Untitled @wandering-tiresias - Tumblr Blog

little design challenge for myself. designing dragons for different genres.

I think those fancomics where Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes is transgender are cute and fun but I also think it's a deep misunderstanding of Calvin's character to think he would transition into a heterosexual normie who goes to her high school reunion. That girl would have neopronouns and fang implants

butch-king-frankenstein

Adult Calvin is a tattoo artist named Panthera who is the bassist in a terrible metal band called Captain Napalm and Hobbes helps do faer E injections

butch-king-frankenstein

I know it's like 2 weeks too late to change it but I'm so mad I didn't realize that the band would obviously be called "Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS". I walk the road of shame

parawyrm

a-book-dragon

Rather than distinctly male or female, the human brain is much more like the heart, kidneys and lungs – basically the same no matter the sex of the body it's in.

rb to make a biological essentialist mad <3

liminalweirdo

“This collapse is a telltale sign of a problem known as publication bias. Small, early studies which found a significant sex difference were likelier to get published than research finding no male-female brain difference.”

mckitterick

the notes on this are toxic - to help clear up any misunderstanding, here’s the actual science paper:

With the explosion of neuroimaging, differences between male and female brains have been exhaustively analyzed. Here we synthesize three dec

in short: brains are brains

fleebites

junicorn

day 13

‘cathedral’

the-guilty-hero

“Freedom”

Happy Pride Month to my family, friends and everyone across the world who celebrate! Art © me

assignedmale

monstersovka

spring ~ 🌱

eroscestlavie

I need to stop replying to “how do you make friends in your 30s?” threads because all my answers boil down to “you have to want to know people instead of have friends” and I don’t think people wanna hear that

eroscestlavie

It’s like. People can tell if you don’t really like or connect with them. If you aren’t truly enamored with someone you will have a hard time coming up with activities to do together to deepen the friendship. Because you don’t really like that person that much.

weirdunclegamer

As someone turning 41 this year who is still trying to find new people to add to my life, I wanna say that I agree with this, and elaborate a bit on my reading of the post.

Once people are in their 30's and up, like, we're adults now. It doesn't matter what your hobbies or fun time interests are, mine are video games and card games etc, stuff that some people see as exclusively for kids, but that doesn't prevent me, and my peers who I would be going through to find new friends, from being full ass adults.

We have jobs (or equivalent), we pay bills, we probably take care of our family or immediate partners/pets to various degrees. We hafta make doctors appointments, we hafta clean up the home because its the right thing to do not just cuz someone yelled at us. My point being; we're all busy as fuck. With like... life.

If you want someone else to spend some of the likely small amount of free time they have on you and being friends, then it can't be a facebook friendship. You hafta commit. And I'll just say it like it is; you gotta love em. You can only really add people meaningfully to your life at this point by loving them for real. I'm not gonna go too far off about how our society devalues platonic love but its absolutely part of why people struggle to socialize as "easily" as adults vs when they were teens et al.

The original posted ended on "Because you don't really like that person that much.", and while that sounds roughly worded, like I could see people on this website acting like they're being accused of duplicity or some such. What it means is you can't just have a playground enjoyment level of relationship with someone. You gotta LOVE em. I make it clear as hell to people who are becoming my friends that if you are my friend that means I love you and I will occasionally make sure to say it out loud even. And the newest friends I've fully added to my life lately have totally reciprocated that once they were sure that the relationship, the FRIENDship, was legit. We all put it in the effort. And that effort pays dividends.

I'm still looking to add people to my life if I can help it, but I've absolutely found the real struggle isn't actually finding people, it's figuring out how to let a stranger know that what you're looking for is the long haul situation, and not just some seattle freeze.

I dunno if that'll help anyone, but its def a topic thats been on my mind lately so I had the urge to throw my two cents in on it.

albatross-the-fanartist

*accordion noises*

its-emimi

Happy Pride month! 🌈

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)

lostinhistory

Wake up babe, new octopus just dropped

He's such a little guy!

itsmissing

design comm for a "cambrian explosion wizard"

itsmissing

wordpress-blaze-60436505

The Quiet Ways Cognitive Distortions Take Over Your Mind

Recently, I came across the term cognitive distortions, and for the first time, I felt like I had language for the way my mind works.

For the longest time, I thought I was just really self-aware. Hyperaware, if anything. I thought replaying conversations meant I was emotionally intelligent. I thought anticipating every possible outcome meant that I was prepared. And I thought overanalyzing people’s tone, body language, or noticeable patterns was simply me paying attention.

