Do You Have Thoughts About The Changes To Firefox's Terms Of Use And Privacy Notice? A Lot Of People

Science side of Tumblr PLEASE share your tips/advice/hacks for academic conferences!

Im attending my first academic conference in a couple weeks and I’d appreciate anything you’d like to share with a lil baby bio undergrad like me

Light Cues

From the "find what works" department of my life...

I was telling my prescribing psychiatrist about this and he really loved it, and it occurred to me I'm not sure I've ever talked about it on here, but I've started using light cues instead of alarms for some things.

I don't use a lot of alarms regularly throughout the day (I don't need one to wake up unless I'm getting up at an unusual time, for example) but I use them for one-off stuff like "time to start getting ready to go out" or "today you have a doctor's appointment". I found after a while that with an alarm for a regular repeating task, there comes a point where I just silence it and forget to do the thing. Like, I have almost all notifications on my phone turned off and it's still muscle memory for me, as it is for many people, to have my phone beep for attention and just silence it unthinkingly. So I started using lighting cues.

It's evolved a lot, starting with the end of the workday. The lighting in my bedroom is all floor lamps; the one over my work desk is on a smart switch, which plugs into the wall and then the lamp plugs into the switch. I set the switch to turn the lamp on at 8am just before I start work, and off at 4:30pm to remind me to stop work, which I don't always remember to do. The light suddenly going out makes that corner unpleasantly dim, and it's more work to turn it back on (open phone, open app, fin the right switch) than it is to stop work for the day.

Then I thought, this is so irritating it must be useful for other things. So I set it to go off from noon to 12:03pm. It's more of a pain in the ass to turn it back on than it is to get up, go to the kitchen, and do what I'm supposed to do at noon anyway: take my second Adderall dose. And the light is back on by the time I get back.

But I was running into the problem of taking the dose on an empty stomach as you're supposed to, but not having eaten since breakfast at like 5am. And now I'm in the kitchen. Having forgotten to eat my Early Lunch at 10:30. But the Adderall needs like 20 minutes to kick in before I eat, and by the I'm back at work, and then I wonder why I eat my body weight in pasta at 5pm.

So I set a light cue for 10:30 to remind me to take a break and eat. But I don't want to use the same cue for everything. The lamp on the other end of the bedroom doesn't have a smart switch but it does have a smart bulb, which is even more flexible, so at 10:30am it dims to 50% (irritating) and turns deep blue (doubly irritating). I leave the room, go eat lunch, and usually come back to sit on the bed with the cats for a few minutes. I don't mind the dim blue light when I'm on the bed -- I just can't work with it that way. So at 11 the light goes back to full white brightness and I get my cue to go back to work.

I have various other cues -- the living room lamps go off and the LED string on the headboard in the bedroom goes on low and red to indicate it's bedtime, and the LEDs go off a little later to remind me NO, it is BEDTIME NOW.

Obviously a lot of this is only possible with either analog daily timers or smart bulbs/switches, and those can be cost-prohibitive for some while others don't like having their lighting on the internet. But it's all switches and bulbs that I can remove easily, and they've come down a great deal in price -- mine are all Kasa brand so they're controlled from a single app, and I've found them extremely helpful.

Plus sometimes at night I put all the lights to deep blue and pretend I'm underwater and that's fun.

i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

Progress not perfection

guys. please

I think something a lot of other people can relate to is the way that you get so conditioned to discomfort that you stop registering it.

I remember sitting at the table with my family, eating dinner as a child. I’d try to eat, because of course I was hungry. But sometimes the flavor or texture was so repugnant that it moved into a category of Not Food.

“Two more bites before you can leave the table.”

“I can’t,” I’d say, trying to explain the impossibility.

But because I was a child they heard, “I won’t,” and made me sit at the table. I’d sit in dull agonized silence, bored and hungry for hours until bedtime when they’d give up. I’d hate myself for not eating and my parents for forcing me to sit there. The few forcefeeding moments ended in vomit.

They’d say, “If you don’t eat this you can’t eat a snack later,” and I moved past trying to communicate my discomfort into accepting that I’d just be hungry.

That state of affairs didn’t last, because my parents realized nothing could force me to eat so they catered to my palate, worrying they’d starve me. But the message stuck. If you can’t do anything about a situation, just accept the suffering.

