Rach @undershining

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Rhianna Pratchett 🧙🏻‍♀️ @rhipratchett

8 months ago

Eleven years since you crossed the black sands. I wish I could say that the world is better than you left it (although it will always be better for having had you in it) but at least there is a new Young Sam to help carry on the Pratchett name and ethos. Love you always ❤️

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@sg_sykes @rhipratchett I finally ordered it last year. Im on the last 30minutes of the Raising Steam audiobook, having patiently completed the entire series's audiobook (again), and am steeling myself to read Shepard's Crown. Maybe. Some time this year.

Here is a good one for you. Real Life. Happened to my husband. He was a Neurology Hospitalist at a large well known hospital chain. They had 3 Neurologists plus a PA covering 2 hospitals 24/7. One day the hospital called a surprise mandatory meeting. They fired the PA on the spot (in front of them) because they were paying her $120,000, and they needed to cut costs. The female neurologist was very close to the PA. She was so angry because aside from what they did to her friend, it was more work for the three of them to cover the two hospitals without the help of the PA. She found a new job in another state, making $100,000 more than at that hospital. Now the hospital had two neurologists to cover two hospitals 24/7. they said that they would hire a new neurologist… But neurologists are hard to find and they couldn’t find one. They asked my husband to sign a new contract. We were livid over the whole situation, but waited to see if he was going to get a huge raise. What did they do???? The new contract change his shifts from 12 hour shifts to 24 hour shifts… For the SAME PAY!!! So… doubling his work!! My husband walked around ranting and raving. He had worked there 20 years and was near 60 years old. They thought they had him hogtied. I said…”We are moving! Do not sign the contract!” Within six weeks, we sold our house and bought a new one in my home state, near Family. Me and the kids moved to get our teenagers in school for the fall season. After that, he put his résumé online. Literally and I mean literally… Within 10 minutes of posting, he found a new job 3 miles from our new house, now making $150,000 more. He wrote a one liner for his resignation email. Admin called within minutes and started begging. He told them it’s too late… My family has already moved and we bought a new house. That felt so sweet after everything they had done to us. Net result::: the hospital lost MILLIONS. they lost two neurologist and to this day they have not been able to replace them. They are paying for locum tenums (travel Drs) to cover the hospitals. Aside from that, my husband did a special procedure that made tons of money for the hospital, and those new doctors don’t do it. And it was all because they fired the PA for making $120,000. So incredibly stupid. The best revenge is living well. It’s been several years. We are happy in our new home living near family!

My son is 14. Ever since he was little, he’s never been able to sit still. While doing homework, he would get up every couple of minutes. At school, he took apart pens, snapped rulers, fidgeted with anything he could get his hands on. “He’s distracted.” “He can’t focus.” “Have you considered medication?” The same comments, over and over again. And almost no one saying: “Maybe his brain simply needs movement in order to think.” His hands were never still. Quiet clicking, constant motion, pieces of pens scattered across his desk. I tried fidget toys, but they either broke quickly or were taken away at school. Then one day, by pure chance, I came across an artisan online who made special pencils for kids with ADHD. A regular pencil — but with a small screw that could be gently moved back and forth. A moving hand. A focused mind. I messaged him immediately. He replied and told me about his nephew, who struggled in the same way. Two weeks later, the pencil arrived at our home. Small. Simple. Brilliant. On the first day of school with that pencil, my son stayed focused through the entire math lesson. No dismantled pens. No warnings. Just the quiet motion of the screw, up and down, as he solved problems. Later, his teacher wrote to ask where we had gotten it. And the artisan began making these pencils for many other children like my son. Because no — not everyone learns best by sitting still. Some people need to move their hands to bring order to their thoughts. Credit: Ben Henry

