reference posts

Carb starts your engine, protein keeps it going.

Cookie

Fruit (canned or fresh)

Chips

Piece of bread

Popcorn

Crackers

Easy protein add on:

Nuts

Spoonful of nut butter

Cheese

Roasted chickpea snacks

Glass of milk (dairy or non dairy)

The two Big Rules when instructing younger students was- 1. Compliment before Critique 2. Don’t say ‘but’, say ‘now’

Praise kids on what they get right first, especially if they are struggling. Like OP said, kids don’t like to engage with people who make them feel bad. They need encouragement when learning new things.

Number two boils down to this. If you tell a kid a compliment, then say “but you need to fix this”, that ‘but’ completely negates your compliment. It’s gone. It was canceled out like adding a negative to a positive. Using “hey, that punch is looking great, now let’s focus on your stance” doesn’t verbally cancel out the progress they’ve made. It’s like they’ve checked off something on their list of stuff to work on.

There's a famous example of Posca that most people misremember because we don't drink Vinegar much anymore. If you're familiar with the Crucifixion of Jesus in the Bible, you probably remember the bit about the Roman soldier offering Jesus a sponge full of vinegar to drink. Most people think the Roman dude was mocking Jesus, but that's wrong. That was a sponge full of Posca. The Roman dude was like "Well this sucks. Want a Sprite?"

...Fun fact, I know this because the phrase "Refreshing Beverage known as Vinegar" got stuck in my head one night at work, and I started googling "Does anybody drink vinegar". I had to know. It turns out the answer is yes! And you can still find vinegar-based soft drinks today! Switchel is a vinegar-and-ginger drink you can find at some bars in the US, and it goes back to pre-carbonated soft drinks.

Vinegar is basically just made from fruit sugars so we had. The most. Amazing vinegars. There’s this one made with mango pulp that I straight up would have just drunk but if you add it to soda water it was truly the most decadent beverage imaginable. So there’s like passion fruit, raspberry, elderflower- just every wonderful sharp flavor imaginable.

We had pregnant ladies who’d buy several bottles at a time because it’s really great for nausea.

But I noticed I was negative. And I didn't like it. I didn't like the way it felt inside to be me, and to live like me, with all those negative thoughts all the time.

I had read somewhere that you could train yourself to be happier. That you needed to force yourself to think positive thoughts, until it became a habit.

I remember those few months of high school where I used to catch myself mentally complaining about something, and then forcing myself to find something positive to think about the person or situation. Again, and again, and again.

And it worked.

It became easier. And I became lighter. It was just nicer to be me, to live my life, to navigate through my days. I still remember the moment I noticed my life had become brighter.

And decades later, it still works. The muscle is still there. Now I know the word is neuroplasticity.

These are some lowkey underrated tips I’ve seen floating around writing communities — the kind that don’t get flashy attention but seriously changed how I write.

1. Put “he/she/they” at the start of the sentence less often.

Try switching up your sentence rhythm. Instead of

“She walked to the window,”

try

“The window creaked open under her touch.”

Keeps it fresh and stops the paragraph from sounding like a checklist.

2. Don’t describe everything — describe what matters.

Instead of listing every detail in a room, pick 2–3 objects that say something.

“A half-drunk mug of tea and a knife on the table”

sets a way stronger tone than

“There was a wooden table, two chairs, and a shelf.”

3. Use beats instead of dialogue tags sometimes.

Instead of:

"I'm fine," she said.

Try:

"I'm fine." She wiped her hands on her skirt.

It helps shows emotion, and movement.

4. Write your first draft like no one will ever read it.

No pressure. No perfection. Just vibes. The point of draft one is to exist. Let it be messy and weird — future you will thank you for at least something to edit.

5. When stuck, ask: “What’s the most fun thing that could happen next?”

Not logical. Not realistic. FUN. It doesn’t have to stay — but chasing excitement can blast through writer’s block and give you ideas you actually want to write.

There are going to be days (or weeks, or months) where you sit down to write and feel... disconnected. From your voice, from your characters, from your ideas. Like the person who used to write your stories just packed up and left.

They didn't. They're just tired. Here's how to keep writing anyway:

Lower the bar (Until it's on the floor) You are not here to write something brilliant. You are here to write something. A paragraph. A sentence. A single line of dialogue. Movement matters way more than quality.

