has the "ship grace with everyone ever" blunt rotation hit the eel hive mind yet

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

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.

Shichiro honestly had no idea where he was. He had never seen anywhere like this in all his travels. His curious talens collected samples as he cautiously walked along the unfamiliar terrain.

He couldn't sense any demonic energy. Infact... nothing around him appeared to be related to the netherworld. His eyes widen with fascination.

Suddenly, he hears footsteps. He turns and... he can't believe it. Is that? A... human? Standing a few feet away stood one. The tempting smell wafting off of them. Mouthwatering.

Saliva building up in his mouth he swallows. No. He couldn't eat them. Humans were so rare after all. It lifts their hand and waves.

☆Whatever you do, I'll do it too. Show me everything and tell me how, it all means something and yet nothing to me.☆

He lifts his own and waves back slowly. It says something, but he can't understand it. "Are... you saying hello?" He asks softly.

They take a step back wide-eyed. He quickly lifts his hands in surrender. "Don't go, I won't hurt you." The human tilts their head studying him.

☆I can see there's so much to learn. It's all so close and yet so far. I see myself as people see me. Oh, I just know there's something bigger out there!☆

They were so small. They looked fragile. The days pass by as he explores this new place. His new human guide leads him around. Always keeping several feet ahead of him.

☆I wanna know, can you show me? I wanna know about these strangers like me. Tell me more, please show me. Somethings familiar about these strangers like me.☆

A lagoon, the water pools around their feet. He stays at the edge, watching them catch fish. It was amazing. Everything was so different from the Netherworld. Even the fish was smaller and more delicate. They didn't even have any teeth! How strange.

☆Every gesture, every move that they make, makes me feel like never before. Why do I have this growing need to be beside them?☆

Before he knew it, his human had warmed up to him. They had relaxed and slowly came closer step by step. How lovely. His heart soared.

☆Oh these emotions I never knew. Of some other world far beyond this place. Beyond the trees above the clouds. I see before me a new horizon!☆

Sunshine, laughter. Huddling underneath his wings as the rain pours. Observing the night sky. Struggling to learn each other's language.

☆I wanna know! Can you show me? I wanna know about these strangers like me. Tell me more, please show me. Something's familiar about these strangers like me.☆

A field of flowers. A starry sky. Insects that they had called fireflies twinkling around. The large gargoyle being led. Tiny hands tugging on large talons.

☆Come with me now to see my world, where there's beauty beyond your dreams. Can you feel the things I feel right now... with you. Take my hand. There's a world I need to know!☆

Then... he woke up. Shichiro slowly sits up from his nest. He looks around. His room is just how he left it. He searches for proof that it was real. That it wasn't just a dream.

But he finds nothing. Yet... it had been so vivid. He couldn't help but draw his human. Their bright eyes stared back at him from the page.

"What are you doing?" He looks up to see Kalego and Opera looking at him from the door. "Hurry up and get ready. We'll be late."

He gets dressed. Opera snatches his sketchbook. "Who's this?" He blushes. "Uhh... it's just what I think a human would look like."

☆Tell me more, please show me. Something's familiar about these strangers like me.☆

Kalego also gazed at the drawing. "Mmm looks troublesome. How annoying." Opera smacked him. "Ignore him, he's just jealous. They look pretty."

Woke: Danny has stared into the void and came out laughing. He is a god and is having a good time poking at reality like its clay.

Broke college student but also the Ghost King Danny looking at the stack of complaint forms in his inbox about people cheating death. In a stroke of sleep deprived inspiration, he issues a royal decree that anyone who has properly died before (I.e biologically dead, not just clinically dead) is still a citizen of the Infinite Realms, even if they were resurrected. And have to pay income tax to the Crown.

He establishes the Infinite Realms Revenue Service, recruits the ghosts of some meticulous accountants and sends them after all the assholes who think they can escape Death and Taxes. Starting with the worst offenders (ie those who have escaped death the longest/most often). Your tax bracket scales with how many times you died.

Just picture Ra's al-Ghul, in the middle of giving some speech to his assassin cult when this Phil Coulson looking ghost dude shows up behind him to "discuss the back taxes he owes to the Crown".

Every magic user worth their salt is suddenly swamped with messages from panicked villains and heroes who are trying to figure out wtf is going on and how to get out of this. Constantine is sweating bullets.

Danny hires Valerie to do mortal side "casework", because a, she's just as saddled with student debt as he is b, has worked fast food and knows how to handle asshole customers c, doesn't take shit from anybody.

Imagine Vandal Savage, Felix Faust and Red Hood awkwardly sitting in a waiting room with a stack of documents each, ready for their number to be called so they can dispute their claims. Being called in and utterly flummoxed at the unflappable, bored young woman at the desk who somehow has files on everything about you - birth record, death record(s), who you killed and when records... now declare your income as a crime lord/dictator/sorcerer, sir.

Bruce: I already knew that

Clark: You did??

Bruce: The only "Kent" related to Clark Kent is a man named Pinesly Kent, which was actually the last known alias of a man named Stanley Pines, who died in 1982. What I would like to know is how you, a man born in [after that], are allegedly the son of this dead man.

Clark: