Polish movie poster for Goncharov by Waldemar Świerzy. Due to delayed release behind the Iron Curtain, the film started screening year later in 1974, which is also the year this poster was made. A classic example of Polish School of Posters.

Let’s go do fun outdoor winter activities and take vitamin d supplements and sign up for yoga class and go on antidepressants and buy a SAD lamp and stretch daily! Follow me everyone!! *slips on black ice and falls face first onto the ground and the snow piles up on my unmoving body*

One thing that worries me about the use of AI is whether or not it can worsen people's dementia and alzheimer's in the future. When my grandmother was first diagnosed, we got her math activity books. Now, my grandmother never had a formal education, but we did our best to keep her sharp, get her to do math and writing activity books, sudokus, playing board games that required some level of strategizing with her. Her family is prone to alzheimer's and dementia (both her siblings had it and deteriorated very very very quickly, which yeah, scares the shit out of me being her granddaughter) but she was the one whose mind lasted the longest, she only passed away two years ago, at 88, ten whole years after her initial diagnosis and sure, she had forgotten things, recipes and where she put her glasses and appointments, but she never forgot any of us, ten whole years in, she still remembered us. Now, this may have been luck, but doctors always said the constant mental work + companionship + medicine helped her a lot. So I'm thinking, these people who are now relying on AI for everything, from email-writing to thinking what's for dinner to casual conversations, I've even seen people rely on it to calculate what time they should leave their house if they need to be at a place at a specific time and their commute lasts X number of minutes. As if that's not... the simplest math operation possible? You shouldn't even need a calculator for that!!! Idk I don't know how long it'll take us to see the effects of this + exposure to brain-rotting short form content that is completely meaningless + people addicted to right-wing conspiracy style media. Idk I'm very worried. Please, read, read complicated books! Take up a book on philosophy and try to decipher it and make your own opinions on it, please buy a maths activity book and relearn how to do math, please get a hobby that involves lots of thinking and concentrating. PLEASE!!!

As a neurologist, I’ll give you the pretty name for it: cognitive reserve.

The way I explain it to my patients is that our neurons don’t regenerate. They make connections with each other and that’s it. If you don’t use your brain, they make fewer connections and, if one of them dies, you’re gonna miss it, because that was the only one that knew how to do X. Now, if each one of them has many, many connections, you won’t notice the difference when one of them dies. The others pick up the slack.

As of 2024, 45% of dementia risk factors are modifiable. Relevant to this conversation, 5% for less education and 5% for social isolation.

We absolutely are going to see the reflection of this, but it’s gonna take decades and it’ll be too late. So, for the love of your brain, pretend that it’s a muscle and make it work. People complain about “when am I ever gonna use this maths formula in my life?” You’re not. You’re teaching your brain to think logically. Those sinapses will be there for when you need to figure out your week’s schedule. English classes taught me how to interpret data and how to convey it in this text so it’s clear and you understand what I’m saying, not because I needed to justify why the curtain is blue.

Make your brain know how to do different things. Logic games, puzzles, taking care of a garden even if small, planning a church’s event or birthday, learn a new instrument, learn a few words in another language, look at a calendar every day, do some manual labor if possible. Do not, I repeat, do not let your brain get rid of sinapses by letting AI do everything. Your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy — do you really think it’s going to maintain connexions that aren’t in use?

Most cases of Alzheimer’s are sporadic, meaning no family history. Family history of a first-degree relative with Alzheimer’s starting before they were 80yo increases your risk in 2-3x on average.

TLDR: Yes. From the knowledge we have today, AI will increase the number and severity of dementia cases.

Brasil que no entiende el español

couple’s t-shirt idea

at this time of year you might be tempted to create new rules for yourself, if you do, make sure that they are designed to serve you, not to punish yourself for imperfection.

Tolkien was ahead of his time

i'm more and more starting to believe the statement: "the reason men do not think women were hurt in the same ways they were, is they don't see those women as human because they were not attractive to them." the girl who was tormented by other students doesn't exist because she didn't wear cute clothes and makeup, she was awkward, she was invisible. but! there's many girls like her! especially if autistic and in public school. she will be reminded her existence is wrong until she learns to be a woman properly in her mid 20s

but I really only think about this stuff when i'm reminded of it--i've kind of moved past grade school, unlike some of you evidently

Holding her pet snowball

one observation someone made about class divides in social dynamics was the demonization of confidence among lower classes*, especially starting from a young age. it's really quite insidious because confidence is the one thing that can get you ahead in life regardless of where you start--even if people see you as audacious (as i've been called on here), they subconsciously accept there must be some valid reason you seem to think so highly of yourself, or at the very least, know it's not worth changing your mind. this is why the "personality hire" type of person exists. anyway baller life hacks

*i've observed this in my personal life even in the school system. on a systemic level it is meant to keep you down, on a personal level it is meant to keep you safe--fighting for your own dignity is brutally punished if you are poor and/or marginalized in other areas.

anyway, YOU 🫵 start microdosing on narcissism now. especially around people of a higher status. it's the only way to get into heaven

sibling relationships are so strange... like i love you. you will never understand me in a way that matters. we are the same person in drastically different ways. we are sewn together. we don't talk. we are attached at the hip. you wish i was never born. can i call you. let's eat together. i forgive you. etc

i don't have enough photos of you on my phone to make one your contact picture. we got the same tattoo completely by coincidence. why do you always get to be mario. i love the meals you cook. we live in different universes. you can stay at my house if you need. we have never been friends. you are more important to me than anyone on this earth

I love animation history and one of the things that always baffled me was how did animators draw the cars in 101 Dalmatians before the advent of computer graphics?

Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isn’t kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.

Even as early as the mid 80’s Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).

But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?

The answer is so simple I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner:

They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines 🤣

That was the trick. They’re not actually 2D animated, they’re stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.

That’s how they did it! Isn’t that amazing? It’s such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.

I can't be the first to make this connection

y'all slept on the first chart but I will make the world see my vision

...Can I add this

i’m obsessed with how every single person can be stupid in their own special way and infinitely smart in another. simultaneously