Drinking soda is better than drinking nothing all day. Eating ice cream for dinner is better than eating nothing for dinner. Eating salsa is better than having no produce in your diet at all.
Water is way more hydrating than soda, but soda is more hydrating than nothing. A balanced meal is way more nutritious than ice cream, but ice cream is more nutritious than nothing.
Something is better than nothing. Some hydration is better than no hydration. Some nutrients are better than no nutrients. Some produce is better than no produce.
Don't let societally imposed food guilt trick you into believing that nothing is a better choice. Nourishing your body, however you can, is always the better choice. Fed is best. Always.
This is a hard thing to hear but i genuinely say it with care and best wishes:
Keep using your brain and trying that hard thing no matter how foggy. Feel stupid! It's ok! I promise you are not stupid. I promise your brain will appreciate it. And that with time it will be valuable that you tried.
It's so easy to lose a whole week to brain fog. But your brain and body don't just stop existing that week (though it can feel that way). It's so important to try to incorporate puzzles anyway. Cook a meal from a scratch, do a jigsaw, the wordle, sudoku, use your other hand, learn a new card game, watch a brand new show, do simple math equations, write words backwards, learn a new language (or even just random phrases from a few), play a podcast, read a fun article or magazine, try a new creative project. Something! To help you feel better longer and keep your brains synapses synapsing.
Find a way to push yourself into it. Ask a friend to do it with you, set a timer, build it into your routine, have a bunch of fun games on your phone, puzzles by the bed, set your google to open straight to wordle.
TO CLARIFY: neuroplasticity is magic. And CONTRARY to prior belief it does not just stop after like 25. The brain can recover in exceptional ways so if you feel behind, or feel like you lost so much of what you knew due to a deep spell of illness or depression or injury; it's never too late. Never too late to nuture your brain to a better state of health.
So have a glass of water, take a deep breath and please join me in feeling really stupid trying to finish a "simple" puzzle and know we are all doing a very good job. ā¤ļø
at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you
at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95Ā°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.
at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly
at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.
at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.
At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.
After running a thousand errands, working hours of overtime, and being stuck in seemingly endless gridlock traffic commuting to and from their jobs, millions of Americans were disheartened to learn that it was, in fact, only Tuesday.
āTuesday?ā San Diego resident Doris Wagner said. āHow in the hell is it still Tuesday?ā
Tuesdayās arrival stunned a nation still recovering from the nightmarish slog that was Monday, leaving some to wonder if the week was ever going to end, and others to ask what was taking Saturday so goddamn long.
You ever think about how unified humanity is by just everyday experiences? Tudor peasants had hangnails, nobles in the Qin dynasty had favorite foods, workers in the 1700s liked seeing flowers growing in pavement cracks, a cook in medieval Iran teared up cutting onions, a mom in 1300 told her son not to get grass stains on his clothes, some girl in the past loved staying up late to see the sun rise.
there are scriptures all over the world painstakingly crafted hundreds of years ago with paw prints and spelling mistakes or drawings covering up mistakes. a bunch of teenage girls 2000 years ago gathered to walk around their hometown, getting fast food and laughing with their friends. two friends shared blankets before people lived in houses. a mother ran a fine comb through her childās hair and told it to stop squirming sometime in the 1000s. there are covered up sewing mistakes in couture dresses from the 1800s, some poor roman burnt their food so well past recognition that they just buried the entire pot. there are broken dishes hidden in gardens of people no one even remembers anymore
children eleven thousand years ago enjoyed jumping around in puddles made from the footprints of a giant sloth. children loved muddy puddles so long ago there were still megafauna alive
Thereās a record of an emperor of Japan in the 9th century talking about his cat - how pretty it is, and how it stalks birds and curls up in a circle and meows mournfully for company and escaped its collar. All completely normal ordinary cat things. And then it ends with him sayingĀ āit is superior to all other catsā. I am delighted to be united across 1200 years with this fellow cat owner with exactly the same feelings about his cat that I have about mine.
nobody ever believes me when I list off all of the ways that humans are significantly less sexually dimorphic than people seem to believe and it drives me batshit insane. āyouāre denying the biological reality of sexā well youāre sticking your fingers in your ears and saying lalalala every time anyone presents you with data that confirms that women and men arenāt really that different. and refusing to come to terms with the two-way relationship between the ābiologicalā and āsocialā worlds. I think one of us is ignoring the biological sciences here and it isnāt me
Someone once told me my biology degree was fake because I said humans weren't sexual dimorphic.
A male human and a female human are roughly the same size and same coloration.
Meanwhile, male black widow spiders are brown and a tenth the size of females. Anglerfish females are a full foot long and have a bioluminescent protrusion on their heads; males are barely half an inch long with no bioluminescence or protrusions. Male elephant seals are ten times bigger than females and have massive snouts. Male orangutans have big jowls and neck sacs that look like goiters, while females look more like other apes. Peacocks have flashy coloration and a long tail that they can display. The females are brown and simple.
Humans aren't sexually dimorphic! You only know someone's gender because of cultural identifiers, like clothing or hair.
The big things for primate sexual dimorphism tend to be canine size and body size. Male primates in sexually dimorphic species tend to have HUGE canine teeth for better threat displays, and are bigger for similar reasons.
Lowland Gorilla males tend to be 2.38x on average the mass of Lowland Gorilla females. Humans? That ratio is something line 1.15.
Male gorilla canines tend to be about 2 inches long, easily twice the length of some of their other teeth. Male humans have canines the exact same length as human female canines and the exact same length as the rest of our teeth.
But by 2023, just two years of letting "nature take the lead" one can find 4,000 bees, with the number of different bee species doubling.
"A Scottish field once home to mono-crop barley has become a pollinatorās paradise after intervention from a local trust saw bumblebee numbers increase 100-fold.
Entitled Rewilding Denmarkfield, and run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the project has also seen a sharp increase in the number of species passing through the rolling meadows after they were reclaimed by dozens of wildflower species.
The area north of Perth is about 90 acres in size, and surveys of bumblebees before the project began rarely recorded more than 50. But by 2023, just two years of letting ānature take the leadā that number has topped 4,000, with the number of different bee species doubling.
āThis superb variety of plants attracts thousands of pollinators. Many of these plants, such as spear thistle and smooth hawkās beard, are sometimes branded as āweedsā. But they are all native species that are benefiting native wildlife in different ways,ā Ecologist Ellie Corsie, who has been managing the project since it began in 2021, said.
āDue to intensive arable farming, with decades of plowing, herbicide, and pesticide use, biodiversity was incredibly low when we started. Wildlife had largely been sanitized from the fields. Rewilding the site has had a remarkable benefit.ā
Similar increases have been recorded in the populations of butterflies, with a tripling in the number of these insects seen on average during a ramble through the field.
The numbers of both insects are now so high that Rewilding Denmarkfield offers bee and butterfly safaris to visitors.
Local residents told the Scotsman that on spring and summer days, the field is awash with color, and hums with the sounds of bees and birds. Even as multiple housing developments expand around the Denmarkfield area, the field is a haven for wildlife."
STOP the "grimdark muddy and grey medievalism film about a white dude doing some bullshit" industrial complex. WHERE is the Questing Beast WHERE are the cool women WHERE are the people of color WHERE is the fun and whimsy and fantastical
prguitarman
stormborns
