Not that I think all marriages are doomed but when deciding who to marry you should ask yourself “is this someone I’d want to divorce?” As in, is this someone I believe would be mature and fair, even when they’re upset and don’t particularly like me at the moment. Is this someone I could continue to trust while going through an adversarial process? And if the answer is no, don’t marry them.
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.
Timberland has an “AI rapper” named Tata, who was made to look like a young Asian girl.
The company that debuted an “AI actress” called Tilly, looks like a teenage white girl.
It’s no coincidence every single “ai entertainer” so far is in the image of a young woman. They yearn for an era of digital pimping and the first digital content creators came into being for porn.
I think it's easier, too, for AI to make a convincing woman's face. It doesn't have to look like a natural human face to convince us, it can look like a face that has had surgery or layers of makeup or false lashes or lip injections. Our uncanny valley filters don't go off as easily with women because we are used to seeing women who have done things to make their faces look less human.
This wikiHow page on how to know if your kid is trans is disgusting. Me and millions of gay kids would have been transed if our parents believed in this shit. These are MADE UP NORMS. Clothes, names, whatever. They are made up by society. Stop teaching kids to hate their bodies because they're gender non-conforming. This is the shit that happens in a society where the only gnc representation is trans and non-binary. Give me one recent butch character in prominent media that wears men's clothes, doesn't shave, has short hair, and doesn't get transed by the last season. Give me one male character that wears dresses and doesn't hate his body.
I love how this list takes for granted that a parent will force their child into gender roles. Like that's normal, expected, acceptable behavior. Like the only problem is if a parent is forcing their child into the "wrong" set of roles.
"shows extreme unhappiness at being forced to act like the gender they were assigned at birth"
Hmm... I wonder why a girl might not like being forced to "act like a girl", surely it couldn't be because the entire concept of "acting like a girl" is sexist? No, it must be that the child is actually a boy!
"Being much happier when you let them do something related to the gender they express"
Any kid is going to be happier if they can do what they want. Any kid is going to be happier not to be forced to conform to arbitrary rules that their parents are inexplicably obsessed with.
"your child may feel (and act) like the world is ending if they have to pretend to be someone they are not"
Kids act like the world is ending for all kinds of reasons, they throw tantrums for all kinds of reasons, and they especially tend to hate unfairness. Not letting a girl shop in the boy's section is unfair and pointless.
"Chosing a masculine/feminine name for themselves", so prefering a nickname over "Andrea", "Alexandra", or "Samantha" means a girl is actually really a boy?
As for "hating their genitals", if a kid hates their genitals something is probably seriously fucked up. Not necessarily sexual abuse, though that's a possibility, but it certainly indicates the kind of body image issues that don't just come out of nowhere.
Jesus fucking Christ, by this logic, every girl I went to elementary school with is trans. We all played with and had toys that were marketed as "for boys" and we all had "boys" clothes. We lived very rural, a significant portion of my friends grew up on farms and "girls clothes" just weren't designed for the farm life. So they mostly had unisex or "boys clothes"
We all played with the hot wheels, read the superhero books, and played "rough" at recess. Half the girls had shorter hair cuts. Most of us (the ones that had access to TV regularly) watched some form of "boys show" and we all played as various characters. Our whole class once got a lecture in third grade because we played "Autobots vs Decepticons" too roughly and a lot of us got muddy/clothes ripped at the knees or elbows/hair a mess/etc. the whole class was involved, boys and girls.
We didn't have a lot of students, so boys and girls played together a lot. We built snow forts in the winter, mini sticks as often as we were allowed, survivor/manhunt pretty much every recess, and traded books with each other often. Nobody told us we weren't girls. We were just kids.
Health classes really ought to teach people what the beginning stages of addiction are like because a lot of people don’t realize they’re addicted to something until they’re years deep into it.
If you go without it you feel unwell in a way that you never usually feel unwell. Sweating, tired, sleepy, headaches, irritable, depressed, etc. For example when I was in opium withdrawal I got incredibly depressed in a way that I’ve never been before or since. When you quit caffeine you might get super bad headaches even if you never usually get any headaches.
