dandelion

Oh boy.

First of all, form good "sleep hygiene" habits, read: https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep%20Hygiene.pdf

A lot of it is obvious, like go to bed at the same time every night (set a timer to get yourself reliable at first!), and wake up at the same time every morning. Give yourself more "sleep opportunity" than the hours you want to sleep so you actually get enough sleep (e.g. if you want to sleep 8 hours, maybe give yourself 10 hours in bed with the lights out).

Don't use screens several hours before bed, don't do anything but sleep in your bed, and wind-down before bed with something like reading a book (again, in a chair in another room, not in your bed).

Now for more advanced tips I've learned from dealing with insomnia:

A problem I have sometimes had is that tasks like meditation can actually cause me to become more alert, and it turns out meditation actually does cause insomnia.

When struggling with meditation related insomnia, I got lots of practice navigating falling asleep.

What I found most helpful was rather than focusing on an object in a meditation like way, to instead allow mind-wandering and rumination and to try to cultivate a lack of metacognitive awareness about that rumination. Basically, the opposite of meditation. Meditators will hopefully know what I mean by this - but basically, don't pay too much attention to what you are thinking, just get absorbed into the mind-wandering.

Sometimes if the mind-wandering leads to thoughts or feelings that are "strong" or engaging enough it can prevent me from sleeping, like when I'm anxious or my mind is preparing or rehearsing for an important event or the next day. In that case, a little bit of meta-awareness can be helpful to alert you to the need to redirect your rumination to something actively boring or benign.

In the most extreme instances, I visualize myself working in a factory performing a repetitive motion like pulling a level to operate a press. I essentially constantly try to pay attention to that mundane task and ensure that it remains mundane / uninteresting - just keep pulling the lever and keep paying attention to that task. This is akin to the counting sheep method, but I always found counting sheep too interesting or engaging of a task.

After hours of boredom I usually lose consciousness.

Sometimes I threaten myself with getting out of bed, and often in response I feel a resistance and that makes me realize how tired I actually am, and I threaten myself with doing something boring like sitting in a chair and staring at a wall. Sometimes that is enough to kick me out of my energized thinking into a milder / more boring and repetitive mind-wandering that leads to dreams and unconsciousness.

Sometimes I actually do have to get out of bed and do something, often I will stretch and if I'm not feeling overwhelmed with sleep that way, I find it helpful to exhaust myself with forearm planks - just hold until you can't anymore (you can also use a timer for 30 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever pushes you past comfort but all the way to failure), maybe try this a couple times. You will sweat and it's miserable the whole time, and you will be tired and want to crawl back into bed. That has helped me fall asleep really well before, and sometimes I think it's because the blood also gets into my muscles and somehow this helps me relax.

Anyway, hope this helps!

Have you considered that your anger can have consequences for people on the other side, and that this can even be harmful - and that if you feel disgusted or upset about something it doesn't always give you the right to express that anger directly at someone?

I mean, I want to be sympathetic, I get how a corporate and sanitized internet can feel wrong and changes the kinds of community that are possible, e.g. young boys on Xbox live were known for saying vile things and riling one another up (as boys commonly do), but as someone who was also present in that culture at the time, not everyone felt at home or comfortable in that environment, and the bullying and culture often made me feel like I couldn't enjoy those games.

Sometimes tolerance and civility is a small price to pay in exchange for making spaces accessible to other people. That said, I'm not sure every space needs to be like this - so again, I want to be sympathetic here.

Why do you feel entitled to express anger or hatred toward people?

That does assume the kid has the time and resources to hang together a costume even if homemade. I was maybe a preteen when this happened, so that may have played into some adults' hesitancy to give me candy, but also looking back I just think the people in the neighborhood I was in had bad values. I also had zero time for a costume, I wasn't planning on trick-or-treating at all, and it was only because my friends were kind enough to invite me anyway.

But I would give candy to teens, adults, or kids regardless of whether they have a costume or not. :-)

Are you, in your estimation, intelligent?

