May or may not be a cryptid

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

I'm a huge proponent of public transit, rail in specific, and I'm very glad that the greater Seattle area is finally starting to see some solid light rail infrastructure sprouting up in the form of the 1 and 2 lines, but that in no way stops me from critiquing the decisions made in planning and implementation.

Light Rail, in it's colloquial form here in the US, is basically always a compromise solution. It's cheaper than subways, can make good use of existing right-of-way around freeways, and can function as a kind of low-capacity commuter rail in the subways while behaving more like a tram or streetcar in downtown areas. It is crucially, however, not a streetcar, nor is it a commuter rail. Streetcars make frequent stops and are optimized for dense areas with lots of traffic. Commuter rails are larger and stop lest frequently, optimized for bringing suburban residents into city centers. Commuter rail should, however, be independent of street traffic so it can travel at higher speeds. For this reason, most of the Link light rail system in seattle is actually not at-grade (street level), but on either elevated or sub-grade track. Downtown, the lightrail actually functions as a low-capacity low-frequency subway system in what used to be the bus tunnel (we don't have time, but yes it was stupid). Everywhere else, it's up on elevated tracks that largely follow the freeway system.

There are three stations, all immediately south of that Mount Baker elevated station, where the Link actually runs at-grade. These stations run through the historic low income immigrant neighborhoods of southeast seattle. Here, the trains are forced to stop at red lights, interact with crossing and left-turning traffic, and even cross through terrifyingly narrow pedestrian islands. They could have built elevated track here, as they did everywhere else, but they didn't. they didn't want to spend the money. I have personally watched light rail cars carrying hundreds of people have to wait two full minutes for cars turning left in front of them, delaying trains so like, 5 people could drive there. Once it reaches the end of this low income immigrant-dominant neighborhood, however, the Link returns to it's above-grade status, with Mount Baker being the first elevated stop. You want to know how this woman, who claims she was misdirected by her GPS, probably ended up here? I would bet anything she tried to make a turn at the intersection just before the stop and got confused. The intersection, for reference, looks like this:

I'm not saying it's an easy mistake to make, but given the number of people who drive through here every day, it's honestly not that surprising that someone, especially someone who is from out of town, or someone who is used to shared streetcar lanes, would eventually make this mistake. When you're dealing with a city of hundreds of thousands of people, it's only a matter of time before a mistake like this happens. but it is only possible for it to happen because of the decisions made in the planning process, and one of those decisions was "we can save money if we make everything worse in that part of town where all the foreign poors live", and so they built the thing at-grade, instead of keeping it elevated like everywhere else.

She played bass on 10,000 songs, including the most-played track of the twentieth century. She was paid $55 per session. Her name never appeared on the albums.

Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, 1964. A woman in a cardigan walks past the receptionist, a Fender Precision bass in her hand like a briefcase. She doesn’t sign autographs. She signs a timesheet.

Her name is Carol Kaye. In three hours, she will record what will become the most-played track of the twentieth century. She’ll pocket fifty-five dollars and head to another studio, on the other side of town, for the next session.

The record label will never put her name on the album.

Between 1957 and 1973, Carol Kaye took part in roughly 10,000 recording sessions. Not as the featured artist, not as a guest, but as a hired hand. She was part of an anonymous collective nicknamed The Wrecking Crew—elite studio musicians who actually played the instruments on your favorite records while the famous bands posed for promotional photos.

The work was relentless. Three albums before the day was over. Stale coffee in paper cups. No rehearsal. The charts arrived minutes before the tape rolled. If you couldn’t read a chart and nail the take in two tries, you didn’t get called for the next session.

Carol could do it on the first try.

She started playing guitar in grimy bars at fourteen because her family couldn’t pay the electric bill. Music wasn’t a romantic dream for her. It was survival. It was a job—factory work with better acoustics and lower pay.

But she was faster and sharper than almost everyone else. She corrected charts in pencil while the producer was still explaining what he wanted. In one session in 1968, she told a famous producer his arrangement sounded like a dying dog. She chose her own line. They kept her version.

That descending bass line that drives the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”? Carol Kaye. The propulsive groove of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”? Carol Kaye. The acoustic-guitar intro to “La Bamba”? Carol Kaye. The iconic theme from Mission: Impossible? Carol Kaye.

