Faded Ink & Dying Stars @closetgremlin - Tumblr Blog

Cedar Waxwings by jocelynefeizo1 http://ift.tt/1RM3Kk0

#do cedar waxwings ever eat anything besides photogenic red berries#do cedar waxwings ever do anything besides eating photogenic red berries#is there any way this child can get its parent to stop feeding it photogenic red berries

speciesofleastconcern

watch how many berries I can cram into this other bird

spielzeugkaiser

He’s absolutely building pools and taking the ladders away-

penny-anna

Rocky on the trip back to Erid registering that Grace has defaulted to using he/him for him for sexism reasons and that they don't actually have to go by he/him. xe does some research on the human computer and spends several weeks cycling through different pronoun sets. starts switching so frequently Grace becomes convinced sie has started being difficult on purpose. after a while Grace is like omg will you just pick one and stick with it. Rocky is like okay i have decided. rock/rocks. rockself. Grace like well i can't argue with that.

penny-anna

#see the hill that I will die on is that if Andy weir was cooler rockey would use either they them or xe xir#you’re telling me cool middle school teacher Ryland grace is unfamiliar with the concept of fun new genders#absolutely not. his students have taught him about singular they them and neopronouns

Grace trying to explain to Rocky that they can be whatever they want to be and presenting a whole list of different pronoun options and Rocky (who has no concept of gender) being like 'why would I care about any of this'

penny-anna

Rocky: which pronouns does Grace use question?

Grace: he/him

Rocky: okay. Rocky will use he/him too

Grace: okay but I feel like defaulting to he/him promotes a patriarchal kind of mindset and we should be more thoughtful about it

Rocky: okay so use the other standard pronouns

Grace: she/her?

Rocky: yeah

Grace: okay but that feels weird too

Rocky: why weird question

Grace:

Grace, later, lying awake: I never considered that Rocky might wanna be a she... Am I a bad person?

penny-anna

Rocky: Grace mix it up suggestion

Grace: I guess I could

Rocky: Rocky he/she/they/it

Grace: I don't know if you can use it

Rocky: why not question

Grace: it's just considered dehumanising?

Rocky:

Rocky, being a little shit: I choose it/its

penny-anna

Rocky: this conversation boring, let's go back to Grace tones

Grace: okay so you won't pick a pronoun but I have to pick a tonal inflection?

Rocky: my thing more important statement

Grace: okay fine can't you just your tones for me?

Rocky: but Grace not qualified engineer

Grace: well is there a schoolteacher tone?

Rocky: uhh no

Rocky: schoolteacher not

Rocky: schoolteacher not prestige profession statement

Grace:

Grace: WOW.

penny-anna

Grace: is there not like a default tone to use when you don't know all this stuff about a person?

Rocky: yes but very rude to use for close friend statement

Grace: wait hold up 🤔 you think of me as a close friend?

Rocky: yes maybe Grace shut up now

penny-anna

Grace several years into their voyage, finally getting good enough at understanding Eridian to clock when Rocky has switched back to using the Neutral Tone for him, thereby implying that they are no longer friends: HEY??

penny-anna

Grace, in the middle of a big argument: did you just. dead person inflection me?

Rocky: uh-huh

Grace: does that mean what I think it means

Rocky: it means what it means statement

Grace: come ON

skelotan

Dedicated to my cat, who is very vocal about my bed time.

PATREON

livelongslacker

cheeseanonioncrisps

I see your “Rocky swears like a sailor but only in pitches humans can’t hear/refuses to teach Grace what those words mean” and raise you “Rocky swears like a sailor and now has to explain to Grace that ‘bad bad bad’ isn’t actually a sequence you play on your Eridian speech piano in polite company.”

Grace is both horrified and amused to realise that a more accurate translation for what Rocky’s been saying is “shit shit shit”.

cheeseanonioncrisps

Eridian government representative: Greetings Rocky, Saviour of Erid, and Grace, Saviour from Beyond the Stars. We are pleased to welcome you home.

Grace, haltingly on the keyboard Rocky built for him: Wassup bitches. Fucking jazzed to—

Rocky: GRACE STOP TALKING NOW NOW NOW I EXPLAIN LATER

scribeherself

I think one of the gentlest things in the world is when a friend just gets your weird little brain. like you say half a sentence and they finish it. you reference something incredibly niche from seven years ago and they’re already nodding. they understand your strange vocabulary for emotions that don’t have real words yet. it’s being seen and known and still loved. maybe especially because you’re known. god. what a gift.

charlemane

i think the luckiest moment of my life - at least, the luckiest moment i'm aware of & can remember - was when i poured HOURS of wrist-grinding labor into nålbinding baby socks with no pattern & vague measurements pirated off a machine-made baby sock, and they turned out weirdly long and skinny. and then the baby was born with such weirdly long and skinny feet that the only socks that fit him were the ones i made. what a very specific little lottery to win.

filibusterfrog

dragonborn for @i-am-lich

valtsv

basically the best thing any character can do is decide they don't want to be afraid anymore - in fact they never want to be afraid of anything ever again - and take action so drastic they fail to realise that this too is a decision motivated by fear. or to account for the Consequences of that.

mollybeenoel

ekjohnston

i am going to have a sad grey bathroom because i am too poor for fun tiles and no one is making them for some reason

soursoppi

irresistible

turtleyuki

My first time i post in this app🧎💧

russsiawave

postilionstruckbylightning

I don’t like how you put these two photos together, as if to imply that the dumplings with the paw print have anything to do with this sweet, innocent angel who has never done anything wrong.

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)

#science tag

verenakauer

I feel so many feelings about Rocky during the first contact. He wants to connect SO BADLY. Do Eridians have horror stories about scary aliens? If they do, Rocky doesn't care. He wants this alien to be friendly. He does everything he can to accommodate. Here, a little gift I'm sending your way at the speed you're comfortable with. Please be there. Here, the next gift is going right into your airlock so that it's easier for you to catch. Please don't fly away. You made a strange gesture with your limb, I'll make my robot make that gesture back. Please belive that I'm friendly. Here's a tunnel to connect us, I'll make sure you can breathe in it. Please come meet me. I'll let you choose the material for the wall separating us; I'll rebuild the whole wall if it makes you more comfortable, no trouble, just please let's talk. You're all alone on your ship, I can hear it, please come sleep here where I can watch you, it's unsafe for you to be alone. I'm alone and scared, it's been 46 years since I felt safe while sleeping, please please please watch me sleep too. I'm very vulnerable when I sleep and I trust that you won't use it against me. I want to visit your ship, am allowed, question? I'm moving in with you. Let's save the stars.