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Transcendant

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Regarding sleep quality, why did humans evolve to require full darkness?

I know evolution is governed by chance and it is random but does it make sense to “ruin” sleep if there’s light? I mean normally, outside, you never have pure darkness, there are the moon and stars even at night. In certain zones of the Earth we also have long periods of no sunshine and long periods of only sunshine....

Transcendant ,

Sorry to piggyback onto your comment, and I know you can’t give medical advice, but I wonder if you have any insight into a problem I have with sleep.

I’m early 40s now. One of my earliest memories, aged around 4, is not being able to fall asleep. I’ve tried EVERYTHING over the years. Sleeping pills are a guarantee if things are getting squirrelly, but give me severe rebound insomnia the next day. When I do fall asleep, it’s like I can sleep for way longer than is normal (so either cause of sleep debt or poor sleep quality).

I’ve always joked that maybe I should be on a planet with a 28 hour day. But I also know that my lack of normal sleep is potentially storing up huge problems like increasing my risk of cancer, heart disease etc.

Melatonin kind of helps. But no matter what I do… My sleep pattern goes out of synch.

I’ve gone through school, ‘normal’ 9 to 5 jobs, relationships, all a big struggle as I have to perform at a normal level despite not having slept for 24+ hours fairly regularly.

I can do everything ‘right’ (no light in the evening, exercise, healthy diet, no excitement in the evening, no caffeine, mild sleep supplements) and still find myself unable to sleep. What the frick is wrong with me… Am I doomed to continue like this? I just want to sleep like a normal human being!

Transcendant ,

Thank you so much for the detailed response, I really appreciate it. Over the years I’ve looked into this a lot but you’ve given me some really useful new information!

Health care in the UK, especially for lesser known genetic diseases, can be a bit of a lottery… I moved up the country 6 months ago, and within a month had been tested & diagnosed for a generic mutation called FMF (familial Mediterranean fever). My dad / sister both have it but despite nearly a decade of requests I was unable to get a doc to investigate it. So far up here the gp response has been a referral to a website for cognitive behavioural therapy.

I’ll push on though and see if there’s anything more they can investigate. Thanks again for the info :)

Transcendant ,

Thanks, I do suspect I have delayed phase sleep disorder. It’s good to know I’m not alone. Do you have any coping strategies?

My coping strategy is ‘modafinil to keep me from not being a zombie when particularly sleep deprived’, and ‘zopiclone for if I have been up longer than I should and it’s early enough to push me back into normal sleep pattern’. But of course I’m very wary about doing that more than twice in a row, so it’s never enough to establish ‘normality’.

Transcendant ,

I’m so, so sorry to hear this.

I feel really lucky that I get some government support because I have autism / bipolar. It’s not much, but the specific benefit I receive also allows me to do some work… and I’m also very lucky to be self employed in a field I enjoy (writing music). So I’m certainly not rich or even that comfortable, but it does allow me to morph my days and nights to suit my unnatural rhythms.

One thing I find about lack of sleep… it makes me really emotional, grumpy, increases likelihood of a depressive state. For me, it’s SO important to almost literally inject happiness. If we have a condition that takes away our happiness, it’s really crucial to create happiness in any way possible. Binge funny TV shows, go for a walk, watch some standup comedy, call a friend (not at 2am unless they’re also a night owl haha), make some art (doesn’t matter if you’re good at it), try learning a new skill, play a game, join a volunteering group. Those are my go-to activities, probably different for you.

Also, and I know it’ll sound trite, but I got into a couple of things during lockdown that made a big difference to my overall happiness; Buddhist and Stoic philosophy. I’m not a Buddhist, probably never will be. I definitely have a long way to go in applying Stoic principles. But they have really improved my life. Meditation is very hard at first but incredibly beneficial. If I could recommend a couple of books (one is an audiobook and for me was more transformative than Buddhist principles)… if you’ve never used Audible, you can sign up for a month trial and keep the audiobook you select, no charge if you cancel within 28 days.

  1. Derren Brown - Happy (not sure if you’re familiar with this guy, he’s a legit mind wizard, almost terrifyingly intelligent and has a long career as a ‘mentalist’ aka psychological magic)
  2. Thich Nhat Thanh - The Heart Of The Buddha’s Teachings
Transcendant ,

Reading the article, this went exactly as I imagined it would. Equal parts hilarious and horrifying!