But really, a lot of it was anxiety, fear, and insecurity. A nervous system constantly trying to protect itself from rejection, embarrassment, abandonment, or emotional pain before it could happen.

And when you live like that long enough, your thoughts stop feeling like thoughts. They start feeling like facts.

There have been countless times where I’ve convinced myself someone was upset with me based on almost nothing. Whenever I’m around friends, I’ll start making up ideas that they genuinely don’t want me around or enjoy my company. It’s usually triggered by the smallest things — an eye roll, a delayed response, a shift in tone. My brain immediately fills in the blanks and creates a narrative before reality even has the chance to exist on its own.

Every single time I leave a social situation, I replay every moment that occurred. Thinking things like:

Did I talk too much? Did I sound awkward? Did I overshare? Do they secretly think I’m weird?

The worst part of it all is that the thoughts feel so believable when you’re stuck inside them.

That’s what cognitive distortions are. They’re patterns of thinking that twist perception in ways that often feel incredibly real emotionally. They usually attach themselves to our deepest fears and insecurities, which is why they can feel so convincing.

For me, one of the biggest distortions has always been catastrophizing.

If something feels uncertain emotionally, my mind immediately jumps to the worst possible outcome. If a friendship feels distant, my brain assumes the relationship is ending. If someone acts differently, I convince myself that I did something wrong.

I’ve recently mourned the loss of a friendship even though it’s technically still intact. We’re still friends, but we haven’t really talked in a long time. We never text each other, and when there is communication, it’s usually initiated by me. She never checks in. Never really asks how my life has been.

We used to be incredibly close, but now it feels different. I’m not sure if it’s because of distance, life changes, or because she genuinely doesn’t care about me anymore. In my mind, I assume the latter. I’ve convinced myself the friendship is already over, even though no one has actually said that out loud.

So now I tread lightly around this person. I don’t want my feelings hurt more than they already are. I still love her and probably always will, but maybe we’ve just changed. I honestly don’t know. I’ve gone back and forth with these thoughts in my head for a very long time.

And the hardest part? She probably has no clue there’s even something wrong.

People around me keep convincing me that it’s not the way I see it. That she does care, and honestly, when we are together, she often shows it. But somehow my mind overpowers those moments. It dismisses the good and clings to the fear instead.

This happens in other areas of my life too. My mind spirals into thoughts like:

What if I never figure my life out? What if I stay stuck forever? What if this feeling never leaves?

And when you’re already mentally exhausted, those thoughts multiply fast.

I also think loneliness can make cognitive distortions even louder. When you spend a lot of time alone, like I do, your mind has more room to spiral unchecked. There’s less outside grounding. Less interruption. More time to sit with thoughts until they start echoing.

Recently, I experienced a real friendship breakup, and I noticed just how quickly my brain turned loneliness into self-blame. Instead of simply accepting that relationships and people change sometimes, my mind immediately latched onto finding reasons why I wasn’t enough. What I could’ve done differently. What was wrong with me.

That’s the difficult thing about distorted thinking — it often disguises itself as self-reflection.

But there’s a difference between healthy reflection and mentally tearing yourself apart trying to find explanations for pain.

Another distortion I struggle with is emotional reasoning — believing something must be true simply because I feel it deeply.

If I feel annoying, I assume I am.

If I feel left behind, I assume everyone else is ahead.

If I feel emotionally overwhelmed, I convince myself I’m incapable of handling life well.

But feelings aren’t always facts. Sometimes feelings are fear, exhaustion, burnout, grief, overstimulation, or old wounds resurfacing.

And I think learning that has been one of the biggest parts of healing for me.

Not eliminating the thoughts completely — because honestly, I still struggle with them all the time — but learning to pause before immediately believing every thought my mind throws at me.

Learning to ask:

Is this actually happening, or is my anxiety trying to protect me from something? Am I reacting to reality, or to fear? Would I speak to someone I love this way?

I also think cognitive distortions become especially strong when your nervous system has been in survival mode for a long time. Your brain starts scanning constantly for danger, rejection, discomfort, or signs that something is about to go wrong. You become hypervigilant emotionally. Even peace can feel unfamiliar.

It’s exhausting constantly interpreting yourself through fear. Constantly questioning your worth. Constantly trying to predict pain before it arrives.

But one thing I’m slowly realizing is that not every thought deserves trust simply because it’s loud. Sometimes our minds are trying to protect us using old survival patterns that no longer fit who we are now.

Healing, for me, is learning that I don’t have to automatically believe every story my mind creates about me.

What thoughts about yourself have you been treating like facts, simply because you’ve felt them for a long time?

“Don’t believe everything you think.” — Unknown