Newtra @ Newtra @pawb.social

They/Them, agender-leaning scalie.

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Plural? How many idle games are we talking here?

Fucking finally! Now when will they let me transfer all the games I had to put on an alt account back to my main?

(Ok really it's just 1 game that I haven't played in ages. I'm not that horny. I just hate having multiple accounts as it eats up headspace)

But the comments below say they're not able to access the new page, even with the direct URL... It seems certain tiers of customers can't opt out. Possibly they can't be included in the first place (e.g. EU users), but it's a pretty big screw up to hide one's status on such an important privacy setting.

Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey suck now.

There are old movies that have aged much better, like The Man in the White Suit and Colossus: The Forbin Project. These should be the ones we call classics.

I could just be further down the path due to lucky opportunities. 20 years ago I had no ambitions beyond game programming. It was only when I got a biology-related job that learning in my free time started displacing mindless entertainment. The whole field is one big nerd snipe - there are endless opportunities where you can advance the frontier of knowledge by combining a few existing ideas and working out the kinks. The more you read, the more opportunities you see. It's thrilling. I don't think I can go back to non-science work.

I think the dopamine from constant learning also helps to keep my ADHD in check. If I start the weekend with some study, I'll usually also get the housework done. If I start with a video game or TV show, I'll probably spend the rest of the weekend stressing about my todo list and not getting anything done.

I honestly don't know what that silence would be like. I've spent my programming career jumping between domains, becoming an expert then moving on to find a new challenge. Now I'm building AI stuff for medicine.

In my down time I learn languages, watch videos about physics and math, and play puzzle games.

My brain actually won't let me stop. Boredom = pain.

I'm impatient. I usually eat it still half frozen. The outside gets warm enough for the cheese to melt, but the core is still usually frozen and covered in ice.

For context, due to histamine intolerance severely limiting my food choices, I've given up and just eat the same frozen meal prepped lunch every day. It'd have lost its flavor by now due to repetition, even if I hadn't gotten bored of waiting for it to fully cook.

I'm glad to hear I'm not missing out on anything. (It's still not out in Europe.)

Since it's a natural hormone the body already has ways to get rid of it. It has a half-life of less than an hour. The lethal dose is so high we haven't been able to intentionally kill animals with it: "Melatonin is not fatal even at a dose of 800 mg/kg in animal studies".

The big risk of ongoing high doses is becoming so dependent on it that you wake up as soon as it wears off (e.g. after only 4 hours of sleep). At this level you basically can't sleep without it and have to slowly wean yourself off to get back to normality.

I think the big difference between people benefiting at small doses (~0.3mg) and large doses (2+mg) is that the 0.3mg group use it for sleep quality through the night, whereas the 3+mg people just need the sudden shock to get to sleep in the first place.

The drawback with big doses is that your brain becomes less sensitive so your naturally-produced melatonin might not be enough to keep you asleep for the whole night after the pill wears off. It has a very short half-life in the body (under 1 hour), so there's no way for a single dose before sleeping to last 8 hours. We naturally produce only 0.06-0.08mg per night, so it's easy to see how supplementing melatonin could desensitize someone and cause them to wake up after just 4-6 hours of sleep.

I have ADHD and am in the large-dose category and use 2-3mg of melatonin to help me fall asleep. Without it, I can't sleep reliably because my brain often won't shut up. Sleep reliably is so much more important to me than sleep quality.

Using it only 5 nights a week, I'm not significantly dependent. I can still sleep without melatonin, just less reliably. I've tried 0.3mg, but it felt the same as taking nothing.

For me, 10mg would be excessive and probably harmful in a desensitizing way. The most I've taken is 6mg, but it only helped in 2 out of 6 times. The other 4 times my brain just wouldn't stop. If doubling my usual dose didn't help, I don't think doubling it again would be any different.

There are however studies with higher doses, e.g. this one about kids with ADHD that says:

two-third of the patients responded to relatively medium doses (2.5–6 mg/d), whereas doses above 6 mg added further benefit only in a small percentage of children.

so I guess it's different for everyone.

Yes! Scientific trials have shown that for most people, 0.3mg of melatonin gives better quality of sleep than 3mg.

I've seen pills as high as 10mg on the shelf and have to wonder wtf they're for. If you take too much your body becomes less sensitive to it and you become dependent on supplementation. 10mg is definitely too much.

That was directly in response to:

those are helpful altho the name of the game is also brightness

Every night I lie in bed, lights off, using my phone for about 20 minutes while waiting for the melatonin to kick in and my brain to calm down. In a dark room I have to keep my phone on quite high brightness (about 1/3rd of maximum).

Lamps aren't an option at that stage as usually my husband is in the room also trying to sleep. I also find that "warm" light still has too much blue

Yes. They're very effective at making me sleepy, but have 2 big drawbacks: they're uncomfortable to wear in bed with your head on a pillow, and complete monochromaticity seems to ruin any enjoyment you get from using your phone. If I get bored it's much harder to get to sleep because my brain starts fixating on stuff and making me anxious. Yay ADHD.

Unfortunately I have to keep my brightness quite high. My eyes can't focus well in the dark.

I do. I also messed with the iOS accessibility settings to color shift even more. It helps so much.

I even went to monochrome red at one point and it felt like me cellphone was actively putting me too sleep. Unfortunately monochrome also kills a lot of the enjoyment of using a phone. I was getting sleepier, but felt so bored I just wanted to find something too do to fill the dopamine void.

Melatonin

I can't do sleep hygiene. My cell phone is the first and last thing I see every day. I stare at screens all day for work and for leisure. With moderate melatonin use I can somehow maintain regular and restful sleep.

No side effects if you use it responsibly (e.g. 5 days on, 2 days off, stick with low doses). Very safe. Can improve sleep even if you're already sleeping well. I don't know why more people aren't on it.

Replace mindless entertainment with enriching entertainment. E.g. YouTube video essays, lectures, history podcasts, DuoLingo, Anki, Brilliant, artsy/niche movies/games, etc. Always be learning something, even if you'll never need it. Try to limit yourself to memorable, unique, or mind-opening content.

It's no fix, but it trains your brain to be able to wait just a little longer for its dopamine. Also you get to feel like you're sort-of achieving something, not just losing time every time your impulsive brain takes over.

I'm intermediate level in 3 languages, know a shit ton of science, and have played thousands of unique indie games. Is any of this useful? lol no. But do I feel accomplished and in control of some big parts of my life? Hell yes.

I had to unsub from Luke Stephens after hearing him throw that insult about hbomberguy needing more testosterone. Most toxic thing I've heard all week...

I love the playlist of worthy queer creators he gave. Not only was it an almost 4 hour video, now I have to watch another 12ish hours of random video essays to decide who else I want to follow!

I just did a big cleanup! I think it's down to about 40 on my work computer and 70ish on my computer.

Don't ask about the phone I'm typing this on... It's a lost cause.

In two languages I'm learning, German and Chinese, I've found it to suffer from "translationese". It's grammatically correct, but the sentence structure and word choice feel like the answer was first written in English then translated.

No single sentence is wrong, but overall it sounds unnatural and has none of the "flavor" of the language. That also makes it bad for learning - it avoids a lot of sentence patterns you'll see/hear in day to day life.