Write around the story Don't force it. If you can't write the scene, try: ⋆ A character ramble / journal entry ⋆ A conversation that won't be included in the final draft ⋆ A list of things the character would never admit out loud ⋆ A messy summary of what should happen Engage with the story from a different angle.

Borrow a voice until yours comes back No, not with AI. Read something that feels close to what you want to write, or watch a scene that captures the tone, then write immediately after. Not to copy, to reignite your instincts.

Write the emotion, not the plot. What is your character feeling in this moment? What are they afraid of? What do they want but won't say? What's being kept from them? The emotion leads, the plot catches up later.

Stop trying to "feel like a writer" first. You don't write when you feel like a writer. You feel like a writer because you write.

It isn't a problem with your writing. You're either:

1) tired or going through it somehow, or have recently been through something, and that can easily make you dissatisfied with what you are producing,

--OR!--

2) you are on the threshold of leveling up, or have done so, and the asshole editor side of your brain is interpreting the raised ceiling as "I suck, actually." You don't, and in six months you won't be able to find the parts you thought were bad writing.

Here’s a list of non-aesthetic reasons to exercise:

relieves stress

keeps you healthy

improves sleep

can have a positive effect on mental health

makes you stronger and fitter

something to focus on other than work/school/uni

I remember that when researchers first established a causal link between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s, AMA rejected it and said it was correlational only. AMA was being funded by the tobacco industry. The 1985 AMA president also happened to owned a farm where tobacco was grown [1]. Today rejecting that smoking causes lung cancer would be denial of empirical knowledge.

And yet, despite the abundance of empirical evidence on the harm of porn, people are still in denial. Forget establishing a causal relationship, people are unwilling to admit that there is even a correlation.

Donnerstein actually had to create sexually explicit material that was not violent for his experimental studies. He said that he could not find any material that was non-violent, didn’t have unequal power between the man & the woman, and where the woman was not depicted enjoying the violence against her. This was in the 1980s so imagine the porn of today. Donnerstein also testified at a civil rights antipornography ordinance that the findings from early experimental studies on porn were so compelling that research ethic boards restricted them and required that the male subject population be below the normal range of aggressive traits [2]:

 The National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation and our own subjects committee will not allow us to take hostile males and expose them to this type of material because of the risk to the community. They obviously know something some of us do not.

When people regurgitate that ‘catharsis’ theory saying that women find catharsis in watching porn or participating in bdsm, I think about this testimony from Dr. Pauline Bart on how social scientists refer to an established learning model when studying general violence. But pull stuff from thin air when that violence is against women, i.e., that violence is porn:

There were two [reports] that came out the same time, one on violence and one on pornography. The one on violence was based on ordinary learning theory, which is a substantial theoretical perspective inside psychology. And the theory is, the more you see, the more you do. 

if watching people engage in sexual violence makes people more sexually violent

…does watching violent movies or television make you a more violent person?  Do violent video games make you violent?

Or is there just something weird about sex specifically

Kids are about to be all the way fucked up.

We’re gonna see a huge rise in Asexual kids, Kids trying to deny sexuality in all aspects because of their traumatic first experiences with it (with porn)

9 year olds getting Instagram famous because of their grown male following

Seamless grooming. Pedos are simply going to have an easier time abusing their victims when kids already know what anal gaping is at 8.

Body dysmorphia like we’ve never seen before.

The rate of anorexic boys, and young gay boys in toxic “Dom/sub” “top/bottom” porn-style relationships I gonna jump because they think it’s just normal now.

Suicide rates in young, young girls boutta jump up.

Teachers abusing students because going home every night and searching that “teen” tab just isn’t cutting it anymore

Paternal familial abuse thanks to the mainstream incest porn.

I volunteer with peer support for CSA survivors and hear both personal stories and do research on these topics. There is direct proof in the UK of porn exposure rasing rates of COCSA. 

Girls experience more mental health issues in connection with objectification. 

Sex offenders recognize grooming culture themselves. 

At first I found a child pornography site, (I know I talk about this story a lot but it legitimately fucked me up) and at that time I was being sexually harassed by the daily and I just assumed it was what people do. Then I fell into the hentai rabbit hole (because porn wasn’t bad enough I guess) thanks to the amount of predatory men in anime hubs, and then my body dysphoria came in a full swing because I wasn’t as cute as these children my age in porn and I didn’t want to be like them at the same time which in hand with my homosexuality and other issues made me use the “trans” label. Because I didn’t want to be these girls and I didn’t manage to live up to their physique (I was a chubby child) and it didn’t help that in my country child marriage was legal and valid. Which to me made it seem like it’s really what’s right and that there is nothing wrong with it. They also promoted incest and told me to sleep with my siblings.