@grok @HenrM_Cruz @washingtonpost Wow I needed this LOL

This is fascinating... the HEIGHT of the ceiling in the room you're working in has a DIRECT impact on how creative you are It's called the Cathedral Effect How it works: Your brain borrows metaphors from the physical world (space is one of the strongest) When a room feels tall and open, your mind unconsciously associates that with freedom and possibility - you zoom OUT When a room feels tight or enclosed, your mind goes into precision mode… attention narrows. You notice typos, spot mistakes, and hone in on details - you zoom IN Researchers found that people in high-ceiling rooms perform better on creativity. People in low-ceiling rooms perform better on detail orientation and error detection Churches and museums have soaring ceilings - meant to inspire awe. Libraries and war rooms are tighter - meant for concentration Startup brainstorms love lofts, and accounting teams love small rooms with doors Even coffee shops do this. The ones designed for deep work tend to be lower and quieter. The ones designed for conversation tend to feel more open So if you’re doing creative stuff - writing, designing, brainstorming - do it in a LARGE room with high ceilings. Then move to a smaller room to edit and proofread.

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"Why does our top performer get the worst reviews?" the boss asked. I was reviewing their annual performance data. "Show me," I said. She pulled up the ratings. Diana: 2.8 out of 5. Below average on "collaboration." Low marks for "team player." "What's her actual performance?" I asked. "Exceeded every target. Landed our biggest client. Trained three new hires." "So why the low scores?" "Her peer reviews are dragging her down." I scanned the comments. "Too direct." "Challenges ideas too much." "Not supportive enough." "Let me talk to Diana," I said. "I used to give honest feedback," Diana told me. "Said our pricing model was broken. Got dinged for 'negativity.'" "What happened with the pricing?" "They finally fixed it six months later. After we lost two major accounts." "What else?" "I questioned why we needed eleven approvals for a simple contract change. Manager said I wasn't being collaborative." "Are you still giving feedback?" "No. I learned my lesson. Now I smile. Nod. Say everything's great. My reviews are improving." "But nothing's actually improving?" "We're making the same mistakes. Just with better vibes." She chuckled. I went back to the boss. "Your review system doesn't measure performance," I said. "It measures compliance." "That's not true." "When was the last time someone got promoted for challenging bad ideas?" Silence. "When did someone get rewarded for preventing a mistake?" More silence. "You've trained your best people to stay quiet. And your mediocre people to stay nice." A few months later, they redesigned the system. Added a category: "Constructive Challenge." Points for identifying problems early. Rewards for preventing costly mistakes. Diana got promoted. "What changed?" I asked the boss. "We stopped confusing agreement with alignment. Stopped mistaking silence for harmony." "And?" "Turns out our 'difficult' people were our most valuable. They actually cared enough to speak up." Here's the truth about performance reviews: Most companies don't reward performance. They reward performance theater. The person who says the meeting was great beats the person who says it wasted an hour. The person who agrees with bad ideas beats the person who prevents disasters. You think you're measuring contribution. You're measuring conformity. And your best people? They've already figured out the game. They're just deciding whether to play it or find somewhere that values truth over comfort.

In 1879 a scientist buried bottles filled with seeds. Every 20 years, one is dug up and studied. - Upworthy share.google/zmNrX1sRb50XGa…

@OldeWorldOrder @JamesLucasIT ??? What on earth are the circumstances leading to this photograph, I _have_ to know!

@CrazyVibes_1 Oh wow they are beautiful!! Thank you for sharing, and good on your husband for carrying on!!

@IterIntellectus If we have microplastics in our brains, then research into microplastics is just microplastics researching themselves I think

so it didn't work

DaVinci @BiancoDavinci

11 months ago

Just stumbled on this incredible handrail

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A young student once asked a wise Monk.... MUST READ.. 🧵

The icelandic cat who eats those who are not wearing their new clothes. The Jólakötturinn, or the Yule Cat is a monstrously large creature from Icelandic folklore that is said to roam the snowy countryside during Christmas, with a particular appetite for anyone who has not received new clothes before Christmas Eve or who did not wear them. She is also the pet of the troll witch Grýla. She is used to threaten naughty children, because she loves to eat them. Grýla's sons are the Jólasveinar, the thirteen Icelandic Santa Clauses, dwarves who originally did not bring gifts, but stole things or played pranks. They are on the move between December 12 and January 6.