Transcendant ,

Never fails to amaze me that anyone who views themself as remotely pious could support trump. He’s the epitome of antichrist, especially if you go by the bible definitions.

Transcendant ,

This is the big problem with modern gaming. Too many companies are now in hock to investors and publishers. To those at the top of the hierarchy, making a game is an investment, a bet. Innovation is stifled in favour 9f ‘safe bets’, no wonder gaming is stagnating.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there are still exceptions to the rule. But it’s certainly not looking good for fantastic single player games.

I’m expecting gta 6 to have a much shorter single player campaign with most of the focus towards online (and more obscene earnings from shark cards 2.0).

Transcendant ,

This was what I meant. It’s these smaller devs that seem to be innovating to any extent at the moment!

Maybe I’m just a bit jaded due to being an old fart nowadays… I remember playing the original Doom / Wolfenstein so especially FPS feel so overdone to me. When was the last time you saw a truly novel game concept? I’m sure I’ve seen a few over the last few years but can’t remember (see, old fart).

Transcendant ,

Yep, it’s a real quandary. I’m not sure what the solution is, or if there is one from our perspective… it’s no point voting with my wallet when there’s millions of others who won’t.

Transcendant ,

You make excellent points. Personally, I rarely have a problem paying for proper DLC (and buy proper DLC I mean, additional story content that wasn’t obviously cynically cut from the OG game). Notable past examples for GTA, stuff like ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ were amazing expansions.

Also sticking with GTA, they’re a good example of bad practice nowadays (imo). They pivoted to online-only DLC once they realised how lucrative a pay-to-play system can be when leveraged against not being bullied by players with more disposable income. There was amazing single-player content in dev for GTA5 and they cut it to focus on MP. Worse, they left the dregs of that content in the game, allowed a ‘GTA5 mystery’ concept to flourish and left people hunting for the mystery thinking they were going to find something like GTA4’s bigfoot. Knowing all along it didn’t exist. But of course, happy that people were still playing and hoping they would get bored and try online mode.

Transcendant ,

It’s a hard question to answer I know! Racking my brains here, the most novel thing I can think of is Portal.

Transcendant ,

I got banned from a… what are we calling them… sublemmy?.. on here for being ‘aggressively negative’. I voiced my disapproval of a character that I didn’t like in a TV show, which included one F-bomb. Some people on here are way too sensitive.

Transcendant ,

Thanks for the info.

Transcendant ,

Is it just me, or has autocorrect on phones also gotten way, way worse? When would I ever want to type ‘thbnks’?

Transcendant ,

Yeah I’m the same. I’ve got DDG set as my default search, if the results aren’t useful then I go to google as backup.

Ending support for Windows 10 could send 240 million computers to the landfill. Why not install Linux on them? (gadgettendency.com)

With support ending for Windows 10, the most popular desktop operating system in the world currently, possibly 240 million pcs may be sent to the landfill. This is mostly due to Windows 11’s exorbitant requirements. This will most likely result in many pcs being immediately outdated, and prone to viruses. GNU/Linux may be...

Transcendant ,

Linux doesn’t support my DAW or audio interface. I’m not throwing away thousands of pounds of software and equipment to use Linux.

I would happily give it a go if cubase / uad interfaces were supported.

Transcendant ,

None of the main adobe suite works on Linux either, so let’s not pretend my use case is so narrow. Literally none of the programs I use to work (Cubase, Audition, After Effects, Illustrator, Premiere, yes I can install a virtual windows machine but that completely defeats the purpose) works with Linux. And from what I gather last time I researched this, hardly any audio interfaces are Linux compatible. Most of the games I want to play also are not Linux-compatible.

Fact of the matter is, despite the large dedicated userbase (which I appreciate), it still has a giant gap where many prosumers and casual users cannot utilise it. It’s no good saying “ahhh well YOU’RE not compatible with US! No u!”. I’d love to switch and tbh am strongly considering a setup for live PA that’s Linux based, in the hope that it brings greater stability. But it’s going to be a large investment of time, and I’ll have to buy a different audio interface if I have a hope of making it work.

Transcendant ,

Yep I definitely took it wrong, one of the problems with text only communication… No body language or audio cues! No worries.

The devs of my audio interface have definitely been asked a fair bit about Linux compatibility… But considering they’ve not even bothered bringing their new DAW to PC, it seems they’re strongly focussed on mac ecosystems only for the foreseeable.

