jurassic park but it's tiny elephants and nothing goes wrong 🥺

same score but played entirely on kazoos

they actually have that for tik tok videos

@elodieunderglass just cuz

it's lovely of you to think of me, thank you!

My friend asked how I learned to cook and the answer is I didn't. I know like 5 things about cooking and they are:

If anyone wants to add, please do

None of these are wrong.

I reblogged this earlier but I forgot to add. Cooking: use approximate ingredients

Baking: USE EXACT MEASUREMENTS

My mother always taught me not to bother with exact measurements when cooking.

Baking though? Boy you're measuring that to the exact gram.

I was actually just up in Ohio for the solar eclipse, and did you know, I'd never seen Spring before?

I thought I had, because down here in Florida we do get some flowers and nice green leaves as the weather shifts from cool to hot, but the trees are never bare and the flowers just blend in with the rest of the trees and in comparison this Actual Spring was some sort of magical wonderland, I swear to god, I've never seen anything like it

Apple blossoms???? are so pretty???????? the subtle changes of the colors, and they take up the whole tree and they're so damn beautiful????????????????? I had never seen them before, we don't have any apple trees down here at all, but now they might be my favorite flower

I'm familiar with cherry blossoms- we do have some cherry trees- but not like this. This tree was entirely pink and stood out so much! No leaves or anything on the trees, just flowers everywhere!!! I see why people like spring and cherry blossoms so much, I think.

And idek what these are but LOOK at that!!!!!!! Life and color!!!! Spring!!!!

So yeah. I went to Ohio and I thought it was beautiful and i wanted to share that with you. Your state is wonderful!!!

When I used to take the train to and from Aberdeen multiple times a year, on the notably picturesque East Coast Line, I remember once staring out the window and literally thinking, in a bored tone "oh look, another unparalleled scene of natural beauty 🙄". It was my brain kicking me in the leg and going "hey! familiarity is making you complacent! you are building boredom out of beauty, idiot!"

mycology, man...

i took my friend to Hocking Hills state park yesterday and on our hike I talked all about the (now retired) park naturalist who mentored me years ago, along with the professor who also mentored me and how they got me my first job in my field after college, like I went on and on about my memories of them and the time I spent with them in the park, and then we got to a cave and they were both inside. I hadn’t seen either of then since I moved away seven years ago and then I went back to the state park for the first time since and they were just there. in a cave. they went to the cave together. one of them saw me and said “oh hi! what are you doing here?” like hey fancy us all being here in this cave together huh.

i can’t express how much this felt like a video game cutscene encounter. i established the lore for two hours about these specific two Guys and then they appeared, like, in their map.

it was this professor btw

executive dysfunction is telling yourself for two and a half hours that you need to shower bc you smell like your workplace and you absolutely Cannot do Anything Else until you shower, doing Any Other Thing before showering is illegal!!! but you still haven’t for some reason??? you’ve just been sitting on your bed in a towel scrolling tumblr for 2+ hours thinking “I need to shower right now immediately” and growing increasingly frustrated that you are still not clean and you haven’t eaten or done your laundry either

ok actually no I’m reblogging this because a) I am clean now (and I smell amazing, thank you), and b) I had a heckin Realize and I wanted to share it with y’all in the hopes it’ll help someone else with a brain like mine.

I figured something out about myself a long time ago– it’s only just now occurred to me that I was in fact solving a problem caused by executive dysfunction, and I haven’t been implementing this solution lately because my brain went “that’s a relatively new term to me and therefore a Different problem that requires a Different solution”. thanks a lot, brain.

anyway, long long ago, before I knew these fancy schmancy Official words, the problem, as I phrased it to myself, was such: 

sometimes I get Stuck. I was doing something, or on my way to doing something, and then… I just. got stuck.

“Stuck” looks like refreshing my feed or dashboard repeatedly. or it looks like staring at a spot on the wall. or chewing my fingernails. or picking at a stubborn sticker. all the while, my brain drifts through various unrelated topics I wouldn’t be able to recall if asked. sometimes I can get Stuck for hours before realizing I am Stuck. sometimes I get so Stuck that I go to bed that way (feeling especially bad for being unproductive) and I have to just reset everything by sleeping.

one day I asked myself, “why is this happening? why am I stuck, right now, at this moment in time?” the answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple: I was trying to make a decision, and I got distracted. I haven’t moved forward because I haven’t answered that one question or made up my mind.

let me rephrase this in terms of executive dysfunction: many people have expressed that it feels like knowing you need to do a thing but not feeling “ready” to do it. many with ADHD may also be familiar with the feeling of needing things to be “just so” before you embark on a task- you need your setup to look a certain way, or you need to set a timer, or have the right music playing, etc.