Thoughts of it regularly bother you and the thoughts go away once you’ve taken it but only temporarily. Unlike with a food craving which usually stays away once you’ve satisfied it or distracted yourself from it.
You find yourself rationalizing with yourself why you should break your own rules about how much you can take and how often. For example you might only let yourself drink alcohol every four days but start thinking that three days is actually close enough to four days, right? Especially if this happens regularly.
You’re using it so often that you feel the need to lie about how much you use because other people might think it’s concerning
If the substance or activity is nearby it’s genuinely difficult to not consume it or participate in it in a way that’s really frustrating.
You feel bad when you’re not on it and your brain tells you “if you just take the thing you wouldn’t feel this way”
You can only feel “whole” or “normal” when you’re on a substance even though it’s a recreational drug
And if you read this and think you might be addicted to something, don’t panic and don’t feel ashamed. Realizing you’re addicted to something isn’t a failure. It’s more information about your health that you can use to manage your condition, whether you want to get rid of your addiction or not.
Any idiot who is disgusted at the sight of a woman existing naturally and without alteration is exactly the kind of person who sees a healthy gorgeous dandelion, or regal purple thistle, or a friggin delightful johnny jump-up, and says PULL THAT WEED. Your mind is dead and dull and you're incapable of seeing beauty even when it's right in front of you. I pity you.
This Native American Heritage Month I want to spread awareness for MMIWG2S crisis, the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirits.
This post has facts, resources to learn more, and includes links with ways to help, although I hope as you read more you realize how much spreading awareness could leave a huge impact as it would create even more help, protections, and resources.
Did you know that indigenous women, girls, and two spirits are murdered and go missing at such high rates that both the USA and Canada have declared it a crisis and epidemic?
In some places they are murdered, assaulted, and go missing at 10x the national average?
The statistics that prove it in the USA:
The National Congress of American Indians - Defending Sovereignty since 1944
And Canada:
Read more on the Assembly of First Nations website here.
May 5th is the National Day of Awareness for MMIWG2S in the USA. In Canada it falls on the same day and it's referred to as Red Dress Day.
Red is a sacred color to indigenous peoples. As such is the color we use to raise awareness for our women, girls, and two spirits that have come under harm.
We use both red dresses and a red handprint over the mouth to raise awareness. So if you see these symbols please pay them their proper respect. They are not to be used in cosplay or costumes nor are they to be mocked or appropriated.
You'll also find the phrase "No more stolen sisters" in discussions about MMIW. This is a phrase specifically intended to raise awareness and bring attention to the MMIWG2S crisis and it shouldn't be applied to anyone except indigenous women, girls, and two spirits.
Origin of the movement Missing and Murdered Women and Girls, why wear red, current legal challenges and future hopes. (May 5, 2020)
For Native and Indigenous communities, 'No More Stolen Sisters' calls attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Along with all these facts I wanna ask you to look up infamous cases of MMIW. Look up Savanna Greywind and look up "Search the Landfill." And please check out this link that covers the legal "loophole" that allows tribal women to be assaulted without any hope for their non-native abusers being held accountable.
Let the horror that some native and first nations women go through fuel your desire to become an advocate for the MMIWG2S epidemic. Sit with us in solidarity and acknowledge the scope of the systemic injustices being done against us.
More reources on MMIWG2S, how the crisis is being handled by government, and how you can help:
WASHINGTON – Native American tribal leaders urged lawmakers to increase federal funding and implement national reporting systems to help sol
Red Dress Day 2025, held every May 5th, is a National Day of remembrance and activism honouring the lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous
The Not Invisible Act Commission’s resource was historic for Native Americans. It’s now been scrubbed from federal websites
“We have no idea where she could be.”
List of resources from the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Natives Women that includes resources for women, LGBT and two spirit people, trafficking survivors, DV survivors, and of course resources specific to MMIWG2S.
If you have any questions please ask them, just be respectful and don't ask anything in bad faith.
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