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Being dominant in the bedroom can boost your work ethic
Studies have shown that dominant sexual activity can often boost your work ethic several days after a sexual experience.

Being dominant in bed can help you excel in your career, research suggests.
- Sex is a complex and intricate human experience that involves many different neurological processes.
- Different sexual activities can alter this process, causing different combinations of hormones to be released.
- Being dominant during sex can cause altered states of consciousness that include heightened concentration and communication, better decision-making processes, and boosted self-confidence, all of which can help you excel in the workplace even days after your sexual experience.
How sex changes your brain
When you experience sexual arousal and intercourse, your brain goes through a complex process.
Image by MattLphotography on Shutterstock
When you're sexually aroused, chemicals flood your system and temporarily alter your neurochemistry.
When you have sex, your brain goes through a complex process that includes:
- Norepinephrine, a hormone that makes you feel energetic and euphoric, is released during initial attraction and sexual arousal.
- Dopamine (the chemical responsible for lighting up the brain's pleasure pathway) is also released, which makes you feel good.
- During intercourse, oxytocin (commonly referred to as "the love hormone" for how affectionate, safe, and happy it can make you feel) is released.
- The release of oxytocin triggers a dip in your cortisol levels. Cortisol is referred to as the "stress hormone" as it is most commonly increased during times of stress or upset.
- Melatonin is also typically released at this time unless you have a melatonin deficiency. Melatonin is known for being a "calming" hormone and can make you feel tired
All of this activity is directed by the hypothalamus, an area at the center of your brain that drives many different biological functions such as regulating blood pressure and sleep cycles.
Different sexual activities can cause different neurological responses
Participating in sadomasochism can alter your state of consciousness, research says.
Image by dizain on Shutterstock
Different sexual activities can alter this whole process, causing different combinations of hormones to be released.
In fact, a 2013 study compared the psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners and a control group. The results showed that people who participate in BDSM activities typically had lower anxiety levels, were less neurotic, and were more secure in their romantic relationships than participants of the control group.
The study also deemed BDSM to be more of a leisure practice than an actual psychological desire. For example, people who enjoy sadomasochism in bed don't typically day-dream of hurting someone outside of the bedroom, it's just a part of what they enjoy during sex. Consider sadomasochism, for example. Sadomasochism is a subset of BDSM that is defined as sexual enjoyment from giving or receiving pain. While there are many who judge those within the BDSM community, consensual BDSM (more particularly, consensual sadomasochism) has not been deemed harmful by the plethora of researchers who have studied the topic.
Participating in sadomasochism can alter your state of consciousness.
Two separate studies performed by different researchers at the Northern University of Illinois showcase the altered states of consciousness that can occur from participating in sadomasochistic activities.
The first study, conducted by James Ambler, involved participants who were randomly assigned to sexual roles of "giving" or "receiving" pain. Before and after their sexual experience, the volunteers completed a cognitive test called the Stroop Task and filled out a questionnaire about their feelings of flow (a state of focus and enjoyment that people feel when immersed in a specific task).
The results of this study showed those participants who were receiving pain scored lower in the Stroop Task cognitive tests, which suggests that the pain caused during their sexual experience may have caused blood to flow away from the region in the brain that is responsible for executive control and working memory.
The second study, conducted by Brad Sagarin and other researchers at the University (including James Ambler) focused on a pain ritual in a non-sexual atmosphere to further test Ambler's theory. The participants of this study experienced something called "the Dance of Souls", which involved temporary skin piercings pulled by rope while music was being played. All participants involved were volunteers.
These "energy pulls" as they are called, showed participants feeling less stressed during their exit cognitive interviews. An interesting note is that the researchers involved in this study found these practices to be quite similar to the experiences people have during yoga or intense meditation - the state of flow and concentration and the release of stress and tension after these experiments suggest there really are altered states of consciousness that we go through when experiencing pain, even in a pleasurable scenario such as BDSM sex.
How does being a dom boost your work ethic?
The changes in your conscious state that you feel from BDSM activities are beneficial in ways you may not even realize and can extend far beyond the confines of the bedroom.
Photo by illustrissima on Shutterstock
The altered states BDSM practitioners experience during a scene can improve mood, enhance cognitive abilities, and heighten your capacity to form original ideas and strong connections with others, explains Sex & Psychology author Dr. Justin Lehmiller.
This is how being dominant in the bedroom can impact your mood and flow:
- Heightened concentration, which is experienced due to the intense flow felt by being in the moment.
- Decision-making confidence, which happens due to the cortisol level dip that tends to be more significant in those who are dominant in the BDSM scene.
- Reduced self-consciousness, or a boost in self-confidence.
- Heightened intuition and listening/problem-solving skills, which comes courtesy of the trust and bond build between a dom and their submissive. This is a critical part of safety during BDSM scenes.
These changes in your conscious state can be beneficial in ways you may not realize and can extend far beyond the confines of the bedroom.
According to sex therapist Jamila Dawson, a client of hers was once able to overcome writer's block the morning after a BDSM rope-play experience with her partner. The client reported feeling free, safe, trusting, and creative. This isn't the only instance of an artist contributing their success to BDSM activity. In 2016, Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas attributed much of his success as an artist to his kinky marriage to sex educator Mollena Williams.
Haas explained in a New York Times article that his vibrant sex life, which often included BDSM, "dramatically improved his productivity and reshaped his artistic outlook."
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle may finally be solved
Meteorologists propose a stunning new explanation for the mysterious events in the Bermuda Triangle.
One of life's great mysteries, the Bermuda Triangle might have finally found an explanation. This strange region, that lies in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been the presumed cause of dozens and dozens of mind-boggling disappearances of ships and planes.
Astrophysicists find unique "hot Jupiter" planet without clouds
A unique exoplanet without clouds or haze was found by astrophysicists from Harvard and Smithsonian.
Illustration of WASP-62b, the Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze in its atmosphere.
- Astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian find a very rare "hot Jupiter" exoplanet without clouds or haze.
- Such planets were formed differently from others and offer unique research opportunities.
- Only one other such exoplanet was found previously.
Munazza Alam – a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Credit: Jackie Faherty
Jupiter's Colorful Cloud Bands Studied by Spacecraft
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8a72dfe5b407b584cf867852c36211dc"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GzUzCesfVuw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois)
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>FOSTA-SESTA: Have controversial sex trafficking acts done more harm than good?
The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims.
