Shadow Wasser

Brachiosaurus Monster that evolved in the deep dark caves, all its bones are cartilage and every part of it is prehensile to fit in crevices.

Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!

It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey

They are, of course, named after Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street!

Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!

I've done a few!

I just realized that apparently I never shared this series here on Tumblr??  

I call it Living Paintings, as they are recreations of extinct animals that some artists actually saw and painted from memory, a long time ago.

A remake of the first ever piece I did for the series, the Megaloceros, given that although the piece of cave art I chose is often labeled as being that species, a more critical look to the antlers in particular makes me think it’s a red deer instead. I picked a more agreed-upon depiction of Megaloceros and also took the opportunity to make it a little more anatomically accurate.

Some funky looking bugs 'round here 🐜

Available as prints and other merch formats!

This deep-sea fish has one of the best strategies for hiding in the deep-sea 🖤✨️

The California slickhead (Alepocephalus sp.) is often found below 1,000 meters (about 3,300 feet). Their name was inspired by the lack of scales on the fish's head. Those large eyes give the slickhead an edge in an environment where food can be scarce. It can glimpse even the faintest flickers of bioluminescence—the “living light” produced by deep-sea animals.

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.

@aloe-wasser Not unpopular with me! I've been meaning to write a meta about this. The personal qualities the Houses prize can be used for good or evil and do not (or at the very least should not) be taken in and of themselves to imply a certain moral value.

I think Harry actually epitomizes the good side of the ideal Slytherin traits. He is extremely cunning and uses trickery to avoid fighting when possible and to accomplish good deeds and his desire to take the initiative to save others in impossible situations and to defeat Voldemort himself exemplify selfless ambition.

Tom Riddle meanwhile is actually the perfect Gryffindor. His willingness to do his own fighting and act on his own and to start a revolution and his desire to face dangerous opponents in single combat rather than trying to get his minions to do it as well as the way he pushes magic beyond its known limits in multiple ways, including going through the painful and risky process of splitting his own soul many times when it's never been done before - all certainly qualify as daring. Harry will fight when he has to, but it's not his first recourse.

Riddle however is much more likely to treat charging into battle as a first option. His insistence on dueling face to face according to proper rules - both in book 4 and in book 5 when he reveals himself to Harry first rather than cursing him while his back is turned - even count towards the Gryffindor value of chivalry.

I think it's also notable that just as Harry had a reason to ask not to be in Slytherin, and thus ended up in the House that was the next best match, Riddle had a reason to ask not to be in Gryffindor. After his disastrous first interaction with Dumbledore I'm sure the very last thing Tom wanted was to have him as his head of House. Given his bloodline and how Gryffindor and Slytherin prized some similar traits, Slytherin is the next best choice.

Which would've been pretty miserable for him given that he was poor, had a Muggle name, came from a Muggle orphanage, and would have been presumed Muggleborn. Though even if he had the last name Gaunt the likes of the Blacks and the Malfoys and the Lestranges wouldn't be that impressed given that the Gaunts lived in utter squalor and had no wealth or power or status to speak of. And of course they would have considered Merope a blood traitor. So really he would hardly have been better off if his true lineage were known.

So things would not have been great for him. At least until he probably (in true Gryffindor fashion) won everyone's respect or at least tolerance by confronting them and starting a fight to force them to change their behavior.

yeah yeah all of this. i can't help but feel that being in the 'monied purebloods who hate muggles, muggleborns and poor people' house can't have been a great way for tom riddle - an impoverished, apparently muggleborn orphan with a muggle name - to start out. (not that i think the other Houses were that much better when it came to these attitudes; just look at James Potter and how he treats Snape, or even his friends - he definitely sees Sirius, the wealthy pureblood, as more of an equal, even if it's not entirely conscious).

Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”

I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.

I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”

Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.

Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.

It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.

Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.

Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.

Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.

Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”

TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:

You do not respect their rights as an individual.

You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.

You probably haven’t been listening to them.

If you are unfamiliar with Tofu, please read this post or watch this playlist about the snake who hates Markiplier. tl;dr- under the Markiplier gif.

