#an atom generator thingy

[ashclouds366]

this is mesmerizing to me

i don't know how to explain it

[copperpipes]

I spec bio'ed Ultraman from Ultraman:Rising for fun (part 1)

the actual file I've written (and still writing) is now far over 2k words, so I desided to break it down to a series of posts so that it would be easier to digest, but if you don't want to wait for me to get them one by one out you can just go and read that long ass file yourself/lh

I understand that the film wasn't meant to be looked into on this level, at the end of the day this is just fan speculative biology, not an official theory, nor is it law, if you find a scientific inaccuracy i'll gladly hear you out in the comments to this post. but essentially what i'm doing here is having fun in my own silly little way :]

I've done some research into ultra physiology and some things didn't make sense to me, partially because there are more than one iteration all with their own worldbuilding, but I'll do my best to try and piece them all together without losing the source material too much.

[updated ultra Kenji design]

(The rest under cut) vvv

fact no.1

ultras are aliens and before they were ultras they were humans (or humanoids, or human-like, i'd like to believe so and i will do you one better).

not going to spoil much but something happened, and they were forced to build this thing called the ultra-spark to keep their civilization going, and the ultra-spark turned them all into giants, ultras.

fact no.2

the weapons ultraman uses (those buzzsaws thingies, shields, beams and glowing fists) are made out of something called spacium energy, positive running through the right side of ultraman’s body and negative running through the left, with the spacium beam appearing when he connects those energies by crossing his arms.

fact no.3

Ultraman himself is made of spacium energy and its presence is vital for him to exist. the ultra-spark is what gave and gives the ultra species spacium energy, ultras can also produce it on their own using other types of energy (solar energy on earth for example) but are not as efficient as the source material, hence why on earth ultraman’s energy runs out quicker then it would for example in space where energy is more abundant.

What is spacium wasn't completely clear to me, what I understood was that Ultraman has it (I think it was his skin that was made out of spacium?) and uses it to convert solar energy into spacium energy. 

I think spacium is meant to be an original element. and from what a mutual kindly told me (thank you @bazookaboi!!) its atomic number is 133. very very unstable in natural environments and extremely radioactive, so with all due respect allow me to ignore that entirely and let it remain a mystery for everyone’s sake.

fact no.4

ultras as a culture have a very strong sense of justice and moral code. (and I guess very emotionally intelligent? empathetic? but i'm not sure about this part ;-;)

Now let us finally start with the Ultra spec bio:

i'll start from the less obvious half for my own sake, you may skip this part if you're here just for Kenji’s human part (which i won't blame you for the designers cooked with this one) but just so you know there would be parts you won't be able to understand.

general ultra spec bio: physiology and body structure (my favorite part):

Do ultras breathe? was my first question and my answer would be, i don't think so.

down to the cellular level cells use oxygen in order to generate chemical energy that comes in the form of ATP, out of glucose and oxygen with ATP and CO2 as the outcome. (The difference between animal and plant cells is how they get their glucose.)

Now ultras don't seem to eat, and why would they? and breathing is not necessary since they already get the energy they need from spacium converting outside energy into spacium energy, on the outside there’s the spacium, and on the inside there’s the spacium energy just running around. it can be let out in certain areas of the body, but essentially this energy is all held together by the ultra’s skin (also probably why ultras have no openings on their body, so there wouldn't be a leakage of their life soup).

An ultra's internal structure is unknown, or at least I haven't been able to find anything on the matter, but in the movie both Kenji and his dad get injured, which means that there is something to be damaged.

i really like how the film handles injury actually, it shows explicitly the consequences of a serious injury and how it can sometimes be a life changing thing. It has a blatant effect long or short term and I need someone to analyze it more in depth. I know someone will eventually.

part 1

All the people who wanted this, i call thee.

next, part 2

@wtf-a-psychoanalysis @fantasma-espacial @spuuks-s @theviewer @whimsicalloser @m1lf-hunter-69

[solradguy]

I’ve been curious about this for a while, but is there a reason that Asuka’s name is the way it is?

Because in Japanese it’s written 飛鳥＝Ｒ＝クロイツ.

I know 2/3rds of it is Christian R(osen)kreuz but why is his first name kanji? Is there any reason for this? Is it a reference? Even if it is a reference, he is not Japanese so wouldn’t it be アスカ＝Ｒ＝クロイツ ?

Is there some Asuka lore I don’t know about? Is it just an aesthetic choice/to make his name as wacky as possible? (I mean, a kanji, romaji, kana combo for a name isn’t something you don’t see every day).

This has been on my mind for weeks.

I don't have citations for any of this so take it all with a grain of salt because I'm largely speculating.

飛鳥 means "flying bird" and Asuka's got a lot of bird/flying imagery in GG, especially in Strive. It could be that Daisuke just liked the motifs, but his design decisions are generally much deeper than that. Asuka has a LOT of themes baked into his character for things like Japan post-WW2/atomic bomb, the effects of horrors of decisions made during wars on the people who make them, and "sacrifice for a greater good." This last one is evident in the decision he had to make in redirecting Justice's laser towards Japan, killing millions but saving the rest of the world from whatever destruction the Universal Will was going to bring.

Asuka being an American with a Japanese first name and German last name fits into that too, with those three countries all interacting closely in horrible ways during WW2. Again, him having to redirect Justice's laser mirrors America's actions with the atomic bomb. "They dropped the bombs to prevent further deaths during the war" is a common (grim) reasoning given for it.

It's possible the bird motifs suggest a freedom and want for a life unburdened by heavy decisions that Asuka is never going to have. The more abstract bird motifs, like his weird eyepatch thingy, could also tie in with angel symbology and the Rosenkreutz/Rosicrucian Order stuff, which then loop back to his connection with magic and Backyard esoterica.

On a lighter note, Daisuke was almost definitely inspired by Go Nagai's Devilman, despite me not having a citation for that lol. 飛鳥 is the same kanji Ryo Asuka from Devilman uses, and GG Asuka's relationship to Sol is almost 1:1 to Ryo's and Akira Fudo's in Devilman. Sol's Dragon Install designs borrow some inspirations from the Devilman's too, most notably in the weird head-wing thingies.

Asuka R. Kreutz is a character that has a ton of very deliberate and carefully chosen elements to his character. I have zero doubts that, when we do find out why Daisuke named him the way he did, it's going to open the floodgates for intense analysis.

[theoneandonlyneonleon]

AAH! HUMANS!

my rottmnt human designs (and redesigns)✨✨ (feat. My shitty fucking camera that cannot correctly capture colors for the fucking life of it!)

Leo✨✨

Donnie✨✨

Mikey✨✨

No Raph :[

Ill get to him eventually- (maybe)

Additional ramblings below 👇👇👇

Leo:

I only changed a few things about Leo, because I generally liked the design, there were just a few things that irked me.

The outfit- I liked my previous outfit for Leo, but it didn't feel like something he'd wear everyday. Casually, maybe. I took inspiration from the episode Air Turtle and instead went with a basketball jersey (bc he plays basketball in my human au) the skinny jeans stay, bc he's a whore.

The hair- I originally did blonde tips on his hair, but decided I liked the brunette better. The blonde also are his face look really busy when paired up with the vitilago for his eye markings. I did however color his front two little strand thingies red to mimic his eye markings.

Donnie:

Donnie changed quite a bit from his original design, ill add the og design for reference.

Okay so-

The outfit- I kinnnnda hated his og outfit. The neon green shirt is a massive eyesore, the khaki shorts. Just no. I kept of the Atomic Lass shirt, but made it purple instead, to better match Donnie's color palate, and went from tan shorts to black cargo pants. I feel like Donnie needed more pockets to carry stuff in, and it looks better, from a fashion standpoint. I also gave him demonias bc duh.

The hair- I swapped him from locs to an afro for a few reasons. One, the reason I dont draw eyebrows is bc I draw eyes so comically large that they just don't fit on the face, and I wanted Don to have his trademarked brows, so I picked a hairstyle that covers his eyes, and allows space for dem brows so he can still emote. Also with a less detailed style I was able to add his goggles without it looking too busy.

Mikey:

Ive kind had a vision for Mike since the beginning. I wanted him to wear something versatile he can move around in easily, but also something colorful and fun to match his personality.

The outfit- I wanted something artsy and fun, but also light. So I picked a cropped hoodie (ik its a vest with an undershirt in the pic; I changed it after taking it) and a pair of shorts and a cool belt. I feel like Mikey is definitely a fun socks guy, so I gave him some striped socks with the turtles' colors on them.

The hair- so in case it doesn't show in my art, Mikey's hair is supposed to be a frohawk type deal- kinda like this

I picked this bc I just thought it looked cool when I was experimenting with drawing different hairstyles.

Raph:

Ive been putting off drawing Raph, bc I dunno why, but no matter what I do, he also comes out looking....... Questionable.

Extra Note- I changed my human au comic to a fic because: one, I don't have the time or energy to draw a comic. Two, I like to get detailed with my writing and you can't do that with a comic.

Thanks for listening to me ramble ^ ^

Please reblog my art <33

[hotfuss]

hello!! I have a few questions if that’s okay..? first question, do you know anything about the K thingy? the one they have on set! I’m planning to make my own (a much shorter version!) so do you know anything about it, the side detailing etc etc. also, in the Miss Atomic Bomb music video, do you have a screenshot of the scene where Izabella is dancing? it’s quite a specific scene and I’m not sure how to describe it, sorry!

first of all it's always ok to send me asks... this made me so happy, like we were back when there was a still thriving fandom on tumblr! 😭 second of all that seems quite a nice project i hope it turns out fine!!

now to answer your questions: the k debuted as a keyboard stand decoration for the day & age tour and after that has been consistently used for any off tour performance (2016 to any 2017 show before the official start of the ww tour, 2019 shows etc). for photo references the best is to just browse my the k stand at https://hotfuss.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/the%20k or https://hotfuss.tumblr.com/tagged/the%20k if you are on desktop/browser or just type #the k on the search bar of my blog if you are on mobile!

additionally sunsets and neonlights used to make nice hd edits of pics and mostly close ups, so it's worth browsing their d&a tag too if needed. i'm the only freak with an overly detailed tagging system so that's a more general era tag tho. but you can check it at https://sunsets-and-neonlights.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/day%20%26%20age and https://sunsets-and-neonlights.tumblr.com/tagged/day%20%26%20age!

for the mab video i took some screenshots and i'm posting them under the read more, hopefully there's the one you are looking for!

[juney-blues]

did you know my comic has an rss feed (i mean technically it's an atom feed but who really gives a shit)

and that i had to code a little javascript thingy to generate the entries, which conolidates pages uploaded on the same day into one single update so your feed doesn't get spammed

(unlike SOME people 🙄)

[snowflake-owl]

for the character thingy, Ochanomizu

(threat)

Astro Boy’s kind adoptive father that he actually deserves.

Sexuality Headcanon: Straight in most canons, aroace in some, and pansexual in the AUs where I ship him with Tenma. It depends of the AU really.

Gender Headcanon: Cisgender

A ship I have with said character: Normally I don’t ship Ochan with anyone, fact is that he deserves happiness so I don’t know why I ship him with Tenma in some of my canons/jk

A BROTP I have with said character: His friendship with Tenma in Atom the Beginning is precious.

A NOTP I have with said character: I haven’t seen anything I hated yet

A random headcanon: He loves LOVES Robot sports. Ochanomizu collects memorabilia from the sports he stans.

General Opinion over said character: He’s a sweetheart and deserves all the appreciation. I also love that Ochanomizu despite being so kind and nice, he still will throw hands and get furious when the situation merits it. He’s not a doormat! He’s not perfect either but his heart is in the right place.

[xxxprogamer69xxx]

Cranky Kong's Dnd Planning #9 Lotta stuff (comparatively) this time. First I am redoing some of the names. Chitfoth (continent) and Colciax are staying the same. Magfestia is being renamed to Omnatraea Slax is now Peterach (this isn't even edited this is just fantasy name generator and it's perfect and hilarious lol) Fuguel is now Temari. Next, the magic system. I am a bit of a science nerd, so I kinda wanted to do a scientific explanation for how magic works, and I decided on a boson (force carrying particle [for example, photons {the light particles} are actually the boson for the electromagnetic force]) called the M Boson (based off the W and Z bosons). It is a bit handwavey but I'm kinda thinking of it (at least for spells that produce some form of physical effect) as like taking the particles needed (like electrons for thunder wave, specific atoms for more specific things, etc.) from far off, somehow making an instantaneous wormhole to the place where the spell is being cast, and then using the matter to cast the spell. Government system! For more general stuff (Trade, warfare, etc.) the ACA convenes and they discuss and vote and figure out what they are going to do (they have a really trusting relationship so no hard feelings if someone is outvoted). For more specific sectors, the individual members control those. Colciax runs the Technology sector (all tech in Chitfoth can eventually be traced back to it (Colciax it/its pronouns) I am not sure what Temari runs just yet I'm probably gonna go with education or entertainment (but i might keep entertainment free besides a little thingy) Omnatraea is in charge of the Magic sector.

Peterach in jail (recently actually for reasons i just realized about so i gotta figure out what he ran [I'm not sure i can give everyone equal slices of the pie so he might just get somthing smaller {would make sense tbh}])

Schnobgoblin runs cartel????? (not canon)

might do a timeline next time idk also maybe tokens on the map, i might recreate on inkarnate bc i can add notes easier.

[mademoeiselle]

Her name Aluna Ruela Ferreira Elefante. You can call her Una, Luna, Unay, Nana, Ay, Al, Rei, Frey, or whatever you feel comfortable with. She cherishes pet names and will graciously take one from you. She is a cat person and owns 10 of them. Taurus Sign, Scorpio Rising, Sagittarius Moon. She is of legal age and has the MBTI XNFJ personality type. Depending on how the other person reacts, she may be both shy and loud person. She enjoys interacting with all of her mutuals, regardless of whether or not they are close to her. Feel free to interact with her and tap on her DMs if you want, she'll gladly respond.

For the note, she occasionally sksd with new people she meets (ensure you're okay with that). She collects memes, whether they are meme jelek or cat memes. Don't worry, you can engage her in a meme war!

Her account is unlabeled. She tweets about her interests, daily life, books, spotify links, rl thingy, and so on!

One of his worlds has to do with books. She loves to read books (particularly self-help, detective/mystery (she genuinely loves Agatha Christie), and classics books). She also enjoys listening to a range of music, such as Indonesian, Western, K-Pop, and Bollywood. She is also a fan of horror and thriller series/films.

Music : Taylor Swift, Westlife, Backstreet Boys, The Beatles, CAS, Keshi, The 1975, Novo Amor, Avenged Sevenfold, Linkin Park, Coldplay, Nirvana, Bon Jovi, Dept, slchld, Arctic Monkeys, Lauv, Sasha Sloan, Hayd, Indonesian 2000s song, Boy Pablo, Benjamin Kheng, Alec Benjamin, Britney Spears, ROSIE, 5SOS, WDW.

K-pop : Girls Generation, New Jeans, ENHYPEN, Red Velvet, The Boyz, BTS, Super Junior, ITZY, Aespa.

Books :

Non-fiction (esp. Self-Improvement) ; Sirah Nabawiyah, Atomic Habits, The Book You Wish that Your Parents Had Read, Encourage to be Disliked, Mind Power Skill, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, The Midnight Library, Tuesday With Morrie, A Gentle Reminder, Good Vibes Good Life, Tentang Semua yang Ada di Bumi, Self Healing ㅡ What's Wrong About Your Life, Maaf Tuhan, Aku Hampir Menyerah, Young on Top, Menanti Kepergian mu, Setelah ini Kita Berjuang Lagi Ya, Catatan Untuk Diriku.

Fiction (Detective, Mystery) ; I adore Agatha Christie so much especially Hercule Poirot series ( I CAN'T CHOOSE MY FAV, I LOVE THEM ALL).

Classic Books ; The Little Prince, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tale Of Two Cities, 1984, Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Catch-22, War and Peace, Crime & Punishment, The Old Man and The Sea.

Drama/Film/Movies/Series : MCU, Maze Runner, Sherlock Holmes, Money Heist, The Walking Dead, Sinister, Insidious, The Conjuring, Top Gun, The Matrix, Mission Impossible, The Queens Gambit, Peaky Blinders, Split, Gone Girl, Korean Drama, etc.

Anime/Manga : Naruto, Attack on Titan, Blue Lock, Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Tokyo Revengers, Sword Art Online, Cells At Work, Tokyo Ghoul, Kuroshitsuji.

Game Story : Resident Evil, A Plague Tale, The Last Of Us, Visage, DLC Shadow Of Rose, The Quarry, Little Hope, Outlast, Madison.

