#YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO *SHIT* TO BE A NEUROSCIENCE MAJOR

[peachyteabuck]

when The Guy said That Thing i knew it was going to trigger me for DAYS and here i am, 2 days later, chewing on my cuticles thinking about skinning him alive 

[wraithdance]

https://www.tumblr.com/wraithdance/765961917651140608/i-really-liked-your-explanation-of-the-whole?source=share

I am really bad at articulating my thoughts but I think about this a lot as someone who hopes to 1- major in neuroscience (i'm 18, going to uni next year) and 2- is trans. I know being trans is not the same thing at all as POC experiences with fic, very cognizant of that, but more to the point where I relate to the aspect of not being able to get over the like mental wall of seeing "neutral" readers as me? I don't know what my brain is doing when i read certain fics but sometimes i can't do it.

I feel like I should close read some of my favorite fic and least favorite fic to see if there are triggers I didn't notice on the first read. does that make sense or seem similar to what you experience? Again I know it's not the same thing, but like i am so curious as to what cis straight white people put in their fic that makes it so obvious that they're cis straight white.

I am sorry if this bothers you, really not my intentions, I am obviously a future brain nerd and i can't stop thinking about this

Congratulations fellow Nerd! You've activated my interest in Race theory and fandom writing from an academic perspective!

Writing reflects life and to answer this question properly, I have to talk about life shit to catch you up to speed, (this should help if you take a sociology or cultural anthropology class lmao) So, Welcome to:

Calvary yaps: Sociology & Intersectionality in fandom writing 101!

Disclaimer: I'm just a random bitch on the internet who loves English and the ridiculousness of social hierarchies, this will be referencing American social constructs and in groups only, with a focus on my experience as a Black American woman who reads a shit ton of books. Don't fight me if you hate my explanation, I will simply not respond.

Read my house rules before sending me an ask, I'm just being a dumb ass rn and word vomiting my interests, so pls i beg no follow up questions unless I say I'm open to em later.

Definitions to know:

Socialization: the act of preparing individuals to participate in society by learned social norms taught in ones family or social settings like school/friend groups. (one can be socialized in gender, race, cultural practices, etc.)

Social Hierarchies: systems of social organization in which some individuals enjoy a higher social status than others (in my opinion this is a lingering safety measure from lizard brain cavemen hunter/gatherer days)

Intersectionality: A term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw; The process of acknowledging the unique parallels a marginalized person experiences when they have more than one marginalization (ie: race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, size, etc.)

Matriarchal society: Social groups/family structures that center female figures as representatives of authority.

Implicit Bias: Unintentional bias a person may have towards a group or individual based on learned stereotypes, prejudices, perceptions based on another's background or state of being.

first, yes anon you are making sense! So the main question:

'What cis straight white people put in their fic that makes it so obvious that they're cis straight white?'

I've been mulling this question around in my head for a few days and tried to figure out how to articulate this without going into depth in Sociological theory, but I can't! So here we are lmao, this is long as fuck so TLDR here.

I've talked to a LOT of Black and PoC people over the last months because I thought I was the only one who felt strange or could tell immediately when a writer was white, despite doing the best job they could to be neutral.

Every person I spoke to agreed they could tell right away even if we don't share similar racial backgrounds.

The answer I've come up with to why that is, is because white people are socialized (taught by society/their parents how to behave) in a way many black and PoC people are not, so their reader characters will often act in a way PoC people have learned not to, so it flags for many of us.

I plan to answer another question about this at a later date so an example is with shit like:

An over deference to hyper masculine male characters (for PoC cultures like certain Black/Latine groups that are often matriarchal in nature and don’t ascribe to as many traditional gender roles, this is a flag), lack of interpersonal/familial connection, over meekness, no challenging of external factors so things just HAPPEN to the reader and lack of awareness of surroundings to name a few. 

A lot of the language of the irl world places white cis people from Western countries as the default and everyone else as others. In which, PoC people have learned to navigate the world very carefully with a hyper-focus on what will potentially bring them harm/scrutiny/ostracism especially in white dominant spaces.

That extends to when we have down time while reading or partaking in media smfh.

I'm sure you've had to learn the same as a trans person navigating cis spaces and it's the same with any marginalization! If you are disabled you have an awareness of able bodied people and their expectations, same with being fat amongst skinny people, etc.

The more marginalizations you have, the louder the rules of social hierarchies become. Which is why many marginalized ppl stick close to those who 'get it' in their social groups as an act of safety in numbers. (Many of us attempt to have strong family connection/harmony because of this)

So referring to your comment about being trans is not the same thing at all as POC experiences with fic, it is when you are a Black or PoC trans person! My angel face @/buttdumplin has spoken a lot about that as a Mexican transman reading fics by cis people!

(Please for the love of God no one come to me explaining how marginalized they are so they shouldn't be lumped in with the white ppl PoC are cognizant of, I will check myself into a psych ward)

So what does that gotta do with reading fics?

No matter what anyone thinks, it is damn near impossible to not frame your writing from the perspective of your lived experiences. It's why even when I try my hardest to make my characters not sound Black, they will always read that way because I have been Black all of my life!

And it doesn't just happen with race, go on tiktok and search male authors writing women. (or here's another article lmao)

Also ask a Southerner how they know someone has never been to the South and don't know shit about our accents when they write Graves. There are linguistic tells that flag off and why we flame actors who pick up southern accents for their roles.

(They chew on that terrible goddamn Appalachian or Louisiana Accent not realizing Southern accents come in many fonts.)

