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dropped the walrus vs fairy question on a group of psychologists today and not only did the majority agree the walrus would be more surprising, the one with the strongest background in research responded to the ‘but fairies aren’t real’ argument with “are your beliefs so inflexible that you’ve never considered you might be wrong about what’s real and what’s not?” and honestly i haven’t recovered

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bitches just want us all to be perfectly perisex more than anything

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remember, folks, if you're itching to do something ill-advised in d&d/similar TTRPGs,

low wisdom: poor impulse control

low intelligence: instructions unclear

high wisdom: a necessary risk

high intelligence: it looked better on paper

low wisdom, high intelligence: forgot to get the plan peer-reviewed

high wisdom, low intelligence: the risk i took was calculated, but man am i bad at math

high wisdom, high intelligence: if someone else in the party did it first, it would've gone so much worse (and you Know they were going to do it)

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As someone who grew up with "I'm not going to praise you for doing what's expected of you; that's not being good, that's doing the bare minimum" I want to encourage you to celebrate every little thing you can. Everything that takes energy and effort should be appreciated and you're allowed to be happy about trying.

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sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really. 

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Mobility assistance

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BDS added this section to their boycott page and I think people really need to read it:

please remember, pushing unorganized boycotts without carefully fact-checking every company in the list can be actively HARMFUL to the boycott movement.

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there's been a lot of obnoxious pop history trends in the last few years but the bizarre total sanitization of vikings/pirates has to be one of the worst. like sorry to the queer neopagan anarchy symbol in bio twitter user community but like. are you aware both vikings and pirates enthusiastically traded slaves

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everyone should attempt an artisan craft at some point in their life because it would cut down the number of comments questioning why handmade goods like ceramics or textile craft or woodworking are so expensive

and this is an unrealistic expectation, but I think the attempt should include seeing through to the end at least one "finished" item, no matter how clumsy or lumpy your first attempts might be. like to me, there's a huge difference in perspective between attempting to learn how to crochet or throw a pot for a few days, acknowledging that it's harder than it looks and giving up, versus committing to finishing that scarf or clay pot you started and working on it for weeks while you painstakingly learn from your mistakes and grow attached to your project while also simultaneously hating it.

once you finish the latter, your perspective changes from "why does this crocheted blanket cost $200" to "holy shit I can't believe they're charging $200 for this crocheted blanket instead of $2000" because you may have known crocheting is hard, you may have easily agreed with the idea that "handmade goods take time and effort" even before attempting a craft, but now you know firsthand the absolute time sink it takes to make things. like yeah dude, that one item took you 2 months to make and probably wasn't even an ultra complex item if it was the first thing you made, now imagine attaching an hourly wage to that time to calculate the cost (and this is ignoring every nuance of the artistic element and master crafters being able to work faster/charge higher because of their years and years of experience)

anyway this rant has been motivated by a comment I saw on someone else's ceramic post asking why a mug was $60 and they understand it's handmade but $60 just seems overpriced, and bro do you know how long ceramics take to make. that mug probably took at minimum 3 weeks between how long it takes to throw the mug, dry partially, trim the mug, dry fully, bisque fire, wait a day for the kiln to cool, sand and paint and glaze, glaze fire, wait a day for the kiln to cool, take product photography of the mug, write description and list the mug online for sale, im not even including the skill needed to complete all these steps without the mug literally exploding or collapsing while also making it an appealing piece of art, aaaaaaaaaaaaa

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people will hear you talk about struggling with mental illness and say “you can do anything if you just put your mind to it”. brother what part of the body does the mental illness happen in. what do you think is the problem

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There's a post going around Tumblr about how if you're post-menopausal and have bleeding, you should get it checked by your doctor. I brought some minor bleeding I'd had up in a doctor visit earlier this year, prompted by that post, and this week, after a biopsy, I found out I have cancer. It's early stage and the survival odds at 5 years are 99%. I have an oncologist appointment and we may have caught it early enough that surgery alone will be sufficient treatment (no radiation/chemo).

So that post may have saved my life and it may have made my treatment a lot easier too.

If you get into menopause and then start bleeding again, really, get your reproductive innards checked out. The life you save may be your own.

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The whole "the brain isn't fully mature until age 25" bit is actually a fairly impressive bit of psuedoscience for how incredibly stupid the way it misinterprets the data it's based on is.

Okay, so: there's a part of the human brain called the "prefrontal cortex" which is, among other things, responsible for executive function and impulse control. Like most parts of the brain, it undergoes active "rewiring" over time (i.e., pruning unused neural connections and establishing new ones), and in the case of the prefrontal cortex in particular, this rewiring sharply accelerates during puberty.

Because the pace of rewiring in the prefrontal cortex is linked to specific developmental milestones, it was hypothesised that it would slow down and eventually stop in adulthood. However, the process can't be directly observed; the only way to tell how much neural rewiring is taking place in a particular part of the brain is to compare multiple brain scans of the same individual performed over a period of time.

Thus, something called a "longitudinal study" was commissioned: the same individuals would undergo regular brain scans over a period of mayn years, beginning in early childhood, so that their prefrontal development could accurately be tracked.

The longitudinal study was originally planned to follow its subjects up to age 21. However, when the predicted cessation of prefrontal rewiring was not observed by age 21, additional funding was obtained, and the study period was extended to age 25. The predicted cessation of prefrontal development wasn't observed by age 25, either, at which point the study was terminated.

When the mainstream press got hold of these results, the conclusion that prefrontal rewiring continues at least until age 25 was reported as prefrontal development finishing at age 25. Critically, this is the exact opposite of what the study actually concluded. The study was unable to identify a stopping point for prefrontal development because no such stopping point was observed for any subject during the study period. The only significance of the age 25 is that no subjects were tracked beyond this age because the study ran out of funding!

It gets me when people try to argue against the neuroscience-proves-everybody-under-25-is-a-child talking point by claiming that it's merely an average, or that prefrontal development doesn't tell the whole story. Like, no, it's not an average – it's just bullshit. There's no evidence that the cited phenomenon exists at all; if there is an age where prefrontal rewiring levels off and stops (and it's not clear that there is), we don't know what age that is; we merely know that it must be older than 25.

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Saw your post from the author who was happy people were using Libby. I'm torn as I understand the author is happy to get the license renewed, but libraries only get 26 loans on a digital license vs 60-80 loans on a physical copy. I love the convenience of digital books, but if taking out the physical copy is better for the library I'm willing to make the trip. Just looking for thoughts from others about it.

It depends on the license agreement the library has and its different for every one. Some renew annually, others renew by X amount of rentals. The library does what is best for them, and the more people use their services the more they can usually argue for more funding.

This is not universal, of course, but most of the librarians I know are ecstatic when people use their services.