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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I used to hang out with some behavioral psychology (BF Skinner stuff) graduate students. They transport pigeons head-down in juice pitchers; I asked them how they got the pigeons into those pitchers, and they showed me that they just open the cages and hold the pitchers up and the birds dive into them, sometimes knocking themselves out in the process. They are into that lever-pressing shit, although TBF that’s mainly because they’re maintained at 80% of a normal diet so that the reinforcing effect of the food pellets is maximized.

    FWIW pigeons can be trained to do some pretty interesting shit. Skinner had them playing ping-pong, and really competing at it - like, they got rewarded for winning shots, not just for hitting the ball back. Skinner also had a scheme going to use pigeons to steer flying bombs into enemy ships during WWII.



  • I read an article a few years back about Mein Kampf and I decided I wanted to read it for myself (for the record, I’m not a nazi or a Hitler supporter - fuck off Kanye). I grabbed a copy at Barnes & Noble but there was a cute girl working the cash register and I just couldn’t bring myself to go through with the purchase. It’s available online but there’s no way I’m going to do that - my Youtube suggestions are bad enough as it is.

    Later on I read about Hitler’s second book and I was like c’mon, there’s no fucking way I’m asking for the sequel to Mein Kampf.