solarbird

[solarbird]

wait, isnt NSFW the letters on the compass

[solarbird]

Moicy, but it's Mirrorverse!

Moira's looks is based on @cryptcoop's lovely design!

[solarbird]

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!

I 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.

[solarbird]

I don’t even care who fucking wins the presidency this year look at this

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[solarbird]

Tonight, we remember one who lent his enormous talent to telling the story we have all come to love. Hail, the victorious dead!

May the Simbelmynë cover his tomb as it did the tomb of the one he so accurately portrayed.

Bernard Hill Dec 17, 1944 - May 5, 2024

[solarbird]

elon musk told jkr to calm down help fkfbkr

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[solarbird]

[solarbird]

If you genuinely, truly, absolutely, cannot bring yourself to vote for the president of the united states, please just show up for elections anyway and vote for your congresspeople and local representatives.

Please.

Just.

If you cannot bring yourself to vote for the president because he's so disgusting of a candidate you morally cannot bring yourself to cross that line, then PLEASE vote for your congresspeople and local representatives who can block, defend, or present new bills, actions, acts, etc.

These are the people who can actually confirm or deny or impede horrendous acts when they happen.

Like. This is the bare minimum. If you cannot vote for the President, please just still vote for someone.

Change doesn't happen if you don't vote for the people willing to enact change.

[solarbird]

😘

[solarbird]

*pats askbox gently* there are more Thermoreceptors?

(I'm sorry ur dome was so hot; I hope its much cooler now!)

My bluff has been called! Hooray!!

I am not a neurologist, a biologist, or a scientist. If anyone with better credentials than "obsessed with emergent properties" contradicts me, listen to them instead.

Cell membranes include little portal proteins that open under certain circumstances based on the shape of the protein and let chemicals into and out of the cell. These portals are useful for all sorts of things: managing water and nutrients, sending messages to nearby cells, serving the whims of tiny intercellular cats. Science hasn't found the tiny intercellular cats yet, but we all know they're there; the existence of a door that can be opened necessarily implies an indecisive feline.

Some protein shapes open up if the temperature is within a certain range. This means that if a cell with that sort of protein in its membrane experiences a temperature in the right range, it will move some chemicals around. This is used to make nerve cells that send a message towards the brain whenever they experience a certain temperature.

Because evolution does all its best work the night before the deadline while on a Code Red Mountain Dew bender, the opened-by-temperature portal proteins are mostly copied from opened-by-a-specific-chemical portal proteins. All of them, in fact, still open for specific chemicals, which means there exist out in the world liquids you can put in a bottle that most animals will instead perceive as "a temperature between 8 and 26 degrees" So things can get a little weird.

Temperature-opening portal proteins:

TRPA1 Opens for temperatures below 12C (not air temperature, skin or body temperature, so you might be kind of in trouble when this happens). Used by hunting snakes to detect where heat isn't so they can find prey. Feels painful in an itchy sort of way.

This one also opens for allyl isothiocyanate. Many plants have evolved to take advantage of the existence of a chemical most animals perceive as itchy pain, especially horseradish and wasabi. Allyl isothiocyanate is harmful to plants, so they keep two separate components in tiny compartments. When an animal bites the plant, the compartments break open their contents mix to create allyl isothiocyanate.

"This plant tastes like itching" is a good defense against almost all animals, but some humans have taught themselves to appreciate the taste of itching.

TRPM8 Opens for temperatures between 8 and 26 degrees. Opens for menthol (peppermint, spearmint, wintergreen) and linalool (roses, orange blossoms, basil). Feels cool or cold.

"This plant tastes like cold" is a somewhat less effective defense against being eaten than "this plant tastes like itching" but it's a more widespread defense because TRPM8-activating chemicals don't harm plants and don't need elaborate two-part storage.

TRPV4 Opens for temperatures from 27-37 C. I'm not sure what this one feels like, or if even feels like anything, since it covers normal human body temperatures. Whatever feeling we get from this one, we're feeling it nearly all the time.

