I've had many exercise regimens throughout my life but never has it ever helped me with mental health in any way.
Exercise has always been a mental drain for me. A day when I go to the gym is a day when I give up mental capacity that could have been used for something else. I'll be less effective at work and less organized at home. It's like my IQ's dropped by double digits.
I drink enough water and electrolytes, in case anybody's wondering.
Sorry if I'm stating something obvious for some, but, exercise doesn't HAVE to be something pushed by the industry like running or going to the gym.
I got great success converting friends and coworkers to... walking.
Not going on a multi-hours hike on the weekend, but just walking around the block or in a park for half an hour at mid-day, and going through the same routes so you don't have to think about finding your way.
By doing so, not only you are physically active, which is a big positive overall for most of office workers, but it requires so little of focus to achieve it that your mind is now free to wander as it please.
During this free period, you can come up with a solution to an issue you've been stuck on during the morning or for days, or you'll think about plans for the future, or you'll just get back to work with a clear mind, ready to tackle the issues of the afternoon.
> I give up mental capacity that could have been used for something else
That's the beauty of _just walking_, it requires no mental capacity, it frees it actually.
Don't overthink things, like where should I walk, when, do I have the right gear... Just get outside, put the appropriate clothing depending on the weather and, enjoy your free mind compute credits!
Once you see how it works, it feels like cheating.
Afterwards you'll feel better physically and mentally.
All the gym/running/zone 2 stuff is something different altogether that could come up once you're converted to the light exercise/big effects of _just walking_.
People talk about depression all the time.
The difference between depression and sadness is sadness is just, you know, from happen stance. Whatever happened or didn't happen for you...
... and depression is your body saying fuck you, I don't want to be this character anymore, I don't want to hold up this avatar that you've created in the world. It's too much for me.
So, a friend of mine who's a spiritual teacher has a really good take. His name is Jeff Foster, and his take on it is that they should change [how we think of] the word "depressed" as "deep rest"
deep rest - your body needs to be depressed, It needs deep rest from the character that you've been trying to play.
My eyes have opened up to the pitfalls of TPM recently while upgrading CPUs and BIOS/UEFI versions on various hardware in my home.
VMs typically do not use TPMs, so it is not surprising that the feature was not being used there. One common exception is VMware, which can provide the host's TPM to the VM for a better Windows 11 experience. One caveat is this doesn't work on most Ryzen systems because they implement a CPU-based fTPM that VMware does not accept.
During my mid-teens, I got this wild idea that I could reproduce the experience of psilosybe cubensis by learning to mimic the brainwave patterns through the practice of neurofeedback. I didn't have an EEG, but I learned about the OpenEEG project. Eventually I bought an OpenEEG-based MonolithEEG[0] during a summer where I was fortunate enough to be in west Europe.
Shortly thereafter, I realized I had no experience at all with electronics assembly, and the fever dream quickly evaporated. The MonolithEEG PCB was lost to time.
To answer your question: My primary goal right now is simply reliable, high fidelity data collection. However, I think neurofeedback is a fascinating application. I’ve been interested in eventually mixing this tech with tACS in a closed loop control system to train the brain to enter specific mental states.
Regarding the MonolithEEG, it's wild to look back at that tech. It is a shame it was limited to 2 channels at 10 bit resolution, but it was a pioneer. With the ADS1299, we are now getting 24 bit resolution across 8 channels. That difference in dynamic range makes a huge difference, especially for precision applications like SSVEP where the noise floor really matters.
Such a striking similarity to my own path. But I was in early 20s-mid 20s, going through some more difficult times and after a lot of research and study of the nervous system and trauma, I came to the conclusion that neurofeedback seems like the magic wand that had the biggest chance to actually produce a transformative effect.
I was experienced with soldering and electronics (mostly board repairs so not design), but not at a professional level. Initially I got an Analog Devices ADC, which they sent for free as I was still registered as a student at the time. I was trying to replicate some existing open source projects, but on an extremely low cost. Ultimately I got stuck in the weeds, and eventually gave up and just bought the ADS1299EEGFE-PDK evaluation board (upon which the original OpenBCI is based iirc). But eventually, again, postponed that, I was in the process of converting the LabView software to C, and to support real-time signal processing. After a short while I moved to the opposite corner of Europe and all those boards are sitting somewhere in my parent's attic. So the question in my mind still remains. Because neurofeedback does sound a bit too good to be true. But evidence is solid as well.
I will definitely give it another go at some point when life gives me more slack/spare time and space.
and if you wanted to measure that you would have to stick electrodes deep into your brain, no way are you going to see what is going on there from the surface.
Stuff I was doing last month got me interested in biofeedback again, I have some talent for it, I can make those mood rings change color at will.
Most of the EEG-based biofeedback devices have three electrodes around the temple and cost about $300 and don't really work because those alpha, beta, theta and delta waves all appear in different parts of the brain and can't be read out of the same electrodes. I hear you can do better with five electrodes but the five-electrode headsets I see don't advertise a price.
I wound up getting a Polar H10 heart rate monitor which can be used with HRV software
but the "biofeedback" apps I have seen so far seem to be breathing exercises that you could do without any hardware. I have electronics for EMG (muscles) and GSR (skin resistance) to hook up to an Ardunio and will probably try making a setup. I'm still looking for a soup-to-nuts answer for EEG biofeedback.
Yeah, I started drafting a sci-fi setting on the edge of fantasy and dystopia where that was the McGuffin last year and what my RSS reader shows me is that science is catching up with that.
It blows my mind that the most ubiquitous computer screen resolution worldwide is considered too niche for decent support by the Zed project. Hopefully that will change in 2026?
The gamer market while overlapping with the developer market, is not a perfect circle. And where the circle does overlap, devs often work on a different display than they game on.
I do not doubt some people experience some issues, but I have regularly used zed with 1080p and 1440p 24" monitors (on macos) and I never experienced any font rendering problem. Saying "zed does not render fonts at low dpi monitors well" is a bit of an exaggeration.
Perhaps reserve your mind being blown for situations where the GP hasn’t confused pixel count and pixel density.
Zed “supports” 1080p monitors just fine. Supports is in quotes because it doesn’t need to do anything nor care at all about the count of pixels on the screen.
If you can call the left image [1] "supporting 1080p" I guess Zed supports it. But it looks like VS Code and other editors somehow support it better without getting blurry.
Keep in mind that Zed developers [2] consider blurry fonts on low DPI displays a Priority 1 issue, and a reproducible bug that is commonