#uninteresting factoids?

[ianxfalcon]

TIL that Henri is voiced by George Blagden. Yeah, motherfucking Grantaire.

That would make a really odd crossover. I'm down.

[constelationprize]

Thinking many many thoughts about how Jean was Riko's partner for a YEAR and was still rooming with Goon #3. Because that was how unwilling Riko was to let go of Kevin. And how that implies that Jean was placed as his partner both because of the practicality of Kevin being gone AND as a punishment for letting him go in the first place. Being partners with Jean could actually slow Riko down depending on how often he's hurt (because I don't think Riko was all that exempt from the rules to the point where his partner's performance would completely not matter) and he was still placed there. Riko was just THAT angry at him over Kevin's escape. And all the while he was keeping Kevin's side of room like an altar, even back when he didn't even think Kevin could PLAY, because of an injury he caused.

[mrfancyfoot]

Patchwork Plots

Woohooo! Celebrating my 500 kudos milestone on Patchwork Plots so have some fluff!

💕I even caught the flip from 499 💕

Potentially planning something for the 10k hits milestone that's coming up faaast.

Drabble 33 - Knifeplay

Read Patchwork Plots on AO3 | Fic Rating: Explicit | Pairing: Astarion/f!OC/Halsin

In which Astarion slowly starts to discover that he enjoys the process of cooking.

Drabble rating: G Warnings: None

Astarion halfheartedly flipped through the cookbook that Evie had set out on one of the tables near the main campfire that she used to prepare meals for the camp.

“You wanna learn?”  From prior conversations, Evie knew he knew absolutely nothing about cooking or much of anything food-related that wasn’t blood.  Aside from fancy factoids gleaned here and there to impress others - a number of which she had challenged for accuracy - it simply wasn’t information he had needed to know since becoming a vampire.

But he desperately needed another damn hobby out here.  Or he could at least busy himself helping her out if he was just going to hover.

He pulled back with a scoff - the cover of the heavy, worn book closing with a thud - and looked down his nose at her as though the very idea was preposterous.  “I don’t eat, so why would I?  It would be a waste of my time, darling.”

Maybe a change of perspective would work?  Appeal to a certain…homicidal side of him?

She turned and leaned her hip on the table as she slowly ran her finger up and down the dull back of her chef’s knife.  “‘Cuz it’s fun.  You get to stab things.  And beat things.  And play with fire.  And there’s often lots of cursing.  And begging.  And it can be messy.  And sometimes you get to be artsy with it and make it look all nice.  I don’t eat even half of what I make, but it feels nice to have others eating what I make.  It’s cathartic!”  Looking around the ingredients she’d gotten out to make a hearty stew, Evie grabbed a tomato to demonstrate.  “Here, this needs to be stabbed into small cubes.  Ish.  Shape doesn’t really matter.  It just needs to be small pieces of tomato, so how it gets there doesn’t really matter since none of us are fucking Gordon Ramsey.”  She set the tomato on the cutting board and started going through the motions to dice it with her knife.  His eyes followed the motion of the blade.

He might have been uninterested at first, but she saw the subtle changes as he crept closer while she began prepping that night’s supper.  She re-opened the cookbook to the recipe she wanted to reference and he scanned over it.

When he was leaning over her shoulder to watch, Evie asked, “You wanna try?”  She set a large tomato on the cutting board and offered up her knife.

He stared at it for a long moment and then hesitantly took the blade, inspecting its shape and weight in his hand.  Taking her place, he stood over the fruit and moved it this way and that to determine the best way to start.  A couple minutes later, it was finely diced in a fashion that honestly looked better than the somewhat careless, rough-shod job she’d done - it was going into a stew after all, it didn’t need to look even or nice, she justified.

“Good job!  Wanna do another?”  She swept the cut tomato into a bowl off to the side and set another on the board.  His eyes widened at the praise and he hastily grabbed hold of the next one to cut.

.

.

Gale, who had been silently watching the last several minutes, stepped up next to her with his arms crossed as she prepared the stew base and quietly asked, “What magic is he under for you to have pulled this?”

She turned to Gale and whispered back, “Kinda thought he’d go a bit more wild with it, to be honest.”  Astarion was most certainly playing with the food given the unwavering, fixated stare as he leaned closely over the fruit - the occasional flash of a smug smile gave that away.  With dextrous precision, he carefully and very quickly had turned several tomatoes and an onion from whole to perfectly shaped, identical cubes and slivers.