Plants do make a chemical that tastes like this temperature, and it can repel nonhuman creatures with different body temperatures: allicin, the flavour of garlic. Like allyl isothiocyante, it is stored in two compartments inside the plant, and combined when the plant is bitten.

Maybe this is why vampires abhor garlic. There is a feeling that, as humans, we always have. Something we don't notice, something deeper than touch. That feel disappears forever when you become a vampire, except those unbearable moments when garlic returns to you for a fleeting moment the experience of lost humanity.

TRPV3 Opens for temperatures 33-39 degrees. Opens for eugenol, found in cinnamon, nutmeg, bay leaf, holy basil, ginger, allspice, and cloves. Feels like warmth.

Plants with high quantities of eugenol, like holy basil and Japanese star anise, are sometimes sacred to buddhists because they smell nice and bugs don't like to eat them, so you can burn them as incense without worrying about all the little crawly guys.

Humans apparently think food that tastes like "warm" is comforting.

TRPV1 Opens for temperatures over 43 degrees. (The one I was experiencing in the overheated dome, which I had never felt from air before) Opens for capsaicin, the active chemical in hot peppers. Opens for the combination of temperature and acidity of fevers and infected wounds. This one we feel as pain, as burning, as flame.

TRPV1 says: Your flesh is failing, and your doom is very near.

Humanity says: This is incredible. We are going to breed plants that cause this sensation as much as possible, and we will spend thousands of years getting it right. We are going to dry this and powder this and flake it and grill it and ferment it and eat it with everything.

And when we leave earth and go into space, we take hot peppers with us. Without gravity, fluid builds up in nasal passages, and astronauts sort of have colds the entire time they're in space and can't smell food very well. But the Nearness Of Your Doom is not a smell and is not perceived by the nose, so - with their doom always on the other side of ten centimeters of insulated aluminum - astronauts can taste hot peppers. In 2002, Peggy Whitson, commander of the ISS, jokingly refused to let a replacement crew on board until they handed over the hot sauce.

We are a strange and wonderful species.

[solarbird]

Every post on reddit is like “my wife left me, so i spent 100000 on a new man cave” and there’s always a storm trooper of some kind in the room. Ive seen this happen so often on reddit that now i associate storm troopers and the entire star wars universe with divorce.

[solarbird]

So not only did I finish the Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map to connect the Seattle and Eastside maps, I decided I would ALSO make a MEGAMAP of all three maps since King County stopped maintaining a map over 10 years ago which makes this the biggest maintained King County bike map since then.

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map (May 2024)

May 2024 MEGAMAP (Northshore May 2024, Seattle EOY 2023, 2 Line Eastside April 2024)

let's gooooooooo!

#biking #maps #bike maps #seattle #northshore #shoreline #lake forest park #kenmore #bothell #woodinville #juanita #kirkland #bellevue #redmond #bike map

[solarbird]

So Seattle maintains a bike facilities map and now with the light rail 2 Line starting up this week they're keeping one, but there's none for Northshore and North King County and the thing is

we connect to all that stuff

so I'm making a connector map. I have pretty good info for Shoreline, Kenmore, Bothell, and parts of Lake Forest Park but not all of it. Woodinville and the unincorporated east is a LAND OF MYSTERY to me tho so if you have data point me at it okay thanks

(this isn't anything I've ever used Tumblr for before but there's a first time for everything I guess lol)

(also kirkland has an official bike lanes map but 1) it's five years old 2) it doesn't show routes that actually exist and 3) it DOES show routes that ABSOLUTELY DO NOT exist so fuck that)

#northshore #seattle #woodinville #bothell #kirkland #juanita #lake forest park #kenmore #biking #bike map

[solarbird]

So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!

[solarbird]

"School districts that don’t respect transgender and nonbinary students’ pronouns or force them to use restrooms that don’t align with their gender identity could be committing federal civil rights violations beginning this fall.

Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced the issuance of a final rule under Title IX to protect people in public schools from sex-based discrimination and harassment. The announcement marks a significant update in federal efforts to combat sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. During a call with reporters, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona emphasized the administration’s dedication to ensuring that Title IX effectively serves all students by providing safe, welcoming, and rights-respecting educational environments."

Read the full piece here