From the videos you can see she tries to figure out what is upsetting Tofu, and found that it's not just streamers, or just his voice, or the stream. This specific snake

He does not like Markiplier specifically which is demonstrated by him squaring up with Mark, striking, and tail buzzing at him. He recognizes Mark specifically as a scary threat.

Animals have been shown to recognize human faces, and Tofu's reaction to Markiplier's face (and only his face as shown by the printout) is strong evidence that he recognizes Mark's face and differentiates him from other faces. With crows, they've been shown to hold grudges and have that grudge extend to other crows.

So Tofu has a negative association with Mark, and specifically Mark. The question is why? My theory is: perceived threat after a perceived dangerous situation. Some have theorized Tofu was mistreated by someone who looked like Mark- if they were while in his keeper's care she'd know. If it was his breeder, he'd more likely be afraid of all humans and need to first get over this negative perception (basing this on how Sakura reacted with massive trauma that took years for her to overcome, and to this day she's still jumpy. A breeder doesn't socialize their snakes so they'd only know humans to be abusive before being adopted, and his current keeper would very much notice that terrified trauma behavior to herself.)

One thing important to know about snakes is they are not only capable of learning from each other, but are protective of each other. I've seen this with my girls interacting with each other (yes snakes have friends and remember their family), learning from watching the other and copying her actions, as well as behavior I've observed on the Rattlecam with wild snakes. Adult snakes teach younger snakes, as well as are protective of them- even if they aren't their own babies. A female was shown on the rattlecam watching over a group of slitherlings that were obviously not her offspring as she was heavily pregnant. IIRC that same female ushered babies to safety after a hawk attack before worrying about her own safety. I've seen it in person as well with my girls, who have shielded each other from perceived danger, and scoria also squared up to something scary in the hall as though she were protecting me. And when it left she immediately went back to being relaxed and cuddly and happy. Snakes have friends that are snakes. It's an outdated belief snakes cannot bond with their keepers, as many do and seek them out for attention. These observations of snake behavior are part of what play into my theory basis.

So what could Mark himself have done? If you watch streamers you'll know Markiplier is known for playing jumpscare games with his FNAF let's plays being some of his most well known. Tofu's owner knows Markiplier, and is actively watching Markiplier with Tofu. More than likely she regularly watches Mark, has watched jumpscare videos, and had Tofu around while doing this.

It's a reasonable assumption. And if Tofu's keeper reacts to Mark's jump scare videos by flinching, looking frightened, or making frightened sounds, it's quite likely Tofu's sees Markiplier is involved every time... and blames Mark. Seeing his keeper get startled, Tofu doesn't understand it's a fun video or that humans enjoy being jumpscared (honestly I don't think I could explain it to him either) so he's learning from his human that Markiplier is a scary threat.

And from Tofu's point of view? He's right! Markiplier is a regular threat that not only (probably) scared his human, but regularly appears to stare him down and even went after him in his own home! And when his keeper scolds him? It's likely the same misunderstanding that dogs have when their owners yell at them to be quiet- they think the human has joined in! Clearly his keeper is joining him in being upset at Mark!

Your story is 50% reader. It’s that mixture of reader and writer that makes the magic.

Which means your story needs to have holes for the reader to fill in. You need that negative space for the puzzle pieces to fit.

I’m not talking about plot holes, I’m talking about giving one sentence the power of two. A book that means what it says is a mediocre book. A book that means more than what it says is a great book.

Don’t over-develop your characters, having them analyze every feeling, or spelling out what every character in a scene is thinking. Don’t follow up a powerful line with an explanation with what makes that line powerful.

Character Help

MBTI Personality Test

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Describing A Character’s Skin Colour

All Characters Talk The Same

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Character Development Questionnaire

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Character Development Through Hobbies

List Of Character Secrets - Part 1 - Part 2

Mysterious Characters

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Creating Believable Characters

Writing A Character Who Has Lost Someone Important

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Revealing A Characters Gender

The Roles Of Characters

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Help I Have A Mary-Sue!

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