anteaterisland

[anteaterisland]

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

[anteaterisland]

English spelling isn't that hard to understand as long as you also understand French orthography, Dutch orthography, the Great Vowel Shift, the Latin language, the history of the printing press, and the etymology of every word introduced to English in the last 600 years

[anteaterisland]

2024 Art Wrap

This was a big animation year for me. It’s really nice to do these art wraps to remind myself all the work I’ve accomplished.

See how I make room guardians on my Patreon!

[anteaterisland]

peace and love on Earth..

[anteaterisland]

a while ago I read this sci-fi short story from the 50s where a guy is kidnapped and interrogated by aliens using a very sophisticated lie detector, but he realizes that the lie detector works off technical truth, and with some careful phrasing and misdirection, he manages to make them believe that humans are a race of immortal, overpowered, omniscient telepathic beings. and it works.

my favorite part is when he tells them that humans are "capable of transportation without the aid of spaceships or any vehicles, just by using mental power to control physical matter". it's true, we can. it's called walking.

[anteaterisland]

seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.

very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.

they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.

mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.

sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.

these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.

i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.

what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.

they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???

THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!

it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just

ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.

kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.

[anteaterisland]

Today I encountered an especially pathetic Italian greyhound. His owner told me that a gust of wind once blew him into a lake.

[anteaterisland]

i've had an epiphany

[anteaterisland]

ENCYCLOPEDIA -- In Proud Immortal Demon Way, Luo Binghe emerges from the Endless Abyss a fully realized heavenly demon. This marks the beginning of his quest for revenge against those who wronged him, along with bedding every woman he comes across.

HALF LIGHT -- He comes out hungry for blood. Your blood.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] -- You remember cheering when you read his revenge against Shen Qingqiu. In fact, you remember commenting that he should've gone further when punishing the scum villain. Little did you know that someday you'd be the scum villain in question.

HALF LIGHT -- You have five years before Luo Binghe decides to turn you into a human stick. Better start running.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY -- I can take him.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT -- In a fight, right?

ELECTROCHEMISTRY -- ...

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT -- In a fight, right?

AUTHORITY [Formidable: Failure] -- You absolutely cannot take him, in a fight or otherwise. He's the stallion protagonist, what are you talking about? You're just his poser shizun. You don't stand a chance.

HALF LIGHT -- You pushed your beloved, sticky little white lotus disciple into the Endless Abyss, and there's no coming back from it. You need to start planning now. When he comes back, what will you do?

[Conceptualization: Impossible] Understand the changes you've already made to the story.

[Rhetoric: Challenging] Explain why you did what you did.

[Physical Instrument: Godly] I can take him.

[Electrochemistry: Formidable] I can take him.

[Drama: Challenging] Fake your death.

DRAMA [Challenging: Failure] -- He can't kill you if you're already dead, right? Of course, faking your death is too cliche, and there are too many ways it could go wrong. If you faked your death normally and ran off, there's always the chance he could find you again.

DRAMA -- There's only one option. You're going to have to kill yourself for real.

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy: Success] -- You know, there's a mushroom that might help with this...

[anteaterisland]

As much as I want to support ethical farming practices I will be buying the cheapest bag of frozen chicken thighs as much as the next frugal/poor person which is why animal welfare needs to be legislated, not left up to the invisible hand of the free market or some bullshit. Invisible hand of the free market finds itself around a lot of throats.

[anteaterisland]

This is one of those things where the discourse is just completely broken. Both of these takes are shit and no one is concerned about the actual problem.

Republicans want to bring back incandescents because they just want to trigger the libs and have decided light bulbs are woke.

And the "LEDs are fine" crowd are throwing people with flicker sensitivities under the bus. And, no, you don't have to be "pretty far on the spectrum" to notice a difference. And even if you did... why in the world is this person so dismissive of the millions of autistic folks?

LEDs, for the most part, are superior to incandescent bulbs. Collectively they save people billions of dollars in energy costs and greatly reduce fossil fuel use. You have more options for color and brightness. You can control them with your phone. LEDs are fantastic.

Unfortunately there is a design flaw that makes LEDs hard to use for certain people. Due to AC power, most LEDs have a 60hz refresh rate. Meaning they turn off and on 60 times per second. With incandescents this didn't matter because the filament didn't have time to lose its glow between cycles.

Most people cannot see this flicker in LEDs. But there are millions of people who are sensitive to it and it can cause migraines and discomfort.

The solution is definitely not to go back to incandescents. There are flicker free LEDs and I think with some regulation we could make sure all LEDs are flicker free or at least make sure flicker free bulbs are easy to find and not priced at a premium.

Thankfully there is a group testing bulbs to find the ones that will most likely cause no discomfort. They call themselves the Flicker Alliance and their website has a pretty decent selection of tested and approved bulbs.

So if you feel like your LED bulbs might be causing you distress, that is a good resource to try. I think there is also something you can do to make sure the LED drivers are using DC power, but I haven't really looked into that.

[anteaterisland]

when i was sixteen and insane for my shakespeare class final i had to do the “alas poor yorick” monologue at a competition and while i was doing it i had this insane thought of like. i’ve never been and never will be closer to experiencing hamlet’s mental state than i am right now. like of course all that stuff didn’t happen to me but when you’re 16-19 you kind of feel like all that stuff is happening, all the time, constantly

[anteaterisland]

Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito

MY COUSIN VINNY (1992)

[anteaterisland]

sneakret santa albaauru for @sylvaridreams 💌

[anteaterisland]

hi i know “don’t believe everything you read on tumblr” has been said enough times at this point in the website’s tenure but i want to specifically say that there is a problem on tumblr and other social media where well-known science enthusiast accounts basically build trust as Knowing Things and then they can say anything they want about those things & everyone just believes them. this is especially a problem among ppl posting about ecology & animal science in my experience.

i’m absolutely throwing stones in my own glass house bc i almost never used to include sources on my wildlife science posts on my old blog but these days i try to make a point of it & i think others should too.

i don’t even think anyone is lying or making things up on purpose. i think they’ve just heard it from another source they consider reliable & they’re spreading incorrect or incomplete information without questioning it, to a much larger platform. about ten years ago I myself made a post repeating something a wildlife professor said to me, which turned out to be outdated info and mostly inaccurate. i trusted him as a source, but i should have looked at the data before sharing it to a wider audience. it was an important lesson!

basically idc how many times popular content creators on here or any other site/app have been correct about other things in other posts. you should still make a habit of asking yourself “what’s the source?” even when it’s a blog you like & trust. bc let me tell ya, i have seen some doozies lately

[anteaterisland]

On my hands and knees begging adults to allow children to engage in risk play.

And by risk play I don't mean handing them a gun and playing Russian Roulette.

I mean like climbing trees, getting so sick spinning on the swing they throw up, balancing on the curb, sitting in the mud, walking on slippery surfaces, building half ass ramps to ride their bike over, standing on rocks, or anything that involves a smidgen of confidence and out of the box thinking that could result in injury.

Obviously like watch your kids and such, but when we talk about the fun of being an 80s or 90s kid, it's not just talking about CDs and Walkmans or not having iPads. It's about how kids today were robbed of critical learning and experience skills we were allowed to have.

Playgrounds disappearing, helicopter parents, and sue culture really destroyed a child's development in the United States, and I think it's about time we as adults recognize that, because the kids sure have.

[anteaterisland]

new years eve!!! wooo!!! go crazy go wild! 🥳🥳🥳