Lol

Adult, queer, music lover

[probuccalfat]

these women did wonders for the “i’m single and i like it that way” community… i’m having a sexy ass life!

[great-and-small]

Don’t mind me just thinking about the hole in the middle of the United States where Chipping sparrows refuse to fuck

[great-and-small]

[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)

[scientia-rex]

A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.

If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.

If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.

If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.

If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.

You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.

You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.

But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.

Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.

[taiey]

We provide free, entertaining exercise segments on our YouTube channel. Preview some of our top videos here and subscribe to our channel.

[scientia-rex]

You will be unsurprised to learn that someone already accused me of ableism for suggesting that people not smoke, move regularly in ways their body can tolerate, and eat plants.

[scientia-rex]

Do NONE of you eat canned beans with maple and ham? This is at every Safeway on Earth as far as I can tell, and if you hate most vegetables, these are a lot sweeter because of, you know, the added sugar. Eat candied plants—glazed Brussels sprouts, candied yams—if you can’t stand the regular kind.

[scientia-rex]

Oh, this is true, but you aren’t familiar with how lazy I am. I will work 36 hours straight for WORK—I’ve done it before and god willing I will never have to do it again—but cooking or preparing food has never been something I’ve devoted time to. (Partly because of hours and demands of work.) I wasn’t taught to cook because (explanation of my mother) and I didn’t even scramble eggs until I was 19, and then I set them on fire the first time I tried. I gave myself nutritional deficiencies twice during residency. The prospect of having to know what’s in my crisper AND use it before it goes bad despite the attentional difficulties, when my contamination OCD focus is already very bad, and KNOW when it’s gone bad when my only reference point is my also extremely OCD father, is untenable. I don’t enjoy cooking or making salads, and they’re pretty affordable at local places (in the sticks), so for me the math maths. However, it is definitely a good idea to learn to prepare salads and those of you with less baggage than me should definitely give it a shot! Salads can and should taste good! Raspberry vinaigrette and some candied walnuts or pecans plus some blue cheese crumbles = good shit. Who cares what plants you put it on. Except not iceberg lettuce.

[paulgadzikowski]

I once saw it observed on Tumblr that adding good tasting things you like to a salad you're making does not cancel out the nutrition in the vegetable matter

(might've been OP. sounds like the kind of thing you post)

[scientia-rex]

That wasn’t me, but I co-sign it 100%. I’d rather have patients eating salads that are completely covered in those “high fat!!!!” salad dressings that news programs love to freak out about than not eating plants. Do what you need to do to the plant to make it enjoyable to eat. Caramelize your onions. Put hollandaise sauce on your asparagus. Glaze your Brussels sprouts. Make! Life! Worth! Living! And make it possible to keep living it.

Penitence as a lifestyle is both unnecessary and often actively harmful.

[shesaysdisco]

I have some guided movement recommendations!

Julie Hunter’s movement_with_me on Instagram is a great resource for low-energy movement/exercise strategy. Julie was bedbound with ME/CFS following a COVID infection, and she used her experience as an athletic coach to figure out ways to reintroduce tiny doses of movement into her schedule, interspersed with purposeful rest, in such an effective way that she is now effectively cured and has returned to her pre-COVID baseline. She offers paid personalized movement coaching, wherein she creates a flexible multi-week schedule for clients to follow. Her Instagram account is a totally free treasure trove of advice, and if you scroll back a ways you’ll find videos demonstrating very simple starter exercises with a range of adaptations for different levels of ability.

Justin Agustin has an Instagram account and a YouTube channel full of “gentle functional exercises for everyday life,” including lots of workouts for beginners, seniors, and people living very sedentary lives. Many of his videos demonstrate techniques for beginners alongside a more advanced option, and he heavily stresses to only do what you are able to instead of pushing yourself further and potentially getting hurt. There are also paid versions of his work — a website and an app — with monthly challenges and a nutrition guide (and possibly more, but I haven’t used the paid version so idk).

And a guided flexibility recommendation!

David Thurin’s movementbydavid account on Instagram is all about gaining and maintaining flexibility through both active and passive stretching. He is incredibly flexible now, but he frequently mentions that it didn’t come naturally to him: He has consistently put time and effort into becoming more flexible, and you can do it too! Being flexible helps prevent injury, and, like fitness, is something you have to work to maintain and will lose if you don’t put in that work. Also like fitness, it’s something you can get better at, even starting from scratch.