No. Particularly I get the impression other people get things faster than me, and I seem to have to do more cognitive labor than my peers. I guess I would ask what "intelligence" is, that seems like a difficult thing to quantify or answer.

Are you wise in the way you apply that intelligence? (interpretation yours)

No, I generally consider myself unwise. (It takes me a long time to learn from my mistakes or change self-destructive behaviors, etc. - it often feels like I have trouble "adulting".)

Do you view yourself as unique and individual, or as a data point on the spectrum of humanity?

Both, how else could it be? (We are both subjects and objects, unique but usually only slight variations of a theme.)

The only time I went without a costume as a kid was because I lived in a dysfunctional household and I was super stressed and didn't have enough time or support to plan a costume - so I threw on an oversized coat and went with my friends; some adults tried to give me trouble and refused me candy, and that was a bummer because I felt like I had failed ... anyway - I guess my point is that maybe some kids are being lazy or something, but you don't really know.

I personally would definitely give kids candy regardless, but I wish people would actually trick-or-treat where I live, it makes me so sad that nobody does.

I see propublica, I upvote

It's commonly regarded as sexist in most contexts, at least that is / was my understanding. The thesis reiterates the harm outside of a workplace setting:

This suggests that the infantilizing label girl has the most impact and is most harmful in contexts where qualities of maturity, leadership, and adultness are most critical, such as in workplace and leadership settings. I do not mean to suggest, however, that being called girl in a non-workplace setting is unproblematic, as it is possible that such labels could have a cumulative effect over time in any setting: the connotations of naivety and innocence may take their toll on women in the long-term.

While referring to a man as a boy likewise has problematic features (esp. as a racist slur, like when a white man referring to a black man as "boy"), I think it is considered more harmful to refer to a woman as a "girl" due to the context of women being marginalized historically and presently by undermining their sense of personal autonomy and authority (e.g. the way Hegel described women as akin plants, or the way Aristotle argued women are natural mutilations and aberrations of the proper male form who do not exercise their will and require men to manage their affairs for their own good, the way parents must for their children).

This is all contextual though - women peers referring to one another as "girl" can be affirming or positive without the infantilizing meaning or impact, so part of the problem is the context of a man referring to a woman as "girl".

And of course you probably didn't intend this, or even been aware it has any sexist connotation, in fact I suspect this kind of behavior is rather common (lots of men can be clueless about the subtle differences in language and the impact it can have on women).

This is somewhat touched on in the article as well:

Indeed, this study may be the first to show that a commonly used label for a group of people (and one that is even preferred by members of that group in many contexts) can have a detrimental effect on members of that group. Previous research (e.g., Boeckmann & Liew, 2002; Carnaghi & Maass, 2007; Evans & Chapman, 2014; Leets, 2002; Leets & Giles, 1997) has documented the effects of hate speech and overtly derogatory labels on minority group members. The term girl reveals another insidious type of language effect that passes by relatively unnoticed and is deemed “normal,” yet has deleterious consequences.

By the way, I want to be clear that the take-away here isn't that you're sexist or bad, the take-away should just be that many women feel infantilized by being referred to as a girl and that it's good to be aware of and sensitive to that.

Besides the harm it can cause, it's also probably just pragmatically useful for you to know that other women seeing you refer to another woman as "girl" might have a chilling effect or even spark anger, since it is seen as sexist. I think the context matters here, but a lot of women are victims of physical and sexual assault on top of all the other ways they can be marginalized in this society, and the resulting trauma can cause outsized / disproportionate responses or outbursts. It's just worth noting that if someone seems to be overreacting to something you don't see as that big of a deal, there might be deeper issues there. I don't want you to feel like you have to walk on egg-shells, but it's also good to be aware and empathetic if you are willing to.

That just wasn't the part of the title I was focused on / expecting to be fixed.

In fact, this whole elections thing is just so expensive, a burdensome cost to the people. Wouldn't you prefer to save money and enjoy the reduced risk with knowing a qualified expert is running things (\s)

(this legit is how the Heritage Foundation sounds)

Sorry, I was so focused on how you called a woman a "girl" I missed that you also misspelled reishi.

(narrator): but it was not fixed