Evie grabbed the rest of the large tomatoes and placed them on the edge of the cutting board for Astarion.  The diced tomato cubes were unceremoniously swiped into a bowl as his eyes fell upon the new fruit.  He happily plucked one up and his knife drew across it.

Pulling over another pair of large bowls, she tossed another onion and a bunch of potatoes in one, silently setting it within his reach, and set the other on the other side of him empty.

“Think I could get him to help me?” Gale grinned with a chuckle. Evie hushed him - the last thing she wanted was to pull Astarion from the little slice-n-dice fixation he was in while there was still so much that needed cut up.  “Baby steps,” she warned, plucking sprigs of herbs from her supply to chop up and add to the stew pot.

Read Patchwork Plots on AO3

[toasterbath7065797369]

hey, so it's been over 3 years (wow has it been that long) since i made this post and now that i've watched multiple fredrik knudsen videos in their entirety, his videos are so important for the internet. his topics may sometimes be too emotionally dark or straight-up uninteresting for people under the age of 18, but you come to really appreciate them as an adult. his factoid that furries started in the 80's, or the impactful and important story of Deep Blue both in the world of computer science and the world of chess, are really fascinating.

his videos are not for everyone (there's a reason his "chris chan" video is age-restricted), but i highly recommend them too.

Fredrik Knudsen’s series Down the Rabbit Hole is seriously one of my favorite series of all time. He covers just a menagerie of obscure topics ranging from the Collyer Brothers to Chris Chan to the bizarreness of YouTube Kids channels and nostalgic early 2000s events like what happened to Spoony and DarkSydePhil and stuff about how fucked up behind the scenes of Neopets was and weird scientific stuff like Time Cube and TempleOS. You should definitely check him out I’ve been a huge fan for like 3 years now and his content is so addicting 

[gay-milton-quotes]

the widespread hatred for content aggregating algorithms, which are designed to Engage and Excite at All Times, shows how important the mundane can be. I want to look at bad fanart of shows I don't watch, actually. I want blurry, zoomed-in pictures of birds. I want an unfunny joke with four notes, an uninteresting observation about supermarkets or the way people sit. I like this app because it isn't autocurated to excite every emotion at once at all times. It being more boring makes it more enjoyable in the long term.

I think about this in offline, real life, "boring" moments, too. Sitting in traffic. Standing on the bus, people chatting around you. Staring out the window, staring at the drop ceiling of your office or classroom. You need that. The white noise, the boring hum, it feels good to the mind in it's own, quiet way. All those factoids saying "by the time you're 80 you'll have spent FIFTEEN YEARS of your LIFE waiting in LINE" as if that's some big tragedy - they're full of shit. These are good moments. This is a part of your life that you need.

[felassan]

I’m curious how you remember all the lore and content things you do - do you just have an amazing memory, do you keep extensive notes, a huge spreadsheet, is your Google-fu just that strong...??

Hi Nonnie! Cool question, thanks. Cut to spare the uninterested. 😄

It’s a mix but is mostly just a consequence of a decade’s obsession with the universe and the source material. Like I started playing in 2010 and have been obsessed with it ever since. My memory in a general sense is actually quite bad honestly, I guess remembering lore and content stuff is just what can happen when you over-focus on something, replay it so much, spend [too much] time thinking about and discussing it and stuff. These days it’s the worldbuilding and the lore that’s my favorite part of the franchise I think. 

No huge spreadsheets, just some notes on specific areas I’m particularly interested in, or on kinda random parts of it. Some of these I’ve made into posts (obscure elven figures is an interest, TLC food and drink was a random one, as an example), some I haven’t. Some content-focused note stuff I post up to share as reference resources with others in case it would help anyone (example). A bit of Google-fu mostly to fill in like.. in my head it’s like a mind map or mind maps of the broad strokes and commonly-recurring topics, it can be like I’ll know there’s a reference to [X] that says [Y] in a particular codex or that a character explains [this, this and this] about a subject in dialogue lines in a particular conversation from that map/s, and then I’ll go grab the exact quote. Some random factoids also ‘stick’ for some reason, especially if it’s about elf stuff, like “every time the Tirashan is mentioned ever” or “examples of elves who break the stated lore about elves and facial hair”.

(Unrelated to DA specifically though my Google-fu in a general sense is pretty strong yeah, probably because of prior irl stuff like work and research. I am glad about this because of said bad memory).

