How Long Could You Survive–In The Quietest Room In The World? Would you literally hear the blood flow through your body? Would your innermost thoughts drive you crazy? From one writer’s semi-hallucinatory experience:
Certain people find the promise of such quiet irresistible; it entices them, like a soundless siren call, to visit the building at great personal cost. The room of containment, technically an “anechoic chamber,” is the quietest place on the planet — according to some. According to others, it’s more like the second-quietest. It is quieter than any place most people will ever go, unless they make a point of going to multiple anechoic chambers over the course of a lifetime.
A person inside an anechoic chamber will not hear nothing. The human body is in constant motion — inhaling and expelling air, settling limbs into new positions, pumping blood — and so, constantly creating sounds (although usually we cannot hear them).
Much of the lore about the chamber’s propensity for mind-annihilation centers on the concept of blood sounds. It is an oft-reported experience, in anechoic chambers, for visitors to become aware of the sound of blood pumping in their heads, or sloshing through veins. Hearing the movement of blood through the body is supposedly something like an absolute taboo, akin to witnessing the fabrication of Chicken McNuggets — an ordeal after which placid existence is irreparably shattered.
OK, admit it. Now you want to read the story. Don’t think I would’ve made it past this question on the sorta-psych exam:
“Does it often happen that nearly every thought immediately and automatically suggests an enormous number of ideas?” Someone’s been reading my
Wild Turkeys Terrorize Mass. Town. Led by Evil Ringleader ‘Kevin’:
People in Woburn, north-west of Boston, have been subjected to a barrage of attacks and intimidation by a group of five wild turkeys, with the situation forcing some to take up improvised weapons and residents reporting being trapped in their homes.
The turkeys, led by a male bird nicknamed Kevin, arrived two years ago. Initially the birds were docile, but as time passed they have become ever more pugnacious, leaving Woburners fearful for their safety and forced to adapt their behavior.
Tolson blames Kevin, distinguishable as the only male in the group by his impressive size and elaborate tail plumage, for the group’s behavior, noting that when Kevin is absent the female turkeys tend to leave people and cars alone.
“The women are more mellow and not so territorial. But I think he kind of amps them up to get them going to chase people. But they’re never the instigators,” Tolson said.
“When Kevin’s not around they’ll actually just mind their business and walk away from you.”
‘Anti-Woke’ Bank Flops In Texas. Shoulda been ‘anti-broke’:
A bank startup backed by billionaire Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel and pitched as “anti woke” for “pro-freedom” Americans is closing up shop after less than three months.
The bank, GloriFi, burned through $50 million in investment money, laid off most of its staff on Monday, and informed workers it was shutting down, The Wall Street Journal was the first to report. Hoped-for funding to keep the operation running fell through last Friday.
Entrepreneur and major GOP donor Toby Neugebauer and business partner Nick Ayers — the chief of staff for former Vice President Mike Pence — said that a huge market of plumbers, electricians and police officers were fed up with big banks that didn’t share their values, according to a Journal profile of the operation earlier this year.
Too bad they valued going broke. Sad.
The Bizarro Universe Of Samuel Bankman-Fried. I couldn’t read this fast enough:
Yet in April, when Avedisian was hired as a master of ceremonies for a conference in the Bahamas sponsored by FTX, Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, she saw how the 30-year-old billionaire really lived: in a guarded island compound, every need closely catered to, the world’s elite at his beck and call.
“You’re living this lifestyle of poverty, but you’re partying with Katy Perry?” she recalled thinking. “Why would you want to hang out with these celebrities if you’re so head-down trying to change the world?”
Bankman-Fried’s FTX spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying up top-grade real estate across the Bahamas’ most populous island, New Providence, including offices, apartments and vacation homes used by FTX’s senior executives, according to property records and FTX attorneys.
A major chunk of the spending spree went to Albany, an ultraexclusive luxury community developed in 2010 by a British billionaire with investment from musician Justin Timberlake and golfers Tiger Woods and Ernie Els.
That should be enough to entice you. Read it, you won’t regret it.
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