A few years later my mother called me off the playground to ask, “Are you limping?”

I shrugged. My feet had hurt for a long time, but that was just the way things were now. My mom pulled my socks and shoes off and gasped. The soles of my feet were covered in huge painful planters warts.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” She demanded but I could only shrug at her. I’d learned a long time ago that saying things about my discomfort didn’t matter, so now I had no words. Sometimes things hurt and sometimes they don’t. I simply accepted and did my best.

Now as an adult trying to learn to improve my own conditions can be hard. If I make food that I can’t eat I’ll force myself to sit at the counter still, full of guilt and self loathing, trying to will myself to eat it.

At first I needed my betrothed to gently take it away to present me with something I could eat. Now on my own I can usually admit that it’s not happening before too long and get something else, but I still feel guilty.

Laying in bed at night waiting for my betrothed to finish getting ready I let out a huge sigh of relief when they turned the lights off.

“Why didn’t you turn them off if they bothered you?” they asked the first time it happened.

“I didn’t even know it was bothering me until it was gone.”

Assessing my physical state now to see if I can improve it is something I’m still relearning but I’m relieved to finally have the space and support to do it.

I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon

What Can I Do For Climate?

[Pinned post]

1. Inform yourself

2. Become politically active

3. Transform your own life

4. Spread the word

———————–

1. Inform yourself - Reading up on climate can be very difficult because the news is so grim, and it can be very upsetting. I do most of my reading focused on possible solutions. I try to know the basics of the issue as well, but I am aware of not pushing my boundaries. Upsetting yourself is not the goal. Knowledge is the foundation that leads to the other steps.

2. Become politically active - Some options:

1) Volunteer for and/or donate to campaigns of candidates who will support climate legislation. As unexciting as it is to support politicians who keep on disappointing, and to wade into electoral politics in general, these are the folks who will actually vote on legislation. Just the effort of replacing any Republican with almost any Democrat is worth doing, even if it makes one sigh. (Sorry, this is going to be US-centric.) Volunteering can include canvassing, phone banking, writing letters, attending campaign rallies and events. Act locally, but if you’re not sure where to start, Swing Left tracks the most significant US races.

2) Go to protests. Showing up is one of the most significant things we can do.

3) Join a climate activism group, like Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future, and participate in their events. If there is nothing near you, there are some things you can participate in online. Check their websites. Other groups you can help: 350, Rainforest Action Network, NRDC, Stop Line 3, Oxfam, stand.earth, League of Conservation Voters…  Use these organizations to choose actions to take (from signing petitions to sending letters to politicians to becoming an organizer). They have many to choose from. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

4) Avoid burnout or guilt. Do what you can, when you can. It’s okay if you can’t. It’s not all on you.

3. Transform your own life - Transforming consumption habits among the world’s more-affluent is necessary to reduce emissions. Collectively, our impact on heating the climate is huge. (People who make $38,000 a year and up are the 10% who contribute 50% of global emissions.) Each individual effort to reduce is so tiny it’s insignificant, but it’s part of a bigger whole that needs to happen. But again, you can only do what you can, and the choices involved are complicated. It’s okay if you can’t. It’s not all on you. (The super-rich are the ones who really need to be doing this, because their contribution to GHG emissions goes hand-in-hand with their wealth.)

These are the most impactful actions, adapted from various sources. “If possible” is implied in all of these:

1) Live car-free. Walk, bike, use public transportation. If buying a car, buy electric or used, and drive less. (”Used” because the significant emissions of manufacturing a car can be avoided by driving an existing car.)

2) Take no more than one short flight every three years and one long flight every eight years.

3) Switch electricity provider to one that provides solar or wind energy. More challenging: also convert your house to using only electricity (no natural gas) and install a heat pump.

4) Switch to a vegan diet or greatly reduce meat – especially beef – and dairy consumption.

5) Buy no more than three new items of clothing a year. Avoid buying newly manufactured things whenever possible. Use what you already have for seven years or longer. A big chunk of consumer emissions are embedded in the things that we buy.

4. Spread the word - This may be the most important and possibly the hardest. Do what you can. Avoid heated and probably pointless arguments. As a general rule, say your piece and then let it go, without expecting to change anyone’s mind right in that moment. I try to focus on talking about solutions, which many people surprisingly don’t know. And use your piece of the internet, write letters to the editor, comment on articles, etc.