YouTube : MiawAug, Markiplier, Windah Basudara, Nessie Judge, Kisah Tanah Jawa, Isagastari.

•••

[angelictyphoon]

From the past they can capture an approximation of the future– with less suffering this time. There are many such towns in No Man’s Land just like the one he recalled for everyone present in the room. Zazie had once deemed the two Independents wandering the desert Bystanders, and they weren’t entirely wrong. He watched them. Humans, clawing and fighting their way from the broken bellies of their ships and shaping towns and cities from fallen remains.

Plants, Independent or not, have the privilege of watching the sort of progression that takes humans generations to achieve. 

Vash won’t speak for his sisters, but their reaction is telling. 

Hopefully Nicholas enjoyed the light show. If not that, then the motes of fondness and affection he passes along as he brushes their fingertips together while Wolfwood recomposes himself.

Even if he scrunches his nose indignantly when Nicholas touches him in turn with sticky sweet fingers. Followed up by a kiss, which makes him feel a tiny bit better (kisses from Wolfwood always do), but like hell he’s going to show it now. So Vash continues to stand there, arms folded over his chest, rubbing at his now-tacky nose with the back of his thumb, and then rubbing the rest of his face too, since Nicholas hadn’t felt like being shy. All while still scrunching.

“Haha,” he laughs flatly, plus a mutter-threat of something resembling, we’ll see who leaves who with something on their face later. Let Wolfwood simmer on that and see how he likes it. 

“They’re like…Little mister thingies. To help water the plants. Not those Plants.” Vash gestures vaguely in the Dependents' direction as part of his explanation to clarify the one thing that did not, in fact, need clarifying. He tries to picture the closest everyday object he can compare atomizers to. 

“Think… a bunch of perfume bottles poking out of a water line. Except, instead of perfume, it’ll just spray water. Fsssh.” Vash wiggles his fingers, then claps his hands together enthusiastically. He rotates above the waist to angle towards his sisters. “No such thing as free room and board, huh?”

The two Plants watching them continue to float leisurely in their bulbs without offering any meaningful input as far as the potential exchange of goods and services. Not the sort of thing most Dependents typically worry about, it’s true, but they offer perfectly synced and closed-eyed, eerily wide grins nonetheless.

 “Odds are we’ll stumble on some equipment if we just keep poking around.”

"Hm—"

Vash darts in to take his bites, and Wolfwood is thoroughly distracted. Because of course he is distracted. He sees what the spikey menace is up to and he falls right for it, leaning in to take matching chomps on opposite sides (albeit with a laughing-grumbling 'jackass' here and there). So what if they come close to nipping each other? It wouldn't be the first time.

So what if he makes direct eye contact while rasping pulp with his teeth or catching dribbles with his tongue? It's not like his ears or face feel hot or anything.

Nope. Not in the slightest.

Before long there is little left but a piece of stem and a mostly flat (and definitely nibbled) mango pit…and a sheen of juices and stringy bits.

Fortunately, the excited vibration from the Dependents is an imperative distraction. Excitement pulses through the room, palpable enough to take Nicholas' breath with the sudden onrush of—not adrenaline, not exactly, but a joyous thrill so intense that it is almost alien.

Almost. Simultaneously familiar, but from something far-flung and close at hand in the same beat.

"—uh, yeah. All'a that. I don't, uh."

One blink. Two. He has been staring wide-eyed (and open-mouthed) without realizing it, both at the Plants' mind-bending display of pulsing color and light, chromatophores and glow undulating in colors he doesn't have words for, and at Vash's dazzling hope.

And so much more. A glimpse of a glimpse at the notion of a future. It's moving. Beautiful, his brain dumbly supplies, ping-ponging around a vague understanding of what it is that Vash is suggesting they do right here and right now.

With a solid click he shuts his gawping maw, promptly plucking another fruit from the vine—something a little smaller, a little more manageable, bright fuchsia-blotched yellow outside and vibrant pink inside. The guava gives, an explosion of sweet and texture jangling his senses, bringing him back to the immediate.

Chomp, chew, he regains some composure, some focus.

He reaches out to poke the point of Vash's nose with a fruit juicy fingertip, seizing on the scattered threads of thought as his heart flutters obnoxiously in its cage.

A pause, and then he leans over to (noisily) kiss Vash's cheek.

"Got somethin' on your face," he snickers.

"I don't know what I'll be lookin' for, but point the way, we'll get the water set up. Least we can do in trade for breakfast, hm?"

And lunch. And more. Maybe for days.

[nalascat]

For the au thingy Atom characters normal highscool au. Like just your average high school ig

high school au!!! hmm let's see

Madame Weatherberry is the favorite teacher of a lot of students, she's kind and easy to talk to, she's got that kind og vibe ig (probably an art or theater teacher, it's just her yknow?)

Skylene and Tangerina are her adopted daughters, and can be a bit snobby about that and just other things in general, but after meeting the main group and getting to know them, they get so much better.

Skylene is on the swim team and is like their star swimmer. It just makes her super happy to be in the water at any point in time.

Tangerina has her own little beehive at their house. She rlly likes to take care of bees it's her thing.

Most of the group have some sort of a hard life at home, and Madame Weatherberry is a super welcoming person, and her classroom ends up being their hangout.

Xanthous is a theater kid. He can tell you every musical and every play the show has ever done, he has a select collection of shows he sees every time they tour (has a few show boots), and aaaa. He's dating Elrik, who is the star of every single show now as well (He isn't spared from the newest explanation of why Cats is actually a masterpiece, Elrik, listen and accept that the dance and choreography is the best in any show, accept it Elrik-)

Brystal and Lucy are INSEPARABLE. although Brystal loves to hang around the library (ick, Lucy would NEVER) and lucy literally anywhere else, they do almost everything together, and if Brystal is being particularly hard on herself about hoping everyone is happy, Lucy is there to help her out

Emerelda is SUPER artistic, and she works a lot with metals and gems and the such. She makes necklaces, earrings, her gifts are super heartfelt and a lot goes jnto them. She cares a lot about her friends.

Xanthous is by her side a lot, and they spend a lot of time together. She forces him to help or make something, and wonky looking rings and such are given to Elrik often, he finds it endearing

[alarajrogers]

Everything Makes Sense: The Human Body and Energy

I wrote a thing. It is a very long thing. It probably contains very little information that most people didn’t already know, but it puts it together in a way I’ve never seen it before.

Most of it will be behind the cut but you get the first few paragraphs out here where you can see them.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything Makes Sense: The Human Body and Energy

So you know how you read all this bullshit about “X improves your energy” and “Y gives you quick energy but then you crash” and “Z improves your metabolism” and it all just sounds like words? Technobabble from the world of science fiction television shows?

It may surprise you to know that practically everything you’ve ever personally observed about energy levels makes sense, as do a lot of the layperson observations you’ve heard in your life, and that there are really good reasons why being sick makes you sleepy and why exercising hard on weekends when you’re a slug all week is bad for you, and that all of this is very understandable from a layperson perspective. Or maybe not, maybe you know all this. I’ve spent years knowing all this, but recently it just dawned on me that it’s all interconnected.  All the things I know are pieces of an amazing whole.

So I’m going to explain this revelation I’ve had, and when you read it, my guess is you’ll come away thinking “But I knew all that already… but now I understand how it all works together!”

Metabolism

First, let’s talk about metabolism. What is it?

We usually use the term to mean something like “the speed at which my body does the things I’m not consciously controlling it to do.” Like, “I have a really fast metabolism, so food just runs right through me!” Or “I have a very slow metabolism so I have to be real careful about how much I drink.”

To metabolize means for a living thing to process something it has ingested. Metabolism is usually used to mean the process of converting food and nutrients into energy. Sometimes we use it to mean the levels of efficiency or speed at which a body does this, which is where we get “a fast metabolism”. Here, I’m going to try to use metabolism specifically to mean the process by which your body converts stuff to energy.

Life Energy

No, a vampire from an alien planet can’t suck it out of you, but you really do have life energy! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alive.

The fundamental molecule of life energy, the thing that if it wasn’t there no life processes would be possible because they would not have any energy to work, is a battery called ATP. Its full name, adenosine triphosphate, is a bit of a mouthful, but it basically means that this is a molecule with three phosphorus atoms.

