MBTI has been proven completely ineffective at predicting anyone’s success at a particular job, and half the people who take it twice will get different results. Reputable psychologists do not recognize it, and the company that owns the rights to it uses it to scam people. People don’t adhere to strict binaries in basically anything. Very few people are going to be exclusively introverted or extroverted. It’s just astrology repackaged as pseudoscience. Shockingly enough, you can’t boil the complexity of the human experience down to a dozen Types of Guy.

The concept of IQ is flawed from the start— “intelligence” is an abstract concept that encompasses many different skills, from social intelligence to emotional intelligence to the very narrow kind of problem solving intelligence IQ tests generally measure for. It cannot predict how fast you learn, how much you know, or how logical and well read you are. It mostly measures how good you are at solving puzzles. Coincidentally, it’s also a pretty good predictor of income and education level, take a guess why. Most people’s IQ will change throughout their lives, because it’s inconsistent bullshit we’ve only held onto this long because we’re still kinda hoping we can breed the ubermensch. IQ tests and the way they attempt to categorize people are explicitly eugenicist and racist.

BMI was developed by a man known as the grandfather of eugenics, who first of all was a mathematician, not a doctor, and second never intended the formula to be used to categorize individuals. It’s intended to give a rough estimate of obesity in populations, and it’s not even good at that. It hangs around because of fatphobia and insurance companies who want it as an excuse to charge fat people more.

The study which determined people’s prefrontal cortex was still developing at 25… stopped measuring at 25. Evidence suggests your brain probably never stops developing. Stop infantilizing grown adults. This is a branch off from the larger mess of misinformation surrounding fMRIs.

i had a fever dream about hrt gummies

Right ok thanks for enabling this, I don’t have the time nor the energy to write an actual essay so this really will just be a rant. But first of all, I fucking hate the idea of taking whichever pair of characters and making them gay and having that be an automatically good and progressive thing and ignoring the original context. Empowering win for wlw: the king and relative who kidnapped you is… a woman!

Generally, what people miss when they engage with the Persephone myth, is the question of why it was created in the first place, what it represents. The modern narrative surrounding hades and persephone is that of Persephone escaping her old life, old name, and incredibly overbearing (often villainous) mother — even the Hades game (2018) does this, which frustrates me to no end. The modern narrative is then that Persephone is granted more freedom in her marriage to Hades, she’s empowered and becomes the Queen of the underworld, but her mother throws a hissy fit so she needs to leave every winter or Demeter will let all of humanity die, basically.

The original myth, for those who are not aware, is actually told from the perspective of Demeter to begin with. And I’m aware that there are different versions of every myth, but if there are any great deviations from the recorded myth of Demeter then I’m unaware of them.

The story goes like this:

Demeter’s young daughter Kore (Greek, meaning young girl or maiden) is out in the field picking flowers. Hades comes out riding his carriage and snags her and drags her down with him into the underworld to be his wife. She doesn’t want to, once there she begs to go home, but since she eats three seeds of a pomegranate grown in the underworld, she must stay there for three months. Hades had received permission to do this by his brother, Zeus, who also happens to be the girl’s father. Demeter searches desperately for her daughter once she finds out she’s missing, and the goddess Hecate tells her that she heard screams but saw nothing. Then the god Helios tells Demeter that he saw what happened and explains it, that Zeus had given Hades permission to take Kore as his wife. This is what sends Demeter into a rage, and she brings a stop to the seasons and the harvests. Zeus figures that this is bad, actually, and so sends Hermes to Hades to get back Persephone. Hades says yes unless she’s eaten something, and now is the part where the pomegranate seeds become relevant. The three months probably represent summer and not winter like we usually say btw, since those are the months in Greece in which nothing grows.

Also relevant: Demeter, and so also her daughter, were very central figures to the Euleusian mysteries (idk if I spelled that right, sorry) and we don’t need to get into that but basically, they were HUGELY important figures, with Demeter at the helm.

Here’s why this myth matters: it clearly mirrors the reality of women living at the time that it was created. The father having a say in who the girl marries, and the girl and the mother have no power over it. When a girl was married off, that might very well be the last time her mother ever got to see her, so Demeter actually getting to see her daughter? Regularly? A fantasy, a happy ending to the reality women lived under. Demeter’s rage actually has effect, she actually has power enough to sway Zeus, which most women couldn’t relate to but likely wished for. They could relate to the story of the Rape of Persephone. They could relate to Kore, they could later relate to Demeter.

But today, the people reinterpreting the myth can’t relate to this. They don’t have to fear being married off against their will, or losing their daughter. But they can probably relate to having an overbearing mother. They can probably relate to feeling stifled by their mother and wishing for greater freedom and power, and what’s more of a power-trip than the Queen of Hell the underworld?

If the original myth was wish-fulfilment, then the new popular reinterpretation is so to an even greater extent. This is my little caveat about why I understand that this interpretation exists. Here’s why I loathe it, in particular when it’s a book with modern marketing:

It shows a lack of understanding for the original myth. And, from those who know the original myth and claim that their version is more progressive, a lack of respect for it and the people who created it.

In general, I have no problem with modern reinterpretations of myths. I have problems with them being hailed as more progressive simply because they might be easier for us to relate to. I have huge problems with the fandomisation of myth, which I’ve talked about earlier. I’ll try to link it later.