when people defend the âCis white guy is defaultâ thing like âHeâs meant to be an everyman we can all relate to and project on!â kindly remind them the largest ethnic group in the WORLD is Han Chinese and the highest gender percentage fluctuates so if you want an ACTUAL  âdefaultâ you want a 40 year old chinese person whose gender changes from year to year. Â
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.
btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
Itâs already time for our third and final Sign-Up Round-Up of StarTrekPotluck2026! Weâre so excited to say weâve got 42 creators from across a huge range of Star Trek fandoms, all ready to fire up their replicators and serve up some delicious fanworks this summer đ„ł đ„Ł
A warm welcome to the kitchen to:
@green-mug-2mato-juice (fandom tbd) (fanwork tbd), 2nd August
@raffaelamusiker PIC/VOY or ENT (tbd) fanfic, 4th August
@problematick VOY fanfic, 5th August
@stellanovaatla TNG fanfic, 6th August
@lilolilyr crossover fanfic, 7th August
@pixiedane SFA fanfic, 8th August
@grissomesque VOY fanfic, 9th August
@astrotrek86 SNW fanfic, 11th August
@aehallhyon PIC fanfic, 12th August
Who join our existing chefs (under the cut!)
Now all thatâs left to do is gather your friends around your favourite mess hall table, settle in, and get ready to see what this yearâs chefs are cooking up for StarTrekPotluck2026!
For more info, see here.
@adiraofthetals DSC fanfic, 1st August
@dragonroar87Â PIC fanfic, 1st August
@metromeisterr TOS fanfic, 1st August
@regionalpancake (fandom tbd) fanfic, 2nd August
@annikasevenshots PIC/VOY or SFA (tbd) fanfic, 2nd August
@ussjellyfish DSC/SFA fanfic, 3rd August
@onmytallesttiptoesspinning SNW or LWD (tbd), 3rd August
@song-spero LWD (fanwork tbd), 3rd August
@moonxshape (fandom tbd) fanfic, 4th August
@elen-aranel DSC/SNW fanfic, 4th August
@cornwells-couch AOS/DSC fanfic, 5th August
@spacetwoofmanyfrontiers TNG fanfic, 5th August
@candycurlsofmaddness (fandom tbd) fanfic, 6th August
@silicon-nodule TOS fanfic, 6th August
@pilcrowtudinous LWD/VOY fanfic, 7th August
@sun-lit-roses SNW fanfic, 7th August
@marymoss1971Â LWD fanfic, 8th August
@cookiegamer TNG/DS9 fanfic, 8th August
@kejsarinna SFA fanfic, 9th August
@annamelia-art (fandom tbd) fanart, 9th August
@jone-slugger VOY fanfic, 10th August
@angrymantheater TNG podfic, 10th August
@jazzfic PIC fanfic, 10th August
@silvermillenniumqueenneptune PIC/TNG fanfic, 11th August
@thewillowtree DS9 fanfic, 11th August
@altumvidetur TNG or DS9 or VOY (tbd) fanfic, 12th August
@eugladossae SFA (fanwork tbd), 12th August
@iwritesometimes (fandom tbd) fanfic, 13th August
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