So when I read a fic about Kyle Garrick from a non black person, I can tell the writer is non black by linguistic implications, the things they emphasize about him and what they don't. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading fics from non black people, I can just tell!

And sometimes that means I, and other PoC's associate the Reader as a white OC while reading fics.

For example, all black people are not monolithic because of our cultural and regional experiences, but many of us share common threads. That's usually family involvement, colloquialisms, that stupid fucking cookie tin our elders put sewing supplies in...

Other non Black PoC people might share similar cultural practices, so when I'm reading fics from say a latina, I will cock my head and go wait.... are you...? And surely enough, they are a person of color. 

But even while reading from a non black PoC, I have to tread carefully because anti black sentiment exists in many cultures, which is why you'll hear me say Black and PoC/Non black people interchangeably.

It’s how the conversation of Implicit bias comes up, because unknowingly non white characters can sometimes be written with a hyper focus that makes them seem inhumanly one characteristic or with little to no background while the other characters are fully fleshed out.

like the character of color is just a stand in to move the plot around white characters forward. 

So all that to say, without sometimes meaning to white writers will always sound off to me in a way that my brain can pick up on in the most minuscule ways because my awareness of my blackness/otherness has been drilled in from birth and reinforced by social norms.

I can even tell immediately if a white person has been around only white spaces their whole life with the jokes they tell lol.

In the grand scheme of things the race of the writer is most important to me when something jarring comes up that slaps me away from the experience, it explains so much of the disconnect.

Every marginalized person has a threshold for what they can ignore as a ‘trigger’ before they’re ejected from reader inserts, mine is usually the association with racial historical happenings, certain gender dynamics, etc.

It's why I mention crying like a little bitch when I read my friend Jess's (Kyletogaz) TF 141 Hair series, Dragon’s (Dragonnarative-writes) Transferrable Skills, and even Xavi's (Buttdumplin) Piercing fic.

Reading those fics felt like safety and familiarity. It was a moment where I realized I could drop the mental load I had no idea I was carrying, where I was trying to prepare myself for potential emotional damage and just READ.

It's also why as a Black person who fucks with kink and sex work it's been so touch and go when navigating dark fics/kink fics/fics about Sex workers.

Because there are different rules of engagement non white kinksters have to be aware of and that leads to a point on the collective vs. Individual experience as a PoC in kink, that I’ll eventually make a post about at some point or another. Maybe…

So yeah I’m tired of yapping. I hope this long shit was enough of an explanation!! Thanks to my friends Kiko, Jules, Xavi and Folded for yapping with me so I could articulate this better!!

[isleofdarkness]

"Mister Constantine!" Adam Constantine rolled his eyes but got to his feet as Fairy Godmother stormed over. "I have told you a million times, you are not to use magic-"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Adam drawled, "Would you rather I let the Unsleeping use one of your faculty as a puppet to murder a student? I've been hearing them whispering about this for weeks, Faye, they want this kid bad." His gold eyes cut over to Riah. "The question is why?"

"What on Earth are you on about?" Fairy Godmother snapped.

Adam bent down, grabbing the dagger Anxelin had nearly stabbed Riah with. "This. I've never seen anything like it, it's too powerful to be in my normal wheelhouse. If I had to guess, this thing is a godkiller, and even my father hesitated to fuck with magick like this. I mean, based on the power I can feel, this kind of shit is meant for Zeus or Odin at a minimum. There's no coming back from a wound from this. So whatever the Unsleeping want with this kid, they want it bad.

"What could they possibly want with him?" The derision was a bit uncalled for. They'd tried to kill Riah, not her, so she could stop acting like he was the threat here.

Adam shrugged. "I can't say for certain. But, if I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with Hades and that amulet around his neck. What King Adam did opened the door for this kind of shit, complications like none of us have ever seen before.

"Look, I don't wanna alarm anyone," He continued, raising his voice so everyone could hear him, "But from what I've heard, this kind of thing is unprecedented, even the Stranger's never seen anything like this because Hades is damn good at his job and doesn't let spirits linger in the Veil for this long. We could be looking at a movement as powerful as the Awakening if this isn't resolved."

"If they want Riah, why not let them have him?" He wasn't sure who said that, but it sent shivers down his spine.

"Absolutely the fuck not, are you out of your godsdamn mind?" Adam snapped, fist tightening in agitation. "We have no idea what's going on here, this is completely uncharted territory. I mean, spoken like someone who's never encountered a malicious spirit. You think they leave peacefully when they get what they want? No, you wanker, they just want more. Besides, with how major of an event this is, how powerful the kid is, and the kind of magick they're wielding to try and get what they want, we can't afford to do anything stupid! For all you know, this kid dying could make reality collapse in on itself or start the apocalypse. Honestly, use your godsdamn brain. We have no idea what we're looking at."

"Well, what would you propose we do?" Fairy Godmother asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. "We can't have an exorcism in the cafeteria every week, Mister Constantine."

"Unless you know where my father is, we're going to have to until I can find a solution! You think demonologist training covers this? This kind of stuff is well above the pay grade of even the fucking Pope! We're getting into theoretical magick and to compare that to science, that's theoretical neuroscience. People need decades of training to even come close to scratching the surface of theoretical magick, let alone the more dangerous areas like whatever it is we're looking at. There's not even the beginnings of a theory on something like this. You asking me how to fix this is like me asking a caveman how to stabilize a collapsing star trillions of lightyears away to keep it from becoming a black hole. I don't fucking know, Faye. This entire situation is unprecedented. You know how many spells are created to protect multi-breeds, especially cambions, from ghosts and demons? Let me check." He pulled a grimoire out of his bag, flipping through the pages sarcastically. "Wow! Zero spells to protect multi-breeds from ghosts and demons! Maybe, MAYBE, my father has something in the Wheelhouse..." He paused, his palm cracking against his forehead with enough force to punch out a horse. "The Wheelhouse! Of course!"

