17 results for “anon_et”
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Rex Orange County made a non-joke song called Hannah Montana. That's so goofy I can't take it seriously. He refers to his crush as "Hannah Montana" throughout it
#Zuckerberg has always been a poser. It looks like a set for a non-mainstream podcast. LOL The way to defeat big tech is to #become #the #tech and build #decentralized #applications on #blockchains. That means nobody owns it and everyone can use it. #MissKitty will build one soon and share. #desktop
How a Legal Backlash Against B...
I would say that I'm a non-violent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you. ...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.
-- Joan Baez
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #JoanBaez #NonViolence #Violence
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #CoyoteButtesNorth #TheWave #VermilionCliffs #Utah
These 5-Star Hotels Allow You to Enjoy Luxury Experiences as a Non-Guest https://www.diningandcooking.com/us/60122/ #Amsterdam(Netherlands) #Aspen(Colo) #hotels #HotelsAndTravelLodgings #London(England) #LuxuryGoodsAndServices #Manhattan(NYC) #NewYorkCity #NYC #NYCHotels #Paris(France) #SanFrancisco(Calif) #TravelAndVacations
my coworker told me earlier he finished writing something first draft and i went to read it and i cried because there was a very human typo and even though i know this dude doesnt use ai to write, im so fucked up lately man that seeing that typo and knowing he had spent the last however long typing that and reading it and editing it... and the thing is that aside from the typo, which is a non issue because it is an unprocessed draft, it was WRITTEN WELL
I need to check this but I read in GrapheneOS' Discord guild that using Revolut in a non-certified AOSP OS will go against the new ToS.
Updated Issue at Senedd Home: M4 Newport. The Senedd has narrowly backed a non-binding motion tabled by Labour supporting a bypass and opposing proposed junction/slip road closures. #Newport #Senedd
https://seneddhome.com/2026/09/m4-newport-congestion-newport-bypass/
Willard Phelps, born OTD in 1941, served briefly as the second Premier of #Yukon in 1985; before 1978 the territory had a non-partisan legislature with no individual acting as leader of the government https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/canada/yukon/?s=mb #travel #Canada #history
The 'problem' with #SCOTUS
...
SCOTUS is important
but unfortunately
the #HeritageFoundation and #Trump
has 'politicized' and corrupted it.
SCOTUS It is no longer a 'non-partial' Constitutional Court
has become the means by which the 'Dictator' bends the law & the Constitution.
And this is (obviously) bad
VERY BAD.
DATE: October 23, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: LSD pushes brain activity toward a more fractal, complex state, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/lsd-pushes-brain-activity-toward-a-more-fractal-complex-state-study-finds/
A new neuroimaging study indicates that lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, alters human brain activity not just by weakening regular brain waves, but also by speeding them up and making neural signals more complex. The weakening of brain waves and the rise in signal complexity were most pronounced in regions tied to sensory processing, language, emotion, and mental imagery, while areas that control physical movement were largely spared. The findings, published in Communications Biology, also hint that listening to music may dampen rather than amplify these drug-induced changes, though that trend did not hold up after statistical correction.
LSD is a potent psychedelic drug that temporarily alters perception, mood, and the sense of self. Like other classic psychedelics, it works primarily by attaching to and activating serotonin 2A receptors on brain cells, though LSD also binds to dopamine receptors. Studying how this compound changes large-scale brain activity helps scientists understand the biological processes that generate conscious experience.
In human studies, researchers often use magnetoencephalography, or MEG, to track the fast-paced electrical activity of the brain. MEG is a non-invasive procedure where a participant sits with their head inside a helmet-like scanner containing sensitive magnetic detectors. As groups of neurons fire together, they produce tiny magnetic fields that the scanner records at a millisecond-by-millisecond scale.
This electrical activity consists of two main types of signals: rhythmic brain waves and background noise. Rhythmic waves, or neural oscillations, happen when thousands of brain cells fire in a synchronized beat, much like a choir singing a specific note. Two of the most common resting rhythms are alpha waves, which cycle at about 8 to 13 times per second (measured in hertz, or Hz) during relaxed wakefulness, and beta waves, which cycle faster at 15 to 30 Hz and relate to active thinking and alertness. These rhythms ride on top of non-rhythmic, background electrical activity that naturally loses strength at higher frequencies.
