Lomarien

Nerd. Gaymer. Bibliophile. She/her. (Visit my side blog @ilovegaymes for video games and Critical Role)

[savagechickens]

So Boring.

[milkywayes]

these days it’s a flex to be able to say that you enjoy reading long-form fiction, and that’s honestly terrifying. i meet infinitely more people who claim they can’t read works longer than 10k than i meet people who say they can and do. this post is not about the time commitment but about the attention span, the ability to stay with something for a while and not lose the thread and not lose your focus so much you have to give up or stop deriving enjoyment or meaning from it. listen, I have unmedicated ADHD too, I have way too high a screen time, i get it. but the human experience, and the stories we tell, cannot all be kept short and easily digestible. so many threads that you spin will only start taking shape over time, over the course of a hundred thousand words, the course of several books. we need to stop accepting this new limitation and fight it instead. there’s so much to lose and so much to miss out on, and i worry about our future.

[hiolivejuicee]

I crave simple things with the right company.

[michaelwheelers]

THE GOOD PLACE (2016-2020)

4.06 — A Chip Driver Mystery

[queercomposer]

JEN D'QUEER??? IS ANYONE HERE JEN D'QUEER???

[onedirectionforever]

“you support gay rights so you must be gay”

i support animal rights do i look like a fucking alpaca to you

[onedirectionforever]

turns out i am gay

[monsieurenjlolras]

holy shit how’d this alpaca learn how to type

[mywitchcultblr]

Diversity win! The alpaca is gay!

[adreamthatsworthkeeping]

[thebirdkiwi]

he was a llama

[mug-of-beans]

“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”

No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.

[wizard-council-bureaucrat]

Yes it had a deep blood cost, but at least it was a one time sacrifice and not this monthly bloodletting nonsense new age magic has

[wizard-archivist-official]

The old magic is robust enough to survive a decade of use and it's compatible with every wand, staff, scroll, and charm in our collection.

The new magic stops working after three days and every spell uses proprietary runes.

Our preferences, as an archiving institution, should be pretty clear.

[charlesoberonn]

You try to get guidance for the new magic and the king's sorcerers maybe will answer you in a few days with an unhelpful suggestion to buy the newest orb.

You need guidance for the old magic and a dozen retired middle-aged wizards will pop up to explain it to you rune by rune if necessary.

[rosettyller]

PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026)

[reeddraws]

It's been a while since I've worked on a sincere, longer-form landscape study. I still had to keep a time limit of one hour on this, but I still had a lot of fun focusing on this. Daily drawing 2472.

[thickness-protection-program]

Dang rip America

[karlyboyyy]

[rythms-of-synthax-deactivated20]

Quote of the day

[baffledtreesquid]

I’m seeing a lot of people saying this post changed their brain chemistry, and as a neuroscientist I wanted to say yes!!! Yes it does!

Wanting something requires dopamine signaling, but liking something doesn’t.

If you have a mental illness/disorder that affects dopamine, you might feel that you don’t want to do the things that you like. You do still like them. You will appreciate having done them.

Let your likes guide you.

(If you want to read more, here’s one experimental paper about it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/ This theory called the incentive-sensitization theory was originally created to explain behaviors in addiction but can be applied elsewhere as well)

Rewards are both ‘liked’ and ‘wanted’, and those two words seem almost interchangeable. However, the brain circuitry that mediates the psych

[magicratfingers]

[jthqp]

[bewbin]

nasa trying to eat the moon

[xtremecaffeine-deactivated20181]

Operation Pac Man is a go

[mushroomofficial]

An Oven is a kind of European above-ground umu typically constructed from metal and ceramic. Originating in the 18th century, ovens are primarily used for preparing several kinds of Western-style hāngī, such as Sunday roasts, casseroles, and pies, which are cooked in various types of specialised poti. Ovens are usually constructed off-site in dedicated facilities before being installed in the whareumu, or kitchen, of a European whare. They are typically not able to be moved once installed, quite unlike umu which may be constructed anywhere and are readily deconstructed and moved as needed. Another limitation of ovens is that due to their small internal volume relative to their overall size, they are generally restricted in the amount of kai they can produce. An oven will produce only enough kai to feed a few people, whereas a hāngī cooked in an umu can feed an entire village.

