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rhysintherain · 2 hours
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I was so happy to see one of my favorite examples of visual mimicry in Costa Rica! take a look at this Petrophila moth and a Nectopsyche caddisfly. notice anything familiar about the pattern they seem to share?
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it’s the front view of a jumping spider! black round eyes in rows, and stripes for legs with gaps between them. the resemblance, especially seeing the mimics at actual size in person, is striking. both moth and caddisfly have a reflective white patch of scales around the eyes, making them seem reflective and alert.
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jumpers are active visual predators, a threat to small insects but also to one another, and have good facial recognition skills for members of their taxonomic family who might be rivals or predators. it’s thought that a jumping spider, viewing a mimic, might be scared off or even consider it a rival and start a territorial display, giving the mimic time to flee.
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many Petrophila and their relatives in the subfamily Acentropinae have the jumping spider patterns, and I saw a few species with varying degrees of spideriness. there’s a surprising amount of other arthropods that mimic jumpers, too, from planthoppers to cockroaches and even other jumping spiders with false eyes.
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rhysintherain · 3 hours
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An extraordinary Acheulean handaxe knapped around a fossil shell circa 500,000-300,000 years ago.
The maker appears to have deliberately flaked around the shell to preserve and place it in a central position. As a result this handaxe has been described as an early example of artistic thought.
From West Tofts, Norfolk.
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Courtesy Alison Fisk
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rhysintherain · 5 hours
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The problem with ADHD is
You can spend all week looking forward to the weekend and wishing work was done
But then you start an interesting, complicated project at the end of (honorary) friday
And at quitting time all you want to do is stay at work and finish the project.
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rhysintherain · 8 hours
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1000%
When I was a teenager and my parents were breaking up and not parenting the little siblings a decade younger than me, my little sisters got a lot of stomach- and head-aches.
And I knew enough, even then, to know that a) these were mostly stress responses to the General Situation and b) they weren't going to stop whining just because I told them that.
So I had a system:
when the little sisters started whining about a headache or stomach ache I'd give them a sugar pull if I had any, or a mint if I didn't
I'd tell them it was my super good headache medicine, and that it wasn't supposed to be for little kids, so don't tell mom or dad I gave it to you
90% of the time, the pain would go away, or at least they'd be quieter about it
Sure, some of that was definitely placebo effect, but probably a good chunk of it was just... Stressed out little kids with minimal parenting needed a grown-up (or somebody they thought was a grown-up) to take responsibility for their problems and make it better.
I bet it works on adults too.
if i was a psychologist or some sort of medical scientist i'd like to test if the placebo effect is strongest if you get the "medicine" from a doctor or a friend or your mum
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rhysintherain · 10 hours
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As archaeologists we tend to think of archaeology as looking backwards in time.
We rarely consider the people who might have been looking forward.
We think of most artefacts as trash, things used up and discarded, out of sight, out of mind.
But what if that's not the case? What if the hunter who lost that perfect projectile point thought 'oh well, someone will find it someday, and they'll see what beautiful tools I can make'? What if that cook who burnt dinner to a clay pot and buried it thought 'when somebody digs here again they'll think this is hilarious'? What if that rough, clumsy scraper didn't fall from the hand of a careless child, but was placed there by a careful one, tucked under leaves at the base of a berry bush for someone, someday, to find?
I've talked to a few people from descendant communities who frame artefacts as belongings left for them instead of trash left behind, and it's a concept I love. Especially for me, descended from a place I've never been, where swords and shields are pulled from lakes, where day-to-day tools and beautiful filigree jewelry are placed carefully in graves. I've seen so many of these items in pictures and museum displays, and it's nice to think there was purpose behind it. 'We left these things here, so someone would find us and know who we are. So someday our descendants can see us when all we are is bones, and know who and where they come from.' I have replicas of some of those pieces of jewelry. Even when I can't name the gods my ancestors worshipped, or what names they went by, or words they used every day, they left something for a future generation willing to look.
We're humans and we're nosy, absolutely, but they were also humans and they thought about the future. They thought about who would want to know these things, and made sure we'd know.
So for me at least, archaeology isn't a one-way relationship. It's the place where we look back and meet the gaze of people who were looking forward. It's the future we can't predict, and the people we can. It's finding a little dog with wheels someone carved for their child thousands of years ago, and losing Star Wars action figures in our backyard as kids. It's finding a small collection of stone arrowheads in an iron age home and knowing we have a lot in common with the people who lived there.
It's the people who carefully buried Gobekli Tepe and the people who carved faces into living trees, as much as the people who found those things centuries later and wanted to tell everyone about them. It's the coins and stone flakes in my backyard fire pit and the artefacts I try to replicate.
Because humans will be nosy as long as there's humans, and humans will daydream about the future as long as there's humans. We become part of the past as we study it, and we become part of the future in the things we leave behind. The same is true for the people who came before us, and for the people who will come long after we're gone.
I think paleolithic people would be delighted to learn that we to this day are still studying and researching the things they left behind. Not for any material benefit, we're just curious. They're people and we like snooping on other people just to know what they're up to. Imagine being able to contact one just for one conversation to ask them about their stuff.
