When I can’t sleep, I turn around and sleep “upside down” - moving my pillows to where my feet were beforehand, and my feet to where my head was beforehand - and I stick with that for a week or so. It gives me a week or so without insomnia and then wears off, so I have to turn myself back around for the next 7-12 day period.
Admittedly this could just be a me thing, but let’s put our faith in this method and let the power of placebo effect take hold. Boom, minor bouts of sleeplessness are cured.
What are your own examples of this?
Drink more water. Eat more fiber.
Yeah if you like poop and pee
Go on…
“if”
While most probably would be okay with hydrating more, do be careful:
- The “eight glasses per day” thing was made up whole cloth
- The advice I’ve heard is that for MOST people, drink when you are thirsty.
But if you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong because you feel a little bad, or have a headache, or are sleepy, or feel like you might be hungry but think you shouldn’t be, or any number of other situations - drinking a glass of water usually doesn’t hurt, and does sometimes turn out to have been the issue. So it’s rarely terrible advice.
(Unless you’re on dialysis like me and have fluid restrictions) :)
Switch to linux
One weird trick! Terminal still scares me as well as installing from GitHub, but I have win11 required at work and mint at home and the speed and ease of use are like night and day
Switched to codeberg as well. Microsoft owns github
Switched to codeberg as well
I’m using gitlab-on-prem for now, until their slow code decay and creeping featurism destroys it completely. It’s only barely usable now because of the really dumb CI/runner changes, for example, but forgejo uses a yaml CI setup so that’s never happening.
Have a look at onedev.io. it’s local Git hosting but it includes cicd and even an issue tracker.
Its build/install fails best practice and ISO in so many places that I simply cannot.
But thank you for sending that over. I’ve never heard of that app, and I’m grateful for the consideration.
I really want to and was mostly Windows free for most of 2025 but I can’t get my new graphics card to perform well in either kubuntu or mint. Games that will run on ultra at over 100fps in Windows will get 60-80fps on medium-high settings on kubuntu. A tear runs down my cheek every time I see people say they got performance increases from switching. Even my old hardware performed slightly worse.
Linux performance improvements are most noticeable on lower end hardware, at the higher end performance VS windows is usually pretty random from what I’ve seen.
Ubuntu and its derivatives are very slow with updates because they’re more focussed on stability. Because of this, your graphics drivers are likely wildly out of date. And if you’re using an Nvidia GPU, you’re better off going with a distro that has the graphics drivers built in.
I recommended going for a distro based on Fedora like Bazzite or Nobara. Fedora only lags a couple weeks behind updates for testing and QA, unlike the months/years you get on Ubuntu. Plus the 2 distros I mentioned have built-in Nvidia graphics drivers
I’m running an AMD GPU (9070XT) specifically because I knew it was meant to work nicer with Linux than my 1080 did.
I might give some other distros a try when I’ve got the time. It’s a shame, I really liked kubuntu. (I know I can configure most distros to do the things I liked about kubuntu but I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to that kind of thing.)
Running a 9070xt on cachyOS, works great
If memory serves you basically need the kernel release and stuff from like, December 2025? Somebody can correct me if that’s inaccurate.
I just installed CachyOS based off this recommendation, and performance is absolutely terrible right after installing. Do I need to install any drivers or change settings? Everything I see says that the drivers are baked into the kernel. But I am getting <50FPS with extreme stutters running the same settings I had on all the other OS’es I listed.
Drivers should be baked into the kernel, yeah, assuming the latest version was installed and regular updates ran after install to make sure all is up to date
Only extra thing I installed was the command that gave me steam and all the related gaming stuff, was a single line with gaming meta in it iirc.
What were you trying to test and on what resolution?
The game I’ve been playing lately is the Oblivion remaster. I know the game is known to have subpar performance, but in Windows with ultra settings and RT set to low I get 130+ FPS outdoors and 180+ indoors, in kubuntu I was getting ~60-80 outdoors and ~100 indoors, CachyOS got me 80 indoors and 50 outdoors with extreme stuttering.
All running on my 3440x1440 144hz monitor.
I just installed Bazzite, we’ll see how that plays.
I’m running an AMD GPU (9070XT)
Yeah, the newer card likely doesn’t have drivers added to the kernel version that Kubuntu uses yet
If it helps, Bazzite and Nobara have options to install with KDE Plasma included
The only software holding me back is Adobe Premeire Pro; I’ve looked at the Linux alternatives and one of them has a windows 3.11 interface (KDEVine I think).
I’m still open to suggestions.
