I have done all of these for a long time but still find myself waking up earlier as I get older despite no changes to going to bed.
A friend let me in on the real secret: "I've never slept better in my life than I have since retiring. I get up when I want, and I feel no need to maximize my evenings with late nights because i have my actual days."
In addition to the aforementioned items, I've recently accidentally discovered that I sleep way better with earplugs. Silicon ones (they require some know-how when it comes to putting them in properly, which is mostly a process of trial and error) work best for me, because of their comfort and decent sound insulation. I'm apparently sensitive to all the small noises around me (refrigerator, random street sounds, etc).
Another thing that helped me is reducing my water intake (this might vary a lot per person). I suspect I had a form of electrolyte imbalance, because I've been drinking a lot of water, but still felt thirsty quite often. I've learned that balance is key when it comes to hydration, so now I drink a bit less of fluids but as a result feel overall a lot better. I also try to include more of magnesium and potassium rich foods in my diet.
Yes more people will live if they have access to care because the system isn’t overwhelmed. People in the later stages will also benefit from the institutional knowledge hospitals gain from treating patients. There will also be more PPE and essential medication that will make treatment more effective. Time is our ally.
This is like the third or fourth spot I've seen on this very site where people are postulating that covid deaths would have really died in "months" anyway. Why is this so weirdly consistent?
To be clear: there is absolutely no evidence for a number like that, none at all. Typical at-risk patients with comorbidity like advanced age or obesity are routinely expected to live for decades. Actual conditions with a death-in-months prognosis are extremely rare, and tend to require hospital care already. Think advanced heart failure or stage 5 cancer.
In Sweden, which only has a voluntary lockdown, over 30% of covid19 dead come from elderly homes[0]. Swedish elderly care is highly focused on keeping the elderly independent (at home) as long as possible, so the people in elderly homes are the ones in the worst state - 20% don't even survive one month from arrival[1] (I saw another statistic that 40% don't survive 6 months, but I can't find that source, google search results are now overwhelmed with covid19 news)
That may point to an upper bound of 30% on the people dying from this that would have died "within months/a year anyway"
There are some bayesian tripwires in that analysis, though I think the data is good and it fits roughly with my intuition that bulk of covid deaths are in the "basically healthy and will live for many years" population.
The fact that a large-ish fraction of the entrants to the care homes die soon means that the people who don't die soon are going to be over-represented in the population. So if you pick a bunch of people from these homes at random, you probably (depending on the total population and total number of such deaths, which isn't cited) don't find people at the edge of death.
So I buy the upper bound, but think the actual number is likely to be much lower.
Stated more intuitively: there just aren't that many people "within months of death" at any time, and there are a lot of people dying to covid.
If you look at the median age of covid fatalities in Italy at age 81.5, this question is entirely valid. Some of the numbers I read pointed to a 16-20% all cause mortality rate for that group irrespective of covid. So by definition the circles overlap to a meaningful extent.
The vast majority of deaths in Canada (for example since I live here) are those who are 80+ and around half lived in nursing homes. Given average life expectancy in our country is only 82, the vast majority of coronavirus victims' probability of death any given year was quite high.
There's a metric called something like "estimated years of life lost" based on mortality rate by age and life expectancy, but you'd also want to factor in individual life expectancy—a lot of the people dying from this already had other health conditions.
In my experience almost all cheese is not orange. Orange cheese is a processed American, and Red Leicester (among other varieties, I just picked a common one - Limburger anyone?) thing.
Almost all types of cheese are not orange, but almost all cheese is orange. The orange varieties are very popular.
Here in the USA, "orange cheese" usually refers to Cheddar, which is almost always orange. It has nothing to do with any place named Cheddar; the cheese would be overripe if shipped that far. You could just about say that this is our standard cheese.
I don't live in the USA. Very little cheese here is orange. I've never seen orange cheddar - I think that's a "USA Cheddar" thing.
Edit: I also know what Annatto is. I'm merely pointing out that claiming that "almost all cheese is orange" is very USA centric. (probably also limited to only some regions of the USA too, presumably ones you know about - while not living there I do consume a lot of American TV, and I don't notice all cheese being orange.)
I've lived in 4 states, widely spread around the country. I'm not an urban dweller.
In a typical supermarket, there might be dozens of types of cheese. Only a few types are orange. So going by type, it might be only 5% orange. Nevertheless, the majority of the cheese (by volume or by mass) is orange.