when I get Stuck it’s often because I got lost somewhere in that setting-up process, and my brain took the opportunity to nyoom off into Distraction Town.

getting myself Unstuck is solved, 95% of the time, by tracing my steps back to the original decision I was trying to make- often something small and inane- and then troubleshooting from there. (out loud! verbal processing is totally punk.) 

so!!! in the case of my first post, where I hadn’t showered for 2 hours? turns out I had been trying to decide what music to listen to in the shower. (another hack: my chances of getting Stuck while showering decrease by 75% if I have music playing to help me keep track of time.) I couldn’t immediately make up my mind, got lost in thought, got distracted, and drifted. once I stopped and asked- “why am I stuck?”-  then I remembered- “oh yeah! I wanted to listen to music”-  and then decided- “I want to listen to Daft Punk’s Discovery album”- I was finally heckin able to shower. and also eat, and also throw my clothes in the dryer.

and may I add I only zoned out once, during the slow part of “One More Time.” :P

I’m not saying this is a foolproof method. sometimes I don’t have a reason for being stuck, and that’s okay! I’m also not saying this is how every adhd brain works. it’s just how my brain works, and I’m sure there’s at least a few who can relate. for those few, I hope this helps!!

a lot of people are reblogging the original post without the update and leaving frustrated comments and that makes me sad! if I can find ways to hack my brain than so can you! executive dysfunction is a real and frustrating challenge, but don’t buy the lie that there’s no way to work with it or around it!!!

!!!!

One of the best things I learned was to just go “fuck it, let’s do this” whenever I thought of doing something. No “I have to, I should” just - there is nothing stopping me now and I have nothing to look forward to by doing nothing.

It didn’t have to be everything. Just a small bit that made it easier to do more later was fine to like opening a book to a certain page or putting something in a reachable place. Or perhaps I really could just put on a youtube video and do the dishes.

Yeah it's not perfect but I've deffo sometimes tackled stuff like this with the phrase "don't think, do". As in, I need to leave the house to do something. I am not doing that. I want to but I'm Not Doing It. I keep thinking about the fact I need to do it, telling myself to do it, but I'm not.

Sometimes the solution is to Not Think. Telling myself to do it isn't working so I try not to think about it, think about something else, anything else and move. I am purposefully not thinking about how I need to leave the house while I grab my bag, put on my shoes, walk out the door.

Works for cleaning too. House is a mess, where to start? Nope. Grab a bag, start picking up any rubbish around the place, just like, we're not planning, we're not thinking about this, we're just picking up some bits and bobs and seeing where it takes us. Which is way more effective in the long run I find.

When I was a kid I kept failing classes because I'd lose my homework. I'd finish it, but between the dining room table and the classroom it would just walk away. Sometimes it ended up in my backpack, sometimes it didn't; sometimes I finished the homework at school and it got home in my backpack but wasn't there the next day.

To attempt to address this, my parents got me a neon orange folder to put in my backpack; it was my homework folder, all homework was to go into that folder and that folder only, and it was to only come out of that folder when it was being worked on. I was to put homework in the homework folder as soon as it was assigned and if I'd worked on it, put it back in the folder as soon as it was finished. The logic here was that using the folder was supposed to be automatic, and you wanted a bright color so it wouldn't get lost in the depths of a backpack.

I think I lost about eight of those before my parents stopped buying orange folders.

So it was very frustrating to search "how to be organized at work as an adult with ADHD" only to get a list that said "set alarms and write things down and try to make friends with a more organized person" which was immediately followed by tips to help your ADHD child stay organized and the one right at the top was to put their homework in a bright folder so they couldn't lose it.

If you have been harmed by the ADHD Tips Industrial Complex you may be entitled to a packet of fun-dip and a cactus cooler as consolation for losing your homework folder again.

SAME.

I love you, hook where my car keys live. I love you, remote control organizer where my meds go. I love you, tiny pair of scissors in a magnetic sheath that looks like a cat stuck on my range hood.

Someone moved my magnetic box opener from the range hood to the fridge and I couldn't find it for weeks.

I normally keep a bottle of olive oil with a pour spout next to a bottle of avocado oil with a pour spout in a rack mounted to the wall in the kitchen but recently large bastard put all the bottles on the counter into the rack.

What this meant is that I heated up my frying pan to make lunch last thursday and poured a shot of cherry torani syrup onto cast iron to make the worst surprise candy in the world.

The cherry syrup is no longer allowed to live in the kitchen lest it be confused with olive oil again. I'm sure that I'll forget I have it in a week, but it's worth it if I don't almost set my house on fire with surprise boiling sugar.