You may have learned in chemistry class, once upon a time, that chemical reactions can be endothermic – they use up energy – or exothermic – they emit energy. Fire is an exothermic reaction; you get it started with heat, usually, but it generates a lot more heat than it took to make it burn in the first place. Your baking soda and vinegar volcano from the science fair a long time ago is also an exothermic reaction. You didn’t put any energy into it to make it bubble like that. On the other hand, melting ice is endothermic. You don’t get any energy when ice melts. It uses up energy to melt.

When ATP releases one of its phosphorus atoms, it becomes ADP – adenosine diphosphate, meaning just two phosphorus atoms! This is an exothermic reaction. ATP turning into ADP is what powers pretty much every single endothermic reaction in your cells. It’s the battery that you run on.

Charging the Battery

Fortunately ADP is rechargeable! An endothermic reaction turns it back into ATP.

The mitochondria do this. You may be thinking, “aren’t they something the lady who wrote A Wrinkle In Time made up?” And you’d be close. The mitochondria appeared in the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door. Madeleine L’Engle didn’t make them up, but she did make up “farandolae”, little creatures in the mitochondria, which don’t exist as far as we know. (Although, if scientists do discover little thingies in the mitochondria that let it do its work, they’ll probably name them farandolae because scientists are big geeks.)

Mitochondria in reality are organelles, components of a cell that do work. They’re independent organelles, which have their own DNA and do all their own reproduction. The only other things we know that work like that are chloroplasts, which are only found in plants… so far. (Personally I think being able to photosynthesize from my skin would be awesome and I am eagerly awaiting the day that genetic engineering allows us to put chloroplasts in human skin, but this isn’t a thing yet.)

Mitochondria combine glucose – a molecule made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, in the formula C6H12O6 – with oxygen, an element that comprises about 22% of our atmosphere, to create carbon dioxide (there’s that di again, meaning two – carbon dioxide is one carbon and two oxygens), water (our old favorite, H2O, sometimes called “dihydrogen monoxide” as a joke about weird chemical names), and enough energy to put a phosphorus atom on a molecule of ADP. Now it’s ATP again! Glucose and oxygen combine in an exothermic reaction.

(Ever wonder why all life on earth depends on the sun? Converting CO2 and H2O into glucose and oxygen is an endothermic reaction. Plants use their chloroplasts to absorb energy from the sun so they can convert CO2 and water into glucose and oxygen. Then animals, like us, eat the plants to get the glucose, and breathe the oxygen. Without the sun, chloroplasts wouldn’t work, plants wouldn’t make glucose, and we’d all starve.)

The Basic Things We Need For This To Work

There are a lot of components going into this system.

The mitochondria need a steady supply of oxygen, but oxygen, being a highly reactive molecule, can’t just float around in the bloodstream like glucose can. (Glucose is iffy too, more on this later.) Hemoglobin, a molecule made with iron, bonds to oxygen and can carry it around safely. Red blood cells are full of hemoglobin. They float in the bloodstream, which goes everywhere in the body. Vitamin B12 is involved in the production of these red blood cells. The bloodstream also carries glucose, but hopefully not too much of it, because glucose is also a reactive molecule and if you have too much, it starts tearing shit up.

The lungs draw in the oxygen that the red blood cells carry, and expel the carbon dioxide. The heart forces the blood to go around and around in this system of blood vessels. The pancreas makes insulin, the hormone that binds up the glucose and regulates how much of it is available in your bloodstream for your cells to take. The speed with which all of this happens can be regulated by thyroid hormone, which requires iodine, and also a working thyroid.

You need all that and a million other things for the system to work perfectly. If the system does not work perfectly, you’re not making as much energy as you could be. That’s pretty obvious.

But here is the thing that’s obvious once you spell it out, and yet, we so often behave, as a society, like we don’t understand it or don’t believe it:

An optimized system still puts out a finite amount of energy at any given time.

If you were in perfect health, right now, you would still have a limited supply of life energy to work with.

We know this. But we behave as if it’s not true. As if we can power through exhaustion with willpower, because being exhausted is a flaw in the system, rather than a really obvious application of the laws of thermodynamics.

What Uses All That Energy?

We also often don’t think about the systems that use those energy, and what they use it for.

The Brain:

The brain is a huge energy hog, using up a whopping 20-25% of all of the body’s energy while awake and conscious (or dreaming – a dreaming mind is as active as a conscious one.) Asleep (but not in REM sleep), the brain still uses about 85% of that, which, lemme do some math here, is 17% if the waking mind was using 20%. A living being can drop to about 50% of that with certain types of anesthesia, but that – the minimum required for a brain to keep a body alive – is still 10% of total energy consumption.

It's not clear how much energy on top of that a very active brain needs. Estimates of how much energy complex and difficult thought consume range from 100 calories a day to 6000! It’s plainly not much on top of basic consciousness, or there’d be no such thing as a fat person doing highly intellectual work all the time, but it’s evident that it’s something.

The Muscles:

We all know about this one. Hard-working muscles use up a lot of energy. How much? Well, swimming, one of the few activities we do that can fully engage the leg muscles and the arm muscles to the same high level at the same time, can burn as much as a quarter of a normal daily intake of calories in a single hour. Most of the time our muscles are not working that hard, but anything more strenuous than vegging out on a couch does burn resources.

The Immune System:

This guy. This guy is the one everyone forgets. The immune system is hard at work all the time protecting you from infections (and, if you’re one of the zillions of people who have allergies or autoimmune disorders, things like cat dander, pollen, and yourself apparently), but when an infection has actually taken hold, the immune system goes into high gear. Most of the responses you experience when you’re sick – nausea, coughing, sneezing, runny or stuffy nose, fever – are actually things the immune system is doing to you to get rid of the infection. Nausea, to expel it through the mouth. Diarrhea, to expel it through the anus. Coughing, to expel it from the lungs, and sneezing, to expel it from the sinus cavities. Mucus, to trap it so it can be expelled. Fever, to kill it, because germs are a lot more sensitive to temperature variation than you, a large multi-celled creature, are. It takes a lot of energy to do all that. Plus there’s white blood cells and T cells and antibodies, all doing their thing.

The Digestive System:

Ever hear the expression “It takes money to make money?” That’s true of life energy as well. The work of moving your food all along the gastrointestinal tract, breaking it down, squeezing and mushing it, making the enzymes to convert it to molecules small enough to get out into the bloodstream, and then pushing the waste out – that’s a lot of effort. There’s no such thing as a free lunch!

The Reproductive System:

Making sperm costs energy. Making a lining for an egg and then expelling it if it’s not used costs energy. Firing up the hormones that cause libido costs energy. And then there’s all the energy burned by the muscles in actually having sex.

Heart and Lungs:

Typically we don’t think of these things as needing a lot of energy because, quite simply, your body’s going to take the energy it needs to run these essential systems whether you want to or not. There’s no re-allocation of baseline energy away from the heart and lungs. But in exercise, when the oxygen demands and the needs of the muscle cells to get more and more fuel increase, the heart and lungs need more energy too.

This is a rough breakdown. You have other systems – we haven’t talked about kidneys and liver and stuff like that – but we’re going to look at these systems in our simplified model.

Everything takes energy. And you have a finite pool of it. Eating more food does not give you more energy – your mitochondria can only work as fast as they can work. If you weren’t at capacity, then yes, food can give you a boost, but it consumes energy first because digestion is work, and if you’re at capacity, any extra calories get stuffed away as fat because extra circulating glucose is bad for you.

By the way, this is why sugar gives you a quick pick-me-up, and should probably be considered a stimulant! Sugar – sucrose, which is basically 2 glucose molecules smushed together, or fructose, which is glucose but in a different shape – supplies your bloodstream with glucose fast, with very little extra work. And it can start doing it in your mouth, because your saliva can break sucrose into glucose and your mucuous membranes can pull glucose into your bloodstream.

But as soon as you start ingesting sugar, your pancreas revs up your insulin production (assuming you don’t have diabetes, or that if you do, it’s type II and not so advanced that you basically don’t have your own insulin anymore.) Insulin, you may recall, is the hormone that keeps circulating glucose levels in your bloodstream down to the levels where the mitochondria can use all of it and there isn’t a lot extra. Extra glucose that nobody is using damages your blood vessels, making them harder and less elastic, which is why circulation problems are a big thing with diabetes, and why my feet are SO FUCKING COLD all winter, not that I’m bitter or anything.

So. You ate sugar, and your body prepared to balance your glucose levels with a lot of insulin. But then all you ate was sugar. You didn’t add fats or proteins or complex carbohydrates in any significant amounts to keep the glucose coming after the initial burst was over. So now you have all this insulin and it went and picked up all the extra glucose and now you know what? Not only is there no extra glucose anymore, there isn’t even enough to keep the home fires burning! Woo, dizzy. Low blood sugar hits the brain hard, because the brain is the energy hog, and feels any dip in energy levels before any other body systems do.