"Hey yeah there's this cave that that got painted around the same time that your people were around the area, it's insanely cool but I just wanted to ask, what's the deal with all the horses? We love them and they're beautiful but we want to know the thought process behind them." "Yeah that was cousin Gabi, and we don't really know either. She doesn't talk, but damn if she isn't good at painting horses. We don't know why it's important, but she cannot be stopped." "Ah okay, understandable."
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rhysintherain · 10 hours
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rhysintherain · 11 hours
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Also you feel like shit long before you realise you're about to get a migraine (or at least I do. Am very bad at recognising the beginning of migraines).
And if you already feel like shit you go 'maybe chocolate will make this better'.
So you eat some chocolate, don't feel much better, and a while later get a migraine anyway.
the chocolate trigger thing is a myth??
Thank you for asking. The short of it is yes.
Chocolate as a posited migraine trigger came out of migraine journal studies. Basically, people suffering from migraine were asked to keep detailed journals of their lives, including what they ate, and this was compiled and trends were picked out.
One thing they found? People often ate chocolate before reporting a migraine attack.
There were two things going on here, though it took years for people to come to this conclusion. The first is that migraine prodrome can include sugar cravings-- so people who were already well on their way to a migraine attack were craving chocolate, ate the chocolate, and then reported the migraine. The second is that stress is a trigger of both migraines AND sugar cravings. Thus for someone had a rough week, the stress induced both a migraine attack and a desire for chocolate.
Later lab studies in which people who suffer migraine were given chocolate, or cocoa, or small doses of caffeine similar to what's found in chocolate, etc etc found that there was ZERO evidence for chocolate triggering a migraine. No component of chocolate triggered a migraine in sensitive people, even people who reported chocolate as a trigger.
So really, eating chocolate is a symptom of migraine, not a trigger of it.
These same food diary studies also led scientists to (briefly) believe that alcohol might PREVENT migraines. Why? People who reported fewer migraine attacks drank more alcohol. The actual finding here? People who have more migraine attacks don't frequently drink alcohol because jfc who wants a drink when they have a migraine (also migraine fucks up social lives). Alcohol, unlike chocolate, DOES trigger migraine attacks.
So these are the kinds of limitations of food diaries when you are trying to figure out what triggers your migraine attacks, and also why doctors emphasizing food triggers, especially chocolate, get a side eye from me.
That said, there is ample evidence that when people feel in control of their health, they tend to feel better. If you believe that chocolate triggers migraine attacks and you feel like limiting chocolate helps you, I'm not going to tell you to stop.
But if your doctor handed you a pamphlet with 20 year out of date information on migraines that included the idea that you had to stop eating chocolate and cheese (no evidence for cheese, either, eat your heart out), I'm here to say your doctor is at least 8 years out of date with the literature.
TLDR; chocolate fine, alcohol bad, doctors lazy, science progresses
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rhysintherain · 13 hours
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, how did you did that.
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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its so scary to put yourself out there but a SINGLE message saying "hi i loved what you made it touched me in some way" makes it all worth it 10000%
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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*before someone says it - yes i know some of these have multiple variants, just pick a damn option okay.
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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ADHD advice that doesn't create fake deadlines:
For school/work things that have deadlines and you don't want to do at the last minute:
Break the task down to how much you need to do per day
For writing assignments in school, I used an add-on that broke my total word count down by the days I had left, so I knew how much to write every day to be done
Or you can estimate the hours a project will take so you know how much time to spend on it per day
Build in free days so you don't have to do it every day
If you're in the zone and you've done the required amount, do as much more as you feel like to save up for a day you don't wanna
For chores and things that don't have their own deadlines:
Find something you like that you can do at the same time. I don't like doing dishes, but I will if I've got a really good podcast and can spend an hour listening to it while I work
Set a timer and take breaks (I can play video games for 30 minutes once I've painted the house for 30 minutes). Set the timer for both work and breaks
Work together. Have a friend who also has trouble with chores? Invite them over to help. Once you've both worked on your chores for a while, plan a day when you can go to their house and help with their chores
Works especially well if there's chores you don't mind that they hate and vice versa
Or set up a time to call a friend who lives far away and talk while you both work. Especially good if you want to talk more and also want to get your work done
Gamify tasks. Get an app that gives you points to spend on customising an avatar when you complete tasks, or make up a game yourself. Weaponise ADHD's love of little tasks with little prizes to do useful things
There's a bunch of adhd advice out there that's like "people with adhd tend to work better under deadlines due to the anxiety so here are ways to artificially induce a stress response in order to get you to get work done" and it's like well what if I don't want to be stressed out all the time in order to function
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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There's nothing quite like driving through a Tundra landscape.
The arctic felt like the biggest place on earth, with none of the monotony of driving across the prairies.
And when you stop and walk around, you notice incredible detail. The textured green of scrub plants; the rare spruce standing like an obelisk; the tiny flowers in every color, taking full advantage of summer while it's still here.
Few landscapes feel as impactful as the old growth forests where I grew up, but the western Canadian Arctic was one of them.
tundras are soooo pretty aand beautiful to look at smears of best ever colors on flat and muted greens and yellows.... hard agree with los campesinos like yes take a body to tundra for real......
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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love how many gay men and lesbians fucked around sexually with each other and wrote about it in history. what curiosity. what generosity. what magnificent exploratory spirit.
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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rhysintherain · 1 day
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writing something with two characters who use the same pronouns and fighting to balance using names vs using pronouns in a way that's both smooth to read and easy to comprehend
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