All three of these people emphasize that you can follow their videos without special equipment, using things you probably already have (like a chair, a wall, a counter, and weights like a water bottle or can of food).

[ceruleanheaven]

how to become good at everything no practice no effort no motivation no passion no talent fast free

[wizardarchetypes]

absolutely looosssinggg it. i'm so obsessed with movies which portray the woman MC in a highly specific job because the writers clearly think it's like "off-beat" and "quirky" but have no idea how the field works whatsoever.

i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.

it's a quirk unique to this MC that she cares so much about paintings, in her department at the metropolitan museum of art, where her colleagues find all that art business rather dreary. because we all know that's what conservators in extremely competitive museum positions are like.

[wizardarchetypes]

I'm not saying there can't be lifelong love in here somewhere but I also just feel like the monogamous heterosexual marriage you're fantasizing about isn't necessarily best represented by the bacchanal. and that's okay. but i do stand by that.

[baraphalloplastyclinic]

I actually do think we should discourage women from becoming housewives. Do not become financially dependent on a man. That's how a lot of women ended up dead over the years. A man gets violent suddenly and you have to choose between homelessness or potentially dying at his hand because you have an enormous gap in your resume and no degrees or certifications or anything that will help you pursue a career that will allow you to be financially independent. He owns your bank account. His name is probably the one on the car. Try and leave and he can report it stolen. Where will you go then?

Don't become a housewife.

[i-hate-chick-fil-a]

We stan!!!!

chaotic good

[exploding-plastic-inevitable]

There’s a happy ending to, because the robbery was unsuccessful, the couple ended up getting the money Eden needed from a movie inspired by em! Also John only had to serve part of his sentence. Check out their wedding photos btw they’re beautiful.

[itsanidiom]

reblogging because I’ve seen this post a thousand times and I’ve never seen the happy ending!! 

[manuciruja]

I think it's insane that even in the most leftist and "progressive" spaces the idea of equating morality with looks is alive and present and no one fucking bats an eye at it. like racists and mysoginysts are always portrayed as fat and hairy and generally unkept, as a contrast to the morally good and attractive leftists of course; people will have no problem being genuinely fucking awful about someone's appearance if they're deemed to be a "bad person". and the worst part is you point all of this out and people act like you're reading too much into things like no dude you gotta start using your brain more

[farewell-persephone]

Oh my daughters, oh my sons and lovers, Did I raise you to harm one another? Or did you learn it from someone else? Did you pull it from someone else's hands? And when you slip into blinking red, do you blame it on God or on your fellow man?

[treedwellinggoat]

Being the only “artsy one” in like a friend group or god forbid family is like… the one true horror in life. The violence done to me by simply existing in normieville cannot be underestimated.

[maxxie-or-smth]

you've met me at a very "yeah i'm trying to work on that" time in my life

[meorix]

ᴍɪxᴛᴀᴘᴇ 3/∞

[kingcatnine]

don't shave your legs this summer HOLD THE FUCKING LINE

[kingcatnine]

the hair literally makes you less sticky

[kingcatnine]

if you're about to reblog this post seeking approval for shaving your legs, please close the tab containing this post and go watch a gillette ad or smth cause you're not gonna get it from me

[saviorified]

sometimes people on here talk about "accountability" in a way that shows they think that the person they've decided is in the wrong can't actually do anything to redeem themselves other than like. suicide.

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

The thing with amateur local theater is it is almost always bad BUT keeping it alive is the most important thing

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

The joys of artistic expression cannot be limited to talented people everybody needs it to survive

[nirruti]

This is such a hilarious take we should give untalented people who make bad art money you know just because guys

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

Exactly. Glad you understand 💗

[fabiansociety]

good art grows from the soil of bad art, but also bad art justifies itself. it's still art

[knitmeapainting]

@powerbottombrucespringsteen

I agree, please enjoy. Acrylic on random thrift store found object, randomly selected colors and fonts from an online generator.

[h0]

[redstonedust]

always good to have friends who are at least 5 years older than you and friends who are at least 5 years younger than you. being the youngest person you know will make you feel like an inexperienced child who knows nothing of the world. being the oldest person you know will make you feel like the joker.