LastThursday

How does white respond to Black Queen c1 in your scenario? Unless white wants to lose their Rook, they have to move it. There are only two safe squares for it, a2 or d3. Neither blocks the black queen going to g5 on the next move. White could just ignore the Rook threat and do Bishop c2 threatening mate, but Knight d7 to f6 stops that and threatens their queen in return. Even if white Queen g6 to avoid the Knight, black can do Queen g5 and things are looking equal after the queen trades.

I've been feeling a lot of stress lately and I'm concerned about its effects on my health and sleep. Anyone here now how to clear stress hormones quickly from the body, and how to reverse the bad effects of stress hormones?

My take on Puzzle 5. Black Queen takes White Bishop for free. White a3 Rook has to move away somewhere safe. Black Queen g5 check. Then black knight f4. Looking like checkmate unless the black knight is taken.

WTF? I feel stressed just reading that. Thanks all, some great suggestions. I'll try crying, moving a lot, and hanging upside down. Perhaps some humour for good measure.

I didn't read the whole book, because I got the gist in the first half of the book. It's just another one of those books that puts people into a set of categories, and explains everything through that paradigm. But it's good for making you aware that these categories exist, the competitive go-getter, the people pleasers and so on - which is useful in itself. It also explains how the four categories might interact well with each other and their inner motivations. Who doesn't like to categorise themselves? It could have been a slimmer book. Awareness is nine-tenths of the law. Or am I mixing my metaphors?

The saga with my dad continues, he is still in hospital but due for imminent discharge. He's still very weak but at least able to dress and bathe himself now. He won't have anyone at home after discharge, albeit for one day perhaps. I'm back in the UK (thank god), but I'm very concerned for him. I could have stayed, but that would have been for an indefinite amount of time, and I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere. I feel bad for doing it, but also hugely relieved. Selfishly I have to look out for myself first, otherwise the stress and worry will make me ill and/or make me unable to help my dad in the longer term. At some point he will probably need to go into home, especially if he loses any more mobility. His flatmate (she only temporarily stays there and can't look after him long term), is a nightmare. She's very domineering, combative and only thinks about getting her own way, and is completely dictating how the situation should be handled, and my dad is too soft to stand up to her. I for one don't want to deal with her too much, I need time to think and plan and not be consantly hounded - she has caused me more stress in the last three weeks than my dad's condition has. Effectively, the situation is simple, he either goes home and largely copes by himself or he doesn't and goes into a home - all this extra drama and hysteria is completely unwarranted. My sister pointed out that both his flatmate and my dad have not really planned or thought about this eventually at all. The flatmate runs a business with him also, and there's about 35 years between them. It was obvious that at some point my dad may get ill or infirm and that would be it. So, in effect I'm in the middle of it picking up the pieces and fielding communications left right and centre. I think my dad will just about cope with living at home, and it will get easier over time as he regains his strength after lying in bed for three weeks. And if so, that my dad will seriously consider his options, he still has his faculties thankfully.

I think it'll be good to get out things that arise and put them down in written form. I have so many lost thoughts and ideas, and some of them were very good.

I see some advantage to putting the white Rook on E3 first, but not much. Otherwise just take the black Knight with white Knight, then White Queen to H5 (whatever happens), since pawns in front of black King are pinned, then in a better position for mate.

Bear in mind high IQ is orthogonal to happiness. Normally it's inversely proportional. Ok ok stupid people are happier and get more sex.

If I was playing Blitz my instinct would be Knight F6 to E4, exposing the queens. Instinct would be to exchange queens after, but may as well take black bishop. But then black Knight F2 for check, but white can counter with taking it with their Knight, and I retaliate with black Rook. But then what? My other instinct is the Black Queen + Rook diagonal pair is the crux of the puzzle. But I can't work it out.

Bear in mind high IQ is orthogonal to sexual prowess. Normally it's inversely proportional. EDIT That's my usual chat up line.

Do what you love? Otherwise, DON'T work 10 hours a day.

