' the last, 'um', and that together they represent the sound 'om' which expresses the 'Absolute or Ultimate Reality' in the Sanskrit mantra. Another interpretation is that the two sounds represent the 'first and last breath' or the beginning and end of life whilst, in some Japanese traditions, a third suggests in a similar vein that the male lion inhales whilst the lioness exhales, symbolising 'life and death'.

More compelling are the astonishing eyes of the lioness. Whilst her right eye stares fixedly ahead, her left eye is swivelled rearwards as if re-directing her gaze towards, or to some point behind, her mate. This strabismus is clearly intended but its meaning is unclear. Moreover, the skilful modelling of the animal's head and facial contours renders this intriguing and unusual feature almost unnoticeable at first sight to the casual frontal observer.

Remarkable also is the tightly coiled 'coiffure' of the lions' manes which refers strongly to the archaic influence of Greco-Buddhist art from Central Asia in the early days of Buddhism in China in the 5th century.

To read more about Chinthe Buddhist Lions (LINK)