In short, you may have given yourself a quick burst of extra fuel, but in the long run, it may actually make your energy levels drop. And if you ate a substantial meal to go with that quick snack… now we have to send power to the digestive system. And that is why eating more food does not give you more energy unless you’re starving. (Or diabetic, more on this later.)

Energy Trade-offs:

You know the drill. Finite amount of energy. Many systems competing for it. Brain takes the most. So what happens when one system suddenly needs extra?

1.       Complex thought shuts down.

I know you’ve experienced this. You’re overtired, or you’ve just done hard exercise, or you have eaten a big meal, or you are sick. You can no longer brain at the levels you expect. Study? Maybe, but retention and comprehension will suuuuck. Math? Probably not. Reading? Depending on how difficult reading in general is for you, maybe this is just the thing, but the topic’s going to be light and easy to comprehend, like fiction, or maybe this article here that you’re reading. Or, maybe reading’s out of the picture. Watching TV? For most people, this is ideal, but if you’re autistic and have an auditory processing disorder and facial recognition issues, hoo boy. Not that I know anybody like that, or anything.

2.       Muscles need to be at rest.

Muscles don’t have to move a lot. You could be sitting on a couch. You could be laying in a lawn chair. You’re awake, but you don’t want to move your muscles because it’s hard.

When what you lack to burn your fuel is not glucose, but oxygen, you can get by sometimes. As long as there’s some oxygen. But the byproduct of making energy without enough oxygen is called lactic acid. Which is acid, and it’s in your muscles. Not good! Nobody likes extra acid in places where extra acid shouldn’t be. So your muscles burn. The good news is, the body breaks down lactic acid pretty fast. The bad news is, you may be building it up faster than the body can break it down.

Hard exercise? You’re gonna feel the burn. But you may run into this same problem attempting to walk to the bathroom if you’re very very sick, because all the energy has been re-routed to the immune system, so there’s nothing there for the muscles.

3.       Consciousness itself shuts off.

The unconscious brain still consumes a lot of energy, but we’re cutting what we can, and you being conscious is not helping here. Shut down anything we don’t immediately need to use. That includes consciousness.

If you are bleeding out and there’s not enough blood in your body to carry the fuel –

If your blood pressure is low or your heart has stopped working and so the fuel isn’t moving fast enough to where it needs to be –

If your circulating glucose is too low because there’s too much damn insulin –

If there isn’t enough water in the body, so blood pressure drops because blood is mostly water –

If you have a fever, which makes all the chemical reactions in your body go kind of screwy and inefficient –

-- You pass out. You cannot remain conscious because your body has to cut services to keep the whole thing going, and this is how.

Sometimes stupid shit triggers this reaction. Like vasovagal syncope, which can happen from triggers like extreme emotional stress or the sight of blood. Like getting blood drawn (which is probably also vasovagal syncope but seems to have a more physiological basis than some of the other things that can cause it, given that it can occur in people who are absolutely cheerful and fascinated by the fact that blood is leaving their body and not upset about it at all. Not that I would know anything about that, either.)

4.       Or, you are highly encouraged to shut down consciousness.

The digestive system is hard at work. There’s no emergency, per se, but this work would get done a lot faster and with less stress if you would just go the fuck to sleep. Thus, “carb coma” or what the cartoon “The Boondocks” called “The Itis.”

The immune system is busting its ass. Things aren’t so serious that you need to pass out. Falling asleep vs. fainting is kind of like shutting down your computer vs. suddenly losing power. You definitely want to go to sleep if the situation is not dire enough to require immediate shutdown of consciousness.

Your body needs to run nightly maintenance. Several systems that operate in low gear when you’re awake need to rev up, and your brain actually needs to do some shit to organize your memories while you’re not recording new ones, and extra energy is needed for the immune system because it’s doing nightly sweeps. Or something like that. We don’t really understand everything that sleep does for us, but we know that if we don’t get it:

-          The pancreas doesn’t work right, resulting in getting fat and maybe diabetes

-          Also high blood pressure

-          Also memories are kind of shit

-          Also the immune system doesn’t work too well

We don’t actually know how your brain would operate without sleep if it wasn’t saturated with the “go the fuck to sleep” chemical GABA, which is broken down while you’re sleeping. GABA does a lot of things, but in this context, GABA builds up in your body to send the signal to your brain to stop using so much damn energy and sleep already. And if you attempt to function mentally with high GABA levels… well, you can’t, okay? Your brain is full of GABA receptors that tell it to turn things off. So those things are turning off. How well does your computer run when it's in the middle of shutting down? I thought so.

(Actually we kind of do. There are chemicals that block tiredness. People who use these chemicals can function on significantly less sleep at significantly higher cognitive levels than people who are not on these chemicals. But the stuff like the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the immune system weakening… all that appears to still be happening. Sleep happens for a reason.)

5.       Other systems that are highly dependent on energy levels shut down.

 -          Exercised your ass off? Now your digestive and immune systems have been tamped down because the energy went to your muscles. Eating when the digestive system isn’t working at full capacity results in stomach cramps or nausea. Forcing the digestive system to work when the muscles need maximum energy levels causes muscle cramps. This is why you’re not supposed to go swimming after a big meal – muscle cramps while swimming can kill you.

-          Ate a big meal? I bet you are not feeling like having sex right now. Probably also not winning any chess tournaments. And don’t move around too much!

-          Feeling sick? Cough, runny nose, sneezing? You’re probably not too hungry. (Especially not when you have a fever. Fevers burn a lot of energy.) You probably do not feel much like having sex. Your muscles ache and you don’t want to move around much. And you are sleepy.

-          Feeling randy, baby? You are probably not also feeling hungry.

What Happens When We Game The System?

I briefly mentioned stimulants above – chemicals that artificially reroute energy levels back to the brain, improving concentration and mental acuity, at the expense of everything else.

Well, not literally everything else. Stimulants suppress pain to some slight extent, increase heart rate and blood flow, and make your muscles more eager to do work. Many people report that stimulant use also makes them horny. So those systems are in good shape too. But you know what took a hit? Your digestive system and your immune system. Now, your digestive system… you can feel that immediately. People take stimulants in order to lose weight, sometimes, because they’ll suppress your appetite. Energy rerouting to brain and muscles means the body shuts down digestion. What’s already there will get processed but let’s not add to it, okay?

You did not feel your immune system slow down and weaken. You won’t, today. But maybe tomorrow you’ll get sick. Maybe the day after that.

Oh, but you gotta work, right? The boss won’t tolerate you not coming in. So you stuff yourself full of stimulants – pseudoephedrine, dries up your nose and keeps you awake; caffeine, keeps you focused – and go to work anyway. With energy being forced away from your immune system to keep your brain and your muscles working. That’s not gonna work out well for you, now is it. You wanna pull the military off the front lines to have a parade, when you’re being actively invaded?

Keeping your brain functioning at full capacity, continuing to use your muscles, when you’re sick, will slow your recovery time, because you took the energy away from your immune system to pump it through your brain. Because the amount of energy you can produce is finite, and relatively fixed.

Oh, you can improve some things. Your blood and everything it does, and practically every chemical reaction in your body, is totally dependent on the presence of water, so stay well hydrated. Stock your body well with the vitamins and minerals you need to make all these things function. Are you getting enough oxygen, citizen? Eat food, but with the right balance of carbs and proteins and fats so that your digestive system isn’t overtaxed, you don’t end up with an insulin spike, and you’re not wasting resources. If your system lacked any of these things, then you can improve metabolic efficiency, and your energy levels, by providing them.

But stimulants can’t give you energy. They can make you feel like they did because the energy is going to places where your conscious mind can feel it… but they didn’t increase the amount of energy you have. Resources are being taken away from other areas. Your immune system is taking a serious hit right now. And you can’t feel that, but it’s gonna fuck you up later.

Brains That Have To Work Extra Hard At Basic Stuff

This is a simplified model, but: all brains are full of little modules that do things. And consciousness, ego, is actually pretty bad at most stuff. The little modules that do things are like dedicated co-processors for specific tasks. Spatial processing. Language acquisition. Basic math. Recognizing faces. Managing executive functions.

The neurotypical mind comes with a basic set of things that neurotypicals don’t even realize exist unless they study psychology or spend a lot of time with neurodivergent people, because they all have them. The thing that recognizes faces. The thing that processes sound into speech. The thing that generates speech from thought. The thing that picks up social rules. The thing that can look at letters and figure out easily and quickly how to pronounce them. The thing that tunes in to body language cues. The thing that’s always aware of how loud you’re talking. The thing that enables you to kind of guess how much time has passed. The thing that lets you control what you’re paying attention to. The thing that does basic math.

Many of these little modules need to be trained – language and math and reading don’t suddenly appear in people’s brains, they’re taught – but once trained, the little modules just… do the thing. The person doesn’t have to think about it. They no longer experience any sense of “I’m doing a thing”, it’s just happening.  

Not all neurodivergent minds have these things. Many such minds have found a workaround. Use conscious processing power, not black box processing power, because the black box isn’t there, but main cortex is. You can apply intelligence to solve problems like “who is that guy, I know that I know him” and “what are the words those people are saying” and “how do I turn those letters into a sound”. “How do I keep track of how much time I am spending on this?” “How do I make myself do shit that bores me?” We use conscious mind processing power, not the much more efficient black boxes that people aren’t even aware they have.

But what happens when energy is sucked away from the conscious mind, and we’re reduced to vegetating, still awake but without the ability to perform complex thought right now?

If we’re routing skills through the conscious mind, we will lose those skills in proportion to how much we lose the ability to think in general, as energy is drawn away from the brain. And NTs, using the much more efficient black box modules, have no idea that this is even a thing that can happen. It would take far more drastic energy loss for them to lose the work the black boxes do.

Some of us have black boxes that the average NT does not have. I can do complex worldbuilding in my head when I’m so exhausted I can’t talk anymore. There are people who just know the answers to complex arithmetic problems the way most of us just know the answer to 2 times 5. Some people have advanced spatial processing coprocessors that mean they’re almost never lost, because they’re effortlessly creating a map of their surroundings any time they go anywhere, and something in their head is tracking what direction they are in and what turns they’ve made. But some of us do not. Not all of us get a trade, skill for skill. And some of us get black boxes that turn out to be kind of useless. Like, suppose a person more or less effortlessly memorizes the name of every dinosaur ever discovered. Unless they are a paleontologist, when is that going to help?

The important thing to note here is that even a small drop in energy can cause a noticeable drop in an ND’s ability to fake being “normal”, because they are using a less efficient means of computing to perform those skills, and it cuts out on them when energy has to draw down from the brain to go somewhere else.

Spoonies

People with auto-immune disorders are constantly using high levels of energy to do useless and self-destructive shit (not that they want to, but their immune system did not ask first), because their immune system is always on high alert against things like their own nervous system. Overactive immune system consumes energy; body parts taking damage consume energy.

People with cancer or other diseases that lead them to take chemo are burning a lot of energy trying to replenish vital functional cells that the chemo keeps killing. Chemo destroys fast-dividing cells… like white blood cells, and the ones in your mucous membranes, and the ones in your hair follicles. And you can do without hair, but you sort of need your mucous membranes and your white blood cells.

People with fatigue disorders might be suffering from an auto-immune issue, or they might be suffering from a metabolic issue. For instance, low levels of thyroid hormone will cause metabolic processes across the board to slow down, drastically decreasing the available energy.

People with depression might literally actually have a fatigue disorder that manifests in not having enough energy to process serotonin and dopamine correctly. Also, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are brain chemicals that do energy routing, having an effect on what the body is putting energy into. Failures to produce enough of those or at appropriate times, or spending energy breaking them down when you still need them, will screw with the body’s ability to deliver energy to the right places.

Whatever the reason, if you have a disorder that drains your energy… even if that’s all it does, even if it literally has no other symptoms, having something that lowers your available energy for your brain and muscles makes it literally impossible for you to function at the levels you would like to. Like, the same way it is impossible for a Chevy Malibu to go 800 miles on one tank of gas. The available energy is not there. Either it is going someplace stupid that you’d rather it didn’t, or metabolism itself just isn’t working well.

If you are neither a spoonie nor neurodivergent, odds are, your body’s working at a reasonably high level of efficiency already, so you can get a dramatic improvement when you find one of the few things you lack, and you fill that need. Hydrate? (Everything runs on water) Exercise? (Speeds up circulation, and fitness in general will cause your metabolism to be more efficient) Vitamins? (Sure, if you’re missing some, vitamins are real useful.)

But if the problem is, you’re pouring energy into activities society requires you to engage in but your brain cannot do them easily and efficiently, so they cost you a lot more than others; if the problem is, your body is wasting a lot of energy on an immune response to things that shouldn’t need an immune response; if the problem is, there’s a food your body can’t break down, so you’re eating enough to feel full but never getting enough energy from it; if the problem is, your metabolism is lacking something esoteric that almost everyone else has enough of, so it’s nearly impossible to figure out what’s missing… exercise and hydration and vitamins will not help. Or, they may help, if you were lacking them, but they won’t fix the problem.

Expecting you to just push through a lack of energy through willpower is a total misunderstanding of how the brain and body work. You cannot do what you don’t have energy to do, and if you route energy to your brain or muscles to accomplish something that requires really pushing yourself, you are taking it away from somewhere else. Probably your immune system. So you’ll get sick. And then you’ll be even more overtaxed.

It’s amazing the degree to which ignorant people think that all bodies literally work the exact same way. (And yet many of these ignoramuses think that people of a different race are somehow completely different from them in some fundamental way. Make it make sense.) What’s even worse is the number of doctors who believe that the only way bodies can malfunction are the ways they happen to know about, so anything outside their experience is fake.

But if you understand how complex the system is and how variable the things that can go wrong with it are, and you understand the role of energy, and energy distribution, in the body, it becomes obvious. You can’t force yourself to do what you don’t have the energy to do without taking it away from somewhere else.

Weight and Energy

There is no question that it’s possible for a human to get to a place where their weight is a severe drain on their energy levels. But very few people are actually there.

Muscle is heavier than fat. But muscle does the work of dragging the weight of a body around. A body with good muscle tone – fat but fit – is in a much better position, in terms of energy production and distribution, than a thin body with weak muscles.

Fat actively helps with energy conservation in the cold. A fit fat person – someone whose musculature is strong and healthy enough that they have no difficulty moving their own weight – has reserves to burn in the event of a disorder that consumes so much energy, it inhibits digestion. (To be honest, so does a weak fat person, but they’re losing energy every time they move because they’re too heavy for their own muscles. But this is true of physical weakness in general.)

Not everyone can be fit! Exercise, if you recall, is one of those things that burns a lot of energy! If you already have very little energy, you’re going to have a very hard time exercising enough to become fit.

All of this is normal. It’s natural. It makes sense. Why would being fat automatically make you less healthy in all situations than someone thin? Being underweight is correlated with a significantly shorter lifespan than being overweight.

I’m Gonna Talk About Diabetes Here

We’re told over and over that there’s a giant health crisis among Americans of increased obesity, and this is causing diabetes.

Bullshit.

Consider this. Diabetes is a disorder where you don’t produce enough insulin, but many Type II diabetics got that way because their body massively overproduced insulin to the point where they wore out their pancreatic cells. Remember when I said insulin takes circulating glucose out of the blood stream and stuffs it somewhere safe? You know where it stuffs it? Fat cells. Doctors have been telling people that being overweight causes diabetes… when we know for a fact that diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, a condition where the cells don’t respond well to insulin, so insulin levels go up, and the body’s ability to produce its own insulin is worn down by heavy overproduction. Do the math. You had high levels of insulin production for years because your cells were resistant to insulin? Insulin stores sugar in fat cells, as fat? Gosh, I wonder if the condition that led to your becoming diabetic happened to be the exact same condition that caused you to get fat!

In a case like that, losing weight wouldn’t do jack shit for your insulin, but changing the way you eat so there’s less circulating sugar in the first place would, and this would cause you to store less in your fat cells, which would cause you to lose weight. But it’s not the weight loss that helped you. You couldn’t solve your problem by cutting calories, because calories didn’t get you into this position. High levels of circulating glucose did. Exercising super hard and going on a diet and actually losing weight – which would be hard, because super high levels of insulin storing all that sugar as fat, and yet your blood sugar is still high because your cells don’t respond to the insulin, but let’s say you pull it off – that does nothing. Maybe you see an improvement in your symptoms because eating very little produces very little circulating blood sugar… though now you’ve got some other symptoms. Namely, no energy. And any improvement you experienced is temporary, because you’re addressing a symptom, not the problem.

