Yeah, everyone in this thread saying the phone bad is a Boomer cop out is oversimplifying the issue.

Yeah, there’s probably a component of taking the blame away from decreased quality of life by blaming it on phones—but you can’t neglect the effect that lack of social interaction has. I’m from the same era, and it’s overwhelming to think how much more complex everything has gotten.

Ones I’ve experienced because of healthcare and would’ve otherwise not really known about—

US tech CT Tech Xray Tech Medical Simulation Tech/Actor (this varies, can also be IT. Med sim centers need a ton of IT) ECMO Perfusionist

Having mega corporations design space networks for you sounds like a great idea until they decide to lock you out and hold your government hostage. Or sell intel… Or sell access to other actors….

Just admit it—the corporations run the world at this point.

We talk for our dog. We don’t have children, but our dog has full on conversations with us but it’s just my wife and I making his “voice.” It always goes along with the context and it seems to be what he would be saying. Our old dog and our current dog even have their own distinct intonation/dialect when saying things.

It’s to the point that sometimes we look at each other and go “huh, it’s weird when you think about the fact that he’s never actually really spoken before….”

Folie a deux?

Honestly pretty much all through complex scenes and groupings in the app. I have different scenes for morning, late afternoon, and night. They all vary based on mood and season. That’s pretty much it. Only use automation for outside lights and to mimic presence when traveling.

This is so true. I try to explain this to my wife and she doesn’t understand.

If I’m on my phone I’m either:

1. Answering endless Teams chats or emails (I get work messages well outside of normal business hours because of my job—it’s annoying but I’ve also gotten used to it because we basically do everything async)
2. Doom scrolling

I hate social media. I’ve hated Reddit since API. Lemmy is great but I’ll go days sometimes with the same home page. So I basically cycle through the same 3 sites endlessly. I got a Steam Deck to try and help with this, but when I hop on it my wife thinks I’m “playing video games so should be working on something.” I’ve tried to explain that using a Steam Deck is the equivalent of her scrolling social media, but alas.

So yeah. Basically nothing to do these days. I think the most frustrating part to me is how most content seems to be geared towards making me angry. I never remember it being like that.

I said this too—the Hue system is game changing as a mood setter. Helps me relax at night by dimming, etc.

1. 8 Sleep Bed—it’s liquid cooled and heated based on your sleep stage. I know it’s expensive, but the sleep it’s given me has been unrivaled by anything else I’ve ever used to regulate my sleep. I work shifts so good sleep is priceless. You spend a third of your life asleep, so it’s worth an investment.
2. Hue lights for my entire home—privacy issues aside, it’s a game changing investment. We replaced the recessed lighting with recessed hue lighting fixtures as well. It’s insane how having multiple lighting settings and colors for times of the day/moods can change your entire mindset.
3. Home gym—if I were pressed for one component it would be the power cage and Olympic bar, but investing in a fully functional home gym has given me much more in return than what I’ve put into it (whether that be physical work building equipment or money).

I think in some ways that could work.

I think a better one may be fish living in a tank that suddenly had its filter break (fish being the brain, and the filter being the BBB).

Not exactly—although an MRI w/wout contrast may show some microvascular ischemia or cortical volume loss. Based on the study there may be some clues from secondary inflammatory markers, but those aren’t specific (other things can elevate them beyond long COVID).

I think this will likely remain a clinical diagnosis for several years until we understand more.

Bringing in a medical perspective since there is a lot of subtle misunderstanding in the comments section:

The source study is not referring to “brain bleeding” or “mini strokes” as a cause of long COVID—the results point more towards a breakdown of the integrity of the blood brain barrier and maybe micro vascular ischemia.