Personally I think compatibility should be a two way street pun not intended! But unfortunately companies tend to vote with our wallets, so until Linux becomes even more established I doubt they will dedicate much if any resources to making their devices work on it. Shame.

I bought a new audio interface for live work a few months back, went for an audient id24 partly because it’s Linux compatible (although no native drivers). So I will get stuck in at some point. I started using PCs back when floppy disks were actually floppy so I’m not afraid of command line stuff!

Transcendant ,

This is interesting and concerning… I don’t need a lot of plugins for live stuff, but I was definitely planning to use my Maschine!

So is that confirmed completely inoperable in Linux? No idea how I’d trigger parts without it.

Transcendant ,

How much of the current lemmy base are ex-reddit? I remember emoticons being heavily frowned upon there. It may be a cultural hangover from the rexodus peeps.

Transcendant ,

A distinction I did not make, good point. Maybe I misunderstand, I thought emojis and emoticons were the same thing.

Or is it an “all emojis are emoticons, but all emoticons are not emojis” kinda situation?

Transcendant ,

I looked up the dictionary definition in a fit of pedantry earlier and they’re right, they do refer to distinct different things. The more you know ey!

Transcendant ,

I hate to defer to a random comment because as is well established, Einstein famously said “don’t believe everything you read on the internet”… but the dictionary has to be deferred to, and it backs up your comment. I stand corrected, thanks for the info!

Transcendant ,

Spotify iirc pays $0.003 per stream, so for 80m streams he’s got $24,000.

If he’s got less than that then he should be directing ire at his label or publisher.

An army of 100 million bots and deepfakes—buckle up for AI’s crash landing in the 2024 election (finance.yahoo.com)

An army of 100 million bots and deepfakes—buckle up for AI’s crash landing in the 2024 election::With generative AI tools it’s easier than ever to spread misinformation. And with a presidential election around the corner, a growing number of people are sounding the alarm.

Transcendant ,

We are as unready for this shit as we were for social media.

Genuinely concerned this will tip the balance enough for trump to win.

Transcendant ,

I lost a friend to ket. He was partying with bad people, he was sick, choked on his vomit and they stole his stuff / left him to die.

Ketamine is a very interesting ride, and has wonderful potential as an antidepressant, but for the love of yourself (and my badly missed friend, John the magic man), PLEASE have someone compus mentus watching over you while you experience it, if you choose to do so.

Also strongly recommend you DO NOT mix with alcohol.

Transcendant ,

I think you and I had very different experiences! While ket abuse can defo lead to paranoia and becoming more insular, in my circles it was taken at hard house / trance events or after parties. Lots of silliness and fun times.

Unfortunately for my friend, he lived on his own in Manchester and fell in with a rough crowd after moving to Salford :'(

Transcendant ,

Erowid is a brilliant resource!

Transcendant ,

Russia just cannot be trusted. Over and over and over again, they show this to the world.

Countries need to stop giving Russia ‘one more chance’. Treat the Russian government like the fraudulent, evil pariahs that they reveal themselves to be.

Transcendant ,

Whenever I release music myself, I actively block it in Russia, because they relentlessly steal my trance / freeform releases and upload them in warez sites.

Of course geoblocking can be circumvented by a determined pirate but it helps to not be on their radar in first place as a lesser known artist.

As an example, once I released a freeform album. Freeform is a very niche, small scene. It was on Russian forums within a couple of days. Fortunately one of my fans notified me, I had a Russian friend contact the site on my behalf to explain that I’m a poor struggling artist, and they’re literally taking money out of my pocket; to my surprise they agreed to take the links down.

Transcendant ,

Pirating from massive companies who exploit their workers and customers is different from pirating small indie artists, surely?

Transcendant ,

Exactly. I had a 12 track album up for £9, or single tracks for 99p, don’t think that’s unreasonable!

Transcendant ,

Hard to say really. I’m fairly sure if it was available online for free, less people would have bought it.

