Insane. Thanks for sharing.

The thing is, he wasn’t even a psychologist.

Your mom broke the garage. That was absolutely irresponsible of her, not you, you were trying to help out which is really sweet.

And I mean what was the goal here anyway? Even when running late the 3 seconds it takes to start a car will hardly make any difference.

Farming locally doesn’t mean use a city building, it means use a field thats kinda in the same region, not at the other end of the world. And of course that’s more sustainable. The shorter the transport routes are, the better.

We gave up on reusing glass bottles in large part because they were not sanitary. Every boomer has stories of finding cigarette butts in their soda and beer.

I live in a county that almost religiously reuses glass bottles and have never heard nor experienced such a story. Seems like someone figured out how to sanitize them.

No what I’m saying is maybe you are sensitive (for whatever reason - from a exceptional metabolism to placebo, over other sensitivities/allergies, complex psychological effects, etc everything is possible) but it’s certainly not because glutamate is a neurotransmitter.

Neurotransmitters and the stuff in our bloodstreams (nutrients, hormones and so on) are two very different systems. Think of it as a river and a power grid. We all have this massive stream of different molecules in our bodies, and we have an elaborate information system made from electric and chemical signaling, like cables and batteries, working right beside it. The batteries might happen to utilize the same molecules that swim around in the river, but they still have nothing to do with each other. The river doesn’t touch the batteries, and your body very carefully decides which part it takes out of the water and into the batteries. Highly simplified of course, but that’s kinda how you can imagine why one doesn’t hurt the other.

To add:

• No visible clocks. If possible don’t check the time at all while trying to sleep. Doing math at night (aka “oh no only 4 hours left”) only makes you angry or sad.
• No alcohol. If unavoidable, try to be sober by the time you want to fall asleep. (Dring sooner, if at all.)
• No coffee after midday. Some bodies suck at metabolising it.
• Bedroom should be as dark and silent and comfy as possible. If there’s any way you can add comfort, do it.
• For persisting sleep problems: Change position or location. (E.g. turn completely around in your bed, feet at the headrest, or sleep on the couch if comfortable.) Brains are very good at linking a location with a state of mind, and changing things around can help if the thought of your bed stresses you out already.

For severe problems it’s probably always wise to check with a physician, or if there’s specific stuff in your head that keeps you awake to consider telling a friend or therapist about it. To distance yourself from your thoughts is something everybody can learn and it can be tremendously helpful with stuff like that.

Even though you’re right in that glutamate is a neurotransmitter, eating it doesn’t affect our brain chemistry at all. It can’t pass the blood-brain-barrier. Which is relieving since basically every food group contains it and flooding our brain with that would lead to violent epileptic seizures and certain death. Not insomnia.

And melatonin isn’t a neurotransmitter but a hormone.

So maybe you do in fact sleep better when avoiding specific food groups in the evening, but your explanation certainly isn’t correct.

Just putting this out there since glutamate is such a highly misunderstood molecule surrounded by many misconceptions, this one being a very common one.

I mean what’s more important to you, being able drop the info about time zones when scheduling international meetings, or preserving humanities ability to communicate time respectively to the actual time of day?

I’ve lived in three countries so far and never actually had trouble scheduling anything. The concept of time of day on the other hand is pretty prevalent in my daily life.

Ahem. Oops.

But in a way that’s a good example for what I meant. You and me communicate time both in reference to the time of day, not a virtual time of the planet that means something else to everyone depending on location, and you easily could spot my mistake.

So let’s just say I did that on purpose.

Communication about times would get so much easier, communication about schedules would get so much easier.

Except that it wouldn’t. It would make communication about time a culture sensitive topic. Sure, the exact time of day in relation to the position of the sun might get lost with our current system, but if someone tells you “I’ve slept til 12am” at least you know it was somewhat around noon. Under your new system you’d always have to consider where someone lives.

Psychologically that would be a desaster. People would wear themselves out in an instant, and in 6 months top we’d have a world population suffering from clinical depression.

:(

You could totally work with your inner child on that basis. Obviously don’t have to. But just imagining this little version of you and the hardship they had to endure, thinking about what they would have needed from an adult, and imagining yourself being that adult for your imaginative younger self - that would be very much in line with the idea of the technique.

When remembering a stressful experience it’s important not to get stuck in your thoughts.

