Five Great Things Found Round Here

[jesse_the_k]

mdbear led me to Switching.Software, a site that offers free, open-source alternatives to the services run by billionaires who are making bad policy decisions. (Whistles loudly to blot out discussions of the choices they’re making)

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solarbird explains how Mastodon and Bluesky users can follow each other through a "bridge"
https://solarbird.dreamwidth.org/2021328.html

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The annual snowflake_challenge is underway. Following the tag from DW’s "latest things" is a good way to meet new people and reconnect with old pals. petra answered the best canon prompt by linking to Slings & Arrows, season 1, episode 3. The version they linked to is ODavies’s passion project of upscaling older shows and movies in glorious 4K. They look good, and at least Slings & Arrows’s captions survived the transfer (although many ks display as js)

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Although I’ve been deploying pacing strategies to manage my chronic illness (CFS/ME) for 30 years, thanks to sonia for sharing this NHS video, which claims that true resting to recharge the parasympathetic nervous system requires no reading. This is a shocker for me, since I routinely listen to (admittedly low effort) audiobooks and podfics when resting.

How to rest properly to help recovery: watch on YouTube w A+ captions

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Finally, this boomer realizes she’s living in the future: I’ve got a new mutual subscriber barbaratp. She writes in Brazilian Portuguese; I have no language even close. Yet we can mutually understand each other thanks to machine translation. (Of course there are glitches, and thankfully we’re humans and can double check that messages received is the message sent.)

Better than flying cars, really.

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Any lovely things you've found here and wish to share?

ETA: 24 May 2025 correct pronouns

Comments

[sheafrotherdon]

The resting thing was such a shocker to me, too! But it perhaps explains why sometimes, when I am wiped out, lying down in bed for half an hour works even if I don't actually fall asleep. I shall do it more, now that I know the mechanism.

Good things - today I put my (usually for the) summer duvet cover on my duvet, just because it felt so cheerful. I am looking forward to burrowing beneath it tonight.

Resting is great, and for me

[jesse_the_k]

Actually napping is risky. Seems like the amount of time I can sleep a day has a hard limit: If I nap during the day, I sleep less and less well overnight.

Is your summer duvet cover a cheerful flowery pattern? Are you still British enough to forego a top sheet? (How many duvet covers does a typical British household have?)

Re: Resting is great, and for me

[sheafrotherdon]

My summer duvet IS a cheery flowered pattern. It's cream with sprays of tiny yellow roses on it. And no, I am 100% team top sheet now. It feels cozier.

We usually had one duvet cover, but now I have three that I rotate so that if i don't feel like doing the laundry, I still have clean sheets and a cover in store to change the bedding.

[thistleingrey]

true resting to recharge the parasympathetic nervous system requires no reading

I'm grateful to the universe at large that my issues allowed me to stumble upon this idea by trial and error. I kept testing it because it didn't seem right (or fair, heh), but for me as well, naps-without-sleep require not reading. Good to learn that there's likely to be a basis!

[jesse_the_k]

I'm glad you learned this!

I feel like a cranky 8-year-old right now: I don't wanna!

I'll tell her that it's only for a week and see if it makes a difference.

[thistleingrey]

Checking it for oneself definitely sounds like a good idea!

[barbaratp]

Felicidades por estar fazendo a sua noite darling, estou adorando snowflake e é a segunda vez que participo. Petra e sua postagem sobre Slings & Arrows me fez descobrir a adaptação brasileira chamada Som e Fúria, que conta com 12 capítulos. Gostei dos links sobre Mastodon/BlueSky e softwares gratuitos ou de código aberto para serem usados no lugar das versões das grandes Big Techs. Não se preocupe caso não entenda meu idioma e se por acaso a tradução automática ficar estranha, basta me falar e tentaremos algo para facilitar sua interação comigo.

[jesse_the_k]

How cool that there's a Brazilian version. I look forward to hearing what you think. Have you seen the Canadian original?

[barbaratp]

Não. Eu nem sabia que existia a série em primeiro lugar. Fiz até uma entrada no meu diário sobre onde assistir a versão brasileira (possivelmente sem legendas em inglês) que eu também não assisti *risos*

[jesse_the_k]

Life is short!

Like you, I habitually save fan fiction to my computer so that it will be ready to read when I am. Right now I have more than 1300 fics in that folder. I don't think I will live long enough to enjoy them all. I can't imagine I'm going to stop downloading when my friends rec great works, either.

[barbaratp]

Fiquei em dúvida de onde veio a informação sobre baixar fics porque estávamos falando da série adaptativa brasileira de um canadense, mas te entendo, não acho que viverei o suficiente para consumir tudo que desejo.

[lunabee34]

It's so wonderful that we can communicate with anyone across the world now thanks to technology.

It's magic

[jesse_the_k]

...and yet, I want to make sure I don't trust the technology 100% because tech can fail us so dramatically.

Re: It's magic

[lunabee34]

Nods nods

[clevermanka]

"Just resting" is a such a tough thing to do sometimes. The way the boredom of lying there in the dark yet again can trigger feelings of frustration and boredom, thus defeating the whole purpose of rest lol. Solidarity fistbump, bb.

I don't think I've found any lovely things online lately, but I did find a surprise sale on pomegranates at the store today ($1 each!) and am looking forward to eating every last seed of it tonight.

[lilysea]

"Just resting" is a such a tough thing to do sometimes. The way the boredom of lying there in the dark yet again can trigger feelings of frustration and boredom, thus defeating the whole purpose of rest lol. Solidarity fistbump, bb

Yes, I spend lots of time lying flat on my stomach in bed during the day to rest

but if I lay down in the dark to rest (NOT to sleep)

I would quickly go into one or more of

- worrying
- ruminating
- anxiety spiral
- catastrophising
- becoming more aware of all my chronic aches and pains

[clevermanka]

🫂

[jesse_the_k]

Yep, these are the reasons that background audio is helpful.

Who know, maybe I actually could trust my intuition?

[seascribble]

Thanks for those social media links up top! I deactivated the facebook and logged out of the instagram and it would be great to have a place to migrate to (although nothing will replicate the web of people from the last twenty years of my life that I could conceivably connect with via the facebook, unfortunately. But so it goes.)

[jesse_the_k]

The dream of connection to everyone is so thrilling. The reality, not so much.

[hunningham]

There's an episode from mythbuster TV show where they cover this. People were doing 30-hour shifts on a fishing boat, and if they had a 20min nap every 6 hours they coped so much better - cognitively and physically. Thing is - no one in the test group could actually get to sleep in the allocated 20 mins, but they found that just stopping and trying - even pretending to sleep - had almost the same effect. But it had to be lying down eyes closed in yr bunk.