You can essentially think of your central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) as being surrounded by a very selective security system called the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). The BBB exists to prevent certain chemicals and cell signaling molecules from entering the central nervous system and messing things up. Neurons and many of the cells that support neurons do not regenerate and tolerate stress as well as other parts of the body, which is why the BBB is so important. Through the various assays the primary authors used it seems like in the setting of long COVID there is a breakdown of the BBB—it starts letting things in and out that it shouldn’t be. This leads to inflammation and damage in the brain which likely results in immediate decreased processing ability and also long-term damage (which further leads to decreased processing ability). One of the components which “leaks” in this setting of BBB breakdown are components of the coagulation cascade (the things that make blood clot) which may potentiate small areas of clotting and decreased blood flow (a thing we called micro vascular ischemia—like an ischemic stroke but in very small capillaries). This entire mechanism is similar to (but very different in nuance) “leaky gut syndrome,” where the gut endothelium starts to break down and cause inflammation. I put that out there since leaky gut is gaining more popular understanding these days and may be more familiar for some folks.

As of now there is no available treatment that restores the endothelial integrity of the BBB. Off of the top of my head this study may suggest that more treatments to modulate the inflammsome (roughly—the amount of inflammation in your body) could be beneficial—which sort of tracks since there is some scattered evidence that high dose Omega-3’s help long COVID.

If you put in the work upfront it will make the back half easier. If you slack on the front end you’ll need to sprint to the finish.

Mainly came to this conclusion in school with academics, but started applying it to everything. It’s not perfect—you can absolutely work hard and still not get the results because of forces of nature (or oppressive systems). But in general I’ve found it’s a good rule to live by.

You know it’s a been a bad day when you arrive to your shift and the Blakemore box is out…

When my dog died almost a year ago to the day, it was one of the worst things my wife and I have ever gone through. I know that’s proof of my privilege—but I think it’s also proof of how much animals mean to us. They’re pure good. I work a lot of weird shifts; when I come home my wife may not be awake or present, but my dog was always there. It initiated intense, physical grief in both of us.

Lean on any friends or family you have. Post here. Don’t deny how bad you’re hurting, but look for another animal to help after you grieve. I feel like our pets represent different chapters in our life, and when one leaves us a new chapter opens. That chapter may come with a different pet for a different time of your life. We chose to use the closing of our chapter as a transition point—we had a few horrible months at first but ultimately kicked some bad habits we had been building for a while. But where you are right now is horrible, and as another human being I understand to an extent how badly you’re hurting.

Yeah, my understanding of the physiology is that taking it that early leads to rebound sleepiness in 4-6 hours after waking. I think it definitely does, but the immediate caffeine helps if you have a job that demands immediate alertness lol.

So yes and no. Some of this depends on what sort of “loop” you’re stuck in, which I can’t answer unless I have more details. The rest doesn’t depend as much on that.

On one hand, 21 is extremely young—which means you have an absurd amount of wiggle room and time to course correct, even if you’ve done some really dumb stuff.

On the other hand, time only starts to move faster and if you don’t commit to course correct at some point you’ll end up a lot older in a way tougher spot.

I think the answer here is some sort of average of extremes (like it is for most things in life). You shouldn’t worry about the future too much because you’re so young, but you should start taking action to course correct now so that the next 5-10 years are easier.

They’re Jet Alert 200 mg—but the pills are oblong so I break them into smaller doses based on how I’m feeling. Feeling really awake? Don’t take any. Slightly drowsy? A quarter of one (50mg). Normal level of drowsy? 100 mg. Etc.

There’s something about the going back to sleep that seems to have a stacking effect—you wake up feeling really well rested.

Sleep with caffeine pills next to your bed. Set an alarm for 20 minutes before when you want to wake up. Take the pill with the alarm, and go back to sleep. You will magically wake up super awake at the time you want to be up.

This is obviously a lot less good than the healthy solutions here, but I work a rotating shift schedule and this trick has been working for me for over a decade.

Very good point. I’d like to also think it’s not getting attention as to avoid prompting more idiots from joining in on the idiocy, but that’s likely me giving MSM too much credit.

This has to be purposefully not getting media coverage so as to not incite panic/public support, right? When I saw the first ruling posted by Gov Abbott it seemed almost like a secessionist rant, but it’s NO WHERE to be seen in MSM