Apathy Is Death

Like, do you know how swooningly, outrage-causingly shocking it was that the main character slammed her bedroom door in her abusive husband's face? Do you have any idea how unthinkable it was that she denied him access to her space and her person? She was supposed to submissively look away while he turned their son into an alcoholic for his own amusement and seduced innocent young women! It was revolutionary in 1848; when Bronte (Anne) wrote it, she had to do so under a male psuedonym because publishers wouldn't accept works by women unless they were harmless pap, which was all that was thought suitable for women to read lest their mild and gentle minds be corrupted.

The reason these groundbreaking books of history seem to tame and understated now is because they worked. They raised the bar, pushed the agenda forwards, cleared the path for the next writer. They did exactly what they were supposed to. Time is linear. History moves forward. We make progress.

When you are old, if things happen as they ought, a future generation of teenagers will read The Hate U Give and Simon and the Homo Sapiens' Agenda and Speak and think to themselves 'why did anybody ever think this was contraversial? Why did they ban them? These are just things we talk about, these are things we deal with like normal people. What was the past like, and how do we stop from backsliding into a place where these things are considered shocking again?"

Okay, so: there's a part of the human brain called the "prefrontal cortex" which is, among other things, responsible for executive function and impulse control. Like most parts of the brain, it undergoes active "rewiring" over time (i.e., pruning unused neural connections and establishing new ones), and in the case of the prefrontal cortex in particular, this rewiring sharply accelerates during puberty.

Because the pace of rewiring in the prefrontal cortex is linked to specific developmental milestones, it was hypothesised that it would slow down and eventually stop in adulthood. However, the process can't directly be observed; the only way to tell how much neural rewiring is taking place in a particular part of the brain is to compare multiple brain scans of the same individual performed over a period of time.

Thus, something called a "longitudinal study" was commissioned: the same individuals would undergo regular brain scans over a period of mayn years, beginning in early childhood, so that their prefrontal development could accurately be tracked.

The longitudinal study was originally planned to follow its subjects up to age 21. However, when the predicted cessation of prefrontal rewiring was not observed by age 21, additional funding was obtained, and the study period was extended to age 25. The predicted cessation of prefrontal development wasn't observed by age 25, either, at which point the study was terminated.

When the mainstream press got hold of these results, the conclusion that prefrontal rewiring continues at least until age 25 was reported as prefrontal development finishing at age 25. Critically, this is the exact opposite of what the study actually concluded. The study was unable to identify a stopping point for prefrontal development because no such stopping point was observed for any subject during the study period. The only significance of the age 25 is that no subjects were tracked beyond this age because the study ran out of funding!

Poor and marginalised people are being kicked out of the houses they worked decades to secure, just at the time in their lives when they are the most vulnerable

bonus halloween theresa!!

these tags, tbh. we fucked up when we allowed "the people you hurt aren't obligated to accept your apology" to shift into "...so you have to shut up and accept whatever abuse is hurled your way no matter what, forever, and if you ever say anything about it, you're deflecting and playing the victim."

- they announce a delay but then the train arrives exactly at the same hour as usual

- they do not announce a delay but the train arrives ten minutes later than usual

- Ticket inspectors who exist only for the first two days of the month and then magically disappear

- the announcer’s voice that becomes shrill by saying that one random word of the phrase, terrifying you, and than returns normal

-friendships born due to the disperation / anger at the announcement of the (umpteenth) delay

- the Angry Nostalgic Old Man ™ that “wHE the DuCE waS hEre The TRains Were PunctUAL”

- but the rest of the station is super calm bc they are blatantly used to delays 

-first and second class interchangeable

- “how this window is supposed to work”

- the announcer that “the train will arrive with 30 minutes of delay” and then “no wait 25″ “40″ “15″ “100″ “60″ “120″ “the train is cancelleD” 

- finding mysterious objects on the seats and wondering how they got there. once i found a celery. what the fuck.

- regarding with disgust the foreigners who use the train bathroom. do u want to die?

-on this note, Trenitalia rules state that if someone feels sick on the train the conducter has to be informed and the train must be stopped. Cue commuters literally waking up from comas to go and stop the poor old lady who is going to talk to the conductor because stopping the train would just fuck up everyone else and that’s not happening on your watch

-the ticket inspectors who just groan when young people don’t have their tickets and don’t even fine you anymore. they just hate their life someone set them free.

-also why they fuck did they remove kilometric tickets and why do the new ones look like receipts

-oh obviously the ticket machines don’t work but luckily there is a strategically placed Baretto equipped with old men playing briscola while smoking and giving you That Dirty Look™

-someone has mentioned this but I feel like we need an actual quotation: é vietato attraversare i binari. servirsi del sottopassaggio.

-also we forgot to mention that literally all trains are insanely full of graffiti like how does that even happen. how on earth do you get that many.

-that one seat that is full of holes and you just know something terrible has happened there and you don’t even care anymore