It helps that theorycrafting and speculating is fun, and the time between additions to the universe means that there’s a) time to absorb all the new stuff in-between [and we do tend to fine-tooth comb it and look at every shred from every angle don’t we :D] and b) for me that’s lots of time that gets filled up by obsessing. It also tends to be the case that the fandom continually discusses the same lore aspects. DA discussion spaces which are lore-leaning tend to focus on the same topics and there’s a number of questions I get asked repeatedly over time. None of that is a bad thing at all, and that’s the point of the big lore mysteries being there. I just mean like, when it’s the same stuff all the time and that’s a fandom you’re immersed in it can end up having a similar effect to if you continually revised the same specific material for an exam or something for years on end, lol.

[peer-pressured-into-tumbler]

All I want to do is recite factoids to uninterested looking people during smoke breaks, is that too much to ask??!?;

I love knowing things but the process of getting to know things is literally (and i do mean literally) worse than being in the trenches

[randomfandomginger]

Don’t You Know (It’s Rude to Stare)

little factoid about this fic: it’s punk logan and a high school AU, and the shipping is intrulogical, so yeah here’s a snippet if you want to read it! It’s complete, two chapters long. There is some angst and fighting at the end of the first chapter, but then it gets fluffy

Words: 6kt

-----

There were three unspoken rules at Sanders Sides High.

Number one, if nothing else, the chicken nuggets were always the safest bet in the cafeteria, even if they look a little gray around the edges. Surprisingly, they’re the least likely entree to give you food poisoning.

Number two, if you ever need to hide anything from your parents, call Janus Devon. He’ll hook you up no biggie, so long as you have a crisp twenty dollar bill in hand when you inquire and you don’t ask him any prying questions. Just roll with it.

Number three, don’t mess with Remus Prince, no matter how tempting it is. The guy might be waxing poetic about the hair on Mothman’s back, just walk on past him, for your own good.

Remus Prince had met Logan Berry during his freshman year. Young, bright eyed, and excited to meet new people and experience new things, he had practically skipped through the front doors of the school at his brother’s side.

Roman Prince was everything that Remus wasn’t. He was instantly popular, a little too good at football for his own good, and he had all of his melanin. His jokes were a little more family friendly, and he charmed all of his teachers right off the bat.

This wasn’t to say that Roman wasn’t uppity about his situation, in fact, rather the opposite. He cared deeply for his brother, and had spent years defending his antics and slightly stranger behaviors. The two were thick as thieves, and with Roman around, Remus felt safe and happy. Roman defended him when other people didn’t, Roman accepted him no matter what.

That was why there was an inkling of doubt and fear lurking in the back of his mind as he set off in the opposite direction of his brother, off to his very first class. Roman was in the band, so off he went, but Remus had gym.

A little less pep in his step, Remus ducked his head a bit lower, allowing his mop of curly, milky white hair to obscure his eyes.

He was kind of dreading gym class regardless of whether or not his brother would be allowed to accompany him. The teacher split them by gender to go change before doing roll call, Remus slipping into his generic athletic shirt and shorts, tying his slightly longer hair back in a small ponytail at the back of his head.

They lined up roughly by last name, playing an awkward game of mumbled “oh, what’s your last name,” until they had sorted themselves more or less out. The teacher was going down the line, a bored expression on their face. Remus made a point to do his best and learn who his classmates were.

“Valarie Aarons?”

“Present!”

Valerie was a sweet looking girl with about shoulder length brown hair. She gave Remus a small smile when she caught him staring at her in interest, doing his best to assign faces to names.

“Terrence Abbot?”

“Here.”

Terrence looked unenthusiastic, though Remus couldn’t really blame him for that. Like Valarie, he gave Remus a small, confused smile when he noticed the freshman sizing him up. Remus wanted to make new friends as soon as possible, before he freaked everyone out too badly.

There was a small sigh before the teacher called the next name. “Logan Berry?”

“Mmh.”

If Remus was staring before, he must have been ogling now. This boy looked nothing like the other classmates, that is, dressed for gym class. His long black hair covered one of his eyes, blue streaks breaking up the silky strands with a little bit of color. His foundation was a pale white, and his deep cerulean eyes appeared to be lined in heavy black eyeshadow. Those same eyes were staring at him curiously, Remus noticed with a flush, and he glanced away quickly for only a moment to break the intensity of the stare. His insides felt funny.