Previous psychedelic studies consistently showed that drugs like LSD and psilocybin cause a widespread drop in the strength of alpha and beta waves, a process called cortical desynchronization. Because traditional brain wave analyses measure activity within fixed frequency windows, they can confuse a change in wave speed with a loss of wave strength, or mistake shifts in the background noise for changes in actual rhythms. If an alpha wave speeds up against a background that naturally falls off at higher frequencies, it can look as though the wave lost strength when it actually just shifted to a faster tempo.
Beyond brain wave speed and strength, psychedelics also change the unpredictability and structure of brain signals over time. Scientists measure this using two mathematical tools: Lempel-Ziv complexity, which counts how many new and distinct patterns appear in a signal over time, and Higuchi fractal dimension, which measures how “rough” or self-similar a signal looks when zoomed in and out across different time scales. Higher scores on both metrics indicate richer, less predictable brain activity.
The physical and social environment also plays a major role in shaping a psychedelic experience, with music frequently used in both traditional rituals and modern psychedelic-assisted therapy. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2018 showed that LSD heightened brain responses to music across regions tied to auditory processing, emotion, and memory. The new research was led by first author Venkatesh Subramani, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience, and senior author Karim Jerbi, a full professor in the psychology department, both of the Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Laboratory (CoCo Lab) at the Université de Montréal. The team aimed to separate true changes in brain wave strength from shifts in wave speed and background activity, while also testing how music interacts with these electrical signatures.
“A characteristic effect of classic psychedelics is the desynchronization of rhythmic brain activity (that is, reduced coordination of activity among neural populations) in the alpha (8-13 Hz) and beta (15-30 Hz) bands,” Subramani told PsyPost. “LSD, however, appears somewhat unique because it also speeds up these intrinsic oscillations, by up to 2 Hz for alpha and up to 5 Hz for beta. This acceleration creates an ambiguity: it is unclear whether LSD genuinely desynchronizes these rhythms, or whether the previously reported desynchronization is an artifact of shifts in the spectral peaks.”
To investigate these questions, the researchers analyzed existing MEG data originally collected from 17 healthy volunteers. The experiment used a within-subject, single-blind, placebo-controlled design with a counterbalanced session order, meaning each participant completed two separate scanning sessions spaced 14 days apart without being told which treatment they were receiving. In one session, participants received an intravenous injection of 75 micrograms of LSD, and in the other, they received an inactive saline placebo.
Roughly four hours after the injection, participants underwent MEG brain scans under two different conditions, each lasting seven minutes. In the first condition, they rested with their eyes closed in silence. In the second condition, they kept their eyes closed while listening to ambient music excerpts. The research team used anatomical MRI scans of each participant’s head to map the MEG signals onto 360 distinct regions across the outer surface of the brain.
The authors then used a specialized mathematical tool to separate the rhythmic brain waves from the non-rhythmic background activity in each brain region. Instead of measuring wave strength inside rigid frequency boxes, they tracked the exact peak frequency where each participant’s alpha and beta waves were strongest. They also calculated Lempel-Ziv complexity and Higuchi fractal dimension for each region, and trained machine learning algorithms to see which brain features best distinguished the LSD state from the placebo state.
When the researchers separated the rhythmic waves from the background noise and accounted for shifting frequencies, they found that LSD still caused a genuine drop in the strength of alpha and beta waves. Alpha wave weakening was most pronounced in the temporal lobes, while beta wave weakening occurred broadly across the brain’s surface. However, ignoring the shifting frequencies made the wave weakening look much more widespread than it actually was, confirming that standard methods can inflate the apparent spatial extent of the drug’s effect.
“This study clarifies the ambiguity,” Subramani explained. “It shows that the weakening of oscillations, the usual marker of desynchronization, is genuine even after accounting for the peak shifts, a potential confound.”
Separating the signals also clarified what was happening in the posterior cingulate cortex, a major hub for self-reflection and daydreaming. In standard analyses that mix all signals together, this hub showed large drops in brain wave power under LSD. Once the background noise was removed, those rhythmic differences vanished, indicating that LSD mainly altered the background electrical activity in this region rather than its synchronized waves.
Alongside weakening the waves, LSD systematically sped them up across large portions of the brain. On average, the peak frequency of alpha waves increased by about 2 Hz, while beta wave peaks shifted upward by roughly 5 Hz. Machine learning models trained solely on these frequency shifts were able to correctly identify whether a scan came from an LSD or placebo session with over 82 percent accuracy, where chance would be 50 percent.
