trying to study

Dream blunt rotation

Losing my goddamn fucking mind over how Batman 1966 gave Catwoman a sidekick in one episode and named her Pussycat.

that’s the legendary Jewish lesbian singer Lesley Gore btw, so I have an inkling they knew what they were doing

Worm dreams…

@softest-punk ‘s amazing writing was the inspiration behind this, ( the text here is from the fic) !please go read their work it is divineee!

Aaaaah omg this is SUCH a delight???!!! The style is gorgeous and the RAIN holy shit. The black and yellow Bentley!! I may cry 😭

oh okay. heart steps right out of my chest and falls down the stairs

The Old Place, Anne-Marie Miéville / Jean-Luc Godard (1999)

Todays beanie of the day is Pudgy the Bear

Released in: 1993 • Sells for: roughly $20

It's kind of amazing how universal the physical therapist (and biomechanics-based trainer) community opinion is on "don't stretch your hamstrings". This is in contrast to most of my sports coaches and PE instructors, who had us do hamstring stretches constantly.

The best explanation I've seen for "don't stretch your hamstrings" is that "your hamstrings are tight" is usually a symptom of something else, usually weak (or inactive) glutes, but sometimes also weak hamstrings. They can also be a result of tight quads (which probably shouldn't be stretched either). Also, a lot of folks who go to stretch their hamstrings end up stretching their ligaments (bad) or sciatic nerve (bad, and also hurts like hell). The latter is why hamstring stretches were always so miserable to me; I wasn't even stretching them! In general, if stretching [your hamstrings, among others] really hurts, you might be doing a nerve stretch instead and you should stop doing that.

Much of the PT community seems pretty resistant to passive stretching. They'll support active stretching, where you resist the stretch at every point along its range. That seems to allow the muscle to relax by encouraging it to fire first and then relax. (And it seems to work for me.) But when a muscle is tight or sore, it tends to be that the tightness and soreness are a result of something else working incorrectly (obvious exception for "this muscle is sore because I worked it really hard yesterday").

huh, interesting.  I’ve always found hamstring stretches deeply uncomfortable...

Can confirm that for horses the problem is usually Something Else and you won’t get anywhere aggravating whatever is obviously symptomatic. Horses are the kings of stiff necks being caused by hip problems and etc.

Does "don't stretch your hamstrings" apply to like...basic flexibility training? I wasn't thinking of it as "stretching my hamstrings" I've just been trying to touch my toes...

Eventually you are going to have to stretch something if you want to get really flexible. But for the majority of things you’re likely to do in your life, unless it is certain martial arts, gymnastics, and things that are like gymnastics (e.g., figure skating), you really don’t have to do a lot of “flexibility training” unless you have something specifically wrong. (For me, I do ankle joint flexibility stuff because I have an actual structural limitation there and it is easier to mess up my knees).

For people who are trying to touch their toes, the hamstrings are not really the limiting thing. (If they’re locked up, it’s because something else is kinda screwed up.) But for a lot of folks who have trouble touching their toes, the limiting thing is nerve tension. For me, that’s where I bend over and suddenly my calves get this sharp pain that’s sort of localized everywhere. And the nerve tension is very rarely a problem of the hamstrings. Usually, it’s because the sciatic nerve is being squeezed by glute muscles which are tight and therefore weak. This is the sciatic nerve. It runs down the back your leg to your toes. For me, it’s why my “hamstring” stretches suddenly go from “fine” to “my entire leg hurts at the same time”

But that’s not the complete picture.  If you look where it comes out of the pelvis, you get this delightful design problem:

The nerve comes out and has to thread between several of the deeper gluteal muscles. This means that tightness there can cause that nerve to “catch” and get stretched and irritated when you bend down. Note that when a muscle is “tight”, that may actually be literally true; the muscle fibers are all gripping each other and creating a hard bundle (this may actually feel harder to the touch). Muscles are happier when they’re not gripping each other (hurts less). But also, when muscles are “squishy” they’re less able to grab onto the nerve. Imagine trying to grab onto something with a bundle of hard spaghetti vs a bundle of cooked spaghetti.

For a lot of people, and me very much included, the tightness and irritation of the glute then strongly limits how much that nerve is able to slide, and therefore the ultimate bending range of your leg. And when you stretch beyond that, you’re just yanking at that poor nerve.