“Who is that?” he whispered to the boy next to him curiously.

“Hmm?” he looked uninterested for only a moment before he realized who Remus was staring at. Then he just chuckled, even as Remus continued to blatantly stare after the third boy in their line. “That’s Logan Berry, he’s a junior this year. Probably one of the nastiest, most reclusive of his entire grade. I wouldn’t go looking at him for too long, he gets angry when people stare.”

Read on AO3 here

[stopsalongtheway]

START

To start. To finish.

The beauty is inbetween. Where the begining and end points do not matter, as the line defines the journey. Without the connections, the points are floting in undefinable space. What does wealth mean to a human body? The story of how that person arrived to that point, is what has meaning. The juice of the fruit. While the fibre itself is uninteresting triva. Don't get me wrong- the fibre has it's purpose. It's there so you can easily digest the whole situation.

So what is your juice? What is the flavor, sweetness, vitamins, and minerals of your framework? A resume is a corpse without the interview. Most people can list the factoids of their life. Job, family, location, schooling... but how did it all come to be? Why do these things matter?

This is where the heart comes in. Creating connections, giving meaning, and being fully accepting of everything that has and will occur. Only then we can make honey. Not just using the facts that are easy to talk about, but diving into the murky depths of unstirred marshes. From high to low, low to high- the present moment and flow of life. We must be ready for it all. To paint a complete picture there must be the the details from a linked-in profile and the context of a facebook timeline.

When I write or tell a story, I tend to struggle with the content rather than the context. I can be very general, vague, and have a hard time recalling specific examples. This limits the storytelling ability for the meaning to be fleshed out. Thinking back to my younger years, I believe I have thes issues because I disregarded my story. That my point of view was not worthy of being told, and my experience was not valid. Believing that I only needed to know the formula, and the variables didnt matter. Now I know you can't write a recipie with only directions and no ingredients.

I believe that as I write and speak more, my story will come forth. In the past, I would tend to freeze up and draw blanks when I felt pressure. No examples became availble to use. This is when I should have given myself space. Space to breathe, space to think, space to fail. Then to place the feeling, of the topic that needs to be talked about, in the fore front of my heart. Feeling it through and seeing what pops up from there. For example, if the topic is about heartbreak, placing that pain in plain sight- feeling that emotion fully. Revealing a beautiful memory, the one of your ex that sold the matching shoes you got them. It's as simple as that.

Starting a story is tough when all you want to do is finish it. So here we go. The Start- the conception of my blog. It's exciting. I've held my voice back for so long, I'm now ready to share it again. I was afraid of being disliked, triggering people, being a bad writter, and that I'd fail. But if I don't write, I will perpetually be a terrible writter. If I am to strike a cord within one's heart and mind, the reveberations might be painful. I have to be alright with that and live with the reprocussions. I take full responsibility for you being a sensitive bitch. This will make me better. So bring it on. Best to weather the storm and see the world, than to shrivel in shelter- never seeing the light of day.

[kaylor]

I don't care about Shawn Mendes either, even his gayness is uninteresting because he has the shittiest taste in men, as soon as he turned 18 he started hooking up with John Mayer & they still have an on-and-off thing to this day... It's why he laughed at Mayer making jokes about how he thought "We can leave the Christmas lights up til January" are shitty lyrics on that one IG live of Mayer's he was on last year, he was there for a booty call 🤢🤮💀

you say you don't care yet you have this extremely niche factoid at your disposal

[faye-wilds]

Sometimes I think I’m useless but then who else randomly interjects into other peoples conversations to add barely-related, uninteresting factoids?

[outboard02]

New book shines light on local kayak fishing

if you love kayak fishing, Gary Rankel has a e-book for you. Rankel has currently published “locating the Treasures of the trails: Kayak Fishing," a 152-page manual book chock full of maps, guidelines and factoids approximately nearby kayak fishing. It sells for $20.  outboard motor covers “Kayak fishing is one of the fastest growing sports activities in the u . s . a . and Citrus County is ideally fitted for it,” Rankel writes in his book.

Rankel, who lives in Terra Vista, stated he retired to Citrus County in 2005 and shortly caught the kayak-fishing trojan horse.