The background electrical activity also flattened out across the brain, meaning there was less slow background activity relative to fast activity. At the same time, both Lempel-Ziv complexity and fractal dimension rose substantially, especially in the back of the brain where visual information is processed. Machine learning decoders using these complexity and fractal measures distinguished the LSD state from placebo with over 76 percent accuracy, compared to a 50 percent chance level.
“In plain terms, LSD makes the brain’s main rhythms faster and weaker, and makes its activity more complex,” Subramani noted.
These results align with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which examined brain activity under microdoses using EEG rather than full psychedelic doses using MEG, and similarly found that LSD increases neural signal complexity. The broader shift away from slower rhythms is also in line with a study covered by PsyPost in March 2026, which examined scalp EEG activity following psilocybin rather than source-resolved MEG following LSD and found that the drug weakened slower theta and alpha waves while strengthening faster beta and gamma activity. That study measured the strength of different frequency bands rather than the speed of individual rhythms, however, and the authors of the new paper note that a clear speeding of alpha and beta peaks has not been consistently observed with psilocybin.
To understand how these electrical changes relate to everyday mental functions, the researchers compared their brain maps against a massive database of over 14,000 prior brain imaging studies. They found that LSD’s effects followed distinct functional hierarchies across different brain systems. Reductions in alpha and beta wave strength, background flattening, and complexity increases were strongest in networks tied to vision, hearing, language, emotion, and mental imagery, while the motor cortex, which controls physical movement, remained largely unaffected.
The weakening and speeding of brain waves did not always line up. The functional systems that showed the largest drop in alpha wave strength, such as auditory and language networks, showed only minimal alpha speeding, while motor and attention networks retained relatively more of their alpha strength but showed the largest increases in alpha speed. In the beta range, the pattern reversed, with the biggest speed-ups occurring where beta strength dropped the most. Because the two effects were not statistically linked across the brain, the authors suggest that wave weakening and wave acceleration may reflect separate processes happening at the same time.
When the researchers examined the effect of music, they did not find any results that survived strict statistical corrections for multiple comparisons across the whole brain. However, uncorrected trends pointed in the opposite direction of what the team initially expected. Instead of boosting the brain effects of LSD, listening to music tended to slightly calm them down, resulting in less background flattening and lower signal complexity compared to experiencing LSD in silence.
The authors suggested that music might act as an external attentional anchor. Building on a 2024 analysis of this same dataset that found psychedelic-induced signal complexity was highest with eyes closed and dropped when attention turned outward, they propose that resting in silence allows the mind to wander freely into unconstrained internal states, whereas focusing on an external structured sound may gently ground and stabilize the brain’s electrical activity.
“Music can be very emotionally powerful, and music and psychedelics have been used together in rituals across many cultures,” Subramani said. “We wanted to formally test how music modulates the way LSD affects the brain. We hypothesized that music potentiates the effect of the drug. Somewhat surprisingly, and albeit not statistically robust, we found the opposite trend: music appeared to reduce the drug effect, which could suggest that the stimulus acts as an anchor that keeps subjects from fully experiencing the psychedelic state.”
“As noted in the paper, this is only hypothesis-generating,” he added. “It calls for studies with more subjects and targeted experimental designs with better controls.” He cautioned that “the music result is exploratory and should not be over-interpreted.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these results. The study relied on a relatively small sample of 17 participants, which limits the statistical power needed to detect subtle interactions between the drug and external factors like music. In addition, the MEG scans were recorded about four hours after the LSD injection, roughly two and a half hours after the drug’s subjective effects had peaked. This timing gap may explain why the researchers found few strong links between the brain measurements and participants’ questionnaire ratings.
Looking at music over a single seven-minute average also treats a dynamic song as if it were a static event. Future studies with larger groups could track how brain waves respond to changing musical moments in real time, and use muscle sensors to help rule out muscle activity as a source of the fastest brain signals. Comparing LSD directly with other psychedelics using these same signal-separation methods will also help determine whether speeding up alpha and beta rhythms is a unique signature of LSD’s pharmacology.
The team is already extending their analytical approach to see how these faster brain wave frequencies might affect other common measures of brain communication, such as functional connectivity, which tracks how closely pairs of brain regions coordinate their activity over time.
“This study shows that LSD shifts the oscillatory peaks and that there is a genuine weakening of oscillations beyond these shifts,” Subramani said. “Power is one measure that could be confounded by peak shifts. Another is functional connectivity between pairs of brain regions. We have been actively working on this, and a preprint will be out shortly!”
