Obligatory “get a bidet” answer

So, the negative effects of stress don’t come from stress itself, but from the fight-or-flight response it elicits. Could you not just switch to having a different response to stress?

For instance, from “The Upside of Stress” by Kelly McGonigal, it says there can be more stress responses than fight-or-flight. Would this then indicate as long as you don’t show symptoms of the fight-or-flight response (poor immune system, digestive system, etc), your stress doesn’t necessarily have to be harmful to you? :)

edit: Found a cool TedTalk from Kelly McGonigal as well

That’s nice to hear :)

I feel as if live what is stereotypically considered a “high stress life” (cPTSD + multi minority), but I’ve always worked hard for my health and thus have low blood pressure and am fairly fit. Because of that, it’s always kind of sucked to see clickbait articles claiming that not only did I suffer through the trauma, but I will also die 20 years earlier due to circumstances completely out of my control.

I imagine these sorts of messages get attention because they can be very validating, but personally I’ve always found platitudes of “mitigate your stress!” annoying because it usually ends with the implication that I am automatically unhealthy because 1) I challenge myself, 2) am a minority, and/or 3) had some bad stuff happen to me a while ago.

Being stressed in healthy doses every once in a while is not bad for your health.

This reminds me of a good book I once read “The Upside of Stress” by Kelly McGonigal, about how if people viewed their stress positively, such as framing it as “excitement” instead of “distress,” they had better health outcomes and were more successful in their given fields. I may have to reread that book sometime :)

Not really a “hack,” but literally just prioritize the things you care about.

I feel like there’s so much pressure when you’re young to be excelling in literally every field. You’re expected to be getting great grades while also having the time of your life at parties while also doing extracurriculars, and so on.

If you only care about resume building, just focus on grades (and extracurriculars if you’re in high school). It’s okay to not have friends and get terrible sleep, school is only temporary anyways!

If you only care about appreciating life, that’s valid too! Functionally there’s often no difference between a 70% and a 100% as long as you make “the cut” to get into college/a job/whatever.

Objectively, the only thing you should not be neglecting is your health. To be perfectly honest, sometimes you will just need to pull all-nighters to get your priorities done. Don’t make a habit of it.

Also, one last controversial opinion: Office hours are useless if you already know the material, you shouldn’t just be attending office hours by default.

Chad Green Lover ^^^

Gosh, reminds me of a time I visited my Grandparents and my Grandfather drived even though I insisted I should. That car ride made me scared for my life.

Being old sure seems hard. At my Grandfather’s age, the average person in America is pretty out of shape, so walking isn’t an option. There are almost no buses anywhere out in the suburbs, so public transit isn’t an option either (and even if there were, the bus stops would need to be within a much shorter walking distance.)

Then again, the article is right that many old people would likely feel robbed of their agency if things like Advanced Driving Directives were implemented. It sucks that America is so car-centric…

Exactly

I mean, yeah?? I just put the soap wherever it needs to go??

The soap isn’t dirty folks. Half of the time all I’m showering off is sweat and dead skin cells anyways. And if any bugger dares reply to this with some clever comment about taint smears, I’ll inform you beforehand I do not speak with bidet-less miscreants.

My basics:

• no drugs, no alcohol, no meat, and I prefer to buy non-perishables bc my fridge isn’t very big. Rice, beans, or peanut butter cost like <$13 for a weeks worth of calories
• buy less. Use everything you have until it is so irreperably broken it must be replaced. Wear old clothes, don’t buy new underwear, don’t throw out all your current stuff so you can get new quality stuff, though still buy quality items that don’t constantly need to be replaced only when actually necessary

If you want to get an appliance, you should probably be getting it because you will actually use it to improve your life, not because it saves money (because it probably won’t)

Sure hypothetically, a bike or a crockpot or a bidet or a fishing rod or a sewing machine or a garden or a gym membership or a bread maker can technically save you money, but only if you use it.

Worse still, note that many of these items require maintenance and space, their price is not just limited to the money they costed.

I’m sure there are no shortage of people online who say that they love their bike or something and it saves them tons of money on car expenses, but if you just buy a bike and never use it- it will have been a waste of money.

For example, if we take the average cost of ingredients to make a loaf of bread go be $1.50, the average cost of a store-bought loaf to be $2.50, the average cost of a breadmaker to be $150, and the average calories in a homemade loaf of bread to be 1466 (numbers found with basic google searches), then you would have to make 150 loaves of bread, aka 440 meals for which bread constitutes 50% of the calories eaten (ex: 440 sandwiches) just to break even on your breadmaker purchase

Am I saying this is never a valuable purchase for anybody? No, of course not. If you want, buy a bread maker and enjoy delicious homemade bread. I just think that in general, people should be of the mindset that buying new stuff is a great way to improve your quality of life, but not necessarily is a very good strategy for saving money.

It seems crazy that Twitter is actively taking steps to become a worse social media company. Back when I was a kid, companies were supposed to be these well thought out, highly methodical entities that would only make the most optimal moves. I suppose it’s 2023 now though.

Pre-Med student here. Just ya average non-average queer neurodivergent zoomer. I’m not from a tech background, but I do use Linux, which basically makes me a programmer 😎

This power would be super useful. Imagine if using mirrors you could just lift all the dirt & grime off your skin, pick up all the dust on the floor, lift up a small camera and fly it through the air, or eat without utensils

To be able to stockpile time up to 24 hours. For example, if I’m running late on a project, I can dip into a time stockpile for 8 hours to get it done. At a later time I can then lose 8 hours from my time

I recognize that format from reddit.com/r/196, migrants or bots from reddit may be bringing it over. Basically, the “rule” of that sub was that if you visited it you had to post a meme before you left, so a lot of posts on the sub couldn’t think of a creative title, so the title was just “rule”

It then became a trend to just put “rule” at the end of whatever the title was, even if you could think of a title.

Cardio is awesome, the runners high is real, but you have to be well conditioned so it’s tough for beginners.

Sometimes, I also like to do workouts because it makes me feel productive while not being as mentally taxing as my ‘job’ of being a full time college student :/