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moonlitdiary · 5 years

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Dozens of NYC Subway riders, fresh off a Robyn concert, singing “Dancing On My Own” while waiting for the E train. (Video by Triszh Hermogenes)

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moonlitdiary · 5 years

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‘am i Having A Brain Problem or Being a Shithead’: a short procrastination checklist

aka why tf am i procrastinating on The Thing (more like a flowchart, actually)

lots of people who have executive function difficulties worry about whether they’re procrastinating on a task out of laziness/simply wanting to be a jerk or mental struggles. this checklist might help you figure out which it is at any given time! (hint: it’s almost never laziness or being a jerk.) (obligatory disclaimer: this is just what works for me! something different might work better for you.)

1) do I honestly intend to start the task despite my lack of success?

yes: it’s a Brain Problem. next question

no: it’s shitty to say one thing & do another. better be honest with myself & anyone expecting me to do the task.

2) am I fed, watered, well-rested, medicated properly, etc?

yes: next question

no: guess what? this is the real next task

3) does the idea of starting the task make me feel scared or anxious?

yes: Anxiety Brain. identify what’s scaring me first.

no: next question

4) do I know how to start the task?

yes: next question

no: ADHD Brain. time to make an order of operations list.

5) do I have everything I need to start the task?

yes: next question

no: ADHD Brain lying to me about the steps again, dangit. first task is ‘gather the materials’.

6) why am i having a hard time switching from my current task to this new task?

i’m having fun doing what i’m doing: it’s okay to have fun doing a thing! if task is time-sensitive, go to next question.

i have to finish doing what i’m doing: might be ADHD brain. can I actually finish the current task or will I get trapped in a cycle? does this task really need to be finished?

the next task will be boring/boring-er than the current task: ADHD brain. re-think the next task. what would make it exciting? what am I looking forward to?

I might not have enough time to complete the task: ADHD brain wants to finish everything it starts. (if task is time-sensitive, go to next question)

i just want to make the person who asked me to do it angry: sounds like anxiety brain trying to punish itself, because I know I’ll be miserable if someone is angry at me. why do i think I deserve punishment?

no, I seriously want to piss them off: okay, i’m being a shithead

7) have I already procrastinated so badly that I now cannot finish the task in time?

yes: ADHD brain is probably caught in a guilt-perfection cycle. since I can’t have the task done on time, i don’t even want to start.

reality check: having part of a thing done is almost always better than none of a thing done. if I can get an extension, having part of it done will help me keep from stalling out until the extension deadline. i’ll feel better if I at least try to finish it.

no, there’s still a chance to finish on time: ADHD brain thinks that I have all the time in the world, but the truth is I don’t.

reality check: if i’m having fun doing what I’m doing, I can keep doing it, but I should probably set a timer & ask someone to check on me to make sure I start doing the task later today.

8) I’ve completed the checklist and still don’t know what’s wrong!

probably wasn’t honest enough with myself. take one more look.

if I’m still mystified, ask a friend to help me talk it out.

hope this helps some of you! YOU’RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE DON’T GIVE UP ON YOU

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moonlitdiary · 6 years

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SATAN’S BALLOON ANIMALS

guess what, it’s time for another episode of Weird Biology! today we’re going to learn about a creature that looks like a stained-glass window, but stalks the oceans with toxic might powered only by the wind like a sailing ship of old.

that’s right, it’s the devil’s own shopping bag-

the name is almost longer than the animal.

The Portuguese Man o’ War is a floating jellyfish relative called a Hydrozoan. it was named after the 18th century sailing ship, apparently by a blind person. “oh, it looks like a sailing ship under full sail” no it doesn’t, shut up. it looks like a rogue walmart shopping bag that blew into the Atlantic and makes a living by strangling innocent sea turtles.

but like the aforementioned plastic bag, the Man o’ War uses its lovely blue-purple air sac to catch the breeze. it wanders in groups through the warm waters of the Atlantic, driven along by the wind and tides. kind of poetic, really.

as long as you don’t look underwater, anyway.