The study, “LSD reconfigures cortical dynamics through faster brain rhythms and increased fractal dimension,” was authored by Venkatesh Subramani, Timothy Nest, Annalisa Pascarella, Jérémy Brunel, Yorguin José Mantilla Ramos, Yann Harel, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, Robin Carhart-Harris, Giulia Lioi, Nicolas Farrugia, and Karim Jerbi.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/lsd-pushes-brain-activity-toward-a-more-fractal-complex-state-study-finds/
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #LSD #Psychedelics #Neuroscience #BrainScience #BrainActivity #Neuroimaging #Consciousness #MentalHealthResearch #ScientificResearch #MusicAndMind
Preventing duplicate customer messages when background jobs retry.
Push notifications are not financial ledger entries, but duplicates still damage trust. A customer should not receive the same failure alert three times because a worker retried, nor should two scheduler processes send the same campaign simultaneously.
Task queues normally provide at-least-once execution. Notification systems must design around that fact.
Claim the campaign before sending
Two workers can pick up the same scheduled campaign. Reading its status and then updating it is vulnerable to a race.
Lock the campaign and transition it to sending inside one database transaction:
with database_transaction():
campaign = Campaign.objects.select_for_update().get(id=campaign_id)
if campaign.status not in {"draft", "queued", "scheduled"}:
return
campaign.status = "sending"
campaign.save()
Only the worker that successfully claims the campaign proceeds.
Deduplicate recipients by delivery destination
A user may have duplicate device records, or the same token may appear in customer and merchant contexts. Build the target list from active devices, validate token format, and retain one target per actual push token.
Give each delivery a deterministic identity
Create a non-sensitive delivery key from the campaign and device token:
delivery_key = sha256(f"{campaign_id}:{device_token}".encode()).hexdigest()
Store one delivery record per campaign and key under a unique database constraint. Create that record before calling the push provider.
If a duplicate task finds the record, it can inspect the existing status rather than sending again.
Record actual provider outcomes
Queued does not mean sent. The delivery record should distinguish pending, accepted, and failed outcomes and retain a safe error message.
Campaign totals can then be calculated from delivery rows rather than optimistic task counts.
Handle partial failure
One invalid device token should not abort an entire campaign. Each delivery is an independent attempt, while the campaign summarizes the results.
If the campaign-level task crashes, move the campaign out of a permanent sending state so operations can inspect or retry it safely. Existing delivery keys prevent already-sent targets from receiving the message again.
The design principle
Exactly-once delivery cannot be guaranteed across every external push platform, but the application can guarantee that it submits each campaign-device pair at most once under its own retry model.
That requires transactional campaign claiming, target deduplication, deterministic delivery identities, and persistent per-device outcomes.#architecture #backend #database #softwareengineering #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
Exactly-Once Push Notifications on At-Least-Once Workers
Introduction
On October 21st, at 07:41 UTC, Chainguard unilaterally breached a coordinated disclosure embargo by releasing a PHP security patch more than six hours ahead of the agreed schedule. This premature disclosure exposed critical vulnerabilities in cybersecurity collaboration, undermining weeks of meticulous coordination among stakeholders to synchronize vulnerability disclosure. The PHP community, which had shared the patch with distributors like Chainguard under strict embargo terms, sharply criticized the company for jeopardizing the security of a significant portion of the web. By releasing the patch prematurely, Chainguard enabled malicious actors to analyze the binary fix before widespread deployment, creating an exploitable window.
The causal mechanism of risk escalation is clear: Chainguard’s embargo breach introduced a temporal disparity between the patch’s public availability and its deployment by end-users. This gap provided attackers with a critical opportunity to reverse-engineer the patch, pinpoint the underlying vulnerability, and develop targeted exploits. During this interim period, PHP users remained unprotected, as the official disclosure—intended to align with patch availability—was delayed. This misalignment significantly heightened the risk of exploitation, effectively nullifying the protective purpose of coordinated disclosure protocols.
This incident exposes systemic vulnerabilities in the enforcement of cybersecurity embargoes. Unlike legal embargoes, which are backed by enforceable penalties, coordinated disclosures in the tech industry depend on trust and voluntary compliance. Chainguard’s actions underscore the absence of formal repercussions for violations, revealing a system susceptible to conflicts of interest—such as distributors prioritizing their own user base over the broader ecosystem. Without robust deterrents, such breaches risk becoming normalized, eroding trust among researchers, distributors, and users. This erosion threatens to fragment the unified response to critical vulnerabilities, leaving the global web infrastructure increasingly vulnerable to rapid, large-scale exploitation.
