exbrained!

Whatever fandom/language/philosophy/recipe/art thing I'm into at the moment.

[musashi]

Hey can you guys reblog Cheeseburger so he can take a sunbeam nap on lots of blogs. No other reason I just want you guys to see him.

[alanaisalive]

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[iguanamouth]

oh shit

[throughshadow-to-the-edgeofnight]

[alanaisalive]

As the OP of this post, I’m going to threaten that if this gets to one million notes by the 10 year anniversary on 1 June 2026, one year from today, I will get a lower back tattoo of the loch ness bear monster.

[docd666]

Y'all know what to do Tumblr.

[exbrained]

@copperbadge more sign options for your bathroom

[penrosesun]

In light of the Panera lemonade thing, I feel like now is a good time to remind people that caffeine has an effective dose that is much closer to overdose amounts than most other drugs (including illegal and heavily stigmatized drugs), that caffeine overdoses are both common and under-reported, that not being able to get through a single day without a drug that was not prescribed to treat a medical condition is not normal, and that the sort of capitalist grind culture that normalizes all of this is bad, actually.

Caffeine headaches are a withdrawal symptom. If you get caffeine headaches when you don't get your coffee fix, you are addicted to caffeine.

Heart palpitations and feelings of impending doom are overdose symptoms, and tolerance can vary enough due to external factors that a high level of caffeine that's fine for you one day could be dangerous for you on another. If you get "panic attacks" and if you regularly drink more than one cup of coffee per day, tell your doctor about your caffeine habits, because those panic attacks may be misdiagnosed caffeine overdoses.

I'm not anti-caffeine – in fact, I'm not anti- any drug. I think adults can make informed choices about their own health, and I think that they should be allowed to do so. But the key to that is the informed part, and an awful lot of people consume genuinely risky amounts of caffeine without knowing any of the risks. In law school, I polled my friends, and discovered that a shockingly high percentage of them had had what were likely caffeine overdoses without realizing that that was what they were, or that they were dangerous. Having a little bit too much coffee and then spending all afternoon feeling like you're close to having a heart attack isn't an everyday occurrence, and it shouldn't be treated like one! Some of these same friends had abused stimulant medications like adderall and ritalin as productivity aids, and I absolutely guarantee that if they'd had the same level of symptoms from an accidental extra dosing of those drugs, rather than of caffeine, they'd have gone to the hospital. But Starbucks and Panera don't hand out adderall and ritalin, and people don't think that merch about adderall and ritalin dependency is cute or quirky, or that an adderall or ritalin habit is indicative of being a hard worker.

I love a cup o' joe in the morning too, but caffeine is a drug, y'all. Stop treating it like it's not.

[exbrained]

A lot of the claims in this post are misleading. I'd be interested in any citations the OP could provide for their claims.

"Overdose" sounds scary, but OP is misusing the term -- it means ingesting a "lethal or toxic" amount of the drug, traditionally a "dangerous" amount. What OP is talking about is often just spending an afternoon feeling shitty; which while unpleasant, isn't actually dangerous for most people.

I agree people should not consume that much caffeine if they don't want to. But I don't think we need to sound the alarms over feeling shitty for an afternoon. To be specific about the actual risks here: this systematic review only found 92 cases of death from caffeine overdose from 1959 to 2018 (that doesn't include cases where caffeine caused a death from a heart condition, which is more common, but the OP seems to be trying to speak to the general public, not just folks with heart conditions).

Considering OP's claim that the effective and lethal doses are quite close: the blood levels of people who die from caffeine are about 20 - 30x (source) what people get from a single cup of coffee (what I assume OP means by "effective dose"). What drugs is OP comparing to? Consider, for example, that alcohol serum levels after a single drink can be 100 mg% while serum levels of alcohol between 600 mg% and 800 mg% are often fatal (source). That's only 6-8x, closer than caffeine.

And, just because the lethal dose is close to the effective dose, that doesn't necessarily mean much from a health perspective, if people aren't likely to approach the lethal dose anyway. If you don't have a heart condition, you'd have to drink 8 cups of coffee to exceed the recommended daily limit, and 30 cups in a short period to feel really bad or die (source). Is that something most people are doing? I think not.

Finally, all OP's points about chemical addiction are, arguably, alarmist. Yes, feeling headaches is a chemical withdrawal symptom. But withdrawal from caffeine is well understood: the stakes are low, and they go away if you abstain for about a week. Contrast that with alcohol, where withdrawal can kill you. We shouldn't be pretending that all kinds of chemical withdrawal are meaningful from a health perspective. The dividing line between what is a drug and not a drug is pretty poorly defined, and while I agree with OP that we treat some drugs that are as dangerous as caffeine very differently from caffeine, that doesn't mean it's caffeine that we're treating the wrong way; maybe we're being overly intense about those other drugs.

