McKinley Valentine Profile picture
Writer/Researcher🔸ABC's Hard Quiz & WTFAQ🔸The Whippet, a newsletter of science, history, language & weirdness: https://t.co/O6HbwWLvi9🔸mckinleaf@bsky.social
Potato Of Reason Profile picture 1 subscribed
May 3, 2022 11 tweets 3 min read
1/ Naked molerats are comprehensively amazing and horrible, each fact about them is more amazing/horrible than the last

1. They are the only cold-blooded mammal on earth

2. They cannot feel pain. Literally do not have the receptors for it.
🧵 2/ Naked molerats are extremely long-lived (30 years, but remember they’re small rodents, it's very unusual) and they don't age - they stay physiologically young right up until they die, they don’t sort of generally break down the way everyone else does
Apr 19, 2022 13 tweets 3 min read
Does anyone else with ADHD... not seem to form habits?
The self-help literature always says habits become second nature - "you don't have to remind yourself to brush your teeth, right?"
But brushing my teeth isn't automatic, it's a task i have to remember and choose every night It's a very easy To Do item, because it doesn't take long, the equipment is already laid out in place, and I've had a lot of practice. But it's still a To Do item that occupies a slot on my mental task list for the evening, with its own micron of task resistance to push through
Mar 11, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Looks like I left substack at the right time! They've introduced an app (where you read all your substacks at once) and encourage readers to turn off emails. The big advantage of an email list is it's owned/controlled by *you*, not a platform. Substack is trying to change that I can see the appeal of the app for users, but it's dangerous for content creators - it means that if you ever want to leave substack, it's going to be much harder to take your readers with you. Which is exactly the risk all other social media poses for creators
Mar 9, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Mar 9, 2022 5 tweets 1 min read
Thinking about 'going above & beyond' in your work.
A lot of freelancers get successful by going the extra mile and so producing better work for the same fee. Some of that's insecurity - you think (possibly correctly) your 'normal' isn't as good as other freelancers' normals 2/ I recently wrote a fiction short story which I think is great, and it took me 2 months. Because I went over it again and again to improve each bit. I'm not as strong a fiction writer, but you can compensate for that to a degree by spending more time + effort on it
Mar 1, 2021 8 tweets 2 min read
A thread on something you might not know about how attention works

There are two totally separate brain systems that govern attention:
- your ability to maintain focus on the thing ('enhancement')
- your ability to tune out other things ('suppression').

#ADHD #NeurodiverseSquad How attention works 2/8
"These processes [focusing on something and tuning out distractions] are so separate, in fact, there are different networks of brain structures that carry out their respective functions, each of which is critical for attention."
Nov 13, 2019 6 tweets 2 min read
The answers by Australians are astonishingly un-self-aware
All "our sardonic wit" [direct quote], "how laid-back and friendly we are" - it's really cringey when compared with the answers from actual visitors to Australia it's a theme