So: should you stretch the glute muscles to get them to relax? Probably not that either. They’re probably tight because you sit all day and have gotten weak, so you’re going to have way better luck doing strength training for them (i.e., things like “bridges” and “bird dogs” and no-weight squats, vs serious strength training, although if you’re doing that, it’ll also help). Also, working things on the other side, and basic core work (planks, but not sit-ups).

In summary: inability to touch your toes is very often a result of basically everything other than “my calves and hamstrings are tight”. In the next post, I’m going to repost a thing from a different thread about a better way to do a hamstring stretch.

A better leg flexibility stretch:

1) Stop doing any hamstring stretch-analogues with your knees straight. You can get as much benefit with them bent, without screwing up your joints.

2) Do the hamstring stretch with your knee bent at right angles up on a chair. Slowly straighten out your leg.  You should feel a stretch toward the meat of your hamstring.  It’ll probably be a bit uncomfortable (because tightness) but not miserable.  If this is the case, then you’ve probably been stretching the sciatic nerve instead. When you stretched before and pointed your toes, did you get shooting pain up and down your leg? Same.

Here’s a better hamstring “stretch” that’s an active engagement exercise

This one is great because it not only relaxes everything, it also gives you strengthening for the glutes and inner leg muscles, which is good long-term.

Another thing that is incredibly stupid and I hate that it works, but it really works. There is a fascial tissue (bundle of fibers) chain that runs from the bottom of your feet, across the back of your legs, up your back, and over the top of your head. As a result, there are two additional things that can get you added toe-touching flexibility:

If you do a before and after comparison, you end up with a “holy crap, why the hell did that work” situation. I use it as a party trick.

Horse behavior.

julia louis-dreyfus on the late show with david letterman, 1994

magic system where “dark magic” and “light magic” are literal terms - dark magic consumes photons, making an area around the spell visibly darker, sometimes to an Extreme extent, and light magic releases photons.

because of this most dark mages tend to work in very brightly-lit areas (either artificial light or outside in the daytime) to fuel their spells and wear and use lightly coloured clothes and tools so that they’re easier to see in the dimness their spells create, whereas light mages wear heavy, sometimes leaden robes (depending on the work being done) and the magical equivalent of welding masks to protect themselves from what can be an extreme amount of light, and sometimes other kinds of electromagnet radiation!

needless to say this is incredibly confusing for anyone unfamiliar with the culture

due to the fact that both magics react with basically all of the electromagnetic spectrum - not just the visible light part of it - dark magic is enormously useful for radiation protection (uv-eating spellwork as sunscreen, anyone?), but also has the slightly uncomfortable effect of eating infared as well - which does have the effect of making areas around powerful or prolonged dark magic uncomfortably chilly.

nothing that a nice fur coat or enchanted light-magic IR-emitting lamps can't fix!

okay this is some truly genius world-building

i understand you guys now. like i get it

I feel like this is even better when you know that the context is that they've just seem three spectral hags emerge from the fog to recite a prophecy of doom that mentions Captain Kirk by name.

I reread the Odyssey today and my copy has a bunch of notes from a previous reader. These are some of my favorites

Okay y’all wanted some more so here are some others that caught my attention

we are in a media literacy crisis

friendly reminder that characters don't need to be saints to be entertaining. and telling a story does not mean endorsement. art does not need to be all about morally good people.

IDK if this was meant as hyperbole but it's literally true:

Adult literacy is low.

Child literacy is low.

Information literacy has shifted dramatically in the last decade, but reputable information sources like research journals and factual news reporting have been unable to keep pace.

We are genuinely in a crisis of media literacy, with ever fewer genuinely factual resources available in the style and language used by contemporary audiences.

It may sound condescending, but we genuinely need to remind people, or worse, explain to them for the first time that art is not evidence of real world behaviour.

So, thank you, for this reminder. Genuinely.

You're correct:

Art does not need to feature exclusively morally pure characters. Art is not proof of the creator's secret, violent desires.

Torrent seeding at 4.3Mbps... But would it still go that fast if they knew I had a belly ring..? Fuck.. 🫦 everyone likes a bad girl until they meet one.