i’m on the pursuit of happiness

in operant conditioning, lab rats are trained to perform a behavior (press a lever) and are reinforced (food pellets). behaviors are not hardest to extinguish when the reinforcement is constant (a pellet for every press), but when it’s intermittent (a pellet for every x presses).

we have become those lab rats.

we scroll. click. open in new tab. someone likes our post or starts following us. an innocuous red icon in the top bar pops up whimsically. and this isn’t only tumblr. it’s facebook. reddit. even though we are the ‘consumers’, these sites have consumed us.

i’ve ‘met’ some amazing people on tumblr/reddit. had my laughs and awws. had ideas challenged and mind opened. but these are the exceptions - the intermittent reinforcement that bias our judgement. honestly? most of the time i’m on these sites, i’m wasting my time, and I rarely walk away from the computer with something different.

we place irrational value on our calendrical days. and feb 29 is, in a sense, ‘a free day’. what are we doing with it? are we living life? is our world the cyber-world? is that our future? for now, i’ll stick with our present moment. there’s no reason why feb 29, a day-light savings hour, holiday vacations, snowdays should be any more a gift than the present day.

this post was exceptionally rushed and raw, but just had to get it out there as closure? motivation? i’ve been on and off these sites for months at a time, but i always came back so who knows. in any case, i’m grateful for having ‘met’ some of you and

I genuinely wish you all the best.

I put a camera on my RC.

The doctors and medics of the group, also known by their French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres, go to centers of conflict where most other medical teams do not. And that means they are often in danger.

On December 29, two staff members were killed in Somalia.

The latest news from South Sudan is especially worrying. Some 130 staff at the Doctors Without Borders clinic in Pibor, South Sudan, are missing, according to a statement from the group.  

Renewed ethnic violence in Jonglei State, South Sudan, has forced thousands of families to flee into the bush.

relative to our body, our brains are MASSIVE - especially the prefrontal cortex. but the unfortunate truth is that they are just able to squeeze through the birth canal as is.

so it seems humans can’t evolve larger brains because it would kill our mothers (and ourselves soon thereafter).

Freddie Roach & Joe Rogan Know/Talk Boxing & MMA and GSP vs. Silva

well, i guess spring is here.

(Source: jillsandwich)

by Captain_Kittenface

It’s coloring time in class again, YAY!!

Just like every coloring time your teacher gives everyone a random color from the crayon box. Today you got green and you draw an aligator.

The teacher loved your alligator and decided to spend the rest of the day talking about reptiles. This is a turning point in your life because you realize how much you love reptiles and that love stays with you your entire life. Fast forward 30 years and you are a world renowned biologist who specializes in reptilian behavior. The ladies adore you and you make millions of dollars every year.

Now back up. You only got green because little Sally got green yesterday and put it back in the crayon box next to the yellow that you got yesterday. And she only put it in the box next to yellow because she was the last to put her crayon away since she had to blow her nose and missed the teachers first go round to collect crayons.

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