This is an awesome use of what is probably a master's degree if not a doctorate and I am 100% thrilled that she shared it even though it was embarrassing and she squeaked.
Californian (sup, fellow desert-havers) i've been using this since i saw it and it works so fucken good dude (i often have to put like 8 dogs in my car, so it's extra important my car isn't attempting to go super-nova when we get in)
This is Dr Hannah Fry, the first Professor of Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, she’s got a list of achievements as long as your arm, and she’s bloody brilliant!
Thread on alternative views of iconic landmarks you (probably) haven’t seen before 🧵
1. Mount Fuji from a plane window.
2. Arc de Triomphe, Paris
3. Aerial view of Kaaba, Mecca
4. A view of the Taj Mahal that you do not usually see, highlighting the stark contrast between opulence and poverty divided by a single wall.
5. Top down view of the Statue of Liberty
6. The backside of Tutankhamun's burial mask
7. The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica seen through Rome's most famous keyhole.
8. The worn steps of the Tower of Pisa
9. Photographer Alexander Ladanivskyy, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, captured an extraordinary drone shot of the Great Pyramid of Giza from an unusual perspective.
10. The Shanhai Pass, where the Great Wall of China meets the ocean.
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.
For the Fanfic Writer asks @sassymajesty sent me 7, Post a snippet from a wip. So here's what I was forced (affectionate) to write by @lexa-griffins, as a challenge on her server.
The context to this one is that over all the tiny details about these characters that I have, Famous AU Lexa is bilingual (maybe even trilingual) I came up with it on a random day where I decided that if all I listen to is music in English even being a native Spanish speaker, Lexa can love music in Spanish as well. So,
This is Clarke and Lexa at a concert of one of Lexa’s favorite Latin American bands, Morat.
Clarke has known Lexa for long enough to be able to at least mumble a few of her favorite songs in other languages, and she’d be caught dead before coming to a concert without at least knowing the chorus of every song in the setlist. She is an artist herself after all.
Morat is one of Lexa’s favorite bands, they make pop and ballads that are mostly all romantic or of heartbreak. Clarke has like the tunes from before being able to understand what the words mean, Lexa likes to play them for hung over morning. The music is easy to dance, bob your head or at least tap your foot to it.
Even being pop and ballads there’s something unique about Spanish pop. the music is different in a refreshing way, and she really gets why Lexa likes it so much. She’s now privy to the translation of enough songs to also know that lyrics also hit different.
There’s a bunch of songs on the set list that she’s used to, a few of them she maybe knows by heart and a few that are simply too fast for her to get. It’s when ‘Porfa no te vayas’ starts, a song Lexa is just in love with, and Clarke is in love with the way she sings it, that Clarke truly realizes how magical this concert is going to be.
It’s beyond the way Lexa sighs with her head tilted back at recognizing the first cords, it’s past the way she moves behind Clarke to pull her close and hide in her neck as tear surely build up behind her eyes and she starts singing with the band.
Even in a crowded arena, even in front of so many people that are really bad at pretending they’re not looking their way, there’s a special sense of intimacy and having her own private concert whispered into her ear.
Even knowing almost four languages herself, there’s nothing more endearing in letting her girlfriend translate a fifth one to her.
Tear fill her own eyes as a smile pulls at her lips when Lexa lifts slightly from her neck after the first verse to press her lips to the side of her temple, words that where barely more that gibberish starting to make sense when a second after Lexa mumbles their translation to English.
“Because only you know that
So many kisses were left in the air
Only you know that
I can’t live, without you I am nobody
Please don’t leave, when sunrise comes
when some mistakes me look imprudent
the nerves of dancing with you playing with me
Please don’t leave, when I try to talk
and while stuttering no-no-nothing I tell you—
the nerves of dancing with you play with me”
Laughing at Clarke catching the poorly translated pun, Lexa hides in her neck again, she goes back to singing in Spanish, words too fast for Clarke to catch beyond knowing the general meaning before hand, she doesn’t care anyways.
"Te puse mil etiquetas y tú no tienes precio
Te enamoré con palabras y tú con los hechos
Construimos el amor empezando por el techo
Sabiendo que faltaban mil pilares de peso
Si dudé de ti, ya no me quedan dudas
Yo vengo de la tierra y tú eres de la luna
Aunque seamos dos, yo nunca olvidaré
Que como tú no hay una"
(I'm from the ground and you're from the moon
Even if we're two, I won't forget
that like you there's no one)
She doesn’t care because the woman holding her in her arms is simply too perfect, inexplicably in love with her for some reason Clarke is yet the decipher but can’t be more thankful to. When the chorus rolls again and Lexa lifts up with laugher in her voice to repeat the same failed pun, Clarke can only turn to kiss her.
Lexa eases her hold on her as Clarke grabs her face to pull her a kiss that is too deep for the environment they’re in, but she doesn’t care. Lexa kisses her the same, shaky sigh coming out as their tears mix in with their saliva. The kiss goes on and on and Clarke can tell Lexa loves the meaning of every words Clarke doesn’t understand when she kisses her harder and pulls her closer.
They laugh wet giggles when the chorus comes around a third and final time before they’re willing to pull apart. They rest their foreheads together as the band closes the song and the crowd screams its goodbye before screaming even louder when the next song starts.
Clarke is right with them in spirit, turning eaxitedly and looking at Lexa with wide eyes when she recognizes one of the songs she does know and likes very much – Segundos Platos, a love song about waiting for your love’s heart to heal to not stain your love.
“Are you translating this one to me now?” Lexa teases her ear when Clarke leans back to her. She rolls her eyes with a soft elbow back; she’s barely singing words she’s memorized more than learnt as it is, she can however sing them to Lexa.
And then Cuando Nadie Vea comes on and Clarke is sure she could translate this, if it only wasn’t more important to sing it against Lexa’s lips.
"Te miro, me miras y el mundo no gira
¡Todo parece mentira! (Oh, oh, oh, oh...)
Tú sigues, yo sigo, es nuestro castigo
Fingir que somos amigos
Y cuando no hayan testigos
Mi vida entera te daré cuando nadie ve"
(Oh, oh, oh, oh...)
((I look at you, you look at me, and the world doesn’t spin
Everything feels a lie
You continue, I continue, is out punishment
pretend that we’re friends
Y when there’s no witness
I’ll give you my whole life, when no one is watching))
I seriously love AO3. Like what do you mean that I get extra content of my favorite fandoms for free?? What do you mean that some of the Shakespeare-level writing is what we could only dream to get in canon?? What do you mean I can read all the content tags and warnings so I know what I’m reading and can choose what I enjoy?? What do you mean I can search and filter for specific troupes and emotions instead of vague genres?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO ADS AND ONCE AGAIN IT’S ALL FREE?? Ack I’ll never get over this website lol <333
- Lexa’s guards have been shipping clexa since day one and are the worst gossips
- Titus got mopey drunk about it in the polis pub one time and told everyone that Lexa didnt like him anymore because Clarke came along. Grounders told Lincoln who told Octavia who told Raven who told everyone she met for two weeks straight
- Octavia took one look at Clarke after the kiss in s2 and told all her grounder friends who then have been taking bets on it ever since Clarke showed up in polis
- Roan of Azgheda writes fanfiction and distributes it
- wait a second i just remembered octavia was there on that fatefull day and was supposed to meet up with Clarke after the clexasexa. My guess is Clarke and Lexa are nowhere near as quiet as they think they were and Octavia went on a rant
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
izzy806
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
gamechangershow
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