The implications are stark: if coordinated disclosure processes fail, the global web infrastructure becomes more susceptible to widespread, rapid exploitation. This incident highlights the urgent need for stricter adherence to embargo protocols and the establishment of clear, enforceable consequences for violations. Strengthening these mechanisms is essential to ensure that collaborative security efforts are not compromised by individual actors, thereby safeguarding the integrity of vulnerability management practices.
The Security Patch and Coordinated Disclosure
In cybersecurity, coordinated disclosure serves as the cornerstone of responsible vulnerability management. This process is a meticulously timed sequence where researchers, developers, and distributors align the release of security patches with the public disclosure of vulnerabilities. The objective is clear: to provide users with a critical window to update their systems before malicious actors can exploit identified flaws. This mechanism operates as a high-stakes race against time, where adherence to agreed timelines is paramount—deviations can precipitate catastrophic outcomes.
Chainguard’s Breach of Protocol
On October 21st at 07:41 UTC, Chainguard unilaterally released a PHP security patch six hours ahead of the agreed embargo, constituting a critical failure in the coordinated disclosure process. This breach unfolded through the following mechanism:
The Causal Chain of Risk Amplification
Chainguard’s actions initiated a cascading sequence of events:
This sequence is not speculative. In cybersecurity, time is a quantifiable resource—each hour gained by attackers corresponds directly to increased user exposure. Chainguard’s breach effectively granted attackers a tactical advantage, nullifying weeks of coordinated preparatory efforts.
Systemic Implications and Structural Vulnerabilities
Chainguard’s actions underscore a fundamental weakness in cybersecurity embargoes: the absence of enforceable penalties. Coordinated disclosure operates on a framework of trust and voluntary compliance, rendering it susceptible to organizational priorities. Key implications include:
The conclusion is unequivocal: coordinated disclosure is not merely procedural—it is a critical mechanical safeguard for global cybersecurity. Violations of this protocol do not merely bend rules; they destabilize the entire system. To safeguard digital infrastructure, stricter adherence to protocols and tangible consequences for non-compliance are imperative. Absent these measures, we jeopardize not just individual patches, but the resilience of the entire global network.
Impact and Reactions
Chainguard’s unauthorized release of a PHP security patch on October 21st at 07:41 UTC—six hours and eleven minutes ahead of the coordinated disclosure schedule—directly compromised the integrity of global vulnerability management. This breach not only violated established cybersecurity protocols but also triggered a cascade of technical and systemic consequences, exposing millions of PHP users to heightened risk. The following analysis dissects the immediate and long-term ramifications of this action.
Immediate Technical Consequences
Upon Chainguard’s release of the binary patch, malicious actors gained a critical window to exploit the vulnerability. The reverse-engineering process—which involves disassembling the binary into machine code, performing differential analysis against prior versions, and mapping code changes to identify patched vulnerabilities—was accelerated. Mechanistically, this process mirrors forensic code analysis, enabling attackers to reconstruct the vulnerability’s root cause with precision. The temporal gap between Chainguard’s release and the official disclosure provided attackers with a tactical advantage, allowing them to develop and deploy exploits before the majority of PHP users could apply the patch. This scenario is analogous to a security breach in which an adversary gains access to a system’s blueprints while its defenses remain unactivated.
Reactions from the PHP Community and Experts
Long-Term Implications
If such breaches become normalized, the coordinated disclosure framework risks collapse. This erosion of trust manifests in the following systemic consequences:
Mechanisms of Risk Amplification
The risk amplification resulting from Chainguard’s actions can be modeled as a causal chain:
Practical Insights
Chainguard’s breach underscores the necessity of enforceable consequences for cybersecurity embargo violations. Without penalties—whether legal, financial, or reputational—organizations may prioritize narrow interests over collective security, akin to disregarding traffic laws for personal convenience. Strengthening protocols to include binding enforcement mechanisms is essential to safeguarding global web infrastructure. In cybersecurity, time is a quantifiable resource; its misuse through protocol violations directly correlates with increased user exposure. Addressing this gap requires systemic reforms to restore trust and ensure compliance with coordinated disclosure frameworks.