When you’re talking only £2000 or so of sales for a small indie release, piracy makes a huge hit to sales. My more popular stuff like trance, the sales drop off a cliff the moment it’s leaked. There was a huge problem with people on promo lists leaking pre-released tracks to warez sites, not sure if the main labels (eg ones like Armada, Anjuna etc) ever got to the bottom of it, but it really hurt the sales of people who aren’t exactly making bank from their music

Transcendant ,

I agree. I think people have taken my comment as a defence of the geoblocking, was just offering an example of why someone like a small indie musician may choose to do that. I do find it frustrating when I have to VPN to a different country to watch a video.

But the reason I geoblock one country isn’t to be an arsehole, it’s because Russia has no recourse for indie musicians like myself who have their music stolen. They have no law preventing music theft which is why it’s rampant in that one territory (not saying it doesn’t ever happen elsewhere). Pretty much the entire rest of the world has some sort of avenue where I can issue something like a dmca.

Transcendant ,

People say this all the time about Spotify, but it’s actually a viable outlet for revenue if you’re on a decent label who understands how to leverage playlists.

Obv that doesn’t apply for freeform… but for styles like trance, techno, DnB etc it’s not unheard of for a track to get 500k streams across a variety of playlists, which equates to $1500.

Got a sample preview of your favorite release?

I don’t think it would be wise to dox myself here after I’ve made an unpopular comment!

Transcendant ,

Ah come on you know what I meant.

Transcendant ,

I guess, I just don’t see many people getting something for free then deciding to go buy it out of the goodness of their heart… maybe I’m too pessimistic.

I try not to pirate music production software because I make some small money from my music, and I’ve personally seen companies go bust and get snapped up by Apple because everyone (me included) justified pirating their small plugins as “they’re making lots of money anyway”. But I justify pirating shit like Adobe to myself I hate paying a subscription to use software. I dunno maybe more people have this mindset than I realise and are happy to pay after ‘trying before buying’.

I’m interested to hear responses from anyone who genuinely buys the music they enjoy after pirating it. Why would they not just buy it in the first place?

Transcendant ,

I see what you did there ;)

Transcendant ,

He even looks like a cartoon. His moustache looks like it’s made of sausages

Transcendant ,

I find talented / strong women to be hot as hell, is that sexist? I’d happily date a woman who can bench me.

Transcendant ,

I’m cautiously optimistic for Light No Fire. The main thing I learned from the NMS initial launch experience (am a day 1 player) is not to allow myself to get too hyped for games (this knowledge was cemented by the launch of CP2077 haha). And, you’d hope that Sean / HG learned also not to overpromise in terms of feature set… would hope they learned a hell of a lot from the long cycle of updating NMS.

Transcendant ,

One of my friends in Finland has a couple of cats, one is fairly disinterested in people but the other loves to play fetch with her toys. It’s ridiculously cute.

Transcendant ,

I’d say to be careful what you wish for, because once the game has begun, it doesn’t end until the cat is bored. It’s impossible to resist the cute drop / sad little cat-activation-noise when you get distracted and don’t notice.

Transcendant ,

I wasn’t expecting to love Lower Decks so much, knew I’d enjoy it but it really is incredible. Star Trek has always had a little sprinkling of goofiness but LD turns it up to 11!

The crossover episode is amazing too, didn’t realise how much the animators based the characters on the voice actors.

Transcendant ,

I hoped he wouldn’t, but at the point where he was massing troops at the border it was surely a sign of what was coming.

“We’re not planning on invading, just putting all our troops here for shits and giggles!”

UPenn president, board chairman resign after firestorm over answers to Congress about antisemitism on campus (www.bostonglobe.com)

The two top leaders of the prestigious University of Pennsylvania resigned Saturday after several days of furious reaction to the school president’s testimony before a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism where she, and the heads of Harvard and MIT, offered equivocal responses to whether calls for genocide of Jews...

Transcendant ,

I don’t get how she fucked this up so badly. All she had to say was “students are entitled to protest for Palestine, but calls for genocide are not OK”

Kinda sounds like she’s OK with calls for genocide.

Transcendant ,

You make some good points, and I respect you greatly for being nuanced in the face of extremely anger-inducing rhetoric (also for raising your head above the virtual parapet!).

English is weird

I got hung up on contractions this morning regarding the word “you’ve”. Normally, I’d say “you’ve got a problem”, which expands to “you have got a problem”, which isn’t wrong, but I normally wouldn’t say. Not contracting, I’d say “you have a problem”, so then should I just say “you’ve a...

Transcendant ,

Leigh can be pronounced like ‘Lee’ or ‘Lay’

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