We are going to celebrate the lift of the mask mandates on Saturday, February 19, at 6 PM.

I'll make fresh lemonade. See you soon!

Post scriptum:

• Ten of us started with two rounds of organized game, which was supposed to be as sad as a therapeutic session, but we had mostly fun, besides a couple of truly traumatic events during adolescence. After that, everyone dived into conversations and we never returned to the cards. A new guest concluded that my introduction tour failed :)
• To celebrate peace and in hope that invasion is a bluff, we tasted Ukrainian beer 1715 made in Lviv, Ukrane. “Lvivske 1715” is made by 300-year old recipes, it is a light pasteurized beer with clear malty aroma. I was able to forget the news images of unnecessary evacuation of children from Donbas. I hope provocations won't work.
• Some of us got sex-ed in modern terminology that helps to describe partner's needs, were you position yourself on several axis of your preferences desires and qualities: sexual - asexual (like reproduction terms), monosexual - bisexual - pansexual, monogamy - polyamory, BDSM in terms of submissiveness (I leaned that being in the middle is not that easy, and I was labeled as "switch" and "brad", even though I disagred with such placement), straight - gay axis, romance, emotional attachment, and mental stimulation, etc.
• We talked about jealousy and attempts to eliminate or turn it into a pleasant feeling vie mental models - with me doubting it in a long run for deep enough attractions and passions.
• We discussed basic emotions from neuroscientific prospective, and the connections between the corresponding brain areas - we concentrated on fear, anger, disgust, and status (hierarchy, prefrontal cortex). The indirect communication between memory systems was most interesting for me, I looked it up, and will read more about is. For example, amygdala and hippocampus:

  These brain structures are activated following an emotional event and cross-talk with each other in the process of consolidation. This dual activation of the amygdala and the hippocampus and the dynamics between them may be what gives emotionally based memories their uniqueness. - pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11414274/

• We talked about reasons to end a female friendship, and whether an unwillingness of one person to educate herself or go to therapy together with insisting on an unwelcome sexual advise is surely a one.
• We discussed robotics, ways to program it, differences with AI, future of deep fakes, etc.
• In a small circle, we talked about my visual organizational system and its principles.
• In another one, we discussed how artwork is used for tax evasion and to park capital, how pieces are bought to inflate their value for future donations, etc. I wanted an opinion on my current project, Masks of Irony.
• We listened to a 1990-s playlist with lots of hard rock and heavy metal, as well as Japanese Babymetal. Metallica had suggested answers to the existential questions. One of my answers was in a song by Animals.

• Calendar: 2021-12-11 17:00
• Properties: private, informal, recurrent
• Goals: fun, conversation, play