The store might stock one row of sliced baby swiss, for a total of 10 pounds. The store will do that for several ripenesses of Cheddar (mild, medium, sharp, extra sharp) times several brands, totaling perhaps 150 pounds of cheese... but that is just sliced cheese. The baby swiss is only available in slices. Cheddar is also available in small bags, giving another 200 pounds of cheese. Cheddar is also available in large bags, giving another 200 pounds of cheese. Cheddar is also available in half-pound blocks, in one-pound blocks, in five-pound blocks, in half-pound bags of cubes, and in one-pound bags of sticks. That is probably at least another 300 pounds of cheese. There could be half a ton of Cheddar on display. Add in 100 pounds of Colby and 100 pounds of American, and there is an awful lot of orange cheese.
FYI, most of the non-orange cheese is Mozzarella. Again, this is by volume or by mass.
People with simple taste in cheese can simply refer to it as "orange cheese" (Cheddar) and "pizza cheese" (Mozzarella).
The color is a very useful distinction. When you have both types of cheese in unlabeled containers in your refrigerator, color ensures that the pizza cheese goes on pizza and the orange cheese goes elsewhere. You don't mix them up. Without that color, you'd have to label the cheese or taste it before use.
Cheddar and Colby are both yellow cheeses in Australia. I only associate orange with "American" cheese, and what Subway calls "old English" which I suspect is also just American cheese rebranded for an Australian market.
Many traditional high quality English and French cheeses have been historically flavoured with additives that also dye them. It isn’t something only people ignorant of cheese do.
I am aware of that. I wasn't implying anything about the relative qualities of different kinds of cheese - just that "all cheese is orange" is a very USA-centric thing. (I suspect it's also a regional thing. Cheddar isn't orange in every state right?)
At every grocery store in the US where I've ever checked, they sell both "white" (off-white) and "yellow" (yellow/orange) cheddar. Yellow is more popular.
They also sell colby, which is a type of cheddar, also usually yellow.
What is regional in the US is the shape of sticks of butter! It's either "Eastern-pack" or "Western-pack" depending on which side of the Rocky Mountains. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#United_States
Since the Rocky Mountains are the continental divide, that means you can stand in a spot where rain the falls to one side of you ends up in the Pacific Ocean and on its way passes by sticks of butter in one shape, and rain that falls on your other side ends up in the Atlantic Ocean and passes by differently shaped sticks of butter on its way.
I’m in MN (not quite Wisconsin but we love our cheese too) and there’s a ton of cheddar both white and orange. Pretty much any cheddar producer up here that makes orange would also make white. I don’t think it’s as ubiquitous as you’d expect.
I have a strong vision impairment and have tried this when Occulus first came out. I found the lag not good and became no longer interested in this problem. There are a few vendors working in this space whose hardware is slowly getting better ...
Every year > 130M humans are born and >55M humans die. As mentioned in above article / video cremation isn't a very good option either as it ejects over 5,000 lbs of mercury into the atmosphere yearly.
Seattle trying to help make human composting happen:
> As mentioned in above article / video cremation isn't a very good option either as it ejects over 5,000 lbs of mercury into the atmosphere yearly.
That's pretty much irrelevant. Half of the mercury in the atmosphere is released naturally. The other half is mostly coal plants. Then there's some industrial processes.
That is deeply disturbing. I'd be fine with cremation or decomposing naturally but there is no way I would ever want a loved one to be buried that way.
The compost from the city yard waste collection facilities is full of pea sized pieces of plastic, especially produce code stickers. If there’s plastic I can see and pick out, you just know there’s a bunch you can’t.
What do you suppose it would take to get plastic produce stickers banned in favor of biodegradable versions?
Either an outright ban, or taxes that gradually increase. However, what's also needed is an alternative that's readily available and not ridiculously overpriced. With produce stickers, I'm actually thinking: are stickers on produce actually useful/necessary? If we really care to tag products, could we just laser engrave them quickly?
These exist, are in use and have been commercialised.
If you look very closely at the expiry date printed on packaged products you'll often find it's actually laser etched, not printed. It's considerably more reliable and readable, particularity for small fonts.
Yeah, laser engraving has become a lot cheaper. However, it can't be mass-produced before the fruit (and labor to engrave is likely to be way more expensive).
Safe to consume doesn't mean biodegradable, likely it passes right through you.
Goobingling around I see a few biodegradable produce stickers marketed as "not like those other nonbiodegrable produce stickers" but that's not conclusive either.
- exercise daily
- no food / screens 2 hours before bed
- blackout curtains
- discontinue usage of an alarm -- wake up naturally