She invented techniques on the spot, out of sheer necessity. When the bass sound was too muddy for AM radio, she stuck felt under the strings and used a hard pick instead of her fingers. The tone cut through the static like a blade. It became the sonic signature that defined 1960s pop.

Bassists spent years—decades—trying to crack the secret of the Beach Boys’ gear to get that sound. They were studying the wrong people. They should have been studying Carol.

She received no royalties. No residuals. No gold-record ceremony. No credit on the album sleeves. When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” hit number one, Carol was already back in a studio cutting a soap jingle.

The biggest bands mimed her bass lines on TV variety shows. New York marketing departments decided a mom in classic clothes didn’t fit the rebellious-youth image they were selling. So they simply left her name off the album credits.

For thirty years, almost no one cared. The truth only began to surface in the late 1990s, when music researchers found the same union contract numbers on thousands of hit records. The very documents meant to preserve studio musicians’ anonymity betrayed them.

Think about it. Every time you heard “Good Vibrations,” “River Deep – Mountain High,” the Righteous Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, or Sonny and Cher, you were hearing Carol Kaye. She composed the soundtrack of an entire generation’s youth.

And yet the records still say nothing. She’s now over eighty. She wrote instructional books. She trained countless bassists. She is finally starting to be recognized by music historians who uncovered the truth about The Wrecking Crew.

But she never got what she deserved: her name on those albums. Credit for the music that defined an era. Recognition that those bass lines everyone associates with the “Beach Boys” were, in fact, Carol Kaye’s.

Fifty-five dollars a session. Ten thousand sessions. The most-played track of the twentieth century.

That text post that's been making the rounds that goes something like "Omg you made it to the same red light as everyone else but faster and more dangerously and recklessly, should we call nascar? Do you want a medal?" summarizes exactly what I'm trying to talk about.

It's like when I have to change buses at one of the bigger and busier bus stops, and the people who get off the same bus as me shove and elbow past me to get off before me, and then shove and elbow past anyone even slightly in their way on the way to the bus they're switching, only to end up on the same bus as all the people they shoved and elbowed with several minutes to spare before it leaves and plenty of open seats left.

I think this unnecessary urgency a lot of people feel in their day to day lives drives a lot of bad behavior. I'm not saying I'm innocent of this, I've felt it too in plenty of situations that didn't call for it, and regrettably was less kind than I should have been as a result. But I try to be aware of it, and always try to ask myself it it's really as urgent as my lizard brain is trying to tell me it is, and even if it was that urgent, does that still justify unkind behavior?

Is shoving or elbowing another person aside going to make the difference between whether or not you make it to the bus before it pulls away? (hint: at least where I live, most of the time that's a no because the drivers usually won't leave if they see people from another bus heading towards their bus). Is shoving and elbowing people aside in a crowded grocery store going to make any noticeable difference in how quickly you get your shopping done?

That fully rewired my brain.

Firstly, let me say there’s nothing wrong with keeping jumping spiders as pets. I have one myself. She’s a captive bred regal jumping spider. She’s currently a bit over two years old. I’ve had other jumping spiders as well, but they passed of old age and in one instance, a failed molt, which is fairly common.

Before and after getting pet jumpers, I joined some jumper groups, read a lot of care guides, and watched a slew of videos about keeping them.

It became obvious pretty quickly that apparently due to their cute fuzzy appearance, large round eyes, and intelligent behavior, people (owners, admirers, and popular content creators) assign human and mammal emotions and behaviors to them, often to their detriment.

I personally believe bugs are complex creatures that can be intelligent and have emotions, but that those emotions and behaviors are NOT analogous to human or mammal behavior and ignoring their natural needs and behaviors means you’re likely not providing proper care for them.

This is mainly about handling. Bugs don’t want to be handled. They get nothing positive out of it emotionally. They don’t want to be pet or cuddle with you. They don’t want to hang out with you. You’re a big scary predator, and it likely wants to get away from you. Forcing handling can stress, injure, or kill them. That’s why I tagged the post (linked above) “your spider is not a cat.” It doesn’t seek affection from you.

I can’t tell you how many posts or videos I saw where people were super upset because they let their jumper out of its enclosure to handle it and it either escaped and got lost or they somehow crushed it and killed or injured it badly. I’ve also seen people chasing their jumper around its enclosure trying to grab it or get it to jump onto their hand when it’s clearly just trying to hide.

