[partialbirthabortion]

Is there anything about abortion in particular that you'd like more laypeople to understand?

Hm! Off the top of my head:

Abortion is very safe. Safer, in fact, than a colonoscopy. Many orders of magnitude safer than giving birth (up until about 20 weeks, at which point risk becomes about par). Abortion does not affect your ability to conceive in the future. Abortion does not increase your risk of breast or uterine cancer.  

Surgical abortion is very fast. Most surgical abortions take 3-5 minutes total. Not kidding. Between a pelvic exam, placing a speculum, opening the cervix, and removing the pregnancy, 5 minutes is on the long side for a first tri procedure. After 13 weeks gestation, 5-7 minutes is pretty typical, and after 16 weeks gestation it’s more like 15-20 minutes. The procedure itself may be uncomfortable (nothing sharp, but pressure and cramping is totally normal!) but most women do not experience lasting discomfort afterwards. Discomfort should be akin to menstrual cramps.

The Abortion Pill is not the best choice for everyone. The Pill (or pills- most people will take one tablet of mifepristone and four tablets of misoprostol) was an incredible advancement in women’s healthcare and is an amazing tool to end a pregnancy- but it kinda sucks. Bleeding and cramping are much more intense with the Pill, and debilitating cramping can persist for even up to five days. Some women will be able to see the pregnancy when it passes. Most women will not be able to work or go to school. If you would like the process to feel a little more natural, like a miscarriage, or would like your partner to be with you for the worst of it, or are super trypanophobic, it’s absolutely there for you, but I would encourage someone seeking even a very early abortion to at least consider the surgical option.

Women do not regret their abortions. The single most common emotion after abortion is relief. The vast, vast majority of people consistently believe they made the best choice they could.

[collapsedsquid]

Hackers say that they used Meta’s AI support chatbot to break into a host of high-profile Instagram profiles by asking the support bot to change the email address associated with the target account. The claims coincide with a series of high-profile Instagram account takeovers, including the Barack Obama White House account, the Chief Master Sergeant of Space Force’s account, and Sephora’s account. The news shows the extreme risk associated with offloading support or critical functions to an AI chatbot. Users who have had their accounts stolen say that there is no way to escalate their problem to a human. In March, Meta announced that it was pushing AI support to all accounts across Facebook and Instagram, and that it would have the ability to reset passwords and perform other critical account maintenance functions: “Solutions, not just suggestions,” the feature’s product page says. “Account security and recovery.”

[brostateexam]

Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked

The exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI.

[senatortedcruz]

[dogpuppy]

[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)

[bonivers]

[louisegluckpdf]

i was born in the absolute RIGHT generation if i had to have children i would KILL MY SELF!!!!

[forest-woman]

[laurierrose]

we need to start legally protecting these like make this kind of bathroom part of the national park system

[roycohn]

when people bemoan the "falling birth rate" all i hear is someone who has very likely made a large part of their personality their Desire To Kill All Pedophiles being sad about a 20-year global decrease in child rape. sorry but you are not serious people to me.

[roycohn]

like do you know why the birth rates have plummeted GLOBALLY since 2007? aggressive intervention against grown men impregnating children. literally, that is what it is. the birth rate decrease is attributed to teen pregnancy rates falling dramatically all around the world in the past two decades, and statistically, over half of all births to teen mothers (particularly those under 15) are fathered by men over 20. the falling birth rate is quite literally a reflection of a worldwide decrease in children being forced to carry an adult rapist's fetus to term. you will never convince me that this is a negative thing.

[ooppo]

Your heart is not true enough to enter the gates of Margaritaville

[ratuszarsenal]

I really fuck with these arabic logos of ikea stylised to look like little house interiors

[maschiiiio]

Louis Fratino, Latteria, 2023

@maschiiiio

[ilan]

[parkayquarts]

[pillarsalts]

there's actually no reason whatsoever for there to be zero gnc women in WWE. not even one trunchbull-esque strongwoman. not even for comic relief. every single one wears a full face of makeup and complete set of nails. it's actually crazy compared to the variety of handsomes to uglies on the male side. fucked up.

[wike-wabbits]

Lace panel depicting the story of the Judgement of King Solomon English, circa 1640-1670 Needle lace, with seed pearls and glass beads

[abigailspinach]