He whipped to look at Riah, still on the floor after Jay had tackled him. "I'm going to see if my father left anything useful in the Wheelhouse. Do you have somewhere safe to stay until I can tell? It could be weeks."

"He can't miss that much school!" Fairy Godmother snapped.

"Faye, I swear to the fucking gods-" Adam turned on his heel, glaring daggers. "If you don't want me to constantly perform exorcisms in the cafeteria then he needs to be somewhere safe, so do his friends with how easily the Unsleeping can use them to kill him. Get it through your thick skull! The safest thing for everyone involved, including the rest of the students, is to get these six to some kind of stronghold. Like maybe the Vat- wait, part demon, Vatican won't work, can't even step into the city." He frowned, thinking. "Maybe the Tower of Fate, or the House of Secrets? The House of Secrets has good wifi. Most of his assignments are online anyway. I'll talk to the other teachers, the House might be the best option."

"You can't just bring students into the Dreaming, Mister Constantine."

Adam blew out a long breath. He knew what he was going to do. "Look, Faye, as the resident expert in the paranormal and one of the few beings who's allowed to perform exorcisms without getting permission from the Pope, I have authority here. This is my wheelhouse and what I say goes. So, I'm taking these kids wherever they need to go to be safe. If that includes the Dreaming, so be it. Fight the Pope if you wish."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Mal demanded, looking between Fairy Godmother, who looked pissed but seemed unable to argue, and Adam Constantine, who looked pretty smug. "What's going on?"

"Until I can figure out the answer to that second question," Adam turned again to face them, clapping his hands together. "You kids are going somewhere safe, where the dead can't get you. Pack your bags. I'm taking you to the House of Secrets, effective immediately."

[mithliya]

I think the anons harrass you bc they saw your selfies and are jealous, you are a neuroscience major with a loving gf and pretty too. I don't mean to blow your head up but that what we see on your blog. So that + you being outspoken against racists = fixation. Kind of a joke but also I low-key think it's true. It reminds me of the news I saw a few years ago about a white college student who was poisoning her black roommate and obviously had a weird combo of racism and jealousy. She kept calling her "Jamaican barbie" which honestly she did look like a barbie, she was v pretty, no excuse for rac is sm and poisoning though. Not to harp on about looks and all but this is a type of jealous racism that I have noticed in white people at times.

neuropsychology is what i study so like not pure neuroscience but similar! anyways yeah idk what it is but clearly it’s an unhealthy obsession that they’ve got. if i posted about taking a shit they’d probably send me angry anons about it, they get angry and insane over every little thing i say or do & look for offence when there’s none to be found.

idk what their goal is but i hope they know that i love laughing at their bizarre msgs with my gf and other ppl in my life 🤭 ppl like this have been lashing out at me ever since i was a teen girl so 99.9999% of the time i just find it amusing rather than it having the effect they’re hoping it’ll have on me. eventually they’ll probably realise that and go seek out some other poor woman to bully as some form of escapism from their sad lives

[micah-write]

@clit-a-cola

Respectfully , you just spewed utter bulshit

Gender as it is now is mostly based on sex , saying only sex should exist end up being only 2 gender exist wich none of them are true , the only reason there's such differences between xx and xy is because a majority of men across history decided to reproduce with woman that where more docile , smaller in build an size , more delicate ect .

YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP , being a grown ass lady mad we encourage people to speak up for themselves and put healthy boundaries instead of being bigots make you mad ??? And I'd like to see examples of homophobia fr , because you wanna know a little something , IVE BEEN VICTIM OF HOMOPHOBIA ALL MY FUCKING LIFE . I'd never be homophobic to someone so unless it's your shit idea of what homophobia is shut the fuck up till you get a fucking taste of real homophobia and not just "sob sob trans people said it was OK I just wanted to date cis trans girl but I want to be opressed"

A preference isn't like a damn fucking allergy and putting it as such is wildly insensitive pls get a grip

Ffs you don't know anything about neuroscience , sociology, BIOLOGY . You just get your information off Tumblr uh ? Make sense you're that dense and brainrotted and believe only hate should exist .

A preference is a very basic concept , wanna know something also at the basis of conversion therapy ? Thinking trans guys are just lost woman . That is something proper to conversion therapy yet you and your terf circles seems to believe it's ok to hold the same exact beliefs as conversion therapy??

You're simply trying to make lesbians be the most opressed uh ? What about people of colors ? Because in the terf movement there's no place for them it's only European centric views ffs

Oh ? I PERPETUATE HOMOPHOBIA BY SAYING ONLY DATE CIS WOMAN IF THATS ALL YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO fr ??? I'm homophobic for defending people for who they want to date ??????

Yes , many people said that you can't be a lesbian because you couldn't procreate , it's actually one of the main elements of conversion therapy and how the churches forced lesbian women to go into cishet wedding in order to "avoid hell" geez so you don't know your own lesbian history ?...embarrassing

Sure sure sure sure I'd like to be as delulu as you but ig I have a brain and do actual researches instead of Tumblr brain rot

I'm not even American fucking imbecile I'm canadian and I'm not pro trump norr Christian I'm a satanist so instead of trying to make a vilain out of me and acting like you actually believe trans right are important stop posting anti trans shit ♡ make your story match and you're gonna look smarter I promise. You don't know anything about the history of your own fucking community I'd be ashamed in your place fr , especially if I also accused someone of so much bulshit like you did to me , you can't respect people and you rather just blow cuz what ? Because you're 30 yo and supposedly know better ?? Pls get a grip . Maybe I'd believe you if you didn't continually insult me or disrespect me but at least in my critique I am praising rusty for what she does well and actually encourage her . You can't even complain about real things you have to make up stuff to be mad at 😭😭😭

[yellowocaballero]

How did you get into writing?