You could try Davinci Resolve. It’s great, professional-grade software, runs natively on Linux, and has a very generous free version and an inexpensive, one-time purchase studio version.
Will it work with wine?
I personally just went with blender sequencer because it is free softare though quite basic. Nuke might be a paid option. It is node based tho.
I don’t see what drinking has to do with anything but I’ll try.
Red or white? /s
In a financial negotiation, avoid saying a number first, even if it seems like you’re being rude, just say stuff like “what’s your budget” instead. This trick sounds really stupid but somehow it is extremely effective.
Absolutely. And in a more general sense, whenever negotiating with businessmen, tell yourself they’re nasty rotten pirates beforehand and throughout the process. Visualise them having peglegs, hooks, eyepatches and battered old sea hats. Do NOT give in, do NOT name that number before they do.
I prefer to think of it like a competitive game; you’re trying to win and you aren’t going to go easy on anyone, but you still treat your adversaries with as much empathy and respect as that allows.
That’s great until the other person is also doing it haha
This is why I have doubts about Macklemore’s business acumen:
I went to the moped store, said “Fuck it”
And salesman’s like “What up, what’s your budget?”
And I’m like “Honestly, I don’t know nothing about mopeds”
I suppose at least he doesn’t immediately answer about the budget, but it still seems like a less than stellar negotiating technique.
When you sprain your ankle, DON’T MOVE. I used to try and walk it off because that’s what everyone does and even coaches recommend it, but that’s when the actual damage is done.
Spraining is usually just your tendons/ligaments going into emergency mode (getting very short/tight). So if you try to walk while they are still tight, they will actually tear, doing damage that takes weeks to heal. If you instead just keep that ankle perfectly still for like 30 seconds to 2 min, the ankle will be completely fine.
Trick is, you have to overcome the social pressure to hurry it along (i.e. on a hike at work, or on a sport field).
I rolled my ankle, damaged the arch of my foot and rode my bike home because I couldn’t walk. I didn’t really have a good support system to say the least and had to rely on myself. I have a slight limp now. Definitely listen to this advice. Dr was facepalming so hard when I told him what I’d done.
I broke my ankle, didn’t realize it was broken, and tried to twist it back into place and stand on it. Twice.
My doctors all had things to say about that, too. As well, like you, I have a pronounced limp after walking more than a few steps.
My ankle hurts just reading this 😖
Mine, too!
Yeah, if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t do … Most of what I did to lead up to that point.
I sprained my ankle once trying to dodge out of the way of a classmate I was trying to avoid when i saw them at a park 😂 What you say is correct. Kind pf wish I’d gotten it checked at the time but it could’ve been worse and I rested soon after hobbling out of view
If you can’t sleep. Get up. Get out of your bed for a while.
Staying awake while laying in bed often changes the association of sleep with the bed. Removing sleep conditioning effects.
Also as someone who has had insomnia since I was a child. I can tell you if I lay in bed. Unable to sleep. And Stay there. Rolling around. I won’t ever fall asleep.
But if I force myself to get up. Maybe have something to drink. Walk around a bit. Stare out the window for a bit. Then go back , I’m more likely to fall asleep.
And if I’m having really bad insomnia. I go for a walk. At this point I’m my life I can tell if it’s going to require a walk or just getting up and moving around the apartment/house for a bit.
Even a 15-20 min walk can do wonders. But I typically do 30 to 1 hour walk. It depends on how I’m feeling.
You would think exercising in the middle of the night would wake you up more. But nope.
9/10 times I go for a short walk. I get back and fall to sleep almost immediately.
It’s hard to force yourself to get up when you are exhausted and just want to sleep. But it’s do the walk or not sleep at all.
Also. Going out at 2 or 3 am on a week day is kinda of an interesting experience. Depending where you live, you might be the only person around.
It’s eirie and surreal. Subliminal spaces.
I quite like it. That also helps motivate me to do the insomnia walk. (Sometimes I ride my bike instead which is really nice as there are minimum cars. -make sure you are in light clothes and have lights and reflectors on your bike).
Here’s how I quit smoking about 15 years ago.
Step one: for about a month, every time I smoked I told myself I’m ready to quit. Every cigarette, every time.
Step two: the next month, every cigarette, every time, I told myself they stink and taste like shit.
Took about 3 weeks into the second month and I never picked up another. Oh and I can be around other smokers and don’t crave them. They still fucking stink.
YMMV
smoker in my early 20s and this advice might change my life.