I grew up reading the Little House on the Prairie Series. Did you as well? Laura Ingalls Wilder never intended to become one of the most influential storytellers in American history. She wasn't thinking about books or fame. She was simply trying to survive a childhood shaped by hunger, hardship, constant movement across the American frontier. Born February 7, 1867, in a 1 room cabin deep in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Her father, Charles Ingalls, Pa was a man who loved wilderness and disliked neighbors. If another family's chimney smoke appeared nearby, Pa felt crowded. The family packed their wagon and moved, again and again, from Wisconsin to Kansas, then to Minnesota, lowa, and eventually to Dakota Territory. Laura grew up in covered wagons, half-built cabins, always on land barely settled before they moved on. Their house had dirt walls, a dirt floor, and a roof made of sod. Grass grew overhead while insects dropped through cracks in the ceiling. It was small, dark, and alive with creatures Laura didn't want to meet. But it was shelter, and the frontier rarely offered anything better. During the terrible winter of 1880-81, blizzard after blizzard battered the town of De Smet. Snow buried homes and blocked every supply train. Without fuel, families twisted dried hay into tight sticks to burn. Without provisions, they ground wheat in coffee mills to make coarse flour. Weeks passed in darkness and cold so deep the wind seemed to cut. Some families froze or starved. The Ingalls family endured. Another blow came earlier, when Laura was 13, her sister Mary was 15. Mary fell ill with a severe fever. When it passed, she was blind. The loss reshaped the family, and Laura tried to become Mary's eyes, describing the world in careful detail. The habit of noticing everything-the curve of a hill, the way sunlight touched grass—would decades later shape her unmistakable writing style. At 18, Laura married Almanzo Wilder, a homesteader ten years older. She hoped their life would be different from her childhood-steady, predictable, rooted. But within the first few years, disaster followed disaster. Diphtheria left Almanzo partially paralyzed. Their barn burned. Crops failed in punishing weather. Their baby boy died before he was a month old. They lost nearly everything and eventually left SD to start over in Missouri. The farm they named Rocky Ridge would become their final home. Laura raised chickens, kept accounts, and stitched together an existence through frugality and hard work. In her 40s and 50s she began writing short articles for farm papers— practical, clear, and surprisingly elegant pieces on rural life. Their daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, a successful writer and journalist, urged her mother to record her childhood memories. Laura hesitated. She was in her 60s. She had no formal training. Why would anyone read her stories of log cabins, dugouts, blizzards, and pioneer struggles? Rose helped transform these manuscripts into publishable books—how much shaping she did remains debated, but the vision was Laura's. The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, 1932. Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, and many others followed. They were based on real events but arranged with storytelling instinct. Laura continued publishing into her late 70s. She lived to see her books adopted in classrooms, cherished by families, and woven into the fabric of American childhood. She died at 90, on the farm she and Almanzo had built from nearly nothing. Wilder didn't simply write children's books. She preserved a vanished world. She documented ordinary families endured hunger, weather, grief. She showed survival required discipline, courage, and tenderness. And she proved that it's never too late to tell your story. At sixty-four, she picked up a pencil and changed American literature.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting." -T.H. White, The Once and Future King 🖼️ The Sword in the Stone - Alan Lee

Rose Valland spent nearly four years in a museum office surrounded by German officers who assumed she was harmless, mute, and culturally insignificant. They spoke freely, issued commands, documented plunder, and discussed train routes for stolen masterpieces. They believed she understood none of it. What they didn’t realize was that Valland was quietly fluent in German and meticulous beyond measure. She wrote down everything—artist names, crate numbers, departure dates, warehouse locations—and copied coded catalog lists late at night when no one was watching. She memorized routes when she couldn’t risk paper, then passed information to Resistance contacts who safeguarded each detail as if it were a life. When Paris was liberated and Nazi art caches were uncovered, her secret notebooks became maps. Because she had listened when listening was dangerous, Rembrandts, Picassos, tapestries, altarpieces, and Jewish family portraits were traced back to owners who had been murdered, displaced, or silenced. Her quiet defiance challenged the myth that espionage belongs to those with guns and uniforms. Valland’s weapon was observation; her battlefield was a gallery desk. She didn’t recover art for glory, but to repair a world torn from families and memory—one shipment, one signature, one whispered detail at a time. #archaeohistories