That one's kind of tough to answer. I feel like there's a simple and a complicated answer. I'll try and go for simple.

It's partly genetic. My mother wrote Buffy fanfiction in the early 2000s. She put it up on her Buffy forums. It's quite good. When I told her I was flying out to meet an internet friend, she was like - ah, yes, the joy of meeting internet friends! I hope you have fun! Icon.

I read a lot of books and comics as a kid for very boring reasons. I think if you do enough of that, it's pretty natural that you want to write something yourself. I remember vividly sitting in my office period in 8th grade, bored out of my skull, and deciding I wanted to write a story. I grabbed a random sheet of office paper and wrote a. Uh. One page Batman fanfic. OTL.

The thing about writing is that you don't have to stop doing it. It's just writing on a piece of paper, or writing on a Word document. You can do that shit in class. You can do it during lunch. You can do it in the library. You can go home and do it on Microsoft Word 2003. You can mentally write it in class and then go home and physically write it. You can do it on the bus as your friends make you write stories about them riding narwhals. I used to get smashed drunk and write (a small percentage of my AO3 fics were written drunk - I got called Hemmingway a lot). My family was very poor growing up, and writing didn't require any money. It was completely free. It didn't require any equipment or a space. It didn't require other people. You didn't have to stop doing it. So I didn't.

The other thing is that I love writing. I love the act of writing. It does not matter what I'm writing, it does not matter what the story is, and it doesn't matter how good it is. You know how your grandma sits in front of the TV and knits, not so she has a potholder or anything, but just because knitting is relaxing? It's like that for me. Writing is fun. I don't remember ever caring if it was bad. When I was 13, 14, 15, I don't remember ever worrying over if something was bad or not. I remember looking at lines and thinking - these are awesome lines. Or I remember how great it felt to put my elaborate daydream on paper.

Writing is the only hobby I've ever really enjoyed. I should find more hobbies. Ones that involve going outside with groups of people. Writing's made me a ton of friends but they're all online. I could meet up with writing groups in person, but then I'd have to talk to actual writers (worst case scenario). I'll have to fake interest in DND or something.

Oh, also, fwiw - during middle school I wrote fanfic, during high school I wrote almost entirely original fiction. I didn't write much in college because I was a Neuroscience major. And when things calmed down I decided god was dead and writing was for fun and my life was hard enough already, so I went back to fic. The fic is a choice.

[cheshire-shuntaro]

Name is Chishiya Shuntarō, currently a doctor residing at The Beach, before I found myself in these lands I was a student of medicine with major in neuroscience. Despite a common belief around here I am not a cat.

♦ GENERAL ♦

♦ This RP blog contains mature themes, so, please for the love of Zeus, be 18 before you interact, aight?

♦ I'm doing this purely for fun (and the ability to be an apathetic asshole), don't take it personally.

♦ We love asks/RP memes here but I do need to be in a mood to answer those, so if I reblogged a meme and haven't replied to your request yet, my apologies, longer, narratively driven threads will usually have priority in my mind.

♦ My activity fluctuates very much. Life and shit happens, so if I'm not active, just wait patiently until I reappear again.

♦ Active threads: 1. Chishiya x Andromeda with @andromedagarcia

2. Chishiya x Airi with @airi-of-hearts

3. Chishiya x Soma with @somatheking

♦SHIPPING RULES ♦

♦ Shipping will be based on, first, how our character vibe, second on how we vibe as writing partners - OOC.

♦ If you do want to have a ship with Chishiya do approach me OOC first so that we could discuss it beforehand, do not spring it out on me out of nowhere.

♦ If you are a MOSTLY self-insert character, I am not going to be open to shipping with you, any other interactions between our muses are welcome.

♦ My muse will be flirty towards anyone he deems interesting.

♦ ABOUT THE MUN ♦

Matt/Mateo (he/they), 26, just a lil guy who loves writing and roleplay in general. I know I play an asshole and have been told that I am intimidating, but I really am not. Scout's honor, I don't bite, text me stupid memes.

[siriuslysatorusimping]

I was tagged 😃

So I have a bachelors and masters in applied psych and now am working towards a PhD in neuroscience :) I love love love it with every fiber of my being and I must be a masochist bc I LOVE the academic hazing that is grad school. I’m probably gonna end up teaching and doing research bc I don’t wanna stop being a student. How do Rinko and Gojo feel about grading btw? Hate it. Worst thing ever.

My focus is on brain imaging and stress in a special population of kids who are highly predisposed to developing schizophrenia, but I had to have a lot of training in psychopharmacology and general cognitive and behavioral science to begin with which is why I am so ready to nerd tf out with Rinko studying psych 😍

YOU ARE SO FUCKING SMART. HOLY SHIT. THAT IS SO FUCKING COOL.