More random stuff from @LastThursday please bear with me, loading... Tom boy A-Ha on CD repeat Out of Blue Comes Green Auburn hair Lulu Short hair Excitable Stripey Tights Stick insect Milton Keynes Bowl Was Not Was Big watches Sexual exploration Innocent love Jealousy Crying Kabooey Gillygogs Running round and round Weightlifting In bed kissing all day T'Pau: China in Your Hand 1988 Wet T-shirt, yikes Summer high jinx Shooting GF's brother with air gun (oops) Soul II Soul Crow (Lindsey!) Kissin' on a bench Empty tube trains home The Venue: clubbing and dry ice Fool's Gold Barrowboy (f**k him) Garry (f**k him) KFC Chicken Burger ... South Kensington Sick (original) parquet flooring Encyclopedia Brittanica (Fourier Transforms!) Fish tanks Curry and Coca Cola (bliss) Frisky Bull Dogs Glow in the Dark Stars Gladiators The Twilight Zone The Nuns of Monza (!) The Lost Boys 9.5 Weeks St Etienne: Only can love break your heart Gladiators Go! Apple IIgs Airheart Bard's Tale (mega printout colouring in felt tip forever) Spinning 8-bit wireframes A-ha cubes Jangling keys opening schools at six o'clock (nearly killed me) Mopping floors Hydrochloric Acid + urinals Super Dodgy Woodpecker council estates Drunken taxis Getting mugged Getting to know my mugger Walking home for two miles Getting away from home Network 7 The James Whale Show Get Stuffed! Impromptu naked duvet discovery (and nearly misapproriating an illegal cherry) Nosey sisters Officious ginger brother The Dew Drop Inn Close to Me: Cure 15 going on 16 Unbearable holiday wait Will you go out with me? Green chequed shirts Drainpipe grey jeans Basketball shoes Have my cherised calculator (supernerd) New girlfriend meet old girlfriend Baggy happy acid hoodies Paisley shirts!! (I loved them) Hi Tec Badminton

@Someone here I'm happy to choose whichever angle suits the conversation. I say "non-living matter" within the context of the OP and you understood what I meant. Of course I didn't actually say those things. I'm equally happy to say that everything is within consciousness and leave it at that.

Just get it out Guillermo. I continue to be in Dublin and having to sort out things for my dad, whilst he is still in hospital. He's due to be moved to another hospital for rehabilitation for his mobility. As it stands there is no way that he can live by himself. The hope is that he recovers enough mobility to be able to do that, but even before he went into hospital he was borderline, and was struggling to think clearly and keep on top of things. Saying that, he's a lot more compos mentis that even before he went into hospital. My dad's always been a dreamer and getting him to be practical and pragmatic is a real effort. Getting him to help himself is even harder. Your parents bring you up and then they turn into children and you become their parent. I really just want to go home and to stop having my dad as the focus of all my attention, it feels artificial and unnatural. And I want to stop living in his flat by myself. Why is it me that's on the hook for his care? Don't my siblings give a shit? Why does his own brother not give a damn? And for the love of god why don't the hospital find him a place for rehab, being in limbo is slowly killing me. The last few weeks has felt like months. Over and out.

You can separate out the emotion from the act. You're right that your mother just wants the best for you, and you should see her actions through that lens, and forgive her when she doesn't get it right. Take her advice only if it feels right to you. Of all the people in the world that can trigger you most emotionally, it's your family. Just allow yourself to be upset, don't try and rationalise it or ruminate on it, let it pass naturally. If the emotion is too much, just say to your mother that you will talk to her another time.

What is the right way to live life? The answer: there isn't a right way. The world and their brother will tell you what to do and what you should be doing, and they're all wrong.

This is the genius of life, it is simultaneously separate and an integral part of the universe. It's separateness comes from its ability to maintain a set of patterns of matter through time. The actual matter itself rushes like a river through an organism, so it isn't the matter that is alive, it is the patterns it makes. The patterns have a type of will, but like a fractal have a repeated structure through time as well as space. That fractal is able to "absorb" being disrupted by that rush of matter and recover. A fractal is a never ending feedback system, that creates unlimited complexity from simple ingredients: matter and laws of nature.

