Eli the Thumpy Dog

I was Eli, the Thumpy Dog (2008-2019). Companion, friend, hand-holder. My opinions were my own.

[SpursRΞPORTΞR @SpursReporter]

Seriously, if @nikebasketball doesn’t turn this🔥fire viral campaign into an official release, somebody should probably lose their job.

And the 20-year-old design student from my alma mater who created it?

Hire them immediately.

No interview.
No second round.
Just send the offer letter.

This is exactly the kind of concept brands spend millions trying to create.

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@MichaelRedd_ BOOM! *Follow*

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@EnswellJones Kit with a collar for the WIN!

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@asiddiqui15 @MaryCKenn Factually wrong is factually wrong.

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@asiddiqui15 @MaryCKenn Apparently not.

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@asiddiqui15 @MaryCKenn So, you should note that. What city’s MEN’s team … y’know.

[Česká fotbalová reprezentace @ceskarepre_cz]

Každý má svůj životní příběh a cestu, která směřovala pro tenhle moment. Tohle je seznam vyvolených, ze kterých vzejde finální nominace na mistrovství světa. 🇨🇿

[Julio Freiress 🇧🇷 @JFreiress_]

A convocação do seleção da Inglaterra ao som The Beatles foi boa, mas a convocação da seleção da França foi melhor.

[The Daily Britain @dailybritainonx]

#OnThisDay2015: Ireland voted to legalise same-sex marriage, becoming the first country in the world to do so by popular vote.

[Michael Warburton @For_Film_Fans]

The late great JAMES GARNER starred (with Mariette Hartley) in over 250 hugely successful adverts for ‘Polaroid’ in the late 70’s & early 80’s.

[Courtney Howard @Lulamaybelle]

Snoopy gesturing “f u” in a road rage incident has me crying laughing.

[Charles Odum @CharlesOdum]

https://t.co/optuLLA6sd

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@cstegmaier +1

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up.

He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour.

Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself.

Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it.

Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows.

Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result.

Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing.

The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@DuckFootball @tysonalger @uoregon Ken Goe has this great piece on Jordan, back in the day:

https://t.co/bStcDYLxcr

[Braves on TBS @BravesOnWTBS]

On May 2, 1999, Nike’s “Chicks Dig The Long Ball” Commercial with Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux first aired.

[Jeevan Brar @JeevanBrar]

The #AllMyChildren channel begins streaming this Friday, May 1 on @plutotvca 📺🇨🇦 #AMC

[Maine @TheMaineWonk]

I’ve written a few campaign ads in my day.

But holy shit.

This ad from @ossoff might be one of the best I’ve ever seen.

[Eli the Thumpy Dog @EliTheThumpyDog]

@MavrocksGirl I liked her acting in that two-part episode, but that character was a totally unethical journalist. Bugged me.
But she, along with Jan Smithers as Bailey and Loni Anderson as Jennifer on WKRP, seemed to set a new, much smarter and compent standard for women characters on TV.