Just Read About The Study That Looked Into The Connection Between The Sound Resonance Of Human-marked

Just read about the study that looked into the connection between the sound resonance of human-marked caves and the location of cave paintings. They discovered that the cave paintings were most commonly located in the areas with the clearest resonance, the best acoustics. The ideal places to sing. Scientist are bound by a duty to commit to facts, to stick with what is known and can be known. They aren't allowed to just wildly speculate, jump to conclusions, or romanticise the connections they make. But I am not a man of science and I can say whatever I want.

We called them "cavemen" at first, when we knew even less of them than what we do now. They were hunter-gatherers, nomadic people who wouldn't have stayed in one place for long, not even a place as good as a cave. A cave is a maw full of blackness, cold and dark, unless you bring fire. They brought fire with them, that we know. They painted the walls in light of torches, beasts that appear to move in the flickering light. They painted the walls in places where one could best sing.

A cave is a place of darkness, unless you bring fire. And quiet - perhaps save for the bats - unless you bring your voice. What did they sing about? The same songs every year, that one sings that time of year When We Return To The Cave, or new ones made up on the spot? Were they sacred? They must have been. One does not go into an unfamiliar cave alone, there are too many ways you may die. You go together, someone shows it to you. Brings you to the paintings to sing. To sing in the dark underworld that looks nothing like the world above, and where even the weakest voices carry, amplifying like nowhere else in the world that they knew.

Is that what we still yearn for? To go with your kin to the hollow halls of sacred places, where the echo compels you to reverent silence, until it's time to sing? To hear the familiar tune, amplified by the echos of stone, urged to join the song just as wolves are called to join the howl? Our urge just as natural as theirs, like migrating birds yearn to leave and return?

Why else do we have churches, but for our yearning to sing in the caves?

First rule of vegan club: never talk about vegan club because a non vegan will over hear and make twelve bad jokes about spotting the vegan, inform your currently living body that you will die without animal protein, question you about the sentience of lettuce and place you on an imaginary island that apparently has no edible vegetation whatsoever despite the animals roaming around.

i think a lot of people going on about how veganism and environmentalism are inherently classist because they've decided to conflate these ideas with expensive luxury goods would be better served by just admitting that it's largely about effort.

and that is ok! it takes effort to change your habits. it often takes more effort to be vegan in a non-vegan world. or to buy used instead of new. to take public transport/ride your bike instead of taking your car. and many people are poor on energy and motivation, because they are struggling in life, because they have to work a lot, because their mental health is not good. it's ok to say "i cannot do this right now because it feels overwhelming". it's not okay to spread disinformation about valuable movements because it's an easy way to appease your own conscience

one thing allows for you to reasses your actions once your situation in life changes. the other inherently paints the change as a bad thing to undertake

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

Despite knowing better, I had given myself a deadline. Today. A big project that I've been working on for months and needs to be Finished already, thank you very much. It's all going well, I think I'll get it done and then ... I get lost in some very very specific sauce.

My therapist is in my ear as I slowly dig myself a deeper pit. Perfectionism, the bane of my existence. Well, one of them. It's at the origin of this particular time-lapse. I want to be Accurate and Complete. Before I know it, I'm covered in mathematics, percentages, statistics, graphs. I become very intimate with a graphics editor, discover functions and shortcuts that were a still a mystery to me three hours ago.

It's almost done when I realise it's wrong. Not inherently but vaguely, marginally, circumstantially. So I delete the work. Start again. It's all or nothing. It's a chore, a mountain, a this-and-then-that-and-then-thus-and-then-so, a finish line somewhere but not visible, not yet.

Then it is Done. I copy, I paste. Then I have something to eat. I've already decided, this deadline today, yeah, will be for tomorrow or the day after that. Time to relax and then go to bed. And then. My brain. Just realises. Out of nowhere. There's something not right. I check and my brain is - of course, flawlessly, inevitably - correct, for fuck's sake. It's fine, I fix. Re-copy, re-paste.

And I kid you not, this exact same thing happens as I am writing this post. So I've just, a minute ago, gone back into the graphics editor. A-g-a-i-n. I do the thing. I copy. I paste. Now, now, now it must be right. Please let it be so. But for all I know, my perfectionism-soaked brain will see it tomorrow and go, "Wait a minute ..."

The concerns most people have about people faking disability aren’t based in fact. Obviously people aren’t faking disability en mass for benefits or to get out of work or any of that stuff

But there is one form of faking that I think is a real problem for disabled people that I don’t think gets talked about enough. And that’s able bodied people pretending to be disabled (in my experience physically) to get emotionally closer to disabled people in order to exploit, abuse and/ or receive sexual gratification.

I’ve had it myself where people message me claiming to be disabled and struggling, asking for friendship or advice who have dodgy motives.

One time after making a post about incontinence, a person messaged me claiming to be newly paralysed and struggling with incontinence. They wanted to hear my experiences of using adult nappies due to a lack of changing places toilets. I was a bit suspicious of this person, clicked the account and it was all disability and humiliation based incontinence fetish posts. The person on the other end was exploiting my desire to support other disabled people so he could have a wank over how gross and embarrassing he found me.

Another time a person messaged me claiming to be quadriplegic and looking for someone with a body like his. I clicked the account and it was nothing more than a fetish blog full of stolen photos of wheelchair users. I’m sure the long game was to persuade me to send photos of me in my wheelchair to add to the collection.

I know that Facebook groups for amputees have this problem constantly of people sending messages like “I’m recovering from amputation and insecure about how my stump looks, can you show me yours?” and then using those photos for sexual gratification and sharing them with others to do the same. Similarly for wheelchair users and SCI groups.

Most of the people targeted are women, but as a man I’ve had several run ins with this as well.

There’s also people who pretend to be disabled to get close to an emotionally and physically vulnerable disabled person so they can isolate and abuse them later. I won’t go into details here but this is what happened with my abusive ex. I know for sure they made up a lot of their physical “disability”, other parts I have my suspicions about but will never have proof of either way. My ex is not the only person who uses this technique.

And unlike the very rare occurrence of benefits cheats this is a deeply embedded societal problem which systematically harms certain groups of disabled people.

As disabled people we need to be able to talk about this so that we can recognise it when it happens and share our concerns when we’re victims of it to prevent further victimisation of others.