Four Letter Scot

Dwarves and Riffs

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

Ehatsup Twitter.

[HARDLORE @hardlorepod]

Goodbye, Bo.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The research behind this is wild. If you played Pokémon as a kid, you have a tiny region in your brain that exists only because of Pokémon. Not a metaphor. Stanford put people in brain scanners and found it.

The study was published in Nature Human Behavior in 2019. They scanned 11 adults who grew up glued to their Game Boys and 11 who never played. When they showed both groups images of the original 151, the players' brains lit up in one specific spot every time. Same spot across all 11 people. The non-players showed zero response.

That spot is a little fold in the back of your brain that normally processes things like animal shapes and cartoon faces. In the Pokémon players, a chunk of it had been permanently reassigned. Their brains carved out a Pokémon department sometime around age 6 or 7 and just never took it down.

And the reason it ended up in the same place in everyone's brain comes down to the Game Boy itself. The screen was 2.6 inches. Every kid held it at roughly the same distance. So those 151 characters hit the exact same patch of each kid's retina, thousands of times, during the years when the brain is still soft enough to reorganize itself. Where an image hits your retina in childhood is what tells your brain where to build the wiring.

Reading works the same way. Humans invented writing about 5,000 years ago. There's zero evolutionary reason for a brain region dedicated to recognizing words. But every person who learns to read grows one, roughly the size of a dime, in the same part of the brain.

Brain-imaging research from 2018 actually watched it appear in children's heads as they learned their letters. It grew by quietly taking over nearby tissue that wasn't doing much yet. Stanford published a follow-up this year showing this region is way smaller or missing entirely in kids with dyslexia, and that 8 weeks of intense reading practice physically grew it back.

London taxi drivers show the same thing in a completely different part of the brain. Brain scans from a 2000 study found the region that stores mental maps had physically expanded, and the longer they'd been driving, the bigger it got. These drivers spend 3 to 4 years memorizing 25,000 streets before they get licensed. About half wash out.

The common thread is childhood. Harvard researchers trained young monkeys to recognize new shapes and they developed brand-new brain regions in predictable locations. Adult monkeys trained on the same shapes never got those structural changes. The young brain wires itself in a way the adult brain cannot replicate.

If you're wondering whether a Pokémon patch in your brain means you lost something else, no. The region sits alongside your normal visual processing areas, not on top of them. Your brain has hundreds of millions of neurons in that zone alone. The lead author noted that every participant in the study had gone on to earn a PhD.

[Movie Updates @movieupdates]

Hercules (1997)

[donner party bus @ok_alriight]

does anyone else remember in 2020 when the national guard drove down a residential street and shot people who were sitting on their front porch

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

Katie’s dad showed me his 70’s Gibson SG 😩

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

Even when I lose I stay winning

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

Nothing behind those eyes

[FearBuck @FearedBuck]

MGK just dropped the song of the summer 🔥

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

You’re not gonna believe what the “p-slur” was

[pickle king @NikeScarKyle]

Who remembers the infamous circa 2015 “p-slur” and “e-slur”

[Chris @citehchris]

maybe drinking doubles all night and having a cigarette is actually really good for you there is really no way to know

[chy. 🍄 @senpaichai]

Not everyone at your workplace is your friend. Do your job, fart on people & go home.

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

I really (don’t) love my life

[Big Ass Truck 𝒾.𝑒.𝒽.𝒸. @bigahhtruck]

FUCK WARNER BROS SPECIFICALLY FOR PATENTING THE NEMESIS SYSTEM FROM SHADOW OF MORDOR. YOU KNOW HOW MANY COOL FUCKING GAMES WE WOULD HAVE BY NOW WITH THAT SHIT

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

You don’t understand they’re singing in polyr- no shut the fuck up its bad

[ac @auraxchains]

my take on the torture shirts is that virtue signaling to show you’re a good person online accomplishes absolutely nothing for anyone that you’re feeling sensitive for. if you feel so passionately about victims of war crimes then take action by donating to a cause or volunteering

[Michelle @Michell33650674]

TRUMP: I don't need votes. MUSK: I'll go to prison if Trump loses. Massive crowds for Harris. Diminishing crowds for Trump. Musk knew results 4 hours early. Starlink explosions 11/11/24. TRUMP: They rigged the election for me (01/19/25 and 03/07/25).

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

I sliced my thumb open the day after this

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

Down with a case of tummy hurt

[Four Letter Scot @wal_cott_]

Cover band at the legion closed with Learn to Fly 😤