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.

Source?

That makes more sense then. Still would need a house, but could manage that with planning/tiny home over time.

I mean, reading the Wikipedia article is seems like there’s a lot known about the killer and a pretty clear motive of him wanting to kill a bunch of people…

Something about the Vegas one (other than total number of fatalities) was so much more sinister. We barely even ever heard about the perpetrator. It’s always seemed bizarre to me.

Not saying we should be giving any media attention to mass killers, but it definitely breaks with the normal media portrayal.

How are you going to buy a bunch of land with a small amount of UBI?

I’ve been saying this for a while, and that’s why I think a complex problem like this needs a more complex solution than UBI.

Essentially I think successful UBI would need to be something like UBS instead (Universal Basic Support). Instead of only being money it needs to consist of free services. That way it’s harder for third parties to leech it away.

So instead of “Here’s $1000 a month, do whatever you want” it would need to be more like “You can get free healthcare here, free electricity through this company, free food rations from this grocery store.” Then if you want things above UBS you need to have some source of income.

The internet is such a funny place.

Open Lemmy and see this on the front page today with a ton of upvotes, yet I make a post a while back criticizing Boomers and my account gets brigaded and spammed. Hope that’s not happening to you OP!

Lemmy is almost as toxic as Reddit these days.

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?

Yep. Been saying for a while that it feels like old Reddit.

I wonder if it’s a nerd-level thing. Reddit devolved as it turned into another social media outlet instead of a niche internet techie place.

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 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.

Think of your sleep as reading a series of engaging books, where each book represents a sleep cycle, including chapters of both deep sleep (SWS) and dream sleep (REM). When you finish a book (sleep cycle), you reach a satisfying conclusion to that story arc—this is akin to waking up after a full sleep cycle. You feel refreshed because you’ve concluded the narrative neatly, without interrupting a tense plot twist or leaving a storyline unresolved.

However, just finishing one book doesn’t mean you’ve completed the whole series. If you stop after one book each night, you’re missing out on the depth and development that comes from reading more of the series (accumulating more sleep cycles). Initially, you might feel okay because you’ve concluded a story (cycle) properly, avoiding the grogginess of waking up mid-chapter (mid-cycle). Yet, this approach doesn’t give you the full, enriching experience (or rest) your body and brain need over time.

As days go on, if you continue this pattern, you accumulate a ‘reading debt’—akin to sleep debt. You’ve missed out on the broader, deeper insights and the full narrative arc that only comes from reading (sleeping) the whole series or book. This debt reflects not fully recharging your brain and body, leaving you progressively more tired. While you might feel a temporary refreshment from completing a cycle, without the full, restorative rest of multiple cycles, you’re not truly at 100%—you’re running on the satisfaction of a finished story, not the full restoration that comes from a complete series.

Yeah, it’s about getting enough REM and SWS cycles. The effect decays over time, though. If you time your wake up to a full sleep cycle (around 2.5-3 hours) one night, you may wake up feeling fine. If you do this multiple nights in a row, however, you will build up a REM/SWS debt. So on day one it feels fine, on day two it feels less fine, and on day three you’re dragging.

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…

My wife and I finally decided to take the leap and buy back in 2022. We had been waiting for years for the “market to correct” and finally just decided that we needed to stop waiting. Within months interest rates became unaffordable, and they’ve only gotten worse since then. We would not be able to reasonably afford our current home with current interest rates. It’s insane. The whole thing is rigged.