I’m a Yeti Rambler devotee. The only thing I don’t like about it is how heavy it is.

And it’s not that the initial experiences or replays are traumatic, but they’re unpleasant. Like a lighter version of nails on chalkboard.

Learning about hyperphantasia is what’s blowing my mind. My experience is pretty close to what that seems to be. (I can’t say I recommend it, now that I know this is not something everyone has to deal with.)

But I didn’t know that THAT was also unusual. That the extent of visual and auditory replay, which feels uncontrollable, is not common. I thought this afflicted everyone and I was just weak or something, to find it upsetting. But maybe it’s actually upsetting.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I had known about aphantasia, and found it interesting that a portion of the population just did not have mental images. I am highly visual and see structures in my brain and fit things into them: I work in data and I think that’s why I’m good at it.

Imagine the worst thing you ever saw, even if it was fictional, even if it was just in your mind’s eye, just appeared, unbidden, and replayed, and upset you all over again, and you couldn’t get rid of it. (This is not ptsd, let’s be clear, but it’s not nothing, either.)

Aww I’d do the same for half the price. These robots are taking our jerbs!

You mean… Marissa Mayer?

“Omg I love that you’ve specifically put sunscreen on your knuckles to keep them all white while you drive thru unanticipated snow, uphill!”

To say nothing of all the old people who can’t get past a terminal command

Thank you for reminding me about The Wager, I’d forgotten about that one! David Grann is such a great writer. I second a lot of the book recommendations above, and have one more to add: Over the Edge of the World, Laurence Bergreen’s book about Magellan.

I need to do what I can to not doomscroll. But should I doomscroll, I need to stop when I come across one of your posts, because the probability of coming across something better/more positive in a the next five minutes (because it’s always “but just for like a few minutes”) is very very low. ❤️

Context free I thought this was just a really dark take on the fires in LA and was simultaneously affronted but also grudgingly having to concede the point

Global warming ahem climate change was JUST SAYING that it would be so much easier to fuck things up if there were holes for ventilation.

Oh are you referring to “the yutes”?

Car brain is way more pervasive than previously thought: at a car free cycling event in LA called Ciclavia, as a person walking though a crowded intersection where all cyclists were supposed to dismount and walk, I got fucking honked and yelled at for being in the way by a 17 year old girl