Luz

lil nas x, a gay black man, using satanic aesthetics is an intentional choice to create social commentary. jazz and rock n roll, styles of music invented and developed by black people, were called devil music. queer people are constantly maligned as being in legion with the devil. this is exactly the kind of trope he is invoking and subverting here.

it’s also worth considering why the blood of a gay black man may be seen as more “unclean” in comparison to that of a straight white man—like perhaps gay black men were particularly at risk during the AIDS crisis.

lil nas x understands what he’s doing and he’s right to point out the double standard.

And the skateboards themselves look like this:

Shadowman #11 (2018)  //  Valiant Comics

Shadowman (Jack Boniface).  At long last, Shadowman is unbound…and it couldn’t have come at a worse time! Finally free from the Boniface lineage after generations of torment, the loa that once shared its gifts with Jack Boniface must now be convinced to join his cause willingly…or else the Brethren will lay waste to everything Jack holds dear!

Story: Andy Diggle, art: Renato Guedes

Get it now here

Here’s something you can do if you want to meditate or focus on something

adhd is a terrible name for this disorder because it’s not that we lack the capacity to pay attention to things (a deficit of attention): it’s that we lack the capacity to control what we pay attention to (failure of prioritization).

The ADD/ADHD person’s focus center is just … hideously bad at self-regulating.

(& the reasons are poorly understood, though we’ve identified some pretty effective treatments.) 

where most people’s brains are able to prioritize tasks based on weighing time sensitivity, ‘importance’, how long it will take to complete, cost-benefit analysis, etc, ADHD brains prioritize tasks based on two things:

is it interesting? (‘new’ also counts as ‘interesting’.)

is it due now? aka: is it urgent? (if not, it is due ‘later’ and is ‘not urgent’.)

if nothing is interesting and/or due now, we cannot prioritize. everything is equally unimportant (boring).  otoh if something is interesting and/or urgent, our brain can seize on that thing and focus extremely well, going into hyperfocus and totally shutting out everything else.

by the way: the only understanding we have of time is ‘now’ and ‘not now’. like

Calendar: *shows the final is tomorrow* ADHD Brain: fuck the calendar! everything after today is *~THE FUTURE~*! ADHD Brain: and *~THE FUTURE~* is far away. like millions of years away. ADHD Brain: so that’s why we’re going to read about a totally random subject for 10 hours instead of studying.

but then the next morning is like

ADHD Brain: HOLY SHIT THE FINAL IS TODAY ADHD Brain: CRAMMING TIME

and has no problem focusing on the important subject material that it couldn’t focus on the night before.

that’s how you know it’s not a lack of care, by the way. if you didn’t care about it, urgency wouldn’t change how much you can focus on it. it’s just that your brain can’t tell how urgent it is until it’s too late, because it lacks the ability to prioritize ‘normally’. 

and those problems can’t be fixed by willpower alone. here’s an example of some tools we use to help:

meds can make it easier for our focus center to self-regulate by giving it the chemicals it needs to reward itself for prioritizing properly, the way non-ADHD brains do. and because we usually do understand prioritization, it can make it easier for us to focus on the stuff that’s important at the time we want to.

otoh, it’s also very helpful to practice good organization habits until they’re so habitual they bypass the focus center, happening on autopilot. it keeps us from self-sabotaging our efforts to be focused on the right thing by reducing distractions like clutter or not having the tools we need to do a thing. day planners can help with this, for instance.

it’s also helpful to have a person who doesn’t have focus problems to check on us and help us stay on task, or guide us in selecting which tasks are most important to get done.

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True story: guys online are actually complaining that Captain Marvel doesn’t smile in the trailer.

Update: Brie Larson’s response:

So what, none of you punks were gonna tell me Don Cheadle out here all kingly dapper af looking like some kind of aristocratic bamf? WITH A SWORD?? I had to stroll up on this all unexpected???