Kiko ranted like a dumbass so hi, rest below the cut 🫠

I have a BA and MA in Technical Writing & Rhetoric with a minor in English Literature. HOWEVER. My grad research focus was actually user experience, which was born from human-computer interaction (a psychology major at my old school). Our department had the best user experience professor, so we had a lot of the HCI PhDs in our UX classes. I always loved talking to them and picking their brains. Part of me wishes I had gotten my PhD in HCI or a related field, but I needed out of academia. I fucking hated it. It was also in the height of COVID, which just destroyed all of my motivation for life itself lol

AS FOR GRADING: I FUCKING HATED IT, TOO.

listen.

when i was in grad school, i had 50+ papers to grade every couple of weeks and we had to have them graded within a certain time period or administration CAME FOR US AND IT WAS TERRIFYING.

But one time I left all 50 until the day before I was put on the hit list and I wanted to die. So I chugged two redbulls and proceeded to go on a grading marathon of like, 10 hours.

This AU is feeding my tiny desire to go back to school to keep me from making the giant financial mistake of trying to get my PhD when I know I'll hate academia just as much as I did last time.

I think Rinko will actually semi-enjoy grading, because she's the type who will be so intrigued to see how her students think.

Gojo hates it. But he also doesn't trust anyone else to do it right. Lucky for him, most of his exams are multiple-choice. But since it's physics they have to show their work, and he hates grading that shit because it becomes so obvious that they don't fucking know what they're doing.

(maybe one of the installments will be a cute, fluffy lil grading session where they're just keeping each other company 🥺)

[froizetta]

3 and 20 for the ask game ❤️❤️

3. Biggest strength

Excellent question! I spent a little time thinking about this because I honestly don't think I have just one, clear strength - although I guess do most people, really? But in the end, I think my actual biggest strength is that I'm a little bit good at a lot of things. For example: I'm scientifically minded, which gives me a useful range of skills; but I also have a bunch of creative hobbies like music, writing, drawing and dressmaking that I'm fairly competent in. And it turns out that having some skill in a wide range of stuff makes you a lot more versatile. Like, for instance, when your PhD suddenly requires you to basically do arts and crafts for Science reasons, you can be like, cool I can basically already do that!

20. 5 things you love

Five whole things? Uhhhhh...

Obvious but: fandom shit. We're literally on dc tumblr lol, I feel like this goes without saying. I'm lumping it into one answer so this whole list isn't just a list of pairings and fandoms, but superbat is the current loml!

Music! I've been playing instruments and singing since I was a kid. I like basically all genres tbh, but my favourite genre to play is jazz and my favourite to listen to is basically any genre fused with funk. (This includes pure funk btw: put on September by Earth, Wind and Fire in my general vicinity and watch me absolutely lose my shit for 3 minutes and 35 seconds.)

A really good sandwich. The majority of sandwich ingredients are fucking baller (I am a slut for both good cheese and a nice seeded sourdough), there's near endless variety, they're easy to make, and it's socially acceptable to just stuff it into your face with your hands. Exquisite. My favourite (partly just out of nostalgia but whatever) is reker smørbrød (open prawn sandwich for the non-Scandinavian) on a sunny summer's day with the family, on the proper white poppy-seed bread with plenty of mayo and a good spritz of lemon juice. And yeah, sure, there's very obviously an element of nostalgia there. But it's my list and I can do what I want, so there!

Fashion I guess? I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was a kid, and although I decided a long time ago that I would hate that actually I've still always really liked clothing and dressing up. Ever since I hit an early quarter-life crisis during lockdown, decided that cringe was dead actually and started dressing like a low-effort e-girl basically all the time, I've been having a blast lol.

The brain. Look, the PhD may have thoroughly beat my interest in neuroscientific academia out of me, but my love for the brain in general remains mostly unsullied. If anyone ever wants a fun neuroscience fact, especially about dopamine (objectively the best monoamine neurotransmitter imo), I'm always happy to provide!

[softeningthesound]

i hate being made to feel and genuinely believe deep inside of me sometimes that spending my years at university in the humanities is a waste of time

i hate that i'm going to spend minimum three years here and i'm made to feel like i won't get anything out of it, i hate that history is a "worthless" degree

i feel guilty that i have no interest or passion for medicine or pharmacy and that even if parts of those fields seem appealing and i want to be in on that world, i have to do physics and chemistry and math on top of biology just to gain access to those fields in university

and i wish i liked physics and chemistry and math and biology enough to want to get through those and do medecine or pharmacy

i wish i was in a field with a better sense of what's to come after the degree

i hate that history is kind of doomed to academics, that everyone asks me "oh so are you going to be a teacher?" i"m not interested in becoming a teacher and i don't want to do a master's or doctorate degree so what is this bacc going to do for me?

i may enjoy getting to know the friends i've made here and most of my classes but there's always that lingering sense that it's all for nothing aside from "sort of having fun for three and a half years"

having doctor parents and working in a pharmacy lab means i'm always surrounded by people who i feel have a grip on their lives and are doing something elevated and smart and meaningful while i'm just wasting away writing not-groundbreaking-at-all essays and partying once a week

i did chemistry and physics in high school and hated writing lab reports but what i did love was a) knowing i was doing well in those classes and b) that feeling when you understand a concept and how to apply it to other situations and feel like you've gained new ground

and i think it's gifted kid shit too, because i never struggled in school and did well in my sciencey classes and now it's like i'm wasting talent taking classes on the history of the united states or the history of urbanism when i've always been made to feel like i should be spending that energy on the sciences, or like i should be interested in those more/force myself through them and go into something more practical at university

it's also the idea that if you go through all these years of medecine or pharmacy or neuroscience or engineering at school, you get these really prestigious and high-paying jobs that you don't get if you do a bacc in the humanities or even a master's or doctorate degree because again, people with PhDs in history are kind of stuck in university for the rest of their lives, teaching classes to young adults who are sort of stuck in the same situation of a) study like seven more years and become a teacher or b) find a more practical way to use your degree or just change majors

i try not to think about it too much because this is exactly what caused me so much anxiety last semester and most of the time i'm fine but then i start up this internal worrying again

i can't reiterate how much i feel like i'm contributing nothing to society by studying in this field, how much it stings when the pharmacist i work with says "of course your end-of-semester isn't too difficult, you're in history", how much i... yearn?? when i watch fucking tiktoks of med students matching into different specialties at their dream hospitals, when i hear the pharmacists around me talk about their time at school, even sometimes when my parents are just casually talking about patients

i hate not having a clear goal

[robotslenderman]