In the semi-light I stumble. Through the dimness I make out wooden floating stairs leading up. Above a breathing presence, barely there. I stand still a moment straining to hear. I shouldn't have entered. I feel forward and grab a step, feeling its solidness in my grip. In that way I fumble my way round to the bottom and begin to climb. Movement stirs above, but my feet continue despite me. I suddenly stop half way up, as the bright full moon peaks through the blinds and casts my breathing shadow on the wall opposite. I breathe deeply. Should I go? No harm done, just a figment of an imagination. Taking another step up, I am level with the floor above, and automatically push myself on my toes to see. Nothing but sombre darkness. No sound except my clenched breath. Do I say something? I continue looking up all the while, until I'm at the top. My eyes slowly adjust. A large bed sits squarely in the middle of the upper floor, covers strewn wildly. I can barely breathe. Below me the stairs are illuminated in pale moonlight. I take a single step towards the bed arms out groping for an answer. I misjudge the edge of the bed and fall face forward into enveloping softness. I lay very still in embarrassment and in fear, arms and legs out, face down. Suddenly I feel a warm rhythmic breath on the back of my neck. I yank my head round to see what it is. It touches my lips with a single finger in a motion of silence. "I've been waiting".

@Breakingthewall obviously we're not going to solve "life" in a few paragraphs on a forum. My intuition tells me that there is a continuum between dead and alive matter. Viruses for example are on the cusp and maybe there's matter more dead or more alive than a virus. All life seems to have the ability to overcome disruption and keep itself intact. In digital communications it's possible to have forward error correction on a message, so that if it is corrupted in transit, then the original message can be recovered. For life to be self-sustaining against being corrupted, all it would need is an error correcting mechanism. If the error correction was strong enough it could sustain itself indefinitely. In a sense an organism "knows itself" so that it can "correct itself", it has an identity. Non-living matter in general doesn't have this self-correcting ability.

@Breakingthewall I enjoyed that. As I like to say: life is matter with an identity. Life is also an epiphenomenon, it is made of dead matter that is constantly flowing and self-organising, the patterns it makes is life itself. Life resists entropy and change to maintain itself. But fundamentally all matter has mass which also resists change of motion: inertial mass is in one sense "alive". Matter has the identity of "mass".

@Butters the obvious question is what do you mean by original? A thought can be the an arrangement of previous experiences in a new way, like a small pink elephant. That would be original in some way. A thought could be of a person you've never met before, the idea of a person is not original, but the particular manifestation is. But to be truly original the thought would have to be of something not in your experience. But then, how would you be able to interpret it if you have no prior experience to base it on? Maybe you'd say it was a "mystical experience", I don't know.

@CARDOZZO nothing mindblowing unfortunately just lots of low level weirdness over the years. I think it's even hard to disentangle cause from effect with supernatural stuff or magick. For example is telepathy an exchange of thoughts, or is it just looking into the future? Or retrocausality, did the future event cause you to make a decision in the past, that forced the future event happen? And for me the more I try to consciously control things, the less effective things are. But also I probably haven't tried to study it closely enough. Sometimes things I've wished to happen take a very long time to manifest, and it does so in convoluted ways. I've learned patience.

@CARDOZZO read Advanced Magick for Beginners on the Internet Archive. It's an easy read and might give you some ideas: https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapman/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapman.pdf The gist of the book is to be creative and experiment a lot, but also to be methodical and write down what works and what doesn't. This will give you a good idea of what you're able to do. For example in my life, I will often realise that I'm idly thinking about someone, and they then contact me soon after. It's happened so many times that it's not coincidence. The trick is, can I force it to happen? Maybe, maybe not.

The belief that my conscious experience is generated by my brain. But it is super obvious to me that it is in fact the other way round, and it's not a belief, because it's there right in front of me all the time, it's an absolute truth.