my friends grep and bomp

grep and bomp are aquatic mites. as larvae they are parasites on semi-aquatic insects like mosquitos, which they ride around on to reach new ponds. as adults they are predators of small insects. very funny and silly guys, not very popular subjects in the bug world but I'm not sure why

@clannfearrunt it's not exactly ya boi but it's close

Small observation based on my own friend group

Koki Tsujimoto — Auspicious Blue and White Whale (mineral pigments on japanese paper mounted on wood panel, 2022)

Favorite thing ever in Dunmeshi is one of the Dragons that Thistle summons being obsessed with a spoon

i often think of my friend who lives in a lighthouse and the time we were having lunch together and he said he had some new friends over for a movie night and I asked what they watched and he grimaced and said “the lighthouse” and I said “wow. a bold choice to watch with new friends” and he said “I just thought it would be fun since, you know. And well. None of us knew what it was about.”

cannot imagine what that was like for everyone.

imagine a guy you only kind of know invites you over to his lighthouse and he says “let’s watch the lighthouse” and you say okay : ) and then he shows you That. he’s the funniest person alive and he didn’t even mean it

more pokemon netsuke

The whole "the brain isn't fully mature until age 25" bit is actually a fairly impressive bit of psuedoscience for how incredibly stupid the way it misinterprets the data it's based on is.

Okay, so: there's a part of the human brain called the "prefrontal cortex" which is, among other things, responsible for executive function and impulse control. Like most parts of the brain, it undergoes active "rewiring" over time (i.e., pruning unused neural connections and establishing new ones), and in the case of the prefrontal cortex in particular, this rewiring sharply accelerates during puberty.

Because the pace of rewiring in the prefrontal cortex is linked to specific developmental milestones, it was hypothesised that it would slow down and eventually stop in adulthood. However, the process can't be directly observed; the only way to tell how much neural rewiring is taking place in a particular part of the brain is to compare multiple brain scans of the same individual performed over a period of time.

Thus, something called a "longitudinal study" was commissioned: the same individuals would undergo regular brain scans over a period of mayn years, beginning in early childhood, so that their prefrontal development could accurately be tracked.

The longitudinal study was originally planned to follow its subjects up to age 21. However, when the predicted cessation of prefrontal rewiring was not observed by age 21, additional funding was obtained, and the study period was extended to age 25. The predicted cessation of prefrontal development wasn't observed by age 25, either, at which point the study was terminated.

When the mainstream press got hold of these results, the conclusion that prefrontal rewiring continues at least until age 25 was reported as prefrontal development finishing at age 25. Critically, this is the exact opposite of what the study actually concluded. The study was unable to identify a stopping point for prefrontal development because no such stopping point was observed for any subject during the study period. The only significance of the age 25 is that no subjects were tracked beyond this age because the study ran out of funding!

I gets me when people try to argue against the neuroscience-proves-everybody-under-25-is-a-child talking point by claiming that it's merely an average, or that prefrontal development doesn't tell the whole story. Like, no, it's not an average – it's just bullshit. There's no evidence that the cited phenomenon exists at all; if there is an age where prefrontal rewiring levels off and stops (and it's not clear that there is), we don't know what age that is; we merely know that it must be older than 25.

Reblog to let your followers know that despite your current obsession your previous obsessions still exist and are simply lying dormant until they awaken and strike again

What I love about Japanese

Sometimes it’s frustrating. I’m learning it because I love anime and want to be able to engage with the culture, but all the shounen I-belive-in-my-friends inspiration can’t help you when you’re faced with a list of 1000 kanji to learn before you’re at the reading level of a five-year-old. Sometimes I wish I’d picked a language with a writing system that made sense. 

But then once in a while something comes along that makes it all worth it. 

Now this. This is the kanji for ability.

It’s a nice enough kanji, has some radicals of its own but isn’t too full of itself. Learning all about it isn’t too important, what you need to know is that this is the character for ability. 

Now. 

This. 

This here is the kanji for bear. As in the animal, not the verb.

That’s right. According to the Japanese language, a bear is ability 

ON LEGS

But then once in a

while something comes along that

makes it all worth it.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Hundreds of people get stung by dogs every year

Dog sting awareness day

Was looking for prom outfits at the Savers; this is my prom outfit from the Savers.

Frog-legged leaf beetle, Sagra buqueti, Chrysomelidae

Photos by Frank Deschandol // Instagram

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

If we’re being honest, most of us study our favourite character less like an entomologist studies a bug and more like an astronomer studies a distant star: drawing complicated inferences from extremely limited data, then getting tetchy about it when somebody else draws incompatible but equally well-supported inferences from the same data because it’s the fucking principle of the thing.