Somewhat related but one thing I've found is that "obvious" doesn't work for me, my brain can ignore anything if it wants to. Y'know what works? Funny or ridiculous.

A post-it on the door saying "Lunch" can be as neon-coloured as it likes, but I'm not going to see that. It's not interesting, it's not engaging, I'm not remembering to take the lunch I made last night with me.

A bit of paper saying "Take your fucking lunch, idiot!" though? Well, I find that amusing. I will see it and go "hehe, idiot", followed by "wait, shit, my lunch!" every single day. And I'd actually take my lunch to work instead of leaving it in the fridge.

Me: “The food webs we try to teach children and the public are too simple to get the point across. Why do they never bother to show the more intricate relationships between specific species? It can’t be that hard to represent with basic teaching tools... I’ll make the thing!”

The thing:

Me: “....I get it now.”

I have now had several teachers ask me if they can use this image in a class presentation. 

Uh oh! You are now a were-animal! This means you become a human-sized animal hybrid with uncontrollable bloodlust every night!

Spin this wheel to get your species

Mandrill. So, uh, that seems pretty bad for everyone involved.

the idea of protists is really funny. Ah yes, the kingdoms of life: Animals, Plants, Fungi, and Don't worry about it:)

The most popular browsers in different countries in 2012 and 2022.

by @theworldmaps_

Nope! When Chrome first came to popularity, people switched over to it cause it was “faster” (turns out, it just eats through your device’s CPU) but since then Firefox has upped its game in a major way. Chrome just doesn’t measure up anymore. Plus, nowadays Chrome is just a data harvester designed to show hyper targeted ads - so even if Firefox ain’t for you, it’s still worth ditching Google for a different browser.

Legit though I switched to Firefox and it’s so so so much better

i’m gonna keep reblogging this ad infinitum so yall might as well convert now

I converted my entire work office to Firefox.

when i finally bit the bullet it was super easy and took literally 2 minutes

Like eight years ago or summat I switched from Firefox to Chrome because Firefox had been having issues with being Slow As Balls and Chrome was noticeably faster.

Two (?) years ago I switched back to Firefox. I'd been leery of doing so, due to the previous "it slows down my entire computer if I open more than 7 tabs" issue but I was assured they'd fixed that. And they had. Firefox works great again.

Switch to Firefox, it's good.

what is THE worst thing you've ever drank. all liquids acceptable. please tell me what it was, bonus points for why

Hey whoa hi. Hello. I am looking directly into your ear canal. What do you mean you drank a tube of virus concentrate.

So, I was working in a lab, right? My job in the lab was preparing a pure, concentrated enough sample of virus. This is tricky since, y'know, viruses require hosts to replicate, but you then need to get the host cells (and the pieces of the host cells that died!) out of the sample while still keeping the viruses. Once I'd finished and the samples had been sent to the database for analysis as well as a second one sent to be frozen for future reference, there was still some left over that needed to be disposed of.

I, knowing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, waited carefully for the lab director to be deep in conversation with someone else on the other side of the laboratory. And then I took my chance.

Test tubes, as it turns out, are really bad as shot glasses. Their shape turns any liquid inside into a stream, so you really can't knock it back quickly - it takes a couple seconds. Additionally, the best way I can describe the taste of virus concentrate was "sterile rot". A very unique kind of bad! Made worse by the test tube's inefficiency as a shot glass.

(by the way we were studying bacteriophages, not animal viruses. these viruses are too specialized on attacking prokaryotes to even recognize our cells as targets at all, according to studies.)

(but also like. if the viruses managed to successfully switch hosts and killed me with a violent infection, itd still be worth it.)

(for science.)

You have a fitting blog title

this post is getting 50k easy

This WOULD be how humanity would go out though tbh

The fun thing is that like, realistically this should be safe, because y'know, you're not a bacterium, and I'm pretty sure bacteriophages aren't really known to jump from bacteria or archaea to eukaryotes?

However, depending on the host species, if the phage can survive a dip in the Stomach Acid Splash Pool and if the host makes up a component of your gut microbiota, I can see this giving you a severe case of the shits? Like, clean you right the fuck out.

The digestive tract really doesn't like it when you selectively obliterate a whole species in the community like that, which is a likely outcome of flooding the system with a shit-ton of concentrated killing agents...

@whyamiherewhosummonedme I know fuck all about virology tbh, but 1: congrats on the species discovery (and rampant disregard for lab protocol) and 2: does this sound at all right?

Who else up thinking about bjj black belt craig jones saying You can give anyone steroids. Despite our best efforts we are yet to give anyone autism.