April of the North

Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food. {Hippocrates} | Meat Eater | Science Nerd | Independent Thinker | Dog Momma 🐾 | Political Orphan 🇺🇲

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

@therabbithole Hello, friend. 😊

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

Lots of opinions on working from home out there. TBH, I truly get more accomplished and my general state of mind is much calmer and focused.

I will never go back to fluorescent overhead lights, office chit-chat outside my door, constant interruptions... I'm blessed and grateful.

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

@SomeBitchIIKnow @doctor_zelenyy You are so blessed. ❤️🙏🏽

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

@SomeBitchIIKnow I'm super jealous that your mom kept all your stuff! I remember reaching out to my stepmom in my early 20s to ask if they had any of my old toys or books - she laughed at me and said "Please, I got rid of all that stuff years ago."

The little April inside might have cried a bit.

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

"Political conservatives consistently report higher levels of happiness, better mental health, and stronger psychological well-being than their liberal counterparts." 🙃

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

New Study Exposes How The Left Turned Mental Illness Into A Political Identity https://t.co/DcI7AhfWKO

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

@zerohedge Ah... it's been a minute since I thought about big red. Thanks, Tyler. 😉

[Michael Ratliff @Wiskyeye]

@TrackAIPAC Denounce AIPAC or resign! We're coming for PACs next! Get the dark money out of our politics, make politicians finance their own campaigns or make them publicly funded only! Rich people don't get to influence our elections anymore, America is fed up with it!
🤬✊️🎓🌎😎

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

She's so gross.

[AIPAC Tracker @TrackAIPAC]

Rep. Haley Stevens turns her back and walks away from a constituent mid-conversation when asked about AIPAC:

[Kathleen Winchell ❤️🤍💙🇺🇸🇺🇸 @KathleenWinche3]

When you forget you’re forty years old! 😁😅

[JP Sears @AwakenWithJP]

Thank you Israel for helping us "win" this war so well. And thank you to our administration that's brave enough to commit treason to get us into this war for Israel in the first place. Much gratitude.

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

😂😂😂😂 Please.

[Vice President JD Vance @VP]

VP Vance praises President Trump's peace deal:

"It's a great day for the American people."🇺🇸

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

Yep. This entire administration has been one big show. The one before it, too.

In fact, I'm starting to think it's ALL for show, our votes have never meant anything, and we may as well have never left England to begin with.

[Dave Benner, Nemesis of Neocons @dbenner83]

This Iran "peace deal" is theater that settles almost nothing—except extending the negotiation timeframe for 60 additional days.

Major issues remain completely unresolved: Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, its ongoing nuclear enrichment, and Israel’s actions in Lebanon.

The agreement isn’t even set to be signed until Friday, giving Israel more time to sabotage it—just as it did yesterday in Beirut.

The Israel Lobby remains furious that the US won’t send American soldiers to die for Israel’s territorial ambitions. At the same time, non-interventionists remain disgusted by Trump’s blatant betrayals and his idiotic decision to launch the war in the first place.

The bottom line is that America’s position with Iran is now worse than before the conflict began—and there’s no going back. The limits of the American Empire have been put on display for the entire world to see.

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

👀

[Uncomfortable Questions @VHASurvivor]

This weekend, think about how difficult it is to have a conversation in private today.

Every device 'listens'. We are told its for targeted advertisement, and don't bat an eye about it.

Then we post on X about Orwell's 1984 warnings coming true like it hasnt already happened.

[Tandy @dantypo]

It wouldn’t solve any of the root causes of poverty and debt.
Those problems aren’t financial. They’re personal.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Your large intestine is a polite, tidy, undersized thing, and that fact alone rules you out as a plant specialist.

The animals that make a living from plants are defined by what they keep at the back end. A horse has an enormous hindgut. A gorilla's colon and fermenting chamber fill most of its torso. A cow runs four stomachs and a microbial factory the size of a dustbin. All of it exists to do one slow, demanding job. Turn cellulose, the tough fibre of plants, into something the animal can absorb. It takes vast internal volume and many patient hours.

Now look at yours. The human colon is small and unassuming, a fraction of the proportional size of a true herbivore's. We have nowhere to run that great fermentation. Eat a large amount of plant fibre and your gut cannot wring a living from it the way a cow can. It mostly bulks up, ferments a little, makes gas, and moves on.

That missing fermentation chamber is the most damning piece of anatomy in the whole argument. You cannot be an animal built to live on plants while lacking the one organ that living on plants absolutely requires.

What you have instead is a short, efficient tube for absorbing rich, concentrated, already-broken-down food. Meat. Fat. The output of a kill, not the contents of a meadow.

[JP Sears @AwakenWithJP]

Israel doesn’t need to spy on us. They’re literally running our country.