Seconding @ultranos. I didn't work with animals, but as a neuroscience major my instructors often had, and their post here completely lines up with what they told me. A story my pharmacology professor told me was that she wanted to study a particular drug/receptor interaction in the brains of rats.

This meant that every single animal in her experiment had to die in order for her to study the brains.

The board had her submit a proposal that involved her having the minimum amount of animals involved for the experiment to still be viable, and of course she had to justify euthanising the animals. She had to justify every animal she used in the experiment. She had to justify why this animal and not another, "lower" (for lack of a better term) animal, and why an animal at all instead of an organ or tissue sample. If she wanted a dozen rats, she had to justify why she needed to use a dozen and not eleven instead.

The board was willing to accept what she'd written, but there was a problem. The problem was that euthanising the rats the typical way would destroy the receptors.

She suggested beheading, but the board vetoed that because putting the rat in the guillotine would stress it out, and it was absolutely imperative that the animal did not suffer in any way, shape or form in the process of euthanasia. Having an injection is far less stressful for an animal than being wrestled into a guillotine as the rats are trained from a very early age to take to injections.

She eventually came up with and demonstrated a method that would actually soothe the rat and then very quickly behead it before it knew what was happening; they were satisfied with that.

So this was the whole process: she would take the rat into a room by itself -- the other rats could not witness this or have any clue what was going on, so they had to be out of sight and out of earshot in case of any vocalised distress (which, if there had been any, the board would've come down on hard because she'd told them her method would cause no distress at all). She would rock the rat to make it go into a daze, and then quickly behead it on the upswing. Because the rats were sleepy and hypnotic -- no distress.

Then she would remove the body, clean up the blood, completely bleach the crap out of the guillotine and the workbench, before bringing the next rat in. Because the smell of blood would distress the subsequent rats, so she had to make sure there was none of it lingering. No smell of blood, no smell of death, nothing.

The ethics board is not just made up of scientists. It's made up of animal rights activists and veterinarians and experts on the particular animal you want in addition to scientists. There's several levels of it, I think here they go A-D, and your profession determines which level you are on the board. And even for experiments where the animal has to die, the board bends over backwards to make sure that what life the animal has is as peaceful as possible. They don't believe in "it's going to die anyway". Even when it comes to testing things like painkillers, you are only allowed to use painful stimuli that 1) the animal can move away from (eg the tail flick test), and 2) does not actually damage the animal under the circumstance that the painkiller is just so good that the animal continues to sit there and let the painful stimuli happen.

The fact that those 23 monkeys died is a huge fucking deal and I guarantee the scientific community immediately surrounding it is losing its fucking shit at those scientists right now. Respecting the animal is the holy grail of animal testing. I mean fuck, if you were dissecting a frog in my uni and you decided to make it do the cancan, you'd get kicked out of the class. Respect the animal. If you have no respect for the animal, you have no respect for life, and you should not be a fucking scientist.

what the libcucks fail to understand is that this is a small price to pay for the end goal: an embedded HUD with unskippable advertisements in the margins of your eyesight

[hewholivesinhisname]

Urban Survivalism

So it looks like my new GF is going to save me. If she doesn't another woman will. It feels good to have achieved a level of social skills where random women offer sex in exchange for pizza. Babetron 7000 has promised that in exchange for love and devotion she will set me up in her family's construction 🏗️ company.

In addition it looks likey idea for building a life extension hospital 🏥 is gaining traction in at least one section of the life extension community. This is good. It means someone might give me lots of money to do the things I really want which is to make society much better than it is even if it is only for the snotty rich kids at first.

Up until now though my life has been a living fucking hell because when you can't earn money being a neuroscience major and my mental illness and my families' complete lack of support has meant I had to survive on the street.

Boston is a good city to be homeless. I resent that these Harvard kids can't end it here but it is a better place than many because there are many churches with meals shelters and food stamps are given out.

I have all these mental health tics too that make me look really weird and as we all know weirdness = evil in the eyes of the majority. Weakness really equals evil now doesn't it if people are looking to predate on people. Why are we surprised at all the pedophiles again? Let's not get side tracked though

Gabi my wonderful gay social worker has been great! Thank God for the queers. She has taken care of me and got me a tent when all the men and women in my life just said fuck you. I think there is a strong connection between queerness and wanting to take care of all the babies already here.

MGH hospital has two days where they help out the homeless and that is where I got my phone. During the day I spend time in the libraries.

I do not believe that Utopia is optional and the reason is that I would not be alive without the desire to make a better society with the top utopian probably being the Jewish and Christian god. Thanks 👍 God!

If you find yourself homeless a tent is a good option and stay the fuck away from other homeless people. Many are downright dangerous. My stuff was stolen the first month I was homeless.

Having someone with money romantically into you will save you. That is what I have learned. Jobs will not and the reason is that they don't pay enough. Those with money are not interested in solving homelessness. They want a return of the middle ages, but with less wizards and more serfs.

