#brain surgery

[70sscifiart]

Control Panel Saturday isn't brain surgery... Jean-François Pénichoux's 1981 cover to Robots: Historique de la robotique mobile du XXIeme au XXVeme siecle, via Ranaroth on bluesky.

[computer-graveyard]

Fuck tumblr fuck drawing here's more hl2vrai

[margarets-flowers]

*guy who has afraid to leave house disorder* why am i so scared to leave the house? this perplexes me

[dduane]

I’m watching ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ from TNG and I got irrationally excited when I saw you co-wrote it. Like THATS DIANE MY FRIEND FROM TUMBLR LOOK AT HER GO!!!

Thank you!

It was a lot of fun, that. (And pitching for it was the scariest thing I’d ever done that wasn’t brain surgery.) 😏

(but also, per @princesscolumbia:)

...what an odd thing to say...

…Only if you haven’t been a nurse who’s scrubbed in on brain surgery. Which I have been, and did. (Brains are kinda shockingly pink-and-white, if anybody was curious…)

I keep having to remind myself that sometimes people think writers just come out of nowhere, without having had previous—or sometimes very current—careers. Most of us have had. (Otherwise the wisdom about “Don’t Give Up Your Day Job” wouldn’t make much sense.) I passed my State Boards as a registered nurse in New York state in 1974; and as part of that qualification, some of my experience naturally involved a medical-surgical unit including “circulating”* during and scrubbing in on various kinds of surgery. Mine, as it happened, included brain surgery. Which, since my qualification was in psychiatric nursing, was unexpectedly apropos.

The brain surgery was actually a lot calmer than (ten-plus years later) unexpectedly pitching “Where No One Has Gone Before” to Gene Roddenberry, as I knew beforehand what was going to happen in the surgical suite. But at least in Gene’s office I didn’t have to hand anybody any dropped instruments, or worry about sterile field discipline. …Anyway, if anybody had dropped anything, Bob Justman (who was also there, gods rest his good soul) would probably have picked it up. Producers can be so tidy… :)

…Hope this helps resolve any confusion.

*For the curious: a nurse doing “circulating” work is the one who brings necessary objects to the active surgical team, and removes stuff no longer necessary for the work. “Scrubbing in” means you’re prepped to work on the surgical patient yourself, or to work closely with the person(s) leading the surgery. Being scrubbed in requires a higher level of sterile discipline.

[lilyspngs]

Neuroscience 𖡎

[facts-i-just-made-up]

What do aerospace engineers do exactly?

Brain surgery, I think.

[oliversrarebooks]

tw: captivity, brainwashing, drugging, awake surgery

I finally had a dream with a coherent whump storyline

I was in a facility with a group of maybe a few dozen people. The facility was clean and brightly lit, and none of us were trying to escape or anything, but it seems like we weren't there entirely by choice either. We were being kept in rooms that were kind of like cells, and ushered out to the common area each day, where we would do things like play board games, but we were being closely monitored by both security guards and scientists with clipboards observing everything we did.

They would take us out of the common areas to do experiments and tests. It was something like trying to get us to have psychic powers like telekinesis, and they were also doing other experiments on the human brain. For some reason, I remember really vividly that about half the people there had some kind of natural aptitude, while the other half were going through some process to have the ability induced. I was in the other half, and even though I was being held more or less prisoner I was really convinced that the work was incredibly important and I was supposed to be there. I think that the others and I had been brainwashed to believe that. We were all wearing hospital gowns and slippers because they wanted to be able to take us away for medical routines at a moment's notice.

There were a lot of vague cognitive tests involved, and routine physicals and vision tests. But the most vivid part was the medical testing they were doing on us to try to induce the psychic abilities. I'd be in the middle of something in the common area, and a group of the scientists would suddenly come up and take me away. I would be happy that I was chosen and the others would be jealous (again, this was probably some kind of brainwashing).

I'd be laid out on an operating table or an examination chair and sedated, and they'd experiment on me and give me more cognitive tests. I remember it being kind of like an awake brain surgery, where I was heavily drugged into almost a twilight state but still somewhat aware, and they were cutting into my neck and the back of my head, and doing experiments with my brain and spine. I could feel the things they were doing to me, and they didn't hurt, but they felt strange and disorienting. They would prod at different things and make changes and insert chips and stuff, and then give me tests to see how it changed me. I had a notion that they were also brainwashing me during these experiments. Sometimes I'd be the only subject, surrounded by the scientists, and sometimes they'd be doing these experiments to a handful of people at once in an operating theater.

At the end of the dream the scientists were all excited because they had some experiment that they insisted was really incredibly important, and it involved being able to wipe memories from people. The surgery and tests were going to be really involved and take a long time. We were all volunteering for it enthusiastically because we were so conditioned to want to be experimental subjects. They chose me as a primary subject and I was happy to be chosen, but also kind of unsettled because I was partly still aware that I had just volunteered for brain surgery to get my memories wiped. They started taking me away and then I woke up.

Maybe I should write up a real story about this sometime...

[caskeullt]

they lobotomised jay like they lobotomised me