Light Out on Fifth

goodrx is the most well known one, but if i'm trying to find the cheapest price for a patient i compare it to scriptcycle, and use whichever is offering the best price. you just type in the medication (PLEASE make sure you're getting the right drug, dosage, and quantity) and your zip code and they will spit out some offers for you

some pharmacies may have their own discount card to compare to as well!

if you are getting a name brand medication, you can also look at the manufacturer's website to see if they offer any evouchers for you to use too

I used to love Luigi(Mario's brother) when I was little. Like, he was my favorite character ever, and I had multiple plushies of him. Didn't give a fuck about Mario, vaguely tolerated Peach, but I loved Luigi.

On my first day of kindergarten, my dad gave me the number for his work phone and said it was Luigi's phone number. "If anything happens at school, call Luigi."And not even twenty minutes into my first day, I was having a panic attack. So I went down to the principal's office and called "Luigi."

Now, at the time, my father was in a meeting with his manager and his supervisor, along with most of his coworkers. And when I called, he picked up before he even left the room.

And he put on a very awful Italian accent and said, "Itsa me, Luigi! Whatsa the matter?"In front of his boss and coworkers. Without telling them what was going on. So they were absolutely bewildered, and he carried on like they didn't even exist. He only explained what was happening after I had calmed down and hung up, to which most of them responded with "Aww, cute."

I continued to call him whenever I got upset at school, and eventually his coworkers got in on it. I distinctly remember one of them impersonating Toad. I don't know why I'm telling you this, I just thought it might make you smile :)

If y'all are anything like me, this time of year is triggering AF. Here are some small, very easy grounding exercises that I was taught by my therapist, basically in order of how much I like them for this rage-inducing season. You make like them in a different order, depending on your rage-to-despair ratio.

Push a wall: literally go up to a wall and try to push it over. Really try. I promise you won't push it over, but give it your best shot. Try to hold it as long as you can, and then take a breather and assess whether you need to repeat. Why it works: This is a quick, physical expulsion of the fight-or-flight feeling. It's a bit like punching a wall, but without the potential to hurt yourself/look scary/damage things. You can even do it in front of people and say you're stretching, they'll never know (unless the wall actually falls down, but this will not happen, I assure you).

Shake like a dog: Animals shake to release stress, and you are also an animal. Setting aside time to just shake it out, as vigorously as you can, arms and legs, face, stick your tongue out, pretend you're shaking like a wet dog. You can dance instead, if that feels better, and you can do this to music, but basically the more unhinged you can be, the better. If you are in a place you can scream, scream too! Why it works: like the above, this is a release of pent-up stress and anxiety. Especially if your rage-to-woe ratio is high, some kind of physical exertion is often the best way to burn through the cortisol and adrenaline you're building up.

Bilateral Tapping: Cross your arms over your chest so that your fingertips are at your shoulders, and slowly tap, one hand at a time, back and forth, for about a minute. Breathe slowly. Why it works: This is weird as hell, but because this engages both sides of your brain, it helps override the activity of the amygdala, which is the part of your brain that Makes The Fear. If you're being literally triggered in a situation, i.e. you're having a trauma response, or reliving some family trauma, this is a good one.

Box Breathing: From a comfortable position (can really be seated, laying down or standing), inhale slowly for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, then repeat. You can do it for shorter counts or longer counts, but if you vary the counts make sure the exhale is longer than the inhale. You can close your eyes or leave them open. Why it works: This exercise helps you move from a sympathetic (activated) nervous system response to a parasympathetic (balanced) response. I do this one every day, and it's a good gateway to meditation. Especially helpful in anxious or tense situations, but I find if I'm very triggered I need one of the other ones first, or it can make anxiety worse. Breathwork is amazing but not usually as a first exercise if you're very activated, or have been activated a long time.

Ice: Lots of ways to do this one – hands in cold water for 30 seconds, ice pack on the back of your neck, dip your entire face into a bowl of ice water (this one's the most effective). Why it works: I kinda think this is hilarious, but this activates your mammalian dive reflex. It immediately slows your heart-rate, so if you are feeling your blood pressure and heart rate rising, this one is very good. The only reason this one's at the bottom of my list is because I hate being cold.

