Have a smashing day

[cuprohastes]

Shiftshaper

Day 1 of infiltrating the crew.

One of them got too far from the group. Paralysed him and took his form.

Returned to the ship. Everyone keeps asking me where my pants are.

Day 2 of infiltrating the crew.

We have taken off. I have explained that one of the 'native lichens' made me allergic to pants. The rest of the crew seems to accept this.

Day 3 of infiltrating the crew.

I have been helping out around the ship while learning its secrets. And also trying to figure out where my quarters are supposed to be. Got it right fourth time. Managed to talk my way out of three awkward encounters.

Fourth one, not so much. I think I'm dating Crewman Eloise now.

Day 4 of infiltrating the crew.

Brought Eloise some breakfast and used my cunning skills to pump her for information.

So successful that I contrived to bring everyone else breakfast. I am a genius.

Day 5 of infiltrating the crew.

The captain keeps asking for Crewman Vitsie. They are obviously incompetent and lazy and have not responded. Captain sounds very irate. Perhaps I should find Vitsie and eat him to improve crew morale.

Day 6 of infiltrating the crew.

... I'm Crewman Vitsie. Got yelled at by the captain. Grovelled handsomely and explained that I am incompetent and lazy. I think I got away with it.

Day 7 of infiltrating the crew.

Space pirates. Why is it always space pirates?

Replicated one of them, infiltrated the ship, ate their captain. Very greasy.

Swapped back to my Vitsie disguise and pretended I snuck on board and shot the captain.

Luckily nobody asked about why I now weigh 50% more

Day 8 of infiltrating the crew.

Captain mentioned he knew I was a shiftshaper. Now hiding in an airduct. I'm not crying. That's... just... OK I might be crying. Eloise was going to put on a movie and I was really looking forward to it.

Day 9 of infiltrating the crew.

Captain has been yelling into an airvent for the last hour. They say they figured it out immediately.

Turns out Vitsie was an asshole, and they just liked me better.

NGL, feeling kind of proud.

Captain says since I saved the ship from greasy space pirates, they'll call it even if I promise not to eat any more crew.

Asked if that includes Robins from Engineering. Captains says Robins included because he's the only one who knows how to fix the toilets.

This is reasonable.

Day 10 of infiltrating the crew.

Watched "The Thing" with Eloise. Didn't sleep all night. That was terrifying!

[scribblysucrose]

Petrova Line (gotta click for better quality im SRRY </3)

[beemovieerotica]

[elodieunderglass]

Is this a horrible thing with legs or...a horrible thing with fingers? Or just a horrible thing?

That’s cephalopharyngeal, a word which ought to help. Thank you so much for thinking of me!

[belovedbright]

Wouldn’t it be cephalophlangi? Since fingers are phalanges, and pharynx is the throat

[elodieunderglass]

Ooooh yeah, that’s better as an accurate description - but no, it still needs the

🤌 flow

How do we feel about cephalodactyl? And we can use phalanges for “phalangipod.” Cephalodactyl phalangipod. How do we feel about that

[sufficientlylargen]

The Greek prefix for "hand" is "chiro", so perhaps it is a chirocephalic pentapod, or maybe a pentapodactyl cephalochiroid?

[elodieunderglass]

I like “pentapodactyl” tremendously!!! but hate “chiro” in this context, and I don’t know why. Obviously I have no authority to be the arbiter of this but I do feel strongly!!

There’s a gorgeous rhythm to:

Cephalopharyngeal pentapodactyl monstrosity of the alarm

[sufficientlylargen]

@elodieunderglass I'm curious how you pronounce "Cephalopharyngeal" - my instinct is to pronounce the opening as a dactyl, like in "cephalopod", i.e. "SEF-uh-lo", but the scansion of that line feels better to me if it's an amphibrach, i.e. "suh-FAL-lo"

[sufficientlylargen]

The Cephalobrachial Pentapodactylus! Palmate monstrosity of the alarm! The sesquipedalian's best pernoctalian psuedo-mammalian hand without arm!

This maniform, bursiform, digital deep-dweller drifts through the darkest demersal domains, A five-footed fingerling phantasm floating full fathoms afloor from the foam-freckled main!

It hunts with its quick hyponychial cnidocytes fully envenomed and ready to kill! If nocuous toxicants don't cause cessation its rostriform mandibles certainly will!

By ripping and rending, it ruptures its rations with razorlike radulae housed in its jaw; Its great glabrous grub-grippers gather the gobbets to go in its ventropharyngeal maw!

The Cephalobrachial Pentapodactylus seldom comes skyward while it's still alive, But sometimes some singular specimen surfaces, stalking the shore like a deadly high-five,

So if you should witness, in perambulation, gressorial fingertips roaming the sands, I beg you, consider this simple hortation: observe from a distance, and do not shake hands!

[podcastwizard]

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

you people aren't CASTING

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

NO

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[coffee-or-hot-cocoa]

i need all the help i can get for finals

[finnglas]

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

[avhira]

I could use some luck

[moldavite]

good news. the things that used to upset me no longer upset me. bad news. i'm creating an army of bugs to hurt innocent bystanders

[ironmyrmidon]

When the AI bubble pops, the demand for computing power will fall much more quickly than the supply. For a brief window, we will have an amazing digital surplus.

[acanfullofspiders]

I fear we may have gone too far...

[thewritingrealm]

If you're reading this...

go write three sentences on your current writing project.

[sunny-sourzii]

They make me sick btw

[sawed-on-shotgun]

hello my name is Stray Hair snd my big dream is to play the itsy bitsy spider on broadway. doyou mind if i practice on the side of your head.

[ghostfiish]

Not only was I the only one who ended up getting a ticket for my particular screening of the Backrooms... but also, besides the concessions staff, the entire theater was completely empty

I think I may have had the most appropriate viewing experience possible

[poupon]

Wow thanks for the ingot man let me just inspect the quality real quick

Dude come on

[twiststreet]

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Edited down a long tweet. (x)

[cherryhatter-deactivated2015072]

KICK THE CAN!

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

To kick the can, reblog it. I wanna see how long this can go on for.

[visibun]

the oldest reblogs for this post that i can find are from january 2nd of 2013. this can has been getting kicked around tumblr for almost 13½ years now

[drtanner]

And yet somehow this is my first time kicking it!

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[throo]

I wasn’t expecting that