House Vulpen @housevulpen - Tumblr Blog

It's absolutely crazy that intellectual labor can wipe you out. It seems like it shouldn't be a thing, like your stores of brain juice shouldn't be able to be depleted in that way.

I feel like a wizard that's out of spell slots, and to me that's a hackish mechanical limitation put in place to try to balance the classes.

adhdedrn

#it's fucked and it's bad design #i should be able to write and edit for 20 hours a day #i'm just sitting there how are we even using energy #feels made up (via @softest-punk, emphasis mine)

Your brain is an incredibly energy-intensive organ. It makes up approximately 2% of your total body mass, but at rest it's using 22% of your total energy intake. The only thing that uses the same percentage of energy is all of your skeletal muscle (which is about 40% of your total body mass), with the liver (about 2.6% of your total mass) close behind at 21% (Aragon et al, 2017).

And that's how much energy it's using at rest.

That's the baseline.

So if you're doing lots of intellectual labour, your brain - which already has disproportionately huge energy demand - is going to use even more energy to keep up with the work. That's why you feel so wiped/drained/like you're out of spell slots after high intellectual demand - because your brain is an organ, and you've just done a lot of high-energy work with a high-energy organ.

Feed your brain.

hometoursandotherstuff

devinellekurtz

Late Night at the Art Studio From my upcoming artbook, which is crowdfunding right now!

marlynnofmany

The tiger He destroyed the fourth wall Yes YES The tiger is out

beaft

bitch moment: obviously this is subjective but a lot of modern queer lit (especially YA) has this specific tone that i find really grating. i want to call it "smug" but that's not exactly it. it's more like, that sense that the author is utterly convinced of the correctness of their own worldview and expects everyone else to agree with them on principle

beaft

two poles on this one btw

author is scared of me = terrified of ambiguity, uses excruciatingly precise language to avoid being misinterpreted, treats diversity as a box-ticking exercise, bends over backwards to explain itself when Literally No One Asked, all morally grey actions have to be immediately justified and resolved

author wants me dead = protagonist is unfailingly righteous and good, antagonist is irredeemably evil strawman, narrative refuses to make space for opinions/experiences that don't perfectly match up with the author's perspective, lots of Teachable Moments where an ignorant character is kindly shown the error of their ways by a wiser, more enlightened character

mikkeneko

#these things are not opposites on a spectrum#I see these mindsets packaged together more often than not#the author wants you dead because they are scared of you

redstonedust

i keep using 'blorbo' to refer to my own OCs to the point i forget its supposed to be a fandom term. yeah i know blorbo from my shows. and those shows? only airing inside my own brain and the dms of a few lucky friends, baby.

clarkent

me @ 10

me @ 30

polygon-wave

FINAL FANTASY VII REVELATION Spring 2027

#final fantasy vii

despazito

iridesia

melmili

just wanna say i am a big fan of this trope specifically

i think there is something to be said about this wave of white women made media that is so surface level with an underlying racist and/or insensitive bias and that refuses to engage with criticism. i'm talking taylor swift's the life of a showgirl, emerald fennell's wuthering heights, colleen hoover, the acotar series and booktok in general, etc. whenever you dare to raise concerns about the superficiality or the questionable writing or the treatment of poc in those pieces you get shut down with a "it's not that deep" or "let women have fun". this weaponisation of misogyny to justify slop made for mass consumption, especially considering how wide spread it is becoming, scares me quite a bit. to quote princess weekes, "the girlypopification of anti-intellectualism" is truly concerning, and i do believe it is linked to the rise of far right movements worldwide. if you refuse to engage with what you are being presented with, and exclusively consume brain smoothing content "for fun" then yeah you do become more susceptible to propaganda. it is that deep.

sunderwight

I recently watched Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights.

So, this thing is absolutely not trying to be a brainless fun teehee girliepop movie. It is indeed a deeply stupid film, but not on purpose. You can tell there's a genuine effort there to be artsy and meaningful! They're trying to use color symbolism and to make commentary about arousal and sex and abuse and offer some perspectives on gender and classism! This thing wants to be deep so badly that it's actively got a shovel in one arm and a fire hose in the other.