[iemon-pxl]

"funaya"

[rosalesbeausderholle]

One thing that worries me about the use of AI is whether or not it can worsen people's dementia and alzheimer's in the future. When my grandmother was first diagnosed, we got her math activity books. Now, my grandmother never had a formal education, but we did our best to keep her sharp, get her to do math and writing activity books, sudokus, playing board games that required some level of strategizing with her. Her family is prone to alzheimer's and dementia (both her siblings had it and deteriorated very very very quickly, which yeah, scares the shit out of me being her granddaughter) but she was the one whose mind lasted the longest, she only passed away two years ago, at 88, ten whole years after her initial diagnosis and sure, she had forgotten things, recipes and where she put her glasses and appointments, but she never forgot any of us, ten whole years in, she still remembered us. Now, this may have been luck, but doctors always said the constant mental work + companionship + medicine helped her a lot. So I'm thinking, these people who are now relying on AI for everything, from email-writing to thinking what's for dinner to casual conversations, I've even seen people rely on it to calculate what time they should leave their house if they need to be at a place at a specific time and their commute lasts X number of minutes. As if that's not... the simplest math operation possible? You shouldn't even need a calculator for that!!! Idk I don't know how long it'll take us to see the effects of this + exposure to brain-rotting short form content that is completely meaningless + people addicted to right-wing conspiracy style media. Idk I'm very worried. Please, read, read complicated books! Take up a book on philosophy and try to decipher it and make your own opinions on it, please buy a maths activity book and relearn how to do math, please get a hobby that involves lots of thinking and concentrating. PLEASE!!!

[notalotgoingonatthisinstant]

As a neurologist, I’ll give you the pretty name for it: cognitive reserve.

The way I explain it to my patients is that our neurons don’t regenerate. They make connections with each other and that’s it. If you don’t use your brain, they make fewer connections and, if one of them dies, you’re gonna miss it, because that was the only one that knew how to do X. Now, if each one of them has many, many connections, you won’t notice the difference when one of them dies. The others pick up the slack.

As of 2024, 45% of dementia risk factors are modifiable. Relevant to this conversation, 5% for less education and 5% for social isolation.

We absolutely are going to see the reflection of this, but it’s gonna take decades and it’ll be too late. So, for the love of your brain, pretend that it’s a muscle and make it work. People complain about “when am I ever gonna use this maths formula in my life?” You’re not. You’re teaching your brain to think logically. Those sinapses will be there for when you need to figure out your week’s schedule. English classes taught me how to interpret data and how to convey it in this text so it’s clear and you understand what I’m saying, not because I needed to justify why the curtain is blue.

Make your brain know how to do different things. Logic games, puzzles, taking care of a garden even if small, planning a church’s event or birthday, learn a new instrument, learn a few words in another language, look at a calendar every day, do some manual labor if possible. Do not, I repeat, do not let your brain get rid of sinapses by letting AI do everything. Your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy — do you really think it’s going to maintain connexions that aren’t in use?

Most cases of Alzheimer’s are sporadic, meaning no family history. Family history of a first-degree relative with Alzheimer’s starting before they were 80yo increases your risk in 2-3x on average.

TLDR: Yes. From the knowledge we have today, AI will increase the number and severity of dementia cases.

[wulfhalls]

forever grateful i was simply too lazy to let the makeup industrial complex get its hooks in me. I was just like im not doing all of that. in fact. im doing none of that

[cumaeansibyl]

yeah I have political reasons for it now but my original and still most powerful reason is "I am not getting out of this bed one single second before I have to"

[aromanticduck]

[inkpixels]

12 colors