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You understand movies, yes? Television? Books? The idea that, for the duration of the thing you're reading, you can allow yourself to exist in a world far far away— in a place where magic is real— in the presence of aliens— even while you know, with your conscious mind, that the thing you are engaging with is a work of fiction.

These cognitive tricks are using the same mechanism— your ability to engage with and accept an idea that is not materially true, because believing in it is useful— to let you leverage yourself into action when it's otherwise difficult.

Because I’ve always just been “oh! I’m reading/watching a story! Humans have told stories since the very beginning of existence :)”

It’s never a “woah look at this cool world that I’m suspending all disbelief for to experience!” vibe it’s a “haha, I do that” vibe

Because storytelling, even about aliens and monsters and stuff, draws on human experience, and so you can go “oh haha I do that!” the whole time

My state didn't restrict EBT, but there was an extra supplementary card for elderly and disabled folks you could only use for "healthy" foods. But unlike SNAP/EBT you couldn't use it at farmer's markets or to buy seeds or food plant starts. It was incredibly arbitrary, and wouldn't tell you if something was covered or not, so you'd go to buy food and discover that while bread and burger buns are "healthy," bagels aren't. You couldn't combine with EBT, so you'd end up buying the randomly disallowed things out of pocket and sucks to be you if you didn't have cash.

Somehow a lot of things I'd class as "healthy" like corn tortillas weren't. I can't prove that white bread and buns being "healthy" but bagels and tortillas being classed "unhealthy" was racial bias, but I side eyed it every fucking time.

The question of who decides what is and isn't "healthy." is one I take very seriously, because I've seen how it works in practice.

Making people play a guessing game like that is cruel and helps no one. It's about Republicans punishing the poor and disabled. Fuck that. I'm an adult and I know what I can and can't eat better than some random person who's never met me.

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

OH MY GOD