>insert severe depression, comphet and internalized homophobia that made me force myself into her relationships

I attempted three of my four suicide attempts in that peroid.

And even when I managed to shake all this off, and till now, I’m extremely desensitized to sexual violence. As well incapable of viewing any pornography with females in them. (Which is why I was a “yaoi” fangirl in my teens.) it wasn’t because I over sexualised Or fetishized homosexuals men, I was simply unable to view any sexual relationship with females in it. Not even other hentai genres like futa or femboys. But I was exposed to this type of pornography so often which made me dig deeper into the BL genre to avoid it because I was also a barely teen and going through the whole maturity thing which it was as fucked as they come.

I couldn’t orgasm without crying, and even now, just the thought of pornography and it being a legitimate addiction makes me want to die, and I’m not saying this as a joke, I cannot understand how someone views something so horrible and end up with a “positive” idea of it. Not with the amount of child pornography is there.

The top searches are “rape اغتصاب" in different ways, incest and “little girls بنات صغيره"

And? I’m still celibate, i have severe depression, unable to emotionally connect to people, and desensitized to both violence and sexual violence. Have issues orgasming, the mention of pornography makes sick. And I can only handle sexual videos with no females or any feminine looking individuals in it. I hate myself, my body, and the times where I thought that it was ok. I know that it wasn’t me who chose to view these things but the idea that at one point, that type of violence was so normalized that I didn’t think twice about it is disgusting.

Protect children, idc who loses their job, idc who loses their income from pornography that is directly targeting kids. They deserve better, I don’t know how more can I explain that pornography is evil and children especially are vulnerable individuals who are easily groomed and can be easily confused and abused.

I found porn when i was in seventh grade, so around 11/12. This was all the way back in 2005, using only a family desktop computer. How did I find this porn? I was looking for fun dress-up games for little girls and I stumbled across NewGrounds.

It started out soft. It got rougher and more degrading. I had graphic, violent fantasies, that I, to this day, have a hard time admitting to, even to myself. They’re shameful and deeply misogynistic. That’s right when my depression began, as well as my many issues with my body and body image. I’m not saying body dismorphia, as I have never been diagnosed.

Frankly, it was easy for me to get suckered into porn. I have always been fat, even as a baby. My father was never around. I met him once in my life, when I was 12. It was easy for me to get into BDSM. Being fat, I always shamed myself, even to this day, though I am making a conscious effort to end my self-shaming. As well, it was easy for me to get into DDlg, as I have father issues.

Because of BDSM, I allowed myself to enter into a polyamorous relationship when I was in college, where I was bottom on the totem pole. This triggered my abandonment issues and my issues of self-worth, as I always felt like I was minimal priority. I allowed the male partner in the relationship to hit me. I was the punching bag, because the other woman did not like rough BDSM. But I did. It ended on bad terms.

And my fiance, right now, I got him into BDSM. And now, as I realize the harm of it, I feel awful. But my fiance is a good man and loves me, and has said we won’t do BDSM since I’m no longer comfortable.

I believe asexuality is a thing BUT I don’t think it is actually widespread. I think many people take on the asexual label bc we live in a misogynistic rape culture that forces obsession with sex whether you want it or not.

It’s supposed to be really, really good for you to keep learning new things as you age. It helps stave off strokes and dementia and Alzheimer’s and improves memory. And hey, learning stuff is fun.

But I really don’t want to be infantilized when I try to learn something. And I definitely don’t learn the way a child does. And honestly, what adult wants to be in the same class as children? Very few.

This occurred to me recently because I’d like to learn how to actually ice skate properly. My parents never signed me up for classes, because it wasn’t a thing they ever cared about or thought about. Now I’m in my twenties and want to learn, and also don’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of eight-year-olds who probably honestly skate better than I do. Because that’s embarrassing, and embarrassment is not how you learn.

Would it be good to lose the social stigma of being worse at something than a child? Yes. Hell yes. But we’ve got to start somewhere, and like I said: adults don’t really learn the way kids do, and a lot of people use these kinds of activities to make friends, and I don’t want to make friends with an eight-year-old, either.

So.