Doctors know that insulin stores sugar as fat. Doctors know that diabetic people with Type II generate higher and higher levels of insulin as their body tries to compensate for not responding to it, until finally the cells give up and the patient needs to take artificial insulin. And yet, somehow, we are still hearing “fat causes diabetes, lose weight and you won’t get diabetes!” There’s a disconnect here.

Overclocking

I’m going to talk about something as dangerous as fuck here.

When your body’s natural systems are not regulating your blood sugar, and so you can have greater than normal levels of sugar in your bloodstream… this can make the pie higher.

Remember I said you can’t increase your energy levels by adding more fuel, because the mitochondria can only work as hard as they can work? Well, that’s not completely true. Mitochondria can apparently work harder than that, if they have access to more sugar. It’s just that more sugar is destroying your circulatory system, resulting in damage to your retinas, the nerves in your hands and feet, your ability to regulate the temperature of those extremities, the speed at which you can grow back skin in an injury, and, oh, pretty much everything else.

Get to a certain level of blood sugar and you feel like absolute shit. But in the range between that – higher than you should be but lower than the levels you can actually feel bad in – you have more energy.

This is fucking awful, to be honest. Everyone wants more energy! Energy helps you get shit done! More energy to the brain makes your brain work better.

And you want the sugar. You want the high glucose. You don’t know that’s what you want, but you know you crave sweets and carbs, and when your glucose is high (but not too high), it’s a stimulant. You’re awake, you can focus, your mental energy is good. Cut down the way they tell you that you need to, when you’re diabetic, and now you’re sluggish and depressed.

It’s killing you slowly but not doing it is depressing and hard and the slow death isn’t causing you any significant amount of suffering, until it does, and then it’s too late.

Sugar is a drug and you’re addicted. But it’s food. There are no regulations to protect you from eating all the food you want. There is no social opprobrium in general against sweet foods or carb-high snacks. (If you are fat you might suffer from this, but thin people are allowed to eat whatever the fuck they want, and honestly if you’re fat you will probably catch shit for eating a nice big steak, which is a lot better for you if you’re diabetic than a piece of toast.)

You’re overclocking your brain, the same way gamers overclock their PCs to get higher performance. Except that when they melt their CPU they can just buy a new one. You are not buying a new brain anytime soon.

I Am Not A Doctor

I didn’t go to medical school. I did study biology at the graduate school level, but no medical degree.

But everything I’m saying is backed up by pretty much any source I look at. It’s just that the conclusions that I’m drawing, while they are logical outgrowths of the things I’m saying, are for some mysterious reason not the conclusion that people who go to medical school are drawing.

Bodies are all different. Bodies are very complicated with many interlocking systems. Many, many things can go wrong with bodies. Far more things than science is fully aware of yet. Therefore it makes perfect sense that if someone is tired all the time for no good reason, there is a good reason and we just don’t know what it is. If someone can’t easily do a thing another person can do, that is absolutely normal and expected, unless that other thing is something that falls into a range that most humans can easily do. Then all of a sudden it becomes impossible to imagine that a human couldn’t do it? Bullshit. We don’t understand the brain perfectly.

It is absolutely normal that when a person’s energy levels are high, they have the resources to accomplish things they cannot do when their resources are low. The notion that if you’re disabled, there’s a thing you can’t do and you can never do it and that is the way it has to be, is nonsensical. Yes, of course some people are disabled in that way. If you have no legs, then no matter how much energy you have, you will never have legs. But you might be a lot better able to tolerate uncomfortable prosthetics when your energy levels are high.

“If you could do it today then why couldn’t you do it yesterday?” I don’t know, Karen, why couldn’t you vacuum your carpet after you’d been working all day, when you were pushing that vacuum around with no trouble last weekend? People can accomplish more when they have more energy. Doing things consumes energy. Once your energy is consumed, the fact that it can only replenish at a finite rate means you have to wait to get more. While you’re waiting, you can’t do stuff, because stuff takes energy, that you don’t have, because you used it up on other stuff. What part of this is unclear?

Being fat is a symptom of underlying conditions in most of the diseases that it’s correlated with. It’s not that being fat is unhealthy, like losing weight would make you healthy again; it’s that it is a symptom of your disorder that shows up before the more definitive symptoms do. It is possible to improve your health by exercising and changing what you eat, and sometimes, this may result in weight loss, but it wasn’t the weight loss that improved your health. It was becoming fitter (more muscle) and eating stuff that isn’t poisoning you because some of your metabolic pathways don’t work. If you don’t lose weight, you may still be getting healthier.

(I suspect it’s actually true that being fat will damage your joints. You’re putting more of a load on them, so it makes logical sense. What doesn’t make sense is to say that being fat causes diabetes and high blood pressure when we know for a fact that overly high levels of insulin cause both being fat and diabetic, and overly high levels of blood sugar cause high blood pressure, heart disease, and general circulation problems, so. Um. All of these things come from insulin resistance? That is the problem? Not the weight, that’s a symptom?)

And sometimes, sugar is an addictive drug. If you’re feeling self-satisfied because you’re not an alcoholic, and you don’t smoke, and you’ve never taken an illegal drug, but you can’t do without your blueberry muffin in the morning and your ice cream after dinner… stop feeling superior to people addicted to illegal substances or well-known vices. The only difference between them and you is that you got addicted to a substance that will kill you but that is safe for most people, and because it improves your mood and your productivity, capitalism is more than happy to let you indulge it until you drop dead.

[androgynousgaz]

I got tagged by the kiddo doods @doodling-doodle. I have a lot of wips, both art and writing so here we go I suppose. Also I think I have to repost the rules so: RULES: post the titles of all the WIPS you have no matter how ridiculous or non-descriptive, let people send you asks about the titles and then post a snippet or talk about it! Tag as many people as you have WIPs

But *Mario voice* Here we go!

Writing

I don't have a title for the current Nova x Mace chapters I started

Nova x Konïg (it was a request)

Poem (no context until asked)

An Adler and Graves family backstory thing (in my opinion or basically Adler caring more about his job than his son)

The NASA scientist next door (dead by daylight thing)

What happened that day (Nova x Mace again)

More random generator ideas from Nova and Mace

The Blackcell agents (IO and Atom)

Reunion (Valeria meeting Chuy again)

Kitsune breaking Valeria out of prison

Two to three different Cyberpunk stories

A TLOU oc backstory thing

Lost ID and Drycleaners

The green snake and the sniper

Always watch your back

Moonlight in Egypt (Moon Knight Arthur and OC thing)

Back 4 blood random thingy

R6 Ship thingy

Raptor and Jet thingy as well

Art

Oh hehehe

I actually started a dbd piece like a few months ago only to delete the app off of my phone but here's a few wips I started and never went back to

(the first one was supposed to be a cyberpunk one before I even played the game, the other one is the Black phone masks, Jake lockley from Moon Knight and a album cover

I don't really have people to tag so.... Enjoy this random wips I did

WIP Title game

RULES: post the titles of all the WIPS you have no matter how ridiculous or non-descriptive, let people send you asks about the titles and then post a snippet or talk about it! Tag as many people as you have WIPs

Tagged by @lvndr-swtr, and oh boy do I have treats for you my friend

Get a snack, guys

A New Type Of Mission

Task Force Chaos

An Ice Touch CH.2 (please don't kill me, Lav)

Los Reyes De Las Almas CH.2

Hunter and Hunted CH.2

A New Life...?

Alex's Uncle

The Firefly Forest (where is your half, lavender?)

A New Year, The Same Mission

Revenge Gone Wrong

MIA add to Chaos

Ice Staking AU

Ghost AU

Undercover

Random TSOP and Cup-o-Canvas ideas

Nolan (I had an idea for Nolan)

Ideas for MW3 Zombies AU

Black Ops

Urzikstan

All I Needed For Christmas...

Western

Fluffcember (if that counts)

A Harsh Realization

I think that's it

I have too many, and a lot of these have multiple Drabbles for them

My main drabble folder currently has 51,295 words in it

So yeah

I can't tag this many people so

@angstkings @androgynousgaz @thatspookyghost (if you write)

Go nuts

And post your drawing WIPS too!