And that's what I've sort of found with most of this white woman made media with underlying racism and/or major insensitivity, which is that it's not that it's all supposed to be I guess "brain smoothing" good times.

It's that for a lot of it the lowkey racism isn't incidental, but rather a vital component of the fantasy they're trying to sell. They don't want you to point it out because that is a load bearing bit of bigotry that actually appeals to them.

White supremacy often gets sold to white women on the idea that they are desirable. Yes, ladies, you might be a second class citizen, but you're a beloved second class citizen who will be cherished and protected by your strong husband, who will keep you from being stolen away by savages who want to rape you. And isn't the idea of being so desired that there are savages who would risk dying to steal you away kind of exciting too? It's akin to the poor white men getting sold on the idea that they at least get to be part of the same group as the rich white men, that they are allowed to be above other men, even if they're still getting fucked over by classism.

White women on the whole are usually well aware that the second class citizen thing is at least kind of bullshit-y, but, it's harder to pry some of them away from the appeal of being the object of irrational desire. Heck, in some ways embracing the appealing aspects help with embracing the idea that it's also a bogus deal, since a component of it is that white women are beautiful victims and martyrs whose suffering is an aspect of their appeal. Which on the one hand is like, yeah sure y'know that makes sense, a lot of people want to be desired and to be told that their suffering is real. The trouble is that this comes as a package deal with the white supremacy baggage, it's not just being desired, it's being the desirable white, it's the dangerous exotic savages, the victim of the covetous gaze of said savages and also of masculine aggression in general, it's the only truly finding your match with a white guy, it's being innately and universally more desirable, and etc etc. It's a whole specific romantic fantasy that you can't really leave intact and pry away from the racism.

Which is just to say that I don't think the matter is necessarily being critical vs uncritical, anti-intellectual vs literary or so forth. A lot of fans of this kind of media will happily overthink it to the moon and back, and only bring out the "don't overthink it" argument for this specific topic. They don't need a discussion of the importance of critical thinking, they need to self-reflect, which is why the conversations on this usually turn into a rotten mess of defensiveness.

zooophagous

Why are you using chatgpt to get through college. Why are you spending so much time and money on something just to be functionally illiterate and have zero new skills at the end of it all. Literally shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to waste thirty grand you can always just buy a sportscar.

qonphuceingey

I’m really starting to think you people don’t understand what university is for. You’re buying the accreditation that you can do these things. It doesn’t matter how you do them.

zooophagous

I can assure you if you're going to school to be an xray tech or a surgical assistant it does very much matter how you do the stuff your accreditation says you can do. We aren't all business majors.

qonphuceingey

Yes, but you actually can’t do an X-ray without an X-ray machine and you can’t do surgery without scalpels. We already rely on technology for everything. Offloading cognitive tasks just frees us up to do more. If you can do your job with chatgpt, but can’t without, you can still do your job. I’m sure you would find university much much harder without access to google or the internet too.

zooophagous

Do you think scalpels are magic and do a little song and dance and perform the surgery themselves like Beauty and the Beast characters and the surgeon is there to conduct the background music

darlingofdots

What do you think will happen when your employer, who hired you because they saw you have a certificate to say that you have specific skills and knowledge, starts expecting you to have and use those skills and knowledge and you can't because you think a university degree is just a piece of paper that you buy

ariaste

"Offloading cognitive tasks just frees us up to do more"

When you're in school, the cognitive tasks are there for the explicit purpose of being brain exercises. It's weightlifting. It is FOR building your mental muscles and making you a stronger thinker and planner. "Offloading the cognitive tasks", then, is just Not Doing The Weightlifting. What happens when you pay for your gym membership and just stand around messing around on your phone? Nothing. Nothing happens. Just money leaving your wallet. Nothing else.