I still want kids but I now want to adopt. There are too many kids and adults not taken care of. I might have some lined up with my friend Rebecca who has like 4 kids and her house burned down. We will see what Babetron says. Adopt mom and kids together? Sounds good 😊

Psychological survival means willing to do degrading things but not get bothered by it like eat from trashcans. If you are a woman a job may be more feasible of course because the men who run things will hire women but rarely other men.

Why can't we get public housing? I don't know Europe has more. It will still be inadequate though because there is too many people all of a sudden. Especially with climate change.

A lot of this is masons...I think. The cops board up old houses and I don't know why. I think the real reason is that people are suing one another to get money after being injured in these houses. If on the other hand you are on the street and you get mentally ill and die from drugs. That is not a problem according to the law.

Why can't we have a more well run Earth? I don't know I really don't. But I really want one wherein shit like this doesn't happen. Bit seems kind of hopeless though because far worse things happen on a regular basis.

If you find yourself homeless though sure you don't look it. And definitely do not hold up signs saying "help" or "will work". It doesn't fucking work. Expect to be criminalized for existing while real criminals go uncaught and unmolested so long as they have money. It's a violent world out there friends.

During this time I actually have met many interesting people including priests, monks, interesting mentally ill folks, Robyn the best navigator and angriest person I know, got closer to God, read much more bible and watched free plays and went to museums.

It is my conviction to have a life that saved me I think....there is free wifi as well. Be wary of people though and count on your friends and family to say fuck you.

[anonymous-cs]

no excuse for some freak 20 year old to be dating a 17 year old lol. there are people their age, they just don't try and rather go after minors. pretty fucked up, and i don't really care if the minor is 17. still a minor. you can have your opinions but everyone else can have their's and personally i avoid any freaks dating minors when they're a whole 20 years old. 20 year olds aren't babies. they are adults.

This kind of thing is nuanced. That’s why no when bats an eye when a 40 year old and a 45 year old date but if an 11 year old is dating a 16 year old then there’s going to be a problem, even though both situations have the exact same age gap. The age gap in of itself it not the actual problem.

The whole “still a minor” thing makes no actual sense to me because there’s a lot of countries where the age of majority differs by state or providence. Take Canada for example, where roughly half its providences have 18 as the age of majority and the other half has 19 as the age of majority. Does that mean an 18 year old in Quebec automatically has some kind of power over another 18 year old who lives a few miles away in Nova Scotia, because the first is an adult and the second is a minor? I sure hope you didn’t answer no because I do not have the ability to even process how someone could genuinely think that. Here’s a fun fact, a lot of laws are all made up! Laws are extremely subjective and most safety regulations weren’t put in place because people logically that certain things were unsafe, but because people died in a mass tragedy and widespread changes were demanded. It’s also often that laws are kind of based on jack shit nothing. Just look at the USA’s drug laws and tell me they’re based on public safety or concern for the wellbeing of any drug user, prescribed or not. Hell, technically literal infants can get legally married in the USA (i.e. California having no minimum age limit on marriage with parental consent though it’s hopefully unlikely due to also requiring Judicial approval). For this reason, I’m not going to focus on the legal age shit and focus on what actually makes an age gap in a relationship inherently imbalanced. 

In order to actually analyze if there is an inherent age based power imbalance between two people you have to think about things like brain development, where they are at in life, actual experience and maturity, etc. For this specific case of a 17 year old and a 20 year old (I’m going back to assuming USA since those are my experiences and probably where the two are from statistically), both are still considered adolescents in a developmental standard. Neither one has a fully developed brain, though both have a relatively matured brain considering that human brain development is exponential (and if you don’t know what that word means why are you trying to argue neuroscience). It’s unlikely either one has a stable full time job or a college degree. They could easily have met at a college or even at a high school. Both are in a stage of life that is probably rather unstable and both probably lack a lot of adult experience. The 20 year old has maybe 2-3 more experience living in the adult world, but that’s really not a lot considering that there are roughly 60+ years of adult life to go through and at some point the difference in amount of adult experience doesn’t even matter. There really are far more things the two would have in common at this stage of life than apart when you actually look at the factors that come with being a certain age.

I am someone who has experienced age based power imbalances in a relationship first hand, both as an minor and an adult. I didn’t magically overcome a lot of these power imbalances by being a legal adult. Hell, being 18 made me a target far more often than not. I went on a date with a dude from Grindr at 18 and he was super patronizing about my age while I didn’t even know how old he was. Age based power imbalances are nuanced to hell and back and often depend on a critical look at the people involved in a relationship and comparing several aspects of their lives. Reducing this discussion to “minor” and “adult” is like reducing math to “addition” and “subtraction”.

You can have your own opinions, but if you’re going to come into my ask box with them, then I can tell you that your opinions are stupid and don’t actually make sense when you take away the buzzwords and think about it for more than a minute at a time.  