I've been watching the track events at the Olympics since I was a wee lad. It was a tradition in our family. We'd gather around our ancient low-definition 19 inch CRT television and watch tiny blobs compete against other tiny blobs and root for our country.

It was a bit like watching YouTube on your phone in 144p.

Several heroes emerged.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was amazing.

You can't forget about Flo-Jo.

And then the Olympics decided NBA players were allowed in the competition.

Which formed... The Dream Team.

Was this fair?

Well... they won each game by an average of 44 points.

So... no. It was not fair.

Though it became more fair as time went on.

But, umm... yeah. The other teams looked like the Washington Generals and the US looked like the Harlem Globetrotters if they stopped screwing around half of the game.

But my absolute favorite Olympian was a runner named Michael Johnson.

He was cool as heck.

For one thing... gold shoes.

But he also had this crazy, upright, Tom Cruise-ish sprinting style that just made him look like a running robot on the track.

And in the 1996 Atlanta games he just trounced EVERYONE. I mean, it wasn't even close.

Yikes. Those losing blobs are probably really embarrassed.

Last night I decided to invigorate my nostalgia and watch the track events again. And I got to see one of the wildest races in history.

It didn't even last 10 seconds but it was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever witnessed. Almost every runner won the race.

After I saw that initially, I was like... who the heck won???

Even in slow motion I wasn't sure.

This was one of the closest finishes in history. There has never been a race where all 8 runners were within this margin.

The arena was silent as the winner was being confirmed. The runners just kind of paced around waiting for official word. My best guess was the Jamaican runner, Kishane Thompson. But then the loudspeaker announced Noah Lyles.

The last tiny morsel of American pride burst out of me with a big "Wooooo!"

I forgot what it was like to be proud of my country. I wish it happened more often. But this young man, despite being last place in the first 3rd of the race, turned on the afterburners and won in a photo finish.

And that's when my inner nerd took over.

Because when they showed the photo finish image, it looked super weird.

Why is the track white?

Why do all of the runners look all warpy like that QWOP game?

So I went down a research rabbit hole to figure this out.

Photo finishes are actually fascinating. The first photo finish captured the end of a horse race in 1890. But that was mostly luck and timing. The actual photo finish mechanisms weren't used until 1937.

Originally they would film the finish line through a physical slit.

And the first horsie head that appeared in that slit would be the winner. This technology ended a huge aspect of corruption in horse race fixing almost overnight.

But we have come a long way since then. And I'd like to introduce you to the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate.

This slow motion camera sits fixed on the finish line of every race. The concept of the photo finish has remained remarkably similar to the 1930s approach. The camera sensor is specially designed to only record a vertical slit.

Only the finish line itself is actually captured.

And because it limits what it records to only that slit, it can capture 20,000 frames per second to get amazing temporal resolution.

So why don't the photo finishes just look like, well... this?

That is because the camera takes a picture of time more-so than dimensional space. I guess it would be more accurate to say it *assembles* a picture of time.

As the runners cross the finish line, the camera combines all of the little strips of pictures into a single image.

It's almost like if you tried to reassemble a piece of paper after it had been shredded.

Imagine each strip of paper is a picture of ONLY the finish line, just at a slightly different point in time.

What if someone stopped on the finish line and didn't move... what would that look like?

Once they got there, the same part of their body would just be repeated.

So the right side of the photo finish picture represents earlier in time and it just assembles the image strip by strip as time passes and you literally get a picture of time itself.

NEAT!

Okay, but how do they determine the winner from the photo finish?

I mean, that shoe looks like it is ahead of Noah Lyles!

Clavicles!

The IAFF rules state the foremost part of the torso must cross the finish line first. And the endpoint of the torso is the outer end of the clavicle.

So if you get this bone across the finish line first, you win the race.

Two more fun facts!

The start of the race is actually just as carefully timed as the end of the race. There are sensors in the starting blocks of each runner.

The starting gun also has an electronic sensor.

They have determined the fastest a human can react to the sound of a gun is roughly 100 milliseconds. So if you start running before 100 milliseconds they know you didn't actually hear the gun, you just got antsy and started running too early.

And the final fun fact...

Did you notice the Omega logo at the top of the photo finish?

That isn't superimposed or added after the fact. That is captured by the camera.