He had a powerboat, however got uninterested in ready in lengthy lines at local boat ramps — especially during scallop season. Plus, it turned into a pain placing it in and taking it out of his storage. Rankel stated he met a man kayak fishing on King’s Bay, they chatted and that’s whilst he determined to test the waters. “I bought my boat and acquired a couple of kayaks and simply fell in love with the game,” Rankel said. in the 13 years when you consider that, Rankel figures he’s out kayaking two times per week. He can be spotted out of Ozello, the Tsala Apopka chain of lakes and the Withlacoochee River. “I fish throughout,” he said. placing it together Tom Craig designed the maps underneath Rankel’s steering. Max Shulman, publisher and all-round trendy manager of the crew, gave a shout-out to the nature Coast girl Anglers and the nature Coast Kayak Fishers for their contribution. “I’m proud of the entire e-book,” Schulman said. “(It’s) surely properly accomplished. The photographs are precise and the maps are precise.” The book is spiral-bound for clean studying, he stated. this is the 1/3 book in a series showcasing outdoor sports in Citrus County. beyond books handled hiking, biking, birding and trails. This e book is for the novice kayaker and the seasoned seasoned, Schulman stated. “there may be a large wide variety of ladies taking up the sport,” he said. The tremendously less expensive cost of kayaking is appealing to all, he added. He estimates a good kayak sells for about $four hundred. Schulman hopes this ultra-modern e-book within the series will draw eco-vacationers to Citrus County who will spend money. fast-growing recreation Kayak fishing may also never make contributions as a good deal to the neighborhood economic system as other neighborhood outdoor hobbies, together with manatee encounters, scalloping, trekking, biking and birding, Rankel stated. however it can offer travelers and residents “the correct complement to their usual leisure revel in,” he writes. And he believes the Suncoast expressway extension into Citrus County will bring greater anglers eager to drop their lures into suitable fishing spots such as Lake Rousseau, the Withlacoochee River and the Tsala Apopka lakes, he stated. Kayakers had been known to tug in spotted sea trout, redfish, snook, cobia and tarpon from neighborhood waters. Rankel stresses in his e book that kayak fishing isn't for every body. “If, like me, you've got infant boomers’ awful-lower back syndrome, it is able to be a task,” he writes. but many decide on the peace and quietness of kayaking over “the roar and fumes of outboard cars,” he stated. Kayaks, he stated, “provide an clean and less expensive alternative for serving up a pleasant fish dinner even as imparting a more enjoyable nature-oriented revel in,” Rankel writes. A assisting hand Citrus County traffic Bureau Director John Pricher heaped praise at the manual e book and stated he might use it to help travelers who forestall with the aid of the welcome center. The Citrus County vacationer improvement Council (TDC) pitched in $2,000 in grant money to help pay for the overall manufacturing and printing of the book, Pricher said. “It’s simply well completed,” he said. “The pics are proper and the maps are excellent and specific.” "Treasures of the trails" books may be bought from nearby traders or at https://treasuresofthetrails.com or ordered on line at https://squareup.com/save/buendia-press.  outboard motor covers

[our-dailyimpact]

Read Why News is Bad For You

News is bad for your health. It results in fear and aggression and hinders your creativity and skill to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognized the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have begun to change our diets. But most folks don't yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is straightforward to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that do not really concern our lives and do not require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we will swallow limitless quantities of stories flashes, which are bright-colored candies for the mind. Today, we've reached an equivalent point in reference to information that we faced 20 years ago in reference to food. We are starting to recognize how toxic news is often.

News misleads. Take the subsequent event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and therefore the bridge collapses. What does the journalism focus on? The car. The person within the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to travel. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that's all irrelevant. What's relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. that is the underlying risk that has been lurking, and will lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it's dramatic, it is a person (non-abstract), and it's news that's cheap to supply. News leads us to steer around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

We aren't rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television goes to vary your attitude toward that risk, no matter its real probability. If you think that you'll compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you're wrong. Bankers and economists – who have powerful incentives to catch up on news-borne hazards – have shown that they can't. the sole solution: cut yourself faraway from news consumption entirely.

News is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you've got read within the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to form a far better decision a few serious matter affecting your life, your career, or your business. the purpose is: the consumption of stories is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognize what's relevant. It's much easier to recognize what's new. The relevant versus the new is that the fundamental battle of the present age. Media organizations want you to believe that news offers you some kind of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we stop the flow of stories. actually, news consumption may be a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the larger the advantage you've got.

News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts assist you understand the world? Sadly, no. the connection is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists' radar but have a reworking effect. The more "news factoids" you digest, the less of the large picture you'll understand. If more information results in higher economic success, we'd expect journalists to be at the highest of the pyramid. That's not the case.