Lessons Learned and Strategic Reforms
Chainguard’s unauthorized release of a PHP security patch prior to the agreed disclosure timeline underscores the fragility of coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) mechanisms. This incident not only exposed systemic weaknesses in embargo enforcement but also amplified the risk landscape for millions of PHP users. The following analysis distills critical insights and proposes actionable reforms to fortify global cybersecurity practices.
Critical Insights
Strategic Reforms
Proactive Mitigation Strategies
To preempt future breaches, the cybersecurity community must address the root causes of embargo violations through systemic, educational, and technical interventions:
Chainguard’s breach serves as a critical inflection point for the cybersecurity community. By addressing the structural vulnerabilities exposed in this incident, we can reinforce CVD frameworks, safeguard global web infrastructure, and ensure that time—a decisive factor in cybersecurity—is not weaponized against users. The path forward demands not just technical innovation, but a recalibration of norms, incentives, and governance to prioritize collective resilience over individual expediency.#cybersecurity #embargo #vulnerability #exploitation #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
Chainguard's Premature PHP Patch Release Undermines Coordinated Disclosure, Increases Risk for Users
@flotationdevice asked:
"Which definition of antisemtism were they using to conduct this survey?"
From https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-antisemitism-report-questioned-student-claim-fall-apart:
"The Bell review used the IHRA definition of antisemitism, according to its published terms of reference.
[...]
The IHRA definition of antisemitism was originally formulated in 2004 as a non-legally-binding tool to assist in monitoring antisemitism. Examples appended to it include "claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour", which critics say can blur the line between antisemitism and political criticism of Israel.
Its lead author, Kenneth Stern, has warned against its use as a disciplinary or legal instrument, arguing that it may risk restricting legitimate political expression."
The IHRA website https://holocaustremembrance.com
(not to be confused with https://holocaustremembrance.org) is a Zionist propaganda medium purely meant to conflate the Holocaust and AntiSemitism with Israel propaganda.
Illegal Westbank settler Dani Dayan was IHRA chairman from March 2025 to March this year. Dani Dayan is also chairman of Yad Vashem (https://www.yadvashem.org/about/dani-dayan.html) and deputy chairman of Auschwitz (https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/auschwitz-council/members-of-the-international-auschwitz-council-4th-term-of-offi/). Probably he wrote the resolution at the bottom of https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/auschwitz-council/.
More on this ultra-Zionist, and a screenshot of said resolution, in https://todon.nl/@ErikvanStraten/115366940876615051.
#IHRAsucks #DaniDayanToICC #AuschwitzHijackedByZionists #AntiZionismIsNotAntiSemitism #FrancescaAlbaneseIsRight #AntiSemitism #AntiZionism #Hasbara
DATE: October 22, 2026 at 03:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Haunted houses may bring people closer, but psychological research suggests the bonding really happens on the ride home
A new study published in the journal Emotion provides evidence that visiting a haunted house with others is linked to feeling more connected to them. People who felt more scared, and who held hands or made physical contact, were more likely to say the experience brought them closer, though before-and-after closeness ratings barely changed, and interviews suggested that talking about the experience afterward may be where much of the bonding happens.
Humans are highly social creatures, and forming bonds with others is strongly linked to overall health and psychological well-being. Scientists have gathered substantial evidence showing that sharing positive emotions, like laughing at a comedy show or cheering at a concert, amplifies interpersonal closeness. A separate line of research suggests that negative emotions, specifically fear, also push people to seek out the company of others. When people face a common threat, they often prefer to face it together rather than alone.
Beyond simply seeking company, shared emotional arousal can create a sense of unity. Previous studies indicate that fear can spread from person to person, synchronizing heart rates and potentially reinforcing group cohesion. Most previous experiments exploring the link between fear and social bonding relied on artificial laboratory settings or situations involving genuine threats. The researchers wanted to investigate how fear affects relationships in a recreational context, where the threat is entirely simulated.
Jane Wiley conducted this research as an undergraduate student at the University of Florida and is now an incoming social psychology doctoral student at the University of Virginia. The project grew out of a passion Wiley shares with their faculty advisor and the study’s senior author, Lawton K. “Ken” Swan.
“He and I are huge horror and haunted house fans,” Wiley told PsyPost. “We have shared plenty of stories (and have heard many others from haunted house guests) of how going through a haunted house together can be a strong bonding experience.”
Wiley noted that anecdotal success stories served as inspiration for the project. “A first date he had at Halloween Horror Nights led to a happy marriage, and I got very close with a best friend — Garrett Johnson, another author of the paper — after we went through a haunted house together,” they said. “This interpersonal focus had not been researched in recreational fear literature when we began, so that was what drew us to studying what we did.”
