What's A Book You Read As A Teenager That Was So Magical And Personally Profound To You It Literally

TED Talks to end the Year on a high note

Brain Magic by Keith Barry

The brain changing benefits of exercise by Wendy Suzuki

Power foods for the brain by Neal Barnard

Intermittent fasting: Transformational Technique by Cynthia Thurlow

You don't find happiness, you create it by Katarina Bloom

The Art of being yourself by Caroline McHugh

The magic of not caring by Sarah Knight

How to not take things personally by Frederik Imbo

Speaking Up Without Freaking Out by Matt Abrahams

How to motivate yourself to change your behavior by Tali Sharot

Why does sleep deprivation worsen the appearance of eye bags?

Is the brain a computer?

A condition in which people have white pupils rather than black ones

Can magic mushrooms cure depression?

Why does drinking alcohol make us lose our memory?

Heres a cool trick you can do with your eyes! (smooth pursuit)

Babies born addicted to drugs

Don’t fall in love with the moment and think you’re in love with the girl

Nature is FAKE NEWS

We are wired to look out for eachother

How do anti depressants work?

Black hamlet fish are petty gender fluid egg traders

Why we need better mental health education

How does spiking a drink with Rohypnol work?

The difference between SSRIs, SNRIs and MAOIs (differing anti-depressants)

What is reading and writing like for people with dyslexia

Why is colour blindess more common in males than females?

Why do we dwell on negative experiences and dismiss positive ones?

Chess is as physiologically taxing as an EXTREME sport

Why do we romanticize the past?

Is there a difference between MRIs and fMRIs?

Why do we want to be loved?

Why do pineapples make our mouth itch?

How to construct and read skeletal formula (chemistry)

Why does fear make us jumpy?

Why do words start to sound weird when we repeat them too many times

Why don’t we have memories of our early childhood?

Why don’t dreams make sense?

What causes lactose intolerance?

What even are brainwaves?

The purpose of pain

Sociopaths

When fun things don’t feel enjoyable anymore :( (Ahedonia)

Do antidepressants change your personality?

Why do we like some smells and are disgusted by others?

Why do our hands turn blue when cold?

Is love real?

Why are we ticklish?

Why do we have feelings of insecurity?

Do plants have gender identities?

Why do we cry when we are sad AND happy?

There’s a condition where the sun makes you sneeze

Why do we lose our appetite when we’re nervous?

Why do we have ‘tells’ when we’re lying?

Why do we get ‘butterflies in our stomach’?

Why do we get brain freeze?

The purpose of laughter

Why do our brains seem to become more active before we sleep?

Why does sadness feel like physical pain?

Why does your heart go boom boom when u see someone hot?

Why do we have a tendency to share our secrets at sleepovers?

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anderperry au where they are happily married and and Neil becomes the actor he wanted to and Todd becomes the writer that he is and they have a meet & greet and they sing and play guitar—

"We need more complex and unlikable protagonists in novels!" You fucks couldnt even handle Holden Caulfield

just saw this on pinterest and it hit me like a truck

Whenever I take a long car ride I end up exhausted afterwards, and I’m always like “why am I so tired? I was just sitting around doing nothing all day.”

But the answer, it turns out, is I was doing something. Riding in a car jars your body in many directions and requires constant microadjustments of your muscles just to stay in place and hold your normal posture. Because you’re inside the car, inside the situation, it’s easy not to notice all the extra work you’re doing just to maintain the status quo.

There’s all sorts of type of work that we think of as “free” that require spending energy: concentrating, making decisions, managing anxiety, maintaining hypervigilance in an unfriendly environment, dealing with stereotype threat, processing a lot of sensory input, repairing skin cells damaged sun exposure, trying to stay warm in a cold room.

The next time you think you’re tired from “nothing”, consider instead that you’re probably in situation where you’re doing a lot of unnoticed extra work just to stay in place.

The misunderstanding of carpe diem + physical harm in dps makes me absolutely crazy

Knox stalks a girl, doesn’t take no for an answer and gets hurt because of it (gets punched by Chet). He deals with physical harm. He ends up getting the girl, but he had a price to pay, a punishment to endure. Chet threatened him, he could have been in danger. Knox didn’t think he did anything wrong. He apologized to Chris, but with the stalking and such, it never went through his head “hey this might be kinda fucked up” while he was doing it.

That’s not what Keating said. He didn’t told them to be careless and act on their impulses even if that might get them in danger.

Charlie pulls his “phone call from god” prank and many things happen. One, when he first published the article he revealed the club (although not its members or activities) without anyone else’s permission. Two, he could have gotten expelled. Three, he got hit by Nolan, a physical punishment. Just like knox, he dealt with physical harm and risked expulsion. Charlie didn’t think he did anything wrong.

Keating himself told him that he flew too close to the sun, than he didn’t mean that in his lessons. Carpe diem is not choking on the bone.

Neil seemed to understand Carpe Diem, he was just desperate. It’s not than he was impulsive, or careless, he was just incredibly desperate, and that’s somehow worse. Neil goes behind his father’s back and joins a play. He writes a letter pretending to be him, sneaks off to rehearsal. When his father finds out, he has a price to pay (his father enrolling him on military school and forcing him to stop acting) and ends up dying by shooting himself (physical harm). Neil definitely knew, and thought about what would happen if his father discovered, but he was so desperate to live, to do something he wanted for once, he didn’t care, he began hoping he would manage to keep it hidden. Neil thought he was in the right (which, honestly, he was). He didn’t see anything wrong in what he did, simply wanted to fulfill his passion, passion than didn’t hurt anyone, passion than didn’t involve anyone else other than himself. The contrast with Charlie/Knox and yet, still having the same consequences… Peter Weir I’m hunting you down.