[friiday-thirteenth]

okay guys science today was rlly fun heres what I learnt bc I need to type I out to remember it so y'all have to deal with that >:)

(disclaimer: this is year ten science they don't tell us everything and it's quite tragic so some of this might be wrong. also my memory is a bitch. and plus, this is so much can remember shit so. yeah :P)

so we're doing chemistry rn and looking at atoms and ions and elements bc chemistry, and you've got three particle? thingies and they're electrons, neutrons, and protons. protons positive, electrons negative, neutrons neutral. nucleus is the centre of something bc it literally means centre

side note, alchemy set science back a crapton bc ppl saw "scientists" going like, hmmm yes elixir of life and lead into gold. how shall I achieve this? and ppl were like wtf are scientists okay

anyway. in the periodic table, the atomic number is generally top left, atomic mass number is below the letters, which will be a shortening of the elements name. examples are H for Hydrogen and Au for Gold (Aurun in Latin. that's why so many shortenings of the elements don't look like their elements name - they're in another language but we (my school vghvjdf) use the English terms)

atomic number = the number of electrons, which then equals protons bc negative must have positives balancing it out, yknow? neutrons are found by taking the atomic number (number of protons/electrons) away from the atomic mass

then you've got the structure of an atom! which is basically protons + neutrons in the nucleus, with the electrons "orbiting" them in their shells.

the electron shells hold the electrons around the nucleus. the first shell holds up to two electrons (1 electrons means uve got Hydrogen, two means you've got helium), the second up to eight (but you've gotta fill the first up fully before you can move to the next)(the eight are uhhh lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine and neon) then the third eight again (sodium, magnesium, aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, and argon) and then it changes again I think, but we only went up to the third shell

oh, and the way you write the electrons is with, for example uhhh silicon, you'd go 2, 8, 4 bc that's that's order they're in (bc first shell holds two, second holds eight, third holds four.)

and then you have ions! ion is pronounced quite similarly to iron, because we've dropped the r from iron. pronounce it with a hard r, like in irony. it's basically that. anyway, ions are what happen when electrons do funky shit.

look, so an atom wants its shell(s) to be full, yes? bc like, completeness. idk bro. so if it's like, for example, fluorine which has only 7 electrons in a shell that can hold, and therefore wants, eight electrons. and its reactive (an alkali I think) because it wants to have all full shells, and therefore it has to "steal" another electron (it could lose seven, but that's rare af)

whereas atoms with less than 4 electrons (bc four is weird, it's right in the middle. 1, 2, 3 all go down (usually), 5, 6, 7 all go up (usually), 4 is fucking annoying) will all, in most likelihood, lose electrons to get full shells.

now, when a shell loses or gains electrons, the atomic becomes an ion! an ion basically means an atom with a charge.

atoms don't have charges, as such. this is because the protons and electrons balance each other out, and the neutrons are neutral and therefore don't affect the equation (or maybe they do, idk yet they don't teach us that stuff until later)

so with something like Boron (B) with the atomic number 5 (which is all I care abt rn), it has 2, 3 electrons per shell. but if it becomes an ion, it will "lose" those three electrons that don't make up a full shell (most of the time!) which means that now when you try to balance the electrons & protons, instead of it being 5 protons minus 5 electrons, it's 5 protons minus 2 electrons.

that results in an ion! because now the atom is positively charged, since there are less electrons then protons. this would be written as B3+ (bc 3 positives aren't balanced out) *the 3+ would be in superscript not subscript but. tumblr.*

and so the noble gases (which are like. either very or mostly stable depending on how far down u go) are non-reactive because they all have full shells. halogens and alkalis are really fucking reactive because they're really close to either only needing to lose one electron to have a full shell, or gaining one to have a full shell and therefore wanna react.

an oxygen ion is called oxide, the -ide suffix being used when something gains electrons. -ate is the suffix used when it loses atoms.

that is literally everything I learnt within 45 minutes and the wording is shjt and completely wrong with regards to some aspects but i literally do not give a fuck I remembered it a and im proud of myself sjdijejrrj anyway thank you fir reading my science rant jfkfjfb

[unclegarou]

Also, I did your generator thingy!

Game Anon is a S Class Hero.

Atomic Samurai confessed to Game Anon but was rejected.

Genos and Game Anon are best friends.

Garou cooked dinner for Game Anon.

Metal Bat hates Game Anon and plans to kill them one day.

Game Anon is dating Sweet Mask but is cheating on them with King.

Game Anon died by the hands of Tanktop Master.

Hmmmm.. Yes, nice nice. I get to date two of the characters I simp for.. Sorry, Atomic Samurai, you're too old for me although you have the option to be my sugar da—

OOH!! I'm friends with Toaster Simp!! Nice, nice!

Ooh!! I get to eat something that Garou cooked! Would be nice if I get to eat something else from him tho.. 😏

ALSO, I SIMPED FOR YOU METAL BAT BUT YOU NEVER CAME HOME IN THE GAME I HAD!! IF ANYTHING I SHOULD BE THE ONE DOING THAT! Actually, no.. Zenko would be mad—

Also, ✨stay away, Tank Top Master✨

-Game Anon

King really do love games to the point where he'd date me—+$+%%!$($!$(? I still love you, Amai—

😂😂😂😂 im dying omggggg. don’t be shy anon, finish your sentence. i already said Atomic Samurai is a dilf but a sugar daddy too?

you might be onto sumthin 😏

[hitoshi-shinsous-actual-archive]

*i tilt my head up and kiss your chin* make me ❤️ *i shoot you another teasing and flirty wink and kiss your cheek* such a cute dork.. <3

and i actually did have a banana a couple hours ago and it helped my stomach so i guess i’ll know what i’ll try to have for breakfast sjdbk,,, and glad to know you’re looking forward to said pictured sdbfjk >\\\<

oh and it’s totally okay if the word makes you nervous. i just don’t wanna overwhelm you because i feel the need to see it every time you’re ✨you✨when it comes to you, the shame i have is probably the size of an atom if i’m being completely honest skfjksjdjk but seriously- if you want me to tone it down, let me know okay?

okay but you hAVE to let me know which songs of willow’s you listened to,,, i’ll admit i haven’t heard TOO many but the ones I’ve heard make me really happy soo <3 that sounds,,,, absolutely amazing ‘toshi :0 also, kinda like,,, exactly what i envisioned in my head especially the making out part too. and don’t worry, i actually like long car rides :) but with you i’d love them <33

akdjskfk sorry it’s just a little gibberish kinda random keyboard smash thingy i say when i find something really really cute,,,, like you <3 by the way,,, if i were to,, i don’t knoww, maybe pet your hair and like play with it,, you’d let me? 👁👁

aksjk and i very much look forward to even more of your lovely rambling 😌 and,,, g-goddess..? hhhhhh >\\\\\\\< oKAY i can’t hear my eyeballs anymore (did i really just type that holy fu-🧍🏽‍♀️) buuuuut,,, will you maybeee,, cuddle me to sleep? maybe? sorta? or just give me a goodnight kiss,,, which ever you want,,, sweetie <3

- 🧋

heh, i... .///. just- i-i- hrngh-

yeah? well, then, i’m glad you’ve got thoughts in for breakfast. and that i could make you flustered like that... makes me feel proud of myself, heh heh.

you can be like.. so cheesy, i swear- still though, i really appreciate that thing with the word and not wanting to overwhelm me... you’re seriously the best, riri. i feel like... it’s okay to use it, sometimes, which i guess would help me... i don’t know. get used to it? i still sometimes get kind of anxious when people say it, like.. generally. but y’know. i think, with you, i am kind of sort of warming up to that idea.

aha, from willow... i think some of my favorites so far are marceline(99.99% sure it’s based on adventure time but that’s an awesome show so it works), overthinking it, and rise. also... perfect, really. that you’re up for all of that, um, date... maybe i’ll flesh it out a little more. (the mod is seriously considering writing about that... seriously, you’re always giving him so many ideas. it’s great)

no need to apologize, aha. but- y’know- i- ...the flutters in my heart are back. it’s, like, unreal, how you’re able to so easily make me feel that way. also... nobody’s ever really done that for me, before, i don’t think.. i’d totally let you. mess with my hair, even pretty it up if you’d like.

you! once again! it’s getting redundant, how flustered you make me! not that i’m complaining! thank you! also, of course. i’d absolutely just... *i sort of lift you up, only to lead us toward a recliner chair- wherever we’re at, sjnvs- it’s big enough that i can sit in it and then sort of plop you beside me, before i turn and... pretty much completely engulf you in my arms, i think. gently, i tuck my chin in the crook of your neck, giving you little butterfly kisses.* who said i couldn’t do both, though?