Most people would be a bit shocked after what you’ve been through. Our brains tend to try to go over things a few times to get a grasp at what happened. Sometimes our thoughts become a movie of the stressful incident that plays on repeat in our thoughts. Try to think further. Remember how you got out of the situation, remember how you got home, remember how you had dinner, remember how you got to bed. And remember: You’re okay, you’re alright, this is all behind you, you did alright, and right now you’re safe and fine.

Try to explicitly think this a few times. At the very least, this is a much more pleasant thought to get stuck on than “fuck, I’m in danger”.

And if it helps: Either distract yourself or tell someone what happened. Both are okay. Just don’t stop at the scary part when telling the tale, always think and tell about it to the point where you were safe again.

It didn’t, at least not in the way you think. The headlines of the past few days show the aftermath of the last decades: industry contracts that were made in the last century and the political heritage of a generation of politicians who are no longer in power.

Coal is being phased out and that’s not changing. It cannot change substantially anyway; there is only so much coal in the gound. Recent political decisions moved to keep most of it there. For technological, political, economical and industry related reasons this won’t be a fast process unfortunately.

One of the roadblocks of our transition to a sustainable energy supply is how much money (and in our capitalisic society, therefore, power) the industry itself holds. Coal lobbies will work hard for you not to think about them too much. Nuclear lobbies will work hard for you to blame those pesky environmentalists. A game of distraction and blame shifting. This thread is a good example of how well it’s working.

Our resources are limited. This is true for good old planet earth as well as our societies. We only have so much money, time, and workforce to manage this transition. And as much as I’d love to wake up tomorrow to a world with PVC on every roof, a windmill on every field, and decentralised storage in every town center, this is just not realistic overnight. We’ll have to live with the fact of our limited resources and divert as much as possible of them towards such a future. (And btw, putting billions of dollars in money, time, and workforce towards a reactor that will start working in 10-30 years is not the way to do this, as much as the nuclear lobby would like you to think that.)

Eh. Humans have (confidently and incorrectly) assumed such causal links for millenia. There’s thunder, so there must be a thunder god. There’s a sun in the sky, so someone must have put it there. There’s people, so someone must have build them from clay.

What we could conclude logically: There is something - so something, somehow, once began.

That’s it. It’s also kind of recursive. It’s factual, but there isn’t anything meaningful inevitably following from this.

And everything else is an assumption.

You can say “I chose to believe that this somehow was a someone.” You could decide to believe that there was a personal entity as a single cause for all that is. Someone who had somewhat of a consciousness, who willingly and deliberately created everything. You could assume that this someone was eternal and all-powerful and therefore later on or even until right now still alive/active. You could speculate about this entity being interested in creating a specific planet with a very specific ecosystem. You could ponder whether this entiry would be interested enough in one species within this ecosystem to watch, influence, and even hold something like a relationship with them.

A bit far fetched, but sure. You wouldn’t be the first one to assume all these from a simple “There is a cake”.

You can do that at 14 actually.

Age of consent in Germany is a staggered system. With 14 you’re able to consent under specific conditions (them being there’s no exploitative element to the relationship), but still could file charge against the older person if they’re over 16. With 16 the first rule still applies; from 18 on you’re able to consent, period.

So for example when I was 14 I had a boyfriend, also 14, and neither of us committed any crime under this ruling. The law acknowledges that teenagers are allowed to have relationships with each other while putting every borderline case through a case-by-case hearing at court.

It’s actually a really good idea, so it kinda is a fun fact.

Did you seriously look at the FAQ of the vegan society, picked something that confirmed your preestablished opinion, and ignored the sentence right before it?

Here, let me show the whole quote:

What does it mean to be vegan?

A vegan lifestyle involves living a life that is more compassionate towards animals and the environment. The precise definition of veganism is:

“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude – as far as is possible and practicable – all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”

You just have a very superficial view of veganism. Just ask yourself this: Why abstain from animals products? What is the intention of a vegan lifestyle? You’ve claimed that a nuanced application would have “made a religion”, but the opposite is true. It would be a religion if we’d blindly apply a rule of conduct without any considerations. Which we don’t, as you will see all over the vegan society’s website. Just check what they write about animal products in medication. They are absolutely clear how a vegan lifestyle should work: “As far as is possible and practicable.” An important principle that practically every single vegan out there knows and lives by.