As an example, a very common thing I’ve seen in videos about jumpers is people saying when they lift their front legs at you and jump or climb onto you/your hands it’s because they “want uppies” and want to be pet and be close to you. This is a wild misreading of behavior. Sometimes raising the front legs is a defensive display, trying to make itself look larger to scare away a threat. Other times, they’re waving their legs around to sense and feel their environment, or preparing to jump onto something. They are arboreal, and their natural behavior is to find a high vantage point, so climbing onto the big thing (you) nearby is normal. It’s not because it seeks your affection.

Certainly if you DO handle them frequently they can get used to it, and it becomes less stressful for them. But in my opinion the dangers outweigh any positives, and I don’t handle mine. These are wild animals that have not been domesticated, even when captive bred. If you want to give them enrichment, and you should, offer them prey to chase or interesting things to explore in a larger enclosure. For those that do still handle them, I’d encourage you to watch their behavior closely and read the spidery cues they’re giving you rather than assuming they’re feeling what a cute little mammal might be feeling in the same scenario.

This one hurt, her work had such a profound effect on my life, thoughts, and politics.

May her memory be a blessing

So the gas station by my work has a sign in the window saying there's no midgrade or premium gas right now, only 87/regular.

MY FIRST THOUGHT: fuck. It's Iran. I read that article about oil shortages. It begins. Fuck.

MY SECOND THOUGHT: remember when there wasn't actually a toilet paper shortage, but people created one by deciding there was one? What if people have bought extra because of Iran, and their delivery schedule just hasn't caught up?

MY RESPONSE: I asked the clerk what was up.

THE TRUTH: they've got a leak and the easiest way to deal with the problem was to shut off premium until the repair people can come. They'll be back up and running in a day or two.

You're gonna notice the real answer isn't very exciting. They need to do a bit of maintenance, big deal. But can you imagine the panic I could have started by reporting my initial reaction as fact?

Oh, yeah. Social media sensationalizes everything to try to generate moral outrage, since outrage tends to push people to give more clicks, comments, shares, and engagement, when the reality to most things is pretty boring.

I remember this one meme ten years ago, how this one city asked residents to dim their Christmas lights.

One click-baity title made it seem like they did to "be respectful to other religions that don't celebrate Christmas," and the article got millions of views and cycled through so many "War on Christmas!" pundits.

The real reason turned out to be all those Christmas lights being on 24/7 (plus people being inside more often with the lights and heat on, since it was winter) was a bit of a strain on the city's power grid, and they just asked residents to turn off their outdoor Christmas lights when they went to sleep at night, same was when they turned off their indoor lights when they went to bed.

The real reason was incredibly mundane, boring, and reasonable, but that didn't get as much engagement as a fictious "attack on your religious freedoms!"

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

Source

And I said, "oh, no, I'm sorry, I won't be spraying for spiders, I like them. I want to encourage them."

And he gave me kind of a weird look and was like "why?" And I was honest and said that they were my pest control, they take care of my mosquitoes and and and flies, and then I kind of laughed and said that I should stop because I know way too much about spiders and if he let me go I'd talk his ear off.

And then he made his fatal mistake and asked what I knew about spiders, and if I knew what kinds of webs he'd walked past to get on the porch and what spiders were in my yard.

A large friend:

Look, this is basically a kitten:

A goth icon.

Strong, independent women that I don't want to fuck with.

"Red Paper wasps? Those are very dangerous! They're very aggressive!" he sputters.

"Really? They seem to be quite placid." I indicated the Fine-backed Red Paper Wasp nest about 16 inches above his head under the eaves.

He stared.

I picked up a crumb of KFC from the porch shelf with my finger and held it up. One of the ladies investigated, then landed and sat on my finger and munched happily for a few seconds before returning to the nest.

"Would you like to see the common paper wasps? They've got a great nest going on the side of the garage."

Another pest control guy showed up and knocked on the door and mentioned that he does bug spraying and I just straight up said "oh i'm the crazy spider lady, I like the bugs, that's why I don't mow."

And he said "Well, do you have any rats or other rodents you need handled?"

And I said "No, we have a barn owl living out back. You should see my collection of rat skulls. Do you want an owl pellet?"

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

Lmao not “Incel Camino”