SleepPhones are great! They are super comfortable and secure (I toss and turn a lot, anything in-ear never had a prayer). I wear mine working out too.

Under-appreciated advantage over cheaper, similar competition: super easy to clean. The mechanism slides in and out of the band, which is machine washable. You’re not just building up sweat and oil might after night.

Yeah it’s got a reputation for exactly this. It’s a terrible movie, but the ending is a completely stupid and unearned tearjerker.

Click.

Also: stopcockstopcock stop. Cock. Stopcock

Very handy and widely applicable.

Though you’d lose the equally useful “pop pop”.

Seconding this plea to ignore anyone telling you to force or withhold food. The whole “they’ll eat it when they’re hungry enough” may apply to many picky eaters, but if someone (kid or adult) eats an extremely limited or unusual diet like you’re describing in the comments, there is a good chance it may be ARFID. It’s an eating/feeding disorder that often goes along with autism or sensory processing disorders, but can be separate. Critically, the “tried and true” parenting strategies for breaking picky eaters will exacerbate the problem. Of course the answer also isn’t “let them eat McDonald’s all day and stop worrying,” but there are a lot of strategies for supporting someone (especially kids) to expand their list of safe foods in a low-risk high-reward way.

Like the commenter above me said, everyone who has/had ”issues with food” is going to have an entirely different list of what they can and can’t eat and a different set of strategies that worked or backfired for them. The only general advice I have that I think applies across the board is: lower the pressure. If someone only eats 2 or 5 or 10 things, every interaction with food is already very high stakes and takes up a lot of brain space. You’re probably not going to be able to make specific foods less scary, but you can make the environment safer. Never make an unsafe food the only option, don’t let them see how worried you are, don’t (like my mom did) tell them “scientists found that if you eat more than one hot dog a month you get cancer” or “if you don’t eat vegetables you’ll die before you turn 20.” And maybe counterintuitively, don’t act overly surprised or excited when they are curious about a new food, aren’t afraid of something, like a food now that they insisted they didn’t like, etc. Just go with it as a win for you both. Let them see that what happens when they can eat more food is just…they can eat more food. No drama. (Exception if they are already excited and you are following their lead.)

Resources like NEDA (in the like above) can point you toward some places to start and connect you with other parents and professionals who can offer more contextualized and specific advice. You might also look at the r/ARFID subreddit. It’s mostly adults supporting each other but there’s a lot of wisdom for concerned caregivers and loved ones as well.

I spent longer than I want to admit trying to make a pun with AI as “the elephant in the room” to talk to about to my students about which ways of using LLMs are unacceptable/acceptable/encouraged on the first day of class. I couldn’t do any better than AI-lephant. I even asked chat GPT for help. Very disappointing.

Finally playing Dave the Diver after getting recommendations from everyone I know since it came out. “Dive for fish and make sushi.” Seemed pleasant enough but I didn’t get why people talked about it in the same tone as like, Stardew Valley.

I get it now.

The choice is “help people from systematically disadvantaged groups” or “don’t.” I’d argue that the “don’t” would be the easier choice.

Extend to gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ, whatever…the key is the “systematically.” We can’t assess relative (dis)advantage at an individual level, but we can recognize it at a systemic level and develop programs that counter it systemically.

I’d say X is more like “disproportionately and systematically disadvantaging people of color.”

Shane’s 6-heart cutscene on the cliff in Stardew Valley.

Also the very last story moments of Tears of the Kingdom. The dive reach grab bit.

The way you’re describing it sounds like a step past the standard “super taster” experience. Especially if you already know you’re prone to hypersensation in taste (or tactile), you might look into learning more about ARFID, an avoidant-restrictive type eating/feeding disorder. Many kids who don’t grow out of being picky eaters (or even get worse) aren’t as much “picky” as they are literally unable to swallow or keep down most food. There’s been more education about it (especially in adults) recently, leading to a lot of adults having a “holy shit I’m not the only person in the world like this?!” moment. There’s a decent community on Reddit if you’re curious about others’ experiences (though being Reddit there’s also some wildly uncalled for aggressive armchair diagnoses, groupthink, and misinformation, soooo grain of salt).

Mystery solved.

I’m imagining you sending off your dirty laundry to relatives for their birthdays, which is probably not what you mean. Does hamper mean something different for you?

He’s kinda been crushing it. Definitely a pleasant surprise. I think putting 50 million of his own dollars towards campaigning for a tax system that would dramatically raise his own taxes was a pretty impressive demonstration that his approach is a bit different from Trump’s.

Also women’s healthcare, refugee support structures, LGBT inclusivity, legal recreational weed, union support, Election Day as a state holiday…the dude doesn’t suck.