[butch-reidentified]

The desire to understand what is unknown in our universe *Is* the passion behind science. Us not understanding how and why we are interconnected is what drives us to make scientific discoveries. Quantum physics is about how the natural world interacts at and below the atomic level. We see the same growth pattern in trees as we do the circulatory system in mammals, why is that when theoretically a closed loop circle would offer the least resistance for circulation? Dogma is the enemy of science, and dogmatic religions are an enemy of science, but curiosity and understanding that there is so much we don't know is not.

this is literally exactly what my wife and I have been saying since day 1 of this shit fr. i don't understand what the issue is.

my wife and i are literally scientists who now run our own consulting firm in the industry. we've made significant breakthroughs, I've been published (peer reviewed) in a major journal, etc. yk what drew me to neuroscience (& other natsci)? THE FUCKIN UNKNOWN!!! how little we really know and understand about it!! yk, the exact thing I've been talking about regarding all this. I've repeatedly said as much in many different ways and I'm exhausted. thank you so much.

having a hard time to tag @violetwhiteandgreen so idk if the tag went thru or not, but... no. like, this is just not factually correct. and I have NEVER SAID and in fact actually said like 250 times that I do not practice a religion. I have gone into detail over and over. if you can read the posts I've made explaining exactly what I do and why, and call it religion or even any sort of belief system, let alone remotely anti-science, YOU are the one lying to yourself and out of touch w reality straight tf up. I challenge you to find a single instance of me engaging in "religious beliefs" or anti-science rhetoric fr

and I also NEVER SAID and in fact explicitly said the opposite of "needing spiritual beliefs to appreciate the natural world" or be feminist AND said another 250 or so times that what I do doesnt even include spiritual beliefs [however, it's still false that practices that view goddess as metaphor are in any way presented on the whole (or ever in my personal experience) as "superior beliefs to science" or "anti-science" or dogmatic or any of that. it's a way of relating to the world thru metaphor and ritual which appeals to many ppl. not remotely the same as religious BELIEFS or dogma!]. talking about "celebrating the unknown" does not mean anything besides its literal definitions. ffs

see prev reblog as well please

fact: there is so much of the natural world we don't understand yet

many forms of women's spirituality is just... celebrating how cool that is. not believing in any fictional narrative. just celebrating nature and how much we have yet to understand.

that's why I take issue with the "it's just as fictional as Christianity etc" narrative. some forms, sure, but not any I'd ever be interested in.

it's just ignorance. your idea of witchcraft vs what I'm actually talking about. but you aren't taking the time to ask or listen. there's literally nothing "unscientific" about what I personally practice. it's just about my relationship to the scientific unknown.

[tuyet-mai]

A real-life example of ADHD. If you get frustrated reading it, imagine what it's like living with it.

Me: Ok! I'm gonna get all of my stuff done this weekend! Let's work on this biology assignment! I need to answer these 3 questions and then I'm done for today!

ADHD: You also have to do your sociology project! Also, next semester you have a bunch of psychology classes and STATISTICS and you may not be able to finish a pHD program if the tax bill goes through, so you should probably be a math major instead of doing psychology/neuroscience. But also, design seems really cool, but that doesn't pay a lot.

Me: wait!!! we have biology!!! can we pleas-

ADHD: You should contact your senator. You should BE a senator. Maybe not though... it would be so boring.

[research into how to become a senator]

[comparing personality test to executives]

what if you were a different myers-briggs type? What even is personality? Why are we different from each other when everything is just cosmic soup ultimately? Existence is pointless. Let's just die now. TIME TO FUCKING END IT

Me: omfg

ADHD: OH WAIT, ALSO, GOTTA CHECK THE FARM APP!!! And what about stat next semester? You should learn how to do statistics. Hey, I know! Let's get on khan academy and LEARN SHIT.

[not even a unit in]

well that's fucking boring. What about biology!!!

Me: Y.E.S.

ADHD: Oh hey they have a medicine category! I wonder if they also have psychology. Ok but biology. Plants! Jelllyfish! I wonder how far consciousness goes back in evolutionary history. What if there's consciousness in larger units of matter and we just don't know it? CONSCIOUS SPACE DUST. What if it was like that thing in guardians of the galaxy? Chris Pratt was in gotg. I wonder what other movies he was in. What kind of movies do I like? What movies are coming up? OOH that looks cool! Are there similar movies? Can we watch a movie???

[wastes 2-4 hours]

Me: [dying]

ADHD: [repeat ad finitum]

[dance-is-life27]

A real-life example of ADHD. If you get frustrated reading it, imagine what it's like living with it.

Me: Ok! I'm gonna get all of my stuff done this weekend! Let's work on this biology assignment! I need to answer these 3 questions and then I'm done for today!

ADHD: You also have to do your sociology project! Also, next semester you have a bunch of psychology classes and STATISTICS and you may not be able to finish a pHD program if the tax bill goes through, so you should probably be a math major instead of doing psychology/neuroscience. But also, design seems really cool, but that doesn't pay a lot.

Me: wait!!! we have biology!!! can we pleas-

ADHD: You should contact your senator. You should BE a senator. Maybe not though... it would be so boring.

[research into how to become a senator]

[comparing personality test to executives]

what if you were a different myers-briggs type? What even is personality? Why are we different from each other when everything is just cosmic soup ultimately? Existence is pointless. Let's just die now. TIME TO FUCKING END IT

Me: omfg

ADHD: OH WAIT, ALSO, GOTTA CHECK THE FARM APP!!! And what about stat next semester? You should learn how to do statistics. Hey, I know! Let's get on khan academy and LEARN SHIT.

[not even a unit in]

well that's fucking boring. What about biology!!!

Me: Y.E.S.

ADHD: Oh hey they have a medicine category! I wonder if they also have psychology. Ok but biology. Plants! Jelllyfish! I wonder how far consciousness goes back in evolutionary history. What if there's consciousness in larger units of matter and we just don't know it? CONSCIOUS SPACE DUST. What if it was like that thing in guardians of the galaxy? Chris Pratt was in gotg. I wonder what other movies he was in. What kind of movies do I like? What movies are coming up? OOH that looks cool! Are there similar movies? Can we watch a movie???

[wastes 2-4 hours]

Me: [dying]

ADHD: [repeat ad finitum]