Millions of people seek out recreational fear every year by riding roller coasters, watching horror movies, or visiting haunted attractions. The scientists designed this project to test whether the fear experienced in these playful, safe environments translates into stronger social ties. They wanted to know if the temporary thrill of a scare can generate a lasting sense of interpersonal warmth among friends, family members, and acquaintances.
To explore these ideas, Wiley and their colleagues at the University of Florida conducted a series of five studies over three Halloween seasons at a commercial haunted attraction in Florida, the Gainesville Fear Garden. In the first study, the team surveyed 986 attraction attendees immediately after they finished a sensory deprivation haunted house. The participants answered questions on a 7-point scale regarding how much fear they felt, how much they enjoyed the attraction, and whether the experience brought them closer to the person in their group they already felt closest to. The researchers also asked if participants communicated or held hands with their companion during the event.
About 48 percent of participants agreed that the experience brought them closer to their companion. Higher levels of reported fear predicted a stronger feeling of having bonded, with each additional point of fear on the 7-point scale associated with about a fifth of a point higher rating on the bonding question. Holding hands, communicating during the event, and enjoying the experience also predicted higher ratings. This provided preliminary, correlational evidence that shared fear in a fun setting is linked to feeling closer.
To verify these findings and look for measurable changes, the researchers conducted a second study with 500 participants during the next Halloween season. This time, guests completed surveys both immediately before and right after navigating the attraction. This method allowed the scientists to measure shifts in interpersonal closeness. As in the first study, participants were asked to focus on the person in their group they felt closest to.
Once again, the amount of fear a person felt predicted how much they believed the experience brought them closer to their companion, with 58 percent agreeing that the attraction brought them closer. Yet, when the scientists looked at the direct difference between the before and after closeness ratings, they found no measurable change: participants rated closeness at an average of 6.27 out of 7 before entering and 6.12 after exiting. The researchers suspected a ceiling effect, meaning that because these participants already rated their relationship so highly before entering the attraction, there was very little mathematical room for their closeness score to increase on a 7-point scale.
For the third study, the researchers adjusted their focus to see if the bonding effect applied to less intimate relationships. They surveyed 554 participants, asking them to focus on the group member they felt the least close to, or someone they argued with most often. Participants were asked if the attraction brought them closer to this specific person, how much fear they felt, and if they made any physical contact.
The scientists found that fear and physical contact remained strong predictors of feeling brought together, even for the least close companions. Approximately 45 percent of participants agreed that the experience made them feel closer to their least close group member. When asked about their party as a whole, an even higher percentage, about 64 percent, felt the experience brought their entire group closer. This suggests that the link between fear and feeling closer is not limited to already-close relationships, and the authors suggest the effect may be even stronger at the group level, though the group and individual figures came from different questions.
In the fourth study, the only one that was preregistered, the researchers again attempted to capture a measurable shift in closeness from before to after the haunted house. They maintained their focus on least close companions to avoid the ceiling effect seen in earlier attempts. The researchers collected complete survey data from 263 attendees who rated their closeness to their least close groupmate before entering and then again after exiting. The team also asked the participants to rate their fear, enjoyment, and physical contact during the immersive 30-minute experience.
The predictive model held up for a fourth time, with fear, physical contact, and enjoyment all predicting perceptions of enhanced closeness. Additionally, the researchers finally detected a statistically significant increase in closeness ratings from before the experience to afterward, rising from 4.61 before entering to 4.81 after exiting, an average increase of just 0.21 points on a 7-point scale. This modest change raised questions about why about half of participants said the experience brought them closer, even though their numerical closeness ratings barely moved.
“Our most surprising finding was when we kept seeing no pre-to-post change in closeness, prior to figuring out that post-haunt reflection is essential for bonding to occur,” Wiley noted.
Wiley added that this lack of initial change was difficult to interpret at first. “This ultimately ended up being a good obstacle to encounter since it led us to transition to qualitative data collection (which helped us deduce the post-experience reflection bit), but it was hard to make sense of at the time,” Wiley said. “So I would say the most surprising finding is that going through a haunted house together alone, without the time to talk and laugh afterwards, does not seem to be sufficient for significant bonding.”