Basically, I'd argue that some addictions are really bad for you and some aren't. Let's not compare apples to oranges and pretend it's the same fruit. I agree that we shouldn't be drinking coffee for capitalism, but I don't think we need to be alarmist about it. Drink coffee if you like it! Don't drink 30 cups! If you drink so much you feel bad, drink less next time!

(aside: of course, Panera definitely should make it more clear that their lemonade has a shit ton of caffeine in it or stop selling this stuff, because it is dangerous for people with heart conditions, and also no one should be misled into taking a substance into their body)

[fahye]

A Power Unbound

Secrets! Magic! Enemies to… something more? Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, would love a nice, safe, comfortable life. After the death of his twin sister, he thought he was done with magic for good. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual hanging over every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world. Now Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping an unlikely group of friends track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross. Cagey and argumentative, Alan is only in this for the money. The aristocratic Lord Hawthorn, with all his unearned power, is everything that Alan hates. And unfortunately, Alan happens to be everything that Jack wants in one gorgeous, infuriating package. When a plot to seize unimaginable power comes to a head at Cheetham Hall—Jack’s ancestral family estate, a land so old and bound in oaths that it’s grown a personality as prickly as its owner—Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets, and bloody sacrifice… and the foundations of magic in Britain will be torn up by the roots before the end.

Coming November 2023

PRE-ORDER: US

PRE-ORDER: UK

ADD ON GOODREADS

[exbrained]

pre-order complete!

[andhumanslovedstories]

Do you ever eat popcorn out of the palm of your own hand with such ardent desperation that you feel like both a wild horse and the gentle schoolgirl feeding it treats to gain its affection 

[andhumanslovedstories]

Hey there guys. It’s me, in 2022, commenting on this post from 2016. There’s been a lot of people on this site lately being like “oooh no don’t make viral uwu I’m so pathetic, little, and defenseless and my poor notifications can’t handle 10k reblogs” well first of all ALL of us are pathetic, little, and defenseless and secondly none of our notifications can handle 10k reblogs and thirdly I’m not a coward and I think this should have a million notes. Not because of its own merit as a post, I just think it’d be funny if when I turn 30 this year and I reflect on the greatest accomplishments of my life thus far, I have to at least consider putting “famous tumblr popcorn post” on the list

[andhumanslovedstories]

Hi there guys. It’s me, again. It is December 8, and my birthday is December 16 (and fyi I didn’t even get my birthday off from work which I’m being so brave about, just saying) and I want you all to gather round and listen to my pitch. I could tell you that I really want this, which I do but I also think it’d be really funny to NOT reach my goal and to start my thirties on the note of failure but like a really stupid kind that doesn’t matter and is very funny. I could tell you that getting this post to a million notes will benefit you in some way, but it absolutely won’t, except in the general tumblr sense of getting to participate in committing to the crowdsourced bit, which is actually the truest joy this webbed site can offer. I could even be very earnest and say something how for better or worse tumblr had a hand in defining my twenties, and even when I’ve been infuriated with parts of it, it is genuinely the only social media that doesn’t make me feel like shit and isn’t impossible for me to use, and at very hard times in my life the weird community has been a comfort, but that’s TOO EARNEST. Knock that shit off.

Instead, I offer you this: if you reblog this post with tags, like anything at all in the tags, multiple reblogs won’t be collated together meaning that you can make my notifications truly unusable. Think about that you fuckin jackals. Can you resist the urge to be both helpful and annoying as shit

[blackberryjambaby]

can anyone remember that post about how children write the best poems & it had an article attached showing the differences between little kids' poetry & preteens?? im desperate to find it again

[blackberryjambaby]

ok i found it! it's called the average fourth grader is a better poet than you (and me too)

here are three of my favourite excerpts

[ganymead]

I rly liked this one too 🥰

[exbrained]

My writing talents have never surpassed this poem I wrote in the 4th grade:

People are ants

Always running

on a scheduled basis

repeating life

every day

small and insignificant

to the rest of the universe

trying to get away

from the spiders

in their life

[exbrained]

if it's any consolation, the short story The Yellow Wallpaper is a middling-ly viral meme nowadays

See, I'm just so old I've come back around to "with it".

[prokopetz]

Striking a blow against the capitalist fetishisation of productivity by devoting enormous and elaborate effort to something utterly pointless.

[lawfulgoodness]

we’re already on Tumblr, Dave

[exbrained]

so can I use Blaze to promote other people's posts? Because I'd promote this.

[exbrained]

I'm very happy for someone else to win the matched set, but I wanted to share with affection my mismatched set! All hardcover except for my very dog-eared copy of the Queen of Attolia.

[brightmouth-deactivated20230417]

My spouse and I just had one of those “wait your brain works HOW?” exchanges, and now I am BURNING TO KNOW HOW IT WORKS FOR OTHER PEOPLE:

Fellow speakers of this feral bastard language (English), rb and tell me in the tags: what is the delineation for you, if any, between evening and night?

