I’m honestly surprised by this. They want him to self destruct on live television. If they make fun of him like they’ve been doing in every press release it will probably work.

This will require Harris to still command the room and come across as professional and presidential though, which might be harder than it sounds when Trump can tell as many outrageous lies as he wants. I think she can do it, but it’s a risk.

So I have some experience with this and have a few things I want to tell you:

Consider a dedicated sleep study. If you have sleep apnea, medication will not fix your problem and some medications may actually make it worse.

Xanax (an anxiety medication) and Ambien (a sleep medication) are very similar drugs with respect to their mechanism of action. Xanax binds to a specific group of receptors to cause anxiolytic effects and happens to also make you sleepy. Ambien binds to a subset of those same receptors to make you sleepy, but don’t have the strong anxiety reducing effect. If Xanax works for you, Ambien should theoretically have a similar effect. In practice, it doesn’t tend to work as well because anxiety can keep you awake. If that has been your experience with Ambien, think about taking some steps to address anxiety even if you don’t think it’s that bad. Yoga, counseling, meditation, whatever. There are also guided breathing audio sessions designed to put you to sleep in apps like Fitbit and calm that may be helpful.

You can also supplement a prescription sleep aid with something non prescription, which is what I do. I take Ambien, and to keep my dose low I supplement with melatonin, tryptophan, and valerian root when I need an extra kick into sleepiness. I’ve heard CBD is also quite effective for this. Magnesium reportedly also helps with restful sleep, but get a sleep formulation because magnesium in the wrong form causes diarrhea.

Don’t underestimate sleep hygiene. For a long time I had the attitude of “I have real sleep problems, basic stuff like cutting back caffeine is not going to help.” The thing is, when taken together, that kind of stuff actually can help tremendously. I scheduled a month where I went hardcore on sleep hygiene. Strict caffeine limits, no late caffeine or exercise, don’t do anything on your bed but sleep and sex, wake up at the same early time every day even when you don’t have to, limit screens before, bed… I mean ALL of it. I found that it actually really helped. In combination with medication it might be a life saver. Might be worth doing your own experiment with it.

Good luck!

Incompatible taste in music. My taste is the benchmark they have to meet and I will not compromise, obviously.

This article is the most I’ve heard about Foamstars since it was announced.

Not from a person. When I was younger I took an online personality test. Nothing from a reputable source, just some random pop psychology thing. The result was short and had a few things on it, but one line hit me like a ton of bricks: “You don’t like people who aren’t as smart as you.”

I was incredulous at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it was probably true at some level. I was pretty horrified by this realization, and I ended up thinking about it a lot and doing a ton of introspection. I knew I was smart, but I started acknowledging that there were also a ton of things I was terrible at. Whenever I had intrusive thoughts about a person I thought wasn’t very smart, I tried to think about things they were good at or at least acknowledge privileges I had that they didn’t.

We are a product of our experiences, and different people have different skills and aptitudes for things. All of that is ok and doesn’t make someone better than anyone else. I’m not perfect at it, but I found some value in confronting uncomfortable truths about myself.

Biden claimed in his State of the Union address that the 25 percent minimum tax on the ultra-rich will raise $500 billion over 10 years. “Imagine what that could do for America,” he said.

Maybe I’m not good at comprehending numbers at this scale but does this seem kind of low to anyone else? I mean, that’s a lot of money in absolute terms but the government spent $6.3 trillion in FY 2023 alone.

We should still do it obviously. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good and all that.

We’re in a weird spot. On the one hand, legitimate criticisms should always be welcome especially when directed at our elected officials. In a healthy democracy we would vote out people who disappoint or underperform. On the other hand, we don’t have a healthy democracy and one side is determined to vote for a man with the most extensive list of abhorrent behavior ever documented in the nation’s history. Criticizing Biden just makes it more likely that a super close race will go to Trump, who is unquestionably worse than Biden.

Part of me wants to say “let’s get the Trump threat behind us and THEN we can work on building a healthier democracy,” but that isn’t how a healthy democracy works! If we compromise on our values to get rid of someone we disagree with, are we the baddies? It’s a frustrating and scary place to be.

