OK Tumblr Geriatric Ward, let’s talk about your posture-

there are things you should be doing now to prevent yourself from starting to look like 🥀

Why does it matter? Future you would like to avoid the pain, limited motion, and fall risk that goes along with worsening posture.

What’s the focus?

1. Keep the flexibility in your spine

2. Stretch the muscles in the front

3. Strengthen the muscle in the back

Here are some simple things you can do daily while sitting and when you get up to go into the bathroom or the kitchen

Keep the flexibility by doing these repeated movements: 10 repetitions several times a day

The goal is to give yourself a double or triple chin. Keep your nose pointing forward, don’t let it tip up or down

Thoracic extension- use a chair with a seat back that comes up to the level of your shoulder blades. Try to bend back over the top of the chair without arching away from the seat back and without extending your neck. If the pressure from the top of the chair is uncomfortable you can place a towel there

Stretch the muscles in the front by using a door frame. This one will feel good afterwards

If this isn’t enough of a stretch you can do one side at a time. If you have the right arm up step forward with the right foot and turn slightly to the left. Then do it on the other side.

Strengthen the muscles in the back by squeezing your shoulder blades together for a count of 10 and then repeating 10 times. You can do this several times a day Hint: Don’t lift your shoulder blades up

There are lots more exercises for strengthening your back muscles but this is a good starting point and easy to do. I like doing it while driving

NOTE: I can do most of these with the cerebral palsy. In fact, a lot of these little exercises are automatically part of my physical therapy. My problem is I already have hyperlordosis, spine arthritis, and cervicogenic headache. These have helped me at least try to have a posture.

I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW GOOD THIS ADVICE IS

There should be a way to say “there’s a loneliness crisis” without it being interpreted as saying “women need to put out more.”

It’s a problem of people having no friends as well, not just no romantic partners. And I don’t even think it’s necessarily affecting men much worse than women? Lots of lonely friendless women out there too.

There IS a way to say that(you just did it), but the people the Mainstream News puts on to talk about it DONT Say That because that's not what they're there to say. What they're actl there to say is "Feminism is Bad" and "Women Shouldn't have Rights", because the people who own TV Networks are rich conservatives who hate women, and THAT is why they frame it as "women need to put out more".

Hear me out. What if there was an X-Files PC-98 game? 

@a-book-of-creatures Did- did we just get kleptoparisitized? (like an idiot?)

Seems to be :0

tumblrinas need to see this

the lovely woman who owned kabosu, the shiba known as doge, should get to take a point blank shot at elon musk with the doohickey that killed shinzo abe

I'm so fascinated by languages with different levels of formality built in because it immediately introduces such complex social dynamics. The social distance between people is palpable when it's built right into the language, in a way it's not really palpable in English.

So for example. I speak Spanish, and i was taught to address everyone formally unless specifically invited otherwise. People explained to me that "usted" was formal, for use with strangers, bosses, and other people you respect or are distant from, while "tú" is used most often between family and good friends.

That's pretty straightforward, but it gets interesting when you see people using "tú" as a form of address for flirting with strangers, or for picking a fight or intimidating someone. In other languages I've sometimes heard people switch to formal address with partners, friends or family to show when they are upset. That's just so interesting! You're indicating social and emotional space and hierarchy just in the words you choose to address the other person as "you"!!

Not to mention the "what form of address should I use for you...?" conversation which, idk how other people feel about it, but to me it always felt awkward as heck, like a DTR but with someone you're only just becoming comfortable with. "You can use tú with me" always felt... Weirdly intimate? Like, i am comfortable around you, i consider you a friend. Like what a vulnerable thing to say to a person. (That's probably also just a function of how i was strictly told to use formal address when i was learning. Maybe others don't feel so weird about it?)

And if you aren't going to have a conversation about it and you're just going to switch, how do you know when? If you switch too soon it might feel overly familiar and pushy but if you don't switch soon enough you might seem cold??? It's so interesting.

Anyway. As an English-speaking American (even if i can speak a bit of Spanish), i feel like i just don't have a sense for social distance and hierarchy, really, simply because there isn't really language for it in my mother tongue. The fact that others can be keenly aware of that all the time just because they have words to describe it blows my mind!

But you do have it! because American English has titles and also hierarchical treatment of last names (if your name is Jeremy Jefferson, there's a huge semantic weight difference between Jerry, Jeremy, Mr. Jeremy, and Mr. Jefferson, for example). English marks hierarchy and familiarity even if it doesn't do it in more grammatical terms. Think of being a kid and your parents yelling your full name across the house when you were in trouble.

I speak Icelandic. Icelandic doesn't have titles or last names or everyday use of a formal plural or any other obvious markers of formality and intimacy. Formality is still marked, just in non-grammatical lexical terms...but because it's not marked in ways I as a L1 English speaker recognize, it's harder for me to reproduce.

The reason you feel like this doesn't exist in English to the point where it exists in Spanish is because it's easier to spot for a L2 learner who has to think about categorizing the new language in a way that makes sense in the L1, and unless you have some more in depth information about language registers and intimacy marking and whatever it's easy to consider this as a novel phenomenon in the L2. But a lot of this semantic stuff is pretty universal, just marked in different ways.

THANK YOU. This is a misconception. Speaking from my experience of living in Japan and studying Japanese while being a native speaker of American English:

1. For folks who don't know, Japanese words/grammar change depending on formality, the genders of the speaker and listener, the age of the speaker and listener, etc.

2. But English words/grammar ALSO change depending on the above contexts described. It's just not formalized in grammar books. Consider the differences:

Etc. People will be like "it's wild that Japanese has different words for 'meal' depending on formality!! Gohan? Omeshi? Crazy!!!" But ENGLISH IS THE SAME WAY.

And this actually makes it harder for speakers of languages like Japanese to learn natural English, because they've been taught that there's no difference in tone between telling a waiter "I'd like a coffee" and "I want coffee." Since one of those feels easier to learn, they'll choose the option that makes them sound weirdly dickish to the waitstaff.

In short: English has levels of formality! Conveniently, saying otherwise fits the stereotypes of rigidly hierarchal East Asians, refined and sophisticated Europeans, and lawless/casual Americans and Australians—but us not recognizing these differences makes it harder for ESL speakers to learn real English

official linguistics post

Together Finally

theres bikes around the city you can rent but you have to use an app that needs your drivers license. theres buses that drive right to your destination, but if you dont have change you need the app. you can wash your car here if you sign into the app. you can go to the bathroom here you just have to unlock it with the app that needs your location on. you can order at this restaurant if you scan the code and download the app. im losing my freaking mind

you should allow yourself to compassionately examine the thoughts and feelings you are ashamed of having

why?

okay, bear with me here. say you get uncomfortable around drag queens. you don't know why--you don't want to be. you're afraid that if you open a dialogue with that feeling, you will become a Bad Person, so you shove it down and try to be cool.

but unfelt feelings don't just go away. they stay in your body as tension and pressure, and if they aren't processed naturally, your brain will find ways to justify releasing them through other outlets. ("I just don't like that person in particular, I just don't like Loud People, it's just what my religion tells me.")

but you're not going to get to the actual reason unless you can actually examine that initial discomfort with grace and curiosity.

so you think people should validate their own internalized homophobia or whatever?

I think they should validate the feelings their prejudices stem from, as a starting point. when you feel safe expressing your feelings (to yourself) you will have an easier time working through them (with yourself (or a trusted, impartial friend)).

if part of you is a kid who's still clinging to regressive talking points because it helped them survive growing up, and you're the only person available to teach and nurture that kid, are you really going to smack them around and tell them to just shut up, because you said so, that's why?

to validate a feeling isn't to give yourself a carte blanche to act on it. it's merely the act of understanding. like, "hey kid, given the way you were raised, it makes perfect sense that you get nervous around acts of fearless self-expression." and then you follow that up with: "can you try and believe just a little that it's okay for these people to live their lives as their happiest selves? that it's safe for us to do that too?"

but prejudice is bad! I would never offer that kind of compassion to someone else having those thoughts!

right now we're not talking about other people. the important thing is that you are the person best situated to give yourself this understanding, so that your brain can learn new, appropriate safety protocols.

that said, prejudice is a universal human experience, like fear of the unknown and desire for stability--feelings which can also foster intolerance and hate. you and everyone you know are going to experience these things, and it's no use pretending we can eliminate them if we just ignore them real hard.

thoughts and feelings are neutral entities. a thought is not a transitive action, nor a reflection of your moral character--regardless of how uncomfortable you feel. it's okay to be uncomfortable.

however, denying the existence of an emotion, as discussed above, can end with it coming out in unexpected, sometimes harmful ways.

but if people have shameful feelings without confessing them and apologizing, that makes them deceitful lying liars!!!

who are you, the catholic church?

Y'all this is a real disorder.

Also see: symptoms of Complex PTSD and moral Scrupulosity from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (especially the Pure Obsession variant). Living with debilitating shame is NOT normal and it's usually a result of untreated anxiety from trauma or abuse.

I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon once sent me to a supercut of Lion King, Lion King 1 1/2, and Lion King II, the main edit being that the scenes of Lion King and Lion King 1 1/2 were interspersed so that they happened in the order they actually happened.

stumbleupon not existing anymore can be directly traced to a dramatic decline in my mental health, I could do a thesis on it.

bestie stumbleupon very much still exists its just called cloudhiker now. i use it all the time.

mini compilation of suggestions from the replies:

The Bored Button - "Press the Bored Button and be bored no more."

The Useless Web

Cloudhiker - "Discover the most interesting, weird and awesome websites of the Internet" (not really a rebrand, it's a different person running it but they have the same intention in mind)

Astronaut.io - "These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you)."

Marginalia - "This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed."

Full Newsletter from Global Tetrahedron Here