News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the visceral brain. Panicky stories spur the discharge of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your system and inhibits the discharge of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself during a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness, and susceptibility to infections. the opposite potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision, and desensitization.

News increases cognitive errors. Newsfeeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. within the words of Warren Buffett: "What the person is best at doing is interpreting all new information in order that their prior conclusions remain intact." News exacerbates this flaw. We become susceptible to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge opportunities. It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story bias. Our brains crave stories that "make sense" – albeit they do not correspond to reality. Any journalist who writes, "The market moved due to X" or "the company went bankrupt due to Y" is an idiot. I'm uninterested in this cheap way of "explaining" the planet.

News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. they're like viruses that steal attention for his or her own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it's worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two sorts of memory. Long-range memory's capacity is almost infinite, but memory is restricted to a particular amount of slippery data. the trail from short-term to LTM may be a choke-point within the brain, but anything you would like to know must undergo it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has a good worse impact. during a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines because the number of hyperlinks during a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has got to a minimum of make the selection to not click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.

News works sort of a drug. As stories develop, we would like to understand how they continue. With many arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. Scientists wont to think that the dense connections formed among the 100 billion neurons inside our skulls were largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. Today we all know that this is often not the case. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits dedicated to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. Most news consumers – albeit they wont to be avid book readers – have lost the power to soak up lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. it isn't because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It's because the body of their brains has changed.

News wastes time. If you read the newspaper for quarter-hour each morning, then check the news for quarter-hour during lunch and quarter-hour before you attend bed, then add five minutes here and there when you're at work, then count distraction and refocusing time, you'll lose a minimum of half each day hebdomadally. Information is not any longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. you're not that irresponsible together with your money, reputation, or health. Why divulge your mind?

News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about belongings you cannot influence. The daily repetition of stories about things we will not influence makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that's pessimistic, desensitized, sarcastic, and fatalistic. The scientific term is "learned helplessness". it is a little bit of a stretch, but I might not be surprised if news consumption, a minimum of partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression.

News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. this is often one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers, and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a good, uninhabited space that emboldens them to return up with and pursue novel ideas. I do not know one truly creative mind who may be a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the opposite hand, I do know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you would like to return up with old solutions, read the news. If you're trying to find new solutions, don't.

Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is usually relevant. we'd like reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers the truth. But important findings do not have to arrive within the sort of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.

I have now gone without news for four years, so I can see, feel and report the consequences of this freedom first-hand: less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time, more insights. it isn't easy, but it's worthwhile.

[twostriptechnicolor]

Assorted Factoids

In a most unusual twist of events, 'twas I charged by the ever lovely @johnhannahs to disclose ten facts about yours truly. As I have no intention of boring you good people with my uninteresting particulars, I'll simply mention the following:

1- I haven't worn jeans since 2002... even then it was for a school play. Nor do I own a pair of sneakers. Or graphic tees.

2- I am not, by any means, an outdoor person. Any attempt to take me hiking will be met with a loud disapproving hiss or a raised eyebrow.

3- In casual conversation, I have a tendency to randomly switch accents or the sound of my voice if the mood strikes.

4- I am resisting the urge to write [CLASSIFIED] on all ten entries.

5- I got my first train set at the age of 4... my parents regret that decision to this very day.

6- I did cosplay once.... ONCE.

7- I don't drive (don't ask).

8- Over the past few years I've been caretaker to at least 5 dogs, 2 cats and 2 rabbits.

9- First movie I ever saw was the 1978 Superman, followed by How The West Was Won and Under The Rainbow.

10- Something something single.

And as is customary, I charge ye mutual followers to follow suit.

[shinigami-pomp]

This Started As A Note

I am a lonely person who has never been cut out for this world. In a past life I must have sucked…or maybe I’ve just been less than honorable in this one. All I know is that my happiness has always been so fleeting and foreign. My happiness is usually tied to- or is a manifestation of- drug induced euphoria. My happiness. It doesn’t exist. It isn’t mine because I so rarely feel in control of It.

Have you ever felt crazy? Reaching for things, anything and nothing, to ground yourself. I anxiously paced, and searched for, and reached for a knife today. It didn’t feel right in my hands. I held a glass bottle. I had the urge to smash it over my own head which I think I (amid racing thoughts) deemed too “slapstick”. I envisioned smashing it on the counter and maybe dragging the glass shards against my skin but… I’m not a cutter to be fair and I feel like the feeling of self-harm, in that moment, was eclipsed by what I felt might be satisfaction in simply smashing the full bottle of room temp cold brew I held and being done with it.