The screen technology is the biggest differentiator. Cheap sets use LCD. Some will have local dimming zones where parts of the backlight dim in order to increase contrast a bit, but there is light bleed which I find distracting

There’s a newer tech called mini LED which is basically an LCD with an array of much smaller led backlights behind it than a cheaper set. This allows for much more precise local dimming of pixels, creating a picture with a better contrast ratio and much less light bleed.

The more expensive stuff is OLED which is a different technology entirely. Its main benefit is that each pixel is lit independently without the need for backlighting which provides VERY deep blacks (the pixels are off), often described as a near infinite contrast ratio, with no light bleed. The main drawbacks are low peak brightness and the possibility of burn in, though both are getting better with time.

The newest and priciest is micro LED, which uses self illuminating LEDs as pixels so it has the same contrast advantages as OLED but it has much higher peak brightness and no burn in. This is extremely expensive and not widely available yet, but is being pitched as replacing OLED eventually.

I’m 38 and I did not know this.

From the linked article from The Hill:

“I like Tom Emmer a lot as a person, but I couldn’t support him as Speaker of the House. He didn’t object to Joe Biden’s electoral college vote,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)

Screaming internally

I know boimler’s hair is purple in lower decks, but I didn’t expect it to be purple in live action for some reason and I couldn’t stop thinking about how weird it was whenever he was on screen. Like, the Simpsons have yellow skin while animated but if they were real life people it wouldn’t be neon yellow. Am I crazy?

I had no idea this was the procedure. I’d love to have more than two viable parties, but I pretty much never want the house to pick the president. What a mess.

I generally dislike massive celebrities being overtly political outside of their artistic endeavors. Their political opinions are no more valid or important than anyone else’s yet they exert a ton of influence over their fans, often young and impressionable fans, who are highly likely to agree with them without really informing themselves on the issue. I think they need to be super careful and responsible with that power.

With that being said, I’m really struggling to be upset with Swift or Kelce for “wielding their influence” to “promote their politics” as outlined in this article. Swift is cool with LGBT people and tells her fans to register to vote? Kelce is pro vaccine and also did a beer commercial with a brand that also did a sponsored social media post with a trans person once? This stuff is so benign it’s barely even news. These issues are only political because Republicans specifically made them political so if they’re upset about it, I can’t really feel sorry for them.

I also cannot tell if this is sarcasm

I have room in my life for exactly one gacha game, which I don’t spend money on. Sometimes this is a fun little distraction, even though progress is slow without buying currency. This is how I felt about Record Keeper before they shut down the global version. I love FF7 so I’m giving this a shot, but it’s been a week and I’m struggling. There are so many superimposed mechanics that it feels like a new player starting a free to play game at year 5 or 6 of its life, after they’ve steadily added new mechanics, currencies, and other powercreep for years. But it hasn’t been out for years, it’s been out for a week and there are already so many things to keep track of. It feels like work.

Also, the “automatic” battle AI is VERY good. Better than I am. And you can double the speed so the battles go quicker. At first I was relieved because it meant I didn’t have to pay attention while grinding, but why am I doing this at all if I’m not even playing it?

The battle of crait from the last Jedi with the red salt was visually stunning and doesn’t really get much credit.

This isn’t about breaking laws, it’s about breaching ethical standards. Federal judges all agree to a code of ethics as a condition of being on the bench. SCOTUS justices weirdly do NOT agree to a code of ethics. The controversy is that we are learning about a ton of stuff that is plainly unethical under the standards federal judges agree to, but SCOTUS is technically untouchable. Democrats are advancing legislation to force them to agree to ethical standards, but SCOTUS is arguing that Congress doesn’t have the power to force them. They are also unwilling to voluntarily agree to a standard of ethics for obvious reasons.

Stop Skeletons From Fighting.

Video game channel with absolutely top tier writing, production, and presentation that stacks up against the biggest channels out there, but it’s from a team of only 2 people. The host is super likeable and entertaining. No low effort click bait videos. Criminally underrated with only 330k subscribers. I know that’s still a lot, but they easily have 1m+ sub potential.

The “punching weight” series about ambitious and wacky titles/peripherals are my favorite. They also have some super well researched video game history videos that are great.