K.A. Doore

And by risk play I don't mean handing them a gun and playing Russian Roulette.

I mean like climbing trees, getting so sick spinning on the swing they throw up, balancing on the curb, sitting in the mud, walking on slippery surfaces, building half ass ramps to ride their bike over, standing on rocks, or anything that involves a smidgen of confidence and out of the box thinking that could result in injury.

Obviously like watch your kids and such, but when we talk about the fun of being an 80s or 90s kid, it's not just talking about CDs and Walkmans or not having iPads. It's about how kids today were robbed of critical learning and experience skills we were allowed to have.

A kid who never climbs a tree becomes an adult who falls off a ladder because they don't intuitively know to keep 3 points of contact when climbing.

A kid who never skins their knees launching off a swingset becomes an adult who shatters an arm because they never learned how to break a fall.

- Developing pain tolerance & an understanding of which types/intensities of pain are "okay" and which need immediate medical attention

- Calibrating the inner ear (sense of balance) and learning how the body reacts to experiencing different things, essential to learning to control the body in unexpected situations

- Developing reflexes and subconscious safety instincts (e.g. protectively throwing up your hands when an object flies toward your face)

- Normalizing getting hurt so the first reaction to an injury is just to treat it (and not to have a fearful emotional meltdown)

- Learning how to treat and heal from injuries (beginnings of self-care)

- Developing appropriate levels of fear around various activities, desensitizing fear around doing harmless things and establishing a fear response for actions that caused an injury. This is key to properly gauging risk in new situations.

Additionally, the reason it's so essential to mess around and get hurt as a kid is not just because it's a critical developmental stage, but also because kids' bodies are growing and naturally resistant to major injuries. A 3rd grader can get launched off a bike onto the pavement and only sustain a few scrapes and bruises that will heal in a few days, while someone who's 30 would likely pull or sprain something (or worse) and take weeks to heal.

This is followed by a series of replies and tags which read as follows…

#i hug them straight on so my boobs can establish dominance

#i prefer head on like a car crash. make the boobies kiss

we could be doing this with balls, no homo even

#i’m usually taller so I press mine above and get a tiddie shelf

My wife calls it “Titris”

it’s called titrus thanks

Miētte, cum oculōs ēius magnōs: tū CALITRĀS Miētte? tū calitrās corpus ēius sīcut follis? ēheu! ēheu! carcer prō Mātre! carcer prō Mātre prō Singula Mīlla Annōs!!!!

a messy and incomplete list

nachvollziehen (v.) -- to understand, but less empathetic. i.e. i see the steps that brought you to that conclusion, but i don't understand you.

doch (interj.) -- you're wrong and really it's the opposite of what you said. often said with a healthy dose of sass. i.e. "this isn't a good movie." "doch. (it is)"

frech (adj.) -- somewhere between naughty and sassy and silly. when you're being a bit of a brat, you're being frech.

dreist (adj.) -- audacious, but far more colloquial. when you have the goddamn audacity, you are dreist. i.e. to park that far over the line is dreist as hell

heimat (n.) -- home, but stronger. a home is wherever you have built a life, but heimat is where your roots are. heimat is where you feel pangs of nostalgia when you go to visit your family for christmas and see the shop at the corner.

weltschmerz (n.) -- literally 'world-pain'. the world sucks and sometimes you just sit and feel the pain of it all. that's weltschmerz.

existenzberechtigung (n.) -- the right to exist, often in a comedic context. i.e. pineapple on pizza has absolutely no existenzberechtigung.

fernweh (n.) -- literally 'far-ache'. the opposite of homesickness, the desire to go far away. i guess wanderlust is similar, but that is also a german word, and this is more painful and visceral

schweigen (v./n.) -- the act of not speaking. silence, but more deliberate. the palpable feeling that people are withholding their voice.

For anyone who hasn't heard my Microwave Rant:

Microwaves are designed to be used at a broad range of power levels. If you're getting bad results reheating your food, and you're doing everything on full blast, try a lower power setting! 50% power for twice the time, just give it a shot. It gives the heat time to spread evenly, and prevents overcooking of parts that are exposed to more radiation.

People complain about reheated pizza a lot -- that's bc overheating the crust makes it tough and chewy. I usually do pizza on 30% power for THREE times as long because it's especially vulnerable -- and my crust always comes out nice and tender.

So i showed her a picture of Ilona Maher from this week's episode.

Her response:

"Thigh. Thigh. Thigh. Thigh. Thigh."

#please know that Ilona went to the designer and asked to be as naked as possible because she wanted to feel her best#she said all the other girls get to be in pretty revealing costumes and she wanted the same without worrying about her body type#she wanted to celebrate it the same way they celebrated the other girls because she loves her body and has fought her own dysmorphia#AND!! it was to celebrate with her teammates and the strength of athletic womanhood that often gets overlooked#if you struggle with dysmorphia she was thinking of you 💕

Via the @NOAASatellites feed at the former bird place:

"This imagery from NOAA's GOES-East satellite is providing visible cloud imagery every 30 seconds of HurricaneMilton as it pushes closer to Florida. Notice the frequent lightning being picked up by the satellite's GLM instrument as well.