Sometimes I'm Prepared

And Sokka just gets distracted by what good quality rope he was tied up with and decides to keep it.

First, Sokka, your origins growing up in a poor isolated fishing village are showing. Good practicality there.

Discovered last year I couldn’t look at my 2015 MacBook Air without it triggering nausea and migraines, and figured the screen died. Have been getting by on my phone, but concluded I really need a laptop again.

Saved up, realised I could afford a brand new MacBook Neo, and got one.

-And I couldn’t spend more than five minutes looking at the screen without massive eye strain, nausea, vertigo, and if I pushed it, I-need-to-lie-down-in-a-dark-room-for-hours migraines.

Looking up MacBook and Eyestrain explained what is going on. The liquid retina displays that Apple currently has uses Pulse Width Modulation or PWM. In order to give the screens a deeper depth of colour and contrast, PWM flickers between several hundred to thousand times a second.

And there is currently no way to turn it off. There are settings and apps to reduce it, but there is no way to stop the screen from flickering. Checked Apple forums, called Apple Support, and the time I could look at the screen kept shrinking. Got the laptop Tuesday, returned it Friday, today is Sunday and I’m still dealing with a vertigo migraine.

For MacBooks, it seems to vary on the computer model and the software it uses. In retrospect, the issue with my MacBook Air started after a major software update.

And it’s not just an Apple thing. Current Windows and Android screens do the same thing. There’s even a Reddit for people who are sensitive to PWM flickers to help find computers and screens that won’t trigger eyestrain and headaches.

So, yeah. This week has been a learning experience. But for those who are prone to headaches and migraines, this may be something to be aware of, cause I was not.

This is exactly why so many Marvel movies feel completely interchangeable. They hire brilliant world-class actors and then force them to fit into a standardized, corporate assembly line

like don’t get me wrong - they absolutely can do serious harm and/or kill, but that’s if they’re startled/during mating season/caring for chicks, which is standard for most animals that are bigger than us/sporting some kind of natural weaponry

• cassowaries are ratites! this is a distinct group with smooth/flat sternum/breastbone and no keel (think ostriches, kiwi, emu) from other birds

• there's actually 3 species!

Casuarius bennetti, the dwarf cassowary/Bennett's cassowary, has no wattle, found in New Guinea/New Britain/Yapen highland

Casuarius unappendiculatus, the northern cassowary/single-wattled cassowary, found in nothern/western New Guinea + Yapen

Casuarius casuarius, the southern cassowary/double-wattled cassowary, found in southern New Guinea, northeastern Australia and the Aru Islands (this is probably the one you're familiar with!)

• they're a keystone species that help maintain the continued biodiversity of rainforest plants in Queensland, Australia and nearby islands

• they're threatened by human habitation, vehicles, dogs, feral pigs, habitat fragmentation, habitat degradation, hunting and natural disasters (estimates for how many are left aren't great - they tend to range from around 1500 to up to 10,000)

• immature birds (less than 12 months) seem to be particularly vulnerable to internal parasites, aspergillosis and avian tuberculosis in disturbed/compromised habitat

• they're inversely sexually dimorphic - while they tend to be visually mostly monomorphic, females are larger (especially in leg/foot proportion) and more aggressive

• females are polyandrous - they can have up to 4 different males mates in a season, and lay roughly 16 eggs. the males only breed with one female though

• after laying, the male typically drives the female off, and spends the rest of the season brooding, protecting and hatching eggs while the female finds other mates. the males also raise the chicks up until 14-16 months of age! they protect them and teach them how to forage and hunt

• there's lots of hypotheses, but we still don't conclusively know why they have that casque on their head (could be for courtship but both sexes have them, could be for fighting, could be for communication, could be for clearing through dense brush, etc)