I’m about to ruin it for everybody, hang on.

like so many other things in life, it’s not what you see on the surface that’s important but what is underneath that counts.

in this case, what’s underneath is up to 165 feet of venomous tentacles. it’s like that thing they say about icebergs, where you only see the top 10% and the rest is an invisible ship-killing nightmare? it’s exactly like that.

except with poison tentacles.

the Man o’ War is basically a biological fishing trawler, trailing these stupidly long tentacles like a fine mesh net through the water. and when an innocent fish who probably has a family at home comes into contact with this “net”, specialized cells called Nematocysts are triggered to fire tiny poison harpoons into the victim, causing instant death or paralysis.

the tentacle then reels itself upward into the body of the Man o’ War like a fishing line, dragging its helpless victim upward to be digested.

so, uh, actually not like a fishing trawler then, not like a fishing trawler at all.

unless the fishing trawler was designed by Junji Ito.

though the Man o’ War may look like a jellyfish, it’s definitely not. in fact, it’s not even a single animal! it’s actually four separate organisms jammed into a venomous trenchcoat like three best friends trying to sneak into an R rated movie.

“how the fuck even”, I hear you say. and that’s a valid question! it’s not everyday that we discover that what we thought was a single animal is actually four smaller animals living communally to form a larger, more dangerous animal. it would be like discovering that opossums are actually comprised of 17 rats each.

no word on if they do a silly dance and tap their fingers together to fuse or what though.

in the Man o’ War’s case, these four individual kinds of “polyps” that comprise the complete final form are the air sac polyp (gets the gang around), the digestive polyp (converts murdered fish into energy for the whole gang), the reproductive polyp (makes small clones of each individual gang member), and the tentacle polyp (murders things indiscriminately for the sheer joy of it).

that’s right, the tentacles are a separate animal! you might be wondering if they sometimes come loose, wander off, and just sting people/animals randomly when they drift into populated areas. what a silly question!

yeah, happens all the time.

SHIT.

while rarely fatal, Man o’ Wars stings can seriously injure humans. this is a big problem in areas where Man o’ Wars are common, because storms and predators can knock the tentacles right the fuck off. the tentacles drift away, only to wash ashore and sting a hapless beachgoer weeks later. that’s right, rogue tentacles can still sting for days or weeks after separation! even if the Man ‘o War is beached! isn’t that neat! fuck!

the discovery of a beached Man o’ War usually closes the entire fucking beach, for this reason. would YOU want to go fuck around in the sand if it might be full of over a hundred feet of poison spaghetti too fine to notice with the naked eye?

if the answer is yes, I have great news about a bridge I’d like to sell you.

if all this information upset you, I’d like to offer my deepest condolences. but buckle up for one last upsetting fact, and here it is: Man o’ War are spreading.

usually restricted to warm waters, climate change has driven the Man o’ War as far north as Great Britain. that’s awful awful awful news for any country that touches the Atlantic ocean, which is lots of them.

luckily, we have dependable allies in this fight: sea turtles and the Mola Mola! (which I’ve written about before) unfortunately just about all we can do at this point is to cheer these awesome devil-balloon-munchers on from the safety of shore, while trying to invent a Man o’ War-proof barrier net.

for now, watch out for anything that looks like a floating plastic bag.

and for god’s sake, watch where you step.

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thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.

if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee or check out my Patreon to see extra content and support Weird Biology.

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IMAGE SOURCES

img1- National Geographic img2- The Garden of Eadon img3- Sean Nash img4- Enrico Villa img5- livescience.com img6- diply.com img7- Daily Mail img8- Sun Sentinel

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moonlitdiary · 6 years

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When we talk about being fat-positive and we say, “weight is not an indication of health,” I will reblog it. But I want us to also say, “health is not an indication of value.”

I could be at any weight and I will never be healthy, because I am chronically ill. Someone might be chronically ill and fat, or they might be chronically ill and not fat, and it really doesn’t matter.

When you make it about health, you’re saying health is the pinnacle of human achievement, and you’re shitting on those of us for whom health will always be a pipe dream.

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moonlitdiary · 6 years

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@mabthefairyqueen Thank you for your kind words. Yes, the responses to this post have made me want to give it another go. It is not fair to judge it on a partial view. Will finish it and then revisit the post.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend

I saw it on Netflix and thought I would marathon it. But I stopped after two episodes. Because I… am confused. The show has received so much critical acclaim and I tried to keep an open mind. Surely so many people cannot all be misreading the show. Am I misreading the show? So okay, let me just list my problems with the show.

1. From what I gather Rebecca Bunch has mental disorders which she refuses to wholeheartedly address. Sure she has medication and a therapist when she lived in New York but obviously she wasn’t getting any better. Most likely misdiagnosed. But she is a functional neorotic. She has a high stress job where she is doing well enough to warrant a promotion. She is miserable though. How is she then, so oblivious about not getting better? Why is she quick to decide her prescription drugs don’t work? Instead of changing therapists she decides to dump her pills. This makes absolutely no sense to me. How can a fully functional Harward and Yale educated woman be so oblivious about her own mental health?