This is not what Keating encouraged. Remember how Keating asked him to talk to his father? Remember how he asked him if he talked to him (and Neil lied and said yes) and he was very happy and supported his decision about the play? Remember how, before knowing his father “agreed” Keating didn’t tell Neil “oh you’re already in the play, go through with it, carpe diem, who cares what your father says?” but instead told him “talk to your father. If he says yes then you can continue with the play with no worries, and if he says no then wait until you’re out of school and he won’t be able to control you as much anymore. You have options, this is not the end of the world. Either talk to him and come to an agreement or wait.” Remember that? Keating didn’t want Neil to go behind his father’s back, because he knew the consequences this would have.

(Interesting how, out of all the physical harm than the misunderstanding of carpe diem caused, Neil’s is the only one inflicted by himself to his own body. I’m definitely very normal about this.)

Charlie, again. He punched Cameron. Acted on impulse, didn’t think of the consequences punching another student on school grounds, on school hours, actually meant. He got expelled. He suffered a punishment. But now he didn’t receive any physical harm, but rather caused it. To Cameron. He didn’t think he did anything wrong, he thought Cameron deserved it.

Cameron. He’s the hardest to understand. He wants to seize the day, in his own way. After all, he joins the club despite not really having to, but he simply seems too scared to actually carpe that diem. He ends up seeing this as dangerous. After what happened to Neil (dead), and after seeing what happened to Charlie (almost expelled) and Knox (ended up with a bloody face) he gets scared. Damn, this might actually be dangerous. It’s a good reasoning. 3/7 members got hurt. Not half of them, but almost. He misunderstood carpe diem based on the consequences seizing the day had in the others (the others who misunderstood what it actually meant) and so he snitched to nolan. And this is what causes him physical harm, what causes him to be punched by Charlie. He loses something (his friendship with the other poets) and gets physically hurt. So, so, sooo interesting how despite this being considered the complete opposite to seizing the day, it’s framed in the exact same way as all the other instances where carpe diem takes part. He suffers the same consequences as everyone else. He believed himself to be doing the right thing, to be saving the others’ academic lives and doing now what he couldn’t have done for Neil before (protecting others from keating’s influence).

Keating never meant for carpe diem to be dangerous, or hurtful, or scary.

But then Todd.

Todd’s carpe diem is just becoming more confident. Reading his poems aloud, becoming more sociable and comfortable around his friends, accepting than he’s allowed to receive love, to rely on others, to believe in himself, to stand up for himself and his beliefs (refusing to sign the paper and saying no to his parents and nolan).

His final stand, his seize the day moment, is at the end of the film. He’s the first one to stand on the desk. This is the perfect rebellion. Meaningful, happens for a reason (Keating getting unfairly fired), doesn’t harm anyone else and doesn’t harm himself (doesn’t cause him nor anyone else physical pain). No danger (he might get in trouble, but I doubt he could face expulsion for standing on a desk). Charlie’s act on Neil/Keating’s memory was one of anger, impulsive, one that drew blood and ended in expulsion. Todd’s was one of defiance, impulsive, but that hurt no one and ended well. It’s more, it caused happiness (Keating felt better, saw his contributions).

The one who felt more scared to go through with it at first is the only one who truly understood it.

Then with Meeks/Pitts idk honestly. They don’t really have a big moment. I guess at the end, standing on the desks, but they’re not the ones who start it or are particularly important in that scene. The radio scene, perhaps, but I don’t really see what was stopping them from building a radio before. If the radio scene was their carpe diem, though, then another example of someone understanding what it truly meant. The scene ended well, didn’t hurt anyone or involved anyone who was unwilling, they didn’t get any punishment after, etc.

Gosh I wish motorcycles weren’t death machines they look so fun

Ok tumblr friends. I’m trying to spend less time on the internet these days, and I LOVE reading non-fiction books, but trying to find recommendations for new books is a nightmare. Any time I try to look up good new non-fiction books the results are all like “would you like to read an autobiography of Paul Newman or New Reasons We’re All Doomed” and that just. Doesn’t Work for Me. So I’m asking for recs here. I’m open to books about literally any field or topic. Only caveats are that hard sciences have to be on a level I can understand as a humanities person, and medical stuff can’t be too gory (ie I loved Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene and The Song of the Cell, but can’t stomach The Mother of all Maladies). And nothing TOO miserable, but I have a fairly high tolerance for historical stuff. I’m particularly fond of micro-history and books that delve into multiple overlapping topics.

As a sampling, here are some books I’ve read and particularly enjoyed in the last two years:

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Pennock

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Victims of Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

The Last Days of the Incas by Kim McQuarrie 

The Dream and the Nightmare: The Story of the Syrians who Boarded the Titanic by Leila Salloum Elias

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Yeats by Andrew Knoll

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristine Kobes du Mez

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that made China Modern by JIng Tsu

The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth by Adam Goodheart

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home by Anya von Bremzen

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

Fire away!