But if this image is composed only of tiny little slivers, how did they get the Omega logo to show up?

That is a little display. And it is synchronized with the Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate to show a little sliver of the Omega logo for each frame captured.

So when the final image is stitched together, it looks like a cohesive logo at the top of the photo.

@aya-m3k Are you talking about the Omega logo?

Sorry, Tumblr allows 30 images per post and I wasn't able to show the example I wanted to fully explain that.

So if you look at the sliver that the camera captures, there isn't enough room for the full Omega logo.

So they put a little vertical display right in line with the finish line that shows a small piece of the logo for each frame the camera captures.

If you were standing in front of the display it would just look like the logo is moving to the right at pace with the runners.

And when the final image is assembled, the full logo shows up at the top.

Imagine the runners running and the Omega logo moving with them. It's basically an optical illusion simulating that.

Dandelion Hair (v2)

I started painting version 1 of Dandelion Hair in early 2021, but I was never happy with the result. I'm not even sure if I'm happy with version 2, but with each iteration I aim to improve until I am happy with it. Maybe in another year or two I'll tackle version 3~

Version 1

Timelapse

I struggled keeping it clean.

I struggled getting it clean.

I would sincerely put in quite a bit of effort and be really proud of the progress I made. Then one of my parents would come check and see how I was doing.

"Well, you've still got a long way to go."

That sentence. I was like, 11 when my parents were saying that to me. It was crushing. All my pride and satisfaction with my work was completely gone. All my effort was worthless to them. All they saw what everything I didn't do.

At the age of ELEVEN, I knew that wasn't right. That wasn't fair. I swore to myself I would never invalidate someone's work like that.

Now, at 30, I catch myself thinking 'I cleaned up, but my apartment is still so messy.' and I flashback to standing in my bedroom as a child, hearing those fucking words from my parents.

'No. I wouldn't invalidate someone else's work. I'm not going to invalidate my own. I did good. I made progress.' and I'll list the things that I DID get done to myself.

You deserve credit for all the progress you make.

You deserve credit for all the work you do.

It doesn't matter how much work you have left.

What you accomplish, no matter how small, counts. Even when what you accomplished was taking a day to rest and recharge and give yourself a break.

It wasn't until some years later that I realized my friend had down syndrome. At that age, his disability didn't affect our friendship much at all, we were both just kids having fun. It's strange to think that although I grew up, my friend stayed pretty much the same as I remember him.

so I built a little snowman on one of the small tables on this strip. 

after about three minutes of cramming ice together, I hear, “Do you want espresso beans for the eyes?” and I turn around and there’s this gal leaning precariously far out the window of her coffee shop, surrounded by her coworkers, holding out her hand and said espresso beans.

Evolution is just not fast enough to keep up with the information technologies of post- Neolithic civilization, never mind 24/7 news cycles and Instagram reels. It is okay, it is necessary, to look away.

Pick one broken thing, one place, one change at a time. Give fixing that thing your heart. Stay informed, sure — but broadly. Know enough to make a good decision if you are electing or delegating someone to work on another broken thing. But your energy and attention are finite.

this this this! I volunteer at two places. i wish i could do more but i'm just not physically able to. i wish i could help do something about so much injustice and pain in the world but all i can do is concentrate on one small part of it and make it as better as i can.

10 years of All or Nothing.

I made this post when I was 20 years old and there was basically no asexual/pansexual rep in media.

I’m 30 years old now and…well, there still isn’t a lot, but at least we have Todd on Bojack Horseman and that guy from Schitt’s Creek?

A lot has changed in the past 10 years, both in the world and within myself. Looking back on the anxious, self-criticising barely-adult that I was back then really helps to put things into perspective.

Despite the Everything that’s happened with this post, I’m still glad it’s around and that it’s circulating - a little slice of classic 2014 tumblr nostalgia.

To everyone who has gotten something positive out of this post - I’m glad I was able to brighten even a small part of your lives, even for a moment.

To everyone who’s amazed I’m still here - Same, honestly. Please keep adding such comments though, each one gives me more power so that I may one day ascend from this mortal shell.

To everyone who’s left unnecessary negativity on the post - Okay 👍

And to everyone who may be wondering ‘how does one celebrate the anniversary of such a momentous part of history?’

In the most asexual way possible: