MelMey

The ocean molded this clump of bricks into a rock shape

Pride flags Ao3 skins! :D

Happy pride month everyone!

Code, instructions on how to install them and previews HERE 

The specific flags are separated in various chapters, and there are quite a few more than those shown in this tumblr post! (I had to cut down the previews or the post would have been SO LONG). 

Of course I couldn’t make THEM ALL they are so many, and I had technical problems for flags with more than 6 colors and I still haven’t found a way to handle chevrons….

The ones I’ve made (you’ll find them all in the link above) are these: the Rainbow Flag, the Trans Flag, the NonBinary Flag, the Agender Flag, the Bigender Flag, the Genderfluid Flag, the Genderqueer Flag, the Greygender Flag, the Lesbian Flag, the Gay Man Flag, the Pansexual Flag, the Bisexual Flag, the Aromantic Flag, the Asexual Flag and the Polysexual Flag. 

The header, the menu and the footer all have flags in it. 

The buttons have flags when you hover them 

The tags are colored by type (relationships, characters and freeform) each having a different flag color!

Each flag was made to work decently well both on light mode and dark mode (reversi).

Have fun! 

Pride flags Ao3 skins! :D

Happy pride month everyone!

Code, instructions on how to install them and previews HERE 

The specific flags are separated in various chapters, and there are quite a few more than those shown in this tumblr post! (I had to cut down the previews or the post would have been SO LONG). 

Of course I couldn’t make THEM ALL they are so many, and I had technical problems for flags with more than 6 colors and I still haven’t found a way to handle chevrons….

The ones I’ve made (you’ll find them all in the link above) are these: the Rainbow Flag, the Trans Flag, the NonBinary Flag, the Agender Flag, the Bigender Flag, the Genderfluid Flag, the Genderqueer Flag, the Greygender Flag, the Lesbian Flag, the Gay Man Flag, the Pansexual Flag, the Bisexual Flag, the Aromantic Flag, the Asexual Flag and the Polysexual Flag. 

The header, the menu and the footer all have flags in it. 

The buttons have flags when you hover them 

The tags are colored by type (relationships, characters and freeform) each having a different flag color!

Each flag was made to work decently well both on light mode and dark mode (reversi).

Have fun! 

Days 29 and 30 of #migratorymay2026 are Black-Chinned Hummingbird and Scott's Oriole. Also reposting Toco Toucan and Indian Peafowl for Day 26 and Day 31.

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Sociologists of friendship have long shown that close ties rarely form because someone sets out to “make friends.” They form through repeated exposure, shared activity, and gradual self-disclosure. You show up and see and talk to the same people. Then, you reveal a little more of yourself each time and so trust accumulates. That is how social capital is built.

What struck me was not that a kink community could generate friendship. It was that it had preserved something many mainstream spaces have lost: structured, recurring, interest-based, in-person interaction among adults.

Just canceled my account (not that I used it that much). But I won’t permit this. Via @unaminh.bsky.social:

IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)