Honestly, quit as soon as you can. After the two week mark, you’ll start smelling things again. At the one month mark, you’ll notice that you’re not constantly out of breath. Cravings still occasionally happen, but it shifts from “god damn it I need a donut right now” to “hmm a donut sounds good right now… But I don’t wanna bother with going to the donut shop.” The cravings never fully vanish, but they definitely change and become easier to dismiss as a passing whim.
Something like 20 years ago now, my pack-a-day wife decided to try a vaper. Not clouds-of-vape, just a pedestrian vaper.
She never went back to cigarettes. She decreased the nicotine and nowadays vapes maybe 2-3 times per day, I think her current level is 6… whatever units of nicotine, it’s not a lot.
I don’t care that she still vapes at that level. If there is anything bad, it’s not much at that rate, so screw it.
I realized it was causing a lot of anxiety for me. Easy quit after that because the reward was less anxiety after a few days.
If you have a song stuck in your head, and it’s driving you a bit mad: listen to it. Something about your mind trying to fill things in (it’s been many years since I’ve read this bit of advice, and unsure entirely on why).
Basically songs stick in our head when we can’t finish them, so songs with really subtle endings or heavily repeated phrases will stick the most.
And if you always seem to have music stuck in your head, go research ADHD symptoms, as that is one of many. And if you DO have ADHD, things like ritalin can silence the music. (One of several things I still remember from my first ritalin)
Or try to rememberr how the song ends.
So if you ever get a random headache that is just a pinching pain in a random spot then try breathing there. I don’t mean breathe deep or breathe into that spot but actually concentrate super hard into that spot and imagine this is where your lungs are. Concentrate when you breathe and think about how the air goes exactly into that spot directly from your mouth cause this is where your lungs are now, and how you breathe out from there. Keep concentrating and breathing there.
I don’t know why it doesn’t work if I just take deep breaths but this is legit the only way I can stop the pulsating stabs until they are gone. Concentrate hard tho because once you stop the pain returns unless the attack is over.
I’ve harvested so much knowledge from this thread, lol. Saved for later. Thanks
Seeing a horizon can fix short-term balance issues, or temporarily relieve long-term issues like labyrinthitis/vertigo, because it feeds the secondary ocular-vestibulo brain bit and gets you back settled and leveled. Unless you’re drunk or damaged, it’s a neat trick.
I’ve heard this before - I thought it was just looking into the distance. You’ve reminded me to try it though. I went from perfect vision to rather short sighted throughout my life so far 🫣
You don’t have to see it clearly, just see it. And you can be fooled, too, by level lines that look like horizons: the corner between wall and ceiling in a room with slight contrast in paint colours can light the reflex and calm the spin. This is stone-age lizard-brain stuff so it doesn’t have to be perfect.
I think it’s the same thing that lets a chicken or an eagle track a spot while turning.
I caught a virus at college that was going around. They didn’t try to trace it but like a dozen of us who met during treatment all suffered damage to our vestibular network in one or both ears and were staggering about until this secondary thing took over full-time. The damage is permanent but this reflex thing keeps us vertical. It’s really astounding.
Staying warm actually does ward off illness. Specifically, you need to keep your nose warm or else its local immune response becomes surprisingly ineffective.
I wanna make a nose-hat now to keep warm
This is cooking advice.
If you struggle with cooking or find that you mess up often, try preparing all of the individual ingredients before you start cooking. Eg. measure, wash, cut every ingredient. Apparently this practice is called mise en place.
If you ever watch a cooking video and it looks so effortless this is probably why. It was a game changer back when I was learning to cook. Suddenly it felt like I could make every recipe with ease.
This practice has drawbacks as it could dirty more dishes and increase cook times but it allows you to tackle most dishes at your own pace. I definitely recommend it whenever you make something new for the first time.
Mise en place is essential in my mind and one of the most important skills I learned early on in culinary school. At home if you don’t want to dirty a ton of dishes, you can organize ingredients (veggie ones anyway, still need bowls for spices/liquids) into small piles on your cutting board. Then just grab a bench scraper or the side of your knife and toss the ingredients in as needed.
Also, get a kitchen scale. You won’t need it all the time but it’s so much easier to just stick a pot on top of a scale and add 500 ml of chicken stock than it is to have to measure 2 cups in a separate container. This is especially good if you’re looking to blanche/simmer something in a flavorful liquid like stock or broth
Rapid eye movement and looking at things, mentally noting them, acknowledge sounds and smells can help regulate moments of anxiety.
Yeah this one was weird to hear about, but if i think about it it’s something I do myself, so i guess it really does work.