[exbrained]

Evening is dusk to dark. Night is dark.

[ginazmemeoir]

it’s the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century.

you can only reblog this today.

[exbrained]

Scheduled my reblog for 21:21, ofc

[valtsv]

OnlyMe. an app that's just you posting for yourself.

[valtsv]

tumblr if you're using it right

[exbrained]

It exists and it's called Yew https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=venture.arboretum.yew&hl=en_US&gl=US

[copperbadge]

Please imagine: a naga, but the snake tail is a flying snake

See, I think I’d be okay with that, because from what I understand of Nagas they are self-aware and not necessarily automatically malevolent to humans. I know most snakes are gentle and harmless but they react the way animals react, which aren’t always understandable to humans, whereas a Naga is not gonna like, just glide out of a tree onto my head because it mistook me for a nice rock to sunbathe on. 

Also Nagas are huge, aren’t they? So you’d see one coming and could get out of the way. :D 

[exbrained]

Okay, so my PhD is in the biomechanics of flying snake locomotion. This caught my attention.  I have to be a downer and say that a human sized flying snake is not mechanically possible without magic. However! A tiny naga could be very awesome! The limit on good gliding ability is probably around a few hundred grams, so a half kg naga could maybe work.

Now, the other issue with flying snakes is symmetry. They undulate in the air in order to have a symmetric configuration over time*. So if you had a snake half and a human half, you run into new problems with symmetrical-ness. If the human half is more dense or doesn’t produce lift, it would topple forward, and you’d get rotating snake which = falling snake (not gliding snake).

So we now need to constrain the human half to 1) be proportionally the same weight/density as the snake bit and 2) also be able to generate lift so the whole gliding thing still works, because otherwise it would be like a flying snake tail with a rock attached to the front. No bueno.

Therefore, we are looking for a 500g human-snake being that can rotate both its human and snake ribs into a concave, lift-generating shape. Then it can pin its arms to it’s side, ideally flatten its skull a bit for a flatter profile, undulate in midair et voila, flying snake naga.

---

* to understand what I’m talking about, think about an S shaped snake and compare it to a flying squirrel: snake is not symmetrical down the midline, but squirrel is. So how does snake not topple over? Well, by switching the S shape back and forth, it’s symmetrical *on average* over time.

[copperbadge]

39thyear replied to your photo “My new office is in the throes of a Fall Appeal fundraiser, and the…”

One data wrangler to another, do you have a favorite NP database? I’ve just picked up a new client who wants to migrate from 72 excel sheets dating back to ‘12 and am looking for any new recommendations (NOT sales force).

SEVENTY TWO EXCEL SHEETS SWEET LORD. 

Ahem. 

They just went to Salesforce at my old job and it sounds like it’s gonna be a total shitshow implementing it, so I can see why you’d want to avoid it. I also cannot recommend Advance, which is what they were using, it’s unbelievably clunky and you basically have to learn coding to pull reports from it. I’ve heard the new Raiser’s Edge is decent but I only have experience with an older version that was hellacious.

It depends on the size of your client’s operation and also on how much reporting they want to do, also potentially how secure they need their data, but honestly I’m enjoying the hell out of DonorPerfect. It’s super fast, pretty customizable, and the reporting is decent if a bit basic. The only issue I have is that you can only have one record open at once or it starts to freak out, so comparing records can be a bit tedious. For the needs of a development office of about 15 people total, managing roughly 200K records, DPO seems like a decent solution to me. 

[exbrained]

We are about to go Salesforce at my job and now I'm afraid... W hats wrong with it ...

[lotstradamus]

HELLO, FRIENDS

long story short: I’m buying a place (!), which means all the books I have with me now and all the books I store at my parents’ house will all be in the same apartment. this also means I have to face facts: I have Too Many books, and I cannot realistically store them all in one small flat. (especially not MULTIPLE COPIES OF THE SAME BOOKS, of which there are several.) I’ve donated most of them to friends and charity shops, but I thought it would be nice do a GIVEAWAY of the books I love the most, slash the books I am constantly banging on about. so without further ado: 

you have to be following me (because this is about ME)

reblog to enter

you can enter as many times as you want 

it doesn’t matter where you live – I’ll ship worldwide

the winners will be randomly selected on the 31st of August

(make sure your ask is open/you respond within 24 hours/you’re willing to give me your address!) 

5 winners in total, 4 books each, first winner gets first choice of books, second winner chooses out of what’s left, so forth etc

have fun and be yourself 

Please Note: I’ve owned some of these books for 10+ years, and some of them were secondhand to begin with. these babies have been READ. they’re “pre-loved” and then some. so don’t expect your FREE books to be without wrecked spines, folded pages, and other signs of luv. ♥ full list of books below!

Keep reading

[exbrained]

Ooh exciting, free books

[domirine]

the magnus archives podcast really has me by the throat