To understand this paradox, the researchers conducted a fifth and final study consisting of face-to-face qualitative interviews. Qualitative research involves gathering non-numerical data, such as conversational responses, to understand underlying concepts, opinions, and motivations. The researchers interviewed 20 guests right after they completed the haunted house and the quantitative survey. They asked the participants what feeling closer meant to them and why their numerical scores might not have changed despite reporting a stronger bond.
In the interviews, 16 of the 20 attendees said that talking, laughing, and swapping stories about the scares afterward, such as on the car ride home, played a central role in making them feel closer. Fourteen described the novelty of the experience as part of its appeal, and many said that relying on one another while blindfolded or frightened created a sense of vulnerability. Twelve commented on the survey itself: some said they had not yet had time to process the experience, and several said they had not distinguished between their overall closeness and their closeness in that moment when answering the questions.
“Haunted houses seem to have the ability to make two people feel closer together, whether these two people were previously very close or not,” Wiley explained. “In other words, going through a haunted attraction with either your best friend or your annoying coworker will likely prove to be beneficial to the relationship. However, this link is quite contingent on what you and that other person do after the experience.”
Wiley emphasized that what happens after the scare may matter most. “Post-haunt reflection is important to the process of bonding: the haunted house on its own may not do much to strengthen the relationship, but if you talk, reminisce, and laugh about the experience afterwards, you’ll probably feel more bonded with that person,” they said.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. All five studies took place at one attraction whose format changed from year to year, and none compared haunted house visitors with people doing a non-scary activity together, so the studies cannot show that fear itself, rather than simply sharing a fun outing, drives the sense of bonding. Closeness was measured with single survey items, only the fourth study was preregistered, and in the interviews, participants were told about the earlier null results before being asked to explain them.
“As there is with any study, ours certainly had limitations,” Wiley noted. “We used convenience samples of people who were already at the haunted house, so not only were race, ability, and income unevenly distributed, but our conclusions can only really be generalized to people who would normally show up at a haunted house with their friends or family (this is a double-edged sword though — we’re interested in recreational fear, so we are particularly interested in people who seek out these experiences on their own time anyway).”
Environmental factors during the surveys might have also influenced the data. “We were surveying people inside the bar of the haunted house, which was a pretty chaotic and high-traffic space: the music was loud, people were drinking, and participants filled out surveys side-by-side with other participants, who in some cases were the people they came with,” Wiley explained. “So it was definitely not a distraction-free environment we were collecting data in, which may have impacted responses. We also only examined the impact of haunted houses in particular, so we cannot make these same conclusions yet about other forms of recreational fear, like horror movies or extreme sports.”
Scaring people together is not a guaranteed relationship fix. Across the studies, only about half of participants agreed the haunted house brought them closer, and a notable minority disagreed. The authors speculate that shared fear might strain a relationship when people’s fear responses are badly mismatched or one person feels unsupported, and they propose that recreational fear may act as an interpersonal stress test: responding to a frightened companion with comfort and humor could reinforce a bond, while failing to do so could weaken it.
Expanding the research could yield useful insights into how shared emotional intensity shapes human connection over time. “We would definitely like to expand on this study, particularly adding an experimental manipulation where some participants have time for post-experience reflection while others don’t, in order to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship,” Wiley said. “We’d also like to see if this bonding pattern exists for other forms of recreational fear.”
The study, “Haunted Attraction: The Effects of Recreational Fear on Interpersonal Bonding,” was authored by Jane K. Wiley, Alexa A. Rivers, Otho Garrett Johnson, Cristina S. Negraru, Jake T. Watson, Tara M. Perreault, Rebecca Martin, Sara C. Slayton, Steffano I. Segovia-Palacios, Benjamin R. Stanisky, Kate E. Doherty, and Lawton K. Swan.
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For I think the first time in 20+ years on my condo association board I find myself in the position of being the bad guy.
I'm sure the couple in question feels strongly about blocking sunlight without increasing indoor heat beyond what they can achieve with white-backed opaque blackout curtains, but covering the townhouse windows with foil is still not acceptable, and planning to use wider foil (no visible seams) or reflective windshield covers 🤦♂️ are not really improvements. Apparently curtains are inadequate, reflective mylar window coatings or tints are non-removable and they want the light other times, building a non-visible frame to block light inside the curtains/blinds/whatever is no good because it allows light to heat up that space, and the air conditioning makes his nose run.
And the one board member who thinks special assessments are better than raising regular assessments for a few years is encouraging him.
Even in the crappy blank and white pictures it looked terrible. I dread the return of this in spring.