"My kid came home from school talking about the weird lunch lady. "Mom, she's so strange. She memorizes everyone's name by the third day. Like, all 600 kids." I figured she was exaggerating. Teenagers do that. Then parent-teacher night happened. I was running late, hadn't eaten, saw the cafeteria was open. Grabbed a sandwich. The lunch lady, older woman with gray hair in a hairnet, was cleaning tables. "You're Zoe's mom," she said without looking up. I stopped. "How'd you know?" "Same eyes. She sits table seven, always picks the apples nobody wants because they're bruised. Drinks chocolate milk even though she's lactose intolerant. Hurts herself rather than waste food." I stood there, stunned. "You know this about my daughter?" "I know it about all of them." She kept wiping tables. Started talking, not to me exactly, just... talking. "Marcus, table three, his dad left last year. Always takes double servings on Fridays because there's less food at home on weekends. Jennifer counts calories out loud to punish herself. Brett throws away lunches his mom packs because kids make fun of the ethnic food, but he's starving by sixth period. Ashley's parents are divorcing, she stress-eats in the bathroom." "Why are you telling me this?" She finally looked at me. "Because you're all at parent-teacher conferences talking about grades. Nobody's talking about this. About who's eating, who's not, who's hurting." "What do you do about it?" "What can I do? I'm the lunch lady. I make sure Marcus gets those extra servings without asking. I tell Jennifer the calorie counts are wrong, lower than they are. I pack Brett containers of his mom's food labeled as 'cafeteria leftovers' so he can eat it without shame. I bought Zoe lactose-free chocolate milk with my own money, tell her we're trying a new brand." I felt like I'd been punched. "Does anyone know you do this?" "The kids who need to know, know. That's enough." I went home and couldn't stop thinking about it. Started asking Zoe questions. She confirmed everything. "Yeah, Mrs. Chen just... sees people. She stopped my friend from... she helped when nobody else noticed." Turns out, Mrs. Chen had worked at that school for 22 years. Made $14 an hour. Knew the story of every struggling kid who came through her lunch line. Never reported it, never made it official, just adjusted portions, swapped items, paid for things quietly. Teachers didn't know the extent. Administrators had no idea. She just showed up, served food, and saved kids in ways nobody measured. Last year, Mrs. Chen had a stroke. Had to retire. The school hired someone new. Efficient. Fast. Didn't learn names. Within three months, the guidance counselor's office was flooded. Kids breaking down. Nobody could figure out why. Until one kid finally said it: "Mrs. Chen knew when we were drowning. She threw life preservers disguised as extra tater tots. Now nobody's watching." The school brought Mrs. Chen back. Part-time. Not to serve food. Just to be there. They called her position "Student Wellness Observer." She's 68 now, walks with a cane, can't lift heavy trays anymore. But she still memorizes all 600 names by the third day. Still knows who needs what. Still saves kids during lunch periods when everyone else is just serving food. My daughter graduated last month. In her speech, she thanked Mrs. Chen. "Some people teach math. Some teach history. Mrs. Chen taught us that being seen is sometimes the only thing standing between surviving and giving up." The whole cafeteria stood up. Turns out, weird lunch ladies who memorize names? They're the most important people in the building." . Let this story reach more hearts.... . Ai image is for demonstration purpose only. . By Grace Jenkins

This strange square 👇 is undoubtedly the most extraordinary work of literature in human history. Yet, unfortunately, barely anyone in the West has ever heard of it. There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3. At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day. Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems. Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love. The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method. At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be. Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain: 仁智懷德聖虞唐， 貞志篤終誓穹蒼， 欽所感想妄淫荒， 心憂增慕懷慘傷。 In pinyin, it is: Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng, zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng, qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng, xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng. Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief." Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain: 傷慘懷慕增憂心， 荒淫妄想感所欽， 蒼穹誓終篤志貞， 唐虞聖德懷智仁。 The pinyin: Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn, huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn, cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn, táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén. It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence." That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu! At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message: 詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping." Or reversed: 蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace." Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle. For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages. Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…). Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems: - The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens. - Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy. - It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions - Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections. So the Star Gauge is simultaneously: - A love letter (expressing personal longing) - A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival) - A cosmological model (structured like the heavens) - A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy) - A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me". Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age. The heart at the center was filled after all.

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