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

This needs to stop. Look at those waggy tails! They know no other life, and they still look to their humans for everything they need, only to be abused in the name of science. You want to know why activists go berserk? This is why.

This is where AI advancement should be focused.

❤️🙏🏽🥺

[Owen Gregorian @OwenGregorian]

AI and the Psychology of Cognitive Surrender | John Nosta, Psychology Today

Gradual dependence on AI can lead to a threshold you won't notice crossing.

Key points

- AI subtly erodes our cognitive strength by making delegation seem like self-generated thought.

- After repeatedly turning to AI for answers, the first thing that erodes is tolerance for not knowing.

- True judgment is built by wrestling with uncertainty, not outsourcing discomfort to machines.

---

There is a curious type of loss that announces itself only after it's happened. And it's something that can sneak up on you. You don't feel the muscle weakening; you feel the surprise when you need it.

That's the problem with cognitive delegation that extends too long and too completely. We're beginning to understand why AI is seductive. It offers frictionless efficiency, the relief of having AI carry complexity that otherwise would be yours to shoulder. What we haven't examined carefully enough is what happens next. What happens to the individual who has been regularly offloading chunks of their own thinking for months or years?

The brain isn't a library where books sit on shelves until needed. It is a dynamic system shaped by use. Nothing new here, as scientists have long studied processes like habit formation and neuroplasticity. Simply put, the capacities we exercise tend to strengthen, and the capacities we neglect become less accessible over time.

This is where the conversation about AI tends to get tricky. Over-reliance is a risk, we're told, and the guidance arrives with a bit of finger-waving. Use AI as a tool, not a crutch. Maintain human oversight. Stay engaged. I've heard these enough times that they've started to sound less like insight and more like a warning label. Telling someone to "eat less and move more" is a related example. It doesn't work.

Here's my insight that might suggest a mechanism. AI doesn't just complete tasks; it returns results that feel like your own thinking. The output arrives in your voice and is shaped by the iterative engagement. The cognitive loop feels closed. But there's a critical difference between approving a thought and generating one, and it may be precisely that difference the technology is designed to make invisible. And there lies an underlying dynamic.

Where Judgment Actually Forms

Someone who is past this threshold still gets things done and sounds sharp and articulate. The problem shows up when the question is hard enough that AI can't quickly close the gap. It's when what's required isn't retrieval or organization but the struggle of actually not knowing something long enough to think your way through it. It's where the important path from A to B gets a bit bumpy but very important

I think this capacity for "productive discomfort" has an older name that feels almost out of date. It's patience. Yet patience may be only part of the story. The other issue is less about waiting than about remaining engaged with a difficult question. It's the ability to tolerate incompleteness without immediately reaching for an answer.

This is where judgment is crafted. Not in the moment of decision, but in the sustained engagement that precedes it. The slow recognition that a first answer is often far from complete or correct. That's the revision that only happens when you stay connected with a problem rather than quickly hand it off to the machine.

Dwelling in Uncertainty

AI, by design, reduces the time we spend dwelling inside cognitive uncertainty. However, a mind that has spent long enough outsourcing its tolerance for uncertainty doesn't simply become less patient. I'll argue that it becomes less practiced in the kind of thinking that uncertainty, when embraced long enough, makes possible.

Cognitive surrender implies a conscious decision. What I'm describing is more gradual than that. It's what happens when a tool works so well, for so long, that you forget what you were doing before you picked it up.

https://t.co/8USvrL5mLx

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

People somehow view Sprite as a "lighter" or healthier soda. I will say this, I can have a Coke with no noticeable negative physiological response, aside from an energy crash later. But Sprite? I become violently ill after a few drinks.

Also, fizzy tea sounds disgusting. 🤢🤮

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

Coca-Cola released a new Sprite soda, it’s called ‘Sprite + Tea’

If you look at the label, you notice the amount of sugar

It has 61 grams of added sugar… That means this one 20oz Sprite Tea is equivalent to 6 Krispy Kreme donuts

There is no actual tea, it’s all chemicals

It also has a bunch of other bad ingredients:

- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Caramel Color used for the brown/tea-like appearance
- Sodium Benzoate is a preservative that can form benzene, a known carcinogen
- Potassium Sorbate, another preservative
- “Natural Flavors” This is where the “tea” flavor comes from. Notably, no actual tea is listed in the ingredients

This isn’t a drink it’s a science experiment

[Bob Phillips @BobTheSuit]

*doordash driver delivers four happy meals with chocolate milk and Disney princess toys*
“Looks like a fun night. How many kids do you have?”
Me: How many what?

[April of the North @ApriloftheNorth]

"Oh, thank GOD." 🤣

[Derek Richards @comednDRichards]

This is a true story...