2. She leaves her job. I tried to read it as not because she met Josh but as a panicked response to the idea of having to shoulder more responsibility. Didn’t really work. Because if that’s really the case, it’s incredibly sexist. When are men ever shown to balk at responsibility? Never. It feeds into the narrative that the reason there are so few women at top management level is because women can’t handle the pressure. If that’s not an incredibly anti-feminist message then I don’t know what is.

3. On the subject of how Rebecca was getting the promotion but she ran away, it’s disheartening also because it feeds into the narrative that there is no systemically skewed playing field that stymies women and priviledges men when it comes to recieving rewards in the workplace. We hear Rebecca works long hours, we are shown her empty house. The reason a lot of men, married men or men with children or men in heterosexual relationships, are able to pull off insane hours is because they are able to foist all their non-office related responsibilities onto women: wives, girlfriends, mother-figures. Women don’t have this. In any case, there is zero questioning of the downright immorality of Capitalism stealing time from the private lives of workers by devaluing and dismissing personal life and leisure.

4. So Rebecca has a super controlling mother and an absent father. She’s broken. What is this, the 60s? Kids of divorce turn out all right. There’s an expiration date on till when you can blame your parents for your situation. 26, about to be made junior partner, having access to mental health services, is way past that expiration date.

5. Rebecca name-drops famous feminists but doesn’t see the problem with her life choices? She does have a moment at the end of episode 1 where she recognises what she has done, but then it’s reset button time by the start of the next episode. A gag in place for actual character development. Why?? Because it’s hilarious to see women being neurotic?! It seems to be some twisted female version of the awful ‘men will be men’ cliché.

6. The meta rapper dude has a feminist change of heart but Rebecca stays oblivious. No curtailing of the beauty rituals, just whining about it. Make up and grooming is fine as long as you can equally exercise the choices to wear makeup and be well groomed and not wear makeup and not be well groomed. Is the rapper’s change of heart supposed to be funny? Is there a gag suggesting that even the most notoriously mysogynistic of men would turn into feminists if only they saw what women put themselves through for being attractive to men?! Yeah, no. Men know. They choose patriarchal privilege because it’s comfortable.

7. I read in one of the spoiler-y reviews that Rebecca burns down the office of her married lover who is also her Professor. Besides the obvious badwrong, this is such irresponsible writing. Women rarely retaliate with violence on being rejected. Even for women with mental health issues this is atypical behaviour, they tend to go into severe depression. Men - mentally healthy men - often kill women for less. Way to feed into the stereotype of the crazy ex girlfriend while claiming to deconstruct it.

8. I wish Valencia was not such an obvious caricature. A hot yoga instructor who wears cocktail dresses to the supermarket and does not like humour.

9. I had a hard time making sense of Rebecca kissing Valencia. And that creepy song. Rebecca is not bi. She’s nowhere shown to be bi. She just has a girl-crush (what is that) along side the simmering rivalry. What. Is this middle school? Can we have some depiction in media of grown women with successful careers who are not insecure bundles of nerves. Can we have one leading lady the locus of whose self-worth is not a guy. Also, girl-crush/man-crush is a convenient term for heterosexual people refusing to acknowledge that their sexualities are not fixed. I might be alone in this, but it feels homophobic to me.

10. Are we supposed to laugh at Rebecca for her obsession with Josh? Why? Because it’s unfeminist? I didn’t find any evidence of that. (Within the narrative, it’s perceived by at least one female character as desperately romantic. Which is another conundrum because then is the show saying all women, even the seemingly non-neurotic ones, are one obsessive thought away from becoming crazy ex girlfriends?) Or because she is more educated, richer and more successful than him and it’s so hilarious that she fixated on such an average guy?

I would probably pick it up again at some point. But right now I would much rather watch an honest rom-com than this mysogynistic wolf in feminist clothing.

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moonlitdiary · 6 years

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@icouldifiwantedto Hi! Thank you for engaging. I am going to stick it out, yes. I think a lot of my frustration comes from what I expected the show to be about and what it actually is. Writing about my problems with it and the responses here have given me a new perspective on the show. I can't judge it for not being what I want it to be, but only for what it *is*. I watch very little TV so I lack perspective also about how much better the show is writing-wise than other popular shows; I simply have no idea. Well, in any case I am going to finish it and then revisit this.