Using AI is a short term pleasure that is going to fuck you over in the long term, and by the time you realize that you didn't build the necessary muscles you need for the cognitive tasks required of your ACTUAL JOB (or, like, adult life in general), it's going to be too late to do anything about it... except going back and doing the real work all over again to get you up to speed.

And if your response as a college student is "Ugh i'm already good at this though, i don't need the practice" -- sweetie, you have no idea how good at it you could be though. If you're good at it now but you keep working on it, you're going to ASTONISH yourself in a couple years with how good at it you can get. I was a good writer when I was in college; I am an ASTRONOMICALLY better writer now, because I put in the work. But you have to lift the weights and build your muscles to get there, even when it's tedious. There aren't any shortcuts for this. You can be content with your own mediocrity, or you can believe that you're capable of growing towards brilliance. Which one will you choose, mediocrity or brilliance? You get to pick right now.

skodasforge

I’m a Surgical Assistant and that ChatGPT stan pissed me off so I’ll use my job as an example. 90% of our job as surgical assists comes down to memorizing the names and usages of the thousands of unique instruments and equipment and sutures involved in surgery as well as having the critical thinking skills to anticipate the needs and expectations of the surgeons we work with. That’s a “cognitive load” that cannot be pawned off on a computer. If I relied on ChatGPT to tell me what instruments to have ready for a case, it would create a composite of what the most likely instruments to be used in a given surgery and assuming that it’s even accurate, it would be effectively useless if my surgeon didn’t use any of those because each doctor is different. Surgeons get pissed off if you give them the wrong diameter size suture, so why would I rely on a soulless algorithm to tell me what my surgeon wants? And if I’m not figuring out for myself what they may need based off my own learning and not machine learning then why am I even there? There’s a reason robotic surgery still requires a surgical assistant and a surgeon to operate the robot, technology is an easement not a replacement for human labor and in college learning is the labor you should be doing.

A common thread with ChatGPT simps seems to be that they truly believe all labor is as easy as their cushy middle management jobs in the tech industry. “Buying an accreditation” might work there but can you imagine someone in the medical field not actually knowing the subject they’re licensed or accredited to know? I’ll give you a hint: the word we typically use is malpractice.

shower-thoughts-last-responder

I would also like to add as somone who did a one degree about 10 years ago when academia was just startingto make the switch from fully physical to full online, it is entirely possible to do a degree without really using the Internet or Google. You turn up to lectures, you collect the reading list, you go to the library, you find the book you need on the shelf, you take it and several others back to whatever desk you're working at and the you read them and make notes (I made notes on a PC but plenty of people in my group used paper notes pads), you critically evaluate the information amd decide whether or not to include it in your assessments. No Google required, it's not that fucking hard.

selwyngrimm

Let me introduce you all to the building trades concept of "buying your book."

A "book" is (a slightly outdated beyond this specific topic) term for your union card, which states that you're a member in good standing of your local/union and ostensibly means that you have the coinciding skills that go with the title of journeyworker or apprentice or whatever. Typically, to become a journeyman, you serve an apprenticeship (usually 5 years) and then have to take a test of some sort to prove you've acquired all the necessary skills to earn the qualification. The card/book is the proof that you have a basic level of competency.

Sometimes though certain locals, usually in the South or other places where right-to-work or similar attitudes are stronger, will "sell books," which is to say they will allow people who either haven't served an apprenticeship or passed a skills test to buy their card so that they may work on union jobs.

There's a myriad of reasons and reasonings on why a local might do this, but on the ground, it means that if I'm on a big job, anyone from areas or locals that have a reputation for selling books is automatically assumed to be under-qualified. This sucks, because I've known plenty of badass hands from Southern Locals, but because they come from book-selling locals, they had to overcome that stigma. To an extent, this whole thing is self-regulating because if you bought a book and can't hack it, you only come to a travel job once before they will never invite you back, but it is a constant source of sand in the gears for the whole labour management process.

Anyway, learning is important and faking learning WILL bite you in the ass if you have any desire to exist in the world in a meaningful way.