Psychologists use EMDR therapy based on activating each hemisphere of the brain in alternating fashion
Standard practice for interrupting an anxiety attack is to name 5 things you can see, 4things you can hear, 3 things you can smell, 2 things you can touch and 1 thing you can taste. I’ve never used it myself but I’ve used it to de-escalate people who are having a flipout
I’ve never understood that last one. Assuming I am otherwise physically healthy and don’t have any foreign objects in my mouth, I can’t really taste anything but neutrality. Technically I can probably taste saliva, but I think my brain filters that out and noting it doesn’t seem like it would help anyway.
Unless I’m misinterpreting and I’m supposed to go lick something during a panic attack. I know I’ve read that biting into a lemon can help.
If your clothes have an odor, you can spray a cheap vodka over them to neutralize the smell.
On a similar vein, quit using fabric softeners and dryer sheets.
Fabric softeners use a mild acid to burn off loosening fibers which speeds up the wear of your clothes.
Dryer sheets work by transferring wax from the sheet to your clothing. This smooths those fibers down and waxes them in place. Wax is incredibly good at holding odors, that’s why we use it for candles and why dryer sheets leave a lasting smell. Unfortunately, it’s not picky so any smell can get trapped in that wax and linger for ages.
As it turns out, most modern textiles are made out of finely processed material, you’re going to be hard pressed to find any clothes that actually need that kind of treatment. It’s wholly pointless on synthetic fabrics.
The worst offenders will begin to pill after a while, you simply shave the pills off with a razor or a depiller tool, which is fully affordable with the money you save on not buying dryer sheets.
To DJ Khalid this, here’s another one.
You can purchase wool dryer balls and use a lower setting in your dryer to keep you clothing fibers to reduce the amount of wear.
Wool dryer balls are great. If you go way down the rabbit hole you start making your own soap. I put together a 5 gallon bucket of powders back in April, it cost less than a month worth of Tide, it takes care of anything short of ink stains all on it’s own, you can use it as all purpose cleaner, and I’m not even halfway through the bucket.
Don’t they smell of vodka then?
Apparently it’ll kill off the bacteria that causes odors. Martha Stewart uses it.
I just have to jump in here.
The lingering B.O. in clothes is dead bacteria which still stink - you need enzymes to actually accomplish anything.
Vodka and vinegar are useless except for certain applications and for “fresh” sweat.
That’s really interesting! Looks like I’ll need to look into this more.
I’m saying this based on personal experience, having gone through a really bad hygiene phase when I was extremely depressed.
It took me a long time to figure out why the stink was not coming out of my clothes despite repeated washings, vinegar/borax/alcohol/etc treatments, everything I could think of.
I ended up using cheap pet odor enzyme spray. Have since learned there are other more expensive enzymes, but I’m happy with the pet spray cuz it works.
If you’re stuck on a creative project or out of ideas on how to approach a problem, and you feel a little fatigued mentally, have a cup of coffee or something with caffeine and lie down for a short nap.
It’ll take some time for the caffeine to kick in, so you might even drift off, and this way it seems to stimulate the mind in a way that produces insights and ideas more than just keeping you from feeling tired.
Nappucino! Works every time
In your head, change the name of a food you wish to avoid. I’ve done this with McD’s.
In my head, it’s been called McDicks since high school. I, personally, don’t enjoy eating dicks. So, when I see the sign, and I feel like a Big Mac would go down easy, I say to myself, “I don’t eat dicks.”
It works.
For those who enjoy eating dicks, well, you’ll have to choose another association. Also, I didn’t think the phrase “feel like a Big Mac would go down easy” would be so overtly sexual.
I honestly hate mcdonalds anyway, but the range of stuff I’ve tried there is very limited - maybe if i had a big mac I’d succumb to the MiccyD.
For me it just feels like food designed to make you sick, either because you’re compelled to eat too much or because it’s sooooo unnatural.
There was this movie on Netflix called Spiderhead where they’re testing drugs including one that makes people overeat until they hurl, and watching it reminded me exactly how i felt whenever I went there as a kid. I steer clear now. Trauma!
For me it just feels like food designed to make you sick, either because you’re compelled to eat too much or because it’s sooooo unnatural.
McDonald’s has been specifically engineered for over half a century to be as pleasing and addictive as possible, by a huge corporation who hires legions of scientists in various disciplines to achieve that singular goal.
In my mind, it’s akin to smoking: the first few times you try it, it’s gross; after that, it’s a dopamine hit that’s easy to become reliant upon.