I didn’t do it.

I walked to my room and leaned against the wall and I sobbed briefly. It was genuinely quick. It just escaped my lips but… despite my loneliness, there’s shame in audible tears so with shaking breaths I suppressed and reached for a large safety pin that I keep on the same hook as my appropriative Buddhist prayer beads. I let tears fall as I continue to feel sorry for myself, so pitifully about to mutilate skin because I feel lonely and lost and angry and sad and sad and sad and sad. I’m in my head though and wonder where the appropriate place to scar one’s body is. It’s summer; not my arms. Do I really want scars on my legs or ribs? Like I said… I’m not a cutter so I half-heartedly scratch my… I don’t even remember… it was such a superficial scratch, it was already gone 10 seconds later.

I couldn’t do it.

I did manage to lose the safety pin somewhere in my bedding or on my floor and I fully expect to succeed unintentionally in self harming when I inevitably roll over onto it or get it lodged in my foot as I head to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I wonder if that’s the way I’ll die too. Suicide is always an ideation. This is one reason why I’m not cut out for this world…but I also can’t hack dying by my own hand. I’m a failure all around. Maybe I’ll get on a plane and it will go down. Maybe I’ll head to the grocery store and get plowed over by an SUV running a light. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and die in my sleep that next day. C’est la vie.

I pull up the suicide hotline webpage. Apparently one can chat online now. Technology is great. Technology provides support for the waves of depression and desperation that envelope me when I look at my social network of Snap stories and Instagram photos of acquaintances with friends smiling, acquaintances traveling and smiling, acquaintances getting married and smiling… acquaintances living. Successfully existing. Facebook posts about acquaintances graduating graduate school and acquaintances landing jobs or being promoted. All liked, viewed, and validated by 60, 70, 80, 90, 100+ other acquaintances. Technology is there when I look at my own screams into the void that go so under… validated. It’s good to know that technology is there to provide a nameless faceless support system that is paid to chat with me online. Technology is awesome.

Actually today, I spent 4 straight hours online looking for apartments and jobs whilst simultaneously trying not to think about how my life is spiraling out of control and how uncertainty kills me slowly. I re-confirmed, as I do every time I job search, that I’m not qualified enough to be considered by any place I want to work … mainly because even in minimum wage, shit hour, non-profit sector gigs… you need a BA. But I was unfazed by this (on its own) today. As a student of life, I try to learn something new every day and today’s factoid was: I’m uninteresting. Not only am I unqualified for a career path job, but I’m unqualified to be an interesting human that people want to get to know. Searching for affordable accommodation in gentrified cities is more difficult than applying for college. Listing after listing I read on Facebook asking for community oriented individuals. Artists. Bohemians. Vegans. Scholastics. SJWS. Extroverts. Professionals. 20-year olds. 40-year olds. Positive mentally sound people. “Link your Instagram and Facebook so that we can use those to confirm how interesting you are; how loved you are by those around you”.

I don’t fit the bill. But it would appear that so many other people do. I stand no chance. C'est la guerre.

 When I break it down:

I have nobody to talk to. I have no more strong connections. I feel unsupported (even if it’s there at times). I feel burdensome all the time.

How can a person feel like they have lost everything when, in reality, they never inherited anything to begin with? Or maybe, how can a person who inherited so much more than plenty of people, feel as if they never stood a chance?

As I’ve typed this, therapeutic self-deprecation has dried any tears. I feel the type of calm I would feel during my brief genuinely non-dramatic stint with bulimia. The calm that comes after a purge. It’s not a relaxing calm necessarily. Not a bright warm calm. It’s the calm that comes when you’re just too tired to feel anything. Too tired to do anything. Too tired to think any more. The calm of a dying person in an induced coma. The calm after a tornado that has ripped miles worth of homes from their foundations. C’est la mort.

Tomorrow is another day to wish I was someone else or nobody at all. There will never be a reprieve outside of untimely death and…

I can’t do it.

- 17 July 2017

[princeyandanxiety]

Interesting factoid: I can put my foot on my ribs. - Andy the Anon

Uninteresting factoid: I couldn't do pirouettes or any work on demi pointe for a good month in year six because I fucked up my foot