Posting Things

"oh so the trans character kills herself??? this show is transphobic" JESUS CHRIST YOU PEOPLE ARE INSANE. Jax repressed himself to the point of abstraction, then Pomni finds a way to reach him even through his broken mental state, and the gang puts him in a safe and comfortable blanket fort where s/he can relax and get his senses back in order without hurting himself or others. The other abstractions get to be seen being happy and at peace. No it's not IDEAL but it's basically like having a mental break that just needs some care and attention instead of Cellar. We do not see any Abstractions get fixed but the episode does leave it open-ended as to how much they will one day be able to be reached, and the characters have eternity to figure it out. Jax finally opens up to Pomni in that headspace and it's far from impossible she can still talk to him in this state.

it's also not like Jax is the only trans/queer character. Zooble is nonbinary/genderqueer and makes it through the entire show, is given emotional depth and weight to their own dysphoria and character struggles, and then gets to end the show with their human self opening a successful (implied) queer bar and their digital self having epic gay sex!! (entire theater cheered and clapped at that btw)

like. look me in the eyes. do you think that a trans woman show creator would write a trans woman character just to kill her out of malice?? like do you think she was maybe trying to say something with the abstractions and Jax's repression and the fact there is still hope and time for him and his human self?? are we operating on this level of media literacy or are we just looking for things to get mad at

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.

[EXTREMELY LOUD KICKBALL THUNK.MP3]

and sometimes it’s someone else’s food preferences. sometimes it’s a weird-but-normal thing that human bodies do. sometimes it’s someone else’s kink.

Another line of his is “democracy is non-negotiable”

I was stocking stuff in the laundry aisle when my coworker walked up to me. She was tense. “Hey, there’s a customer up front and I don’t wanna serve him. Can you come… handle it?”

I was like, “okay sure,” since, on good days, I’m very much a people person, and today was a high-energy day. So, I got up and walked up front.

There was someone facing away from me, grey sweater with a backpack on. I walked up to them, waved, and said, “hello there! Is there anything I can help you with?”

The guy turned around. He was covered in blood, shaking like a leaf, and sweating really badly. He took a step towards me and was like “do you guys sell any lighters?”

I rushed behind the counter.

There was an island aisle right across from the check-out counters that had lighters on it. So I pointed right at them and was like “yeah, they’re right there.”

This guy turned sloppily towards them, proceeded to circle the entire aisle, then walked back up to me. “I don’t see ‘em, where are they?”

I leaned over the counter to point again. “Right there.”

This time, he saw them. He hobbled over (I think he was limping with both feet, but I’m not sure), bent down, and picked up one of the $1 ones. He put it on the counter, and I rung it up. In Michigan, there’s a 6 cent tax, so it came out to $1.06.

He proceeds to hand me a bloody $5 bill.

By now, by coworker had gotten my boss, and she walks over, takes one good look at him, and says “sir, you need to leave and not come back until you’ve changed into clean clothes.”

He keeps trying to hand me the bloody money, which we can’t accept, all the while trying to convince us it was Kool-Aid or something. My manager eventually won, getting him out of the building.

Two hours later. 4 PM. He comes back in.

He’s still bloody, still shaking (though not as bad), and still wide-eyed. He asked again if we sell lighters.

By now, my manager had gone home, so my coworker took over, telling him to just leave. He did, and we banned him from the store after that.

9:12 PM. Just past closing.

My coworker was in the back counting the deposit for the day, and I was sitting on a stool behind the counter.

He and I made eye contact through the window.

He then left, walking in the opposite direction from my apartment, and he only came back in a handful of times after that, but still.

I found out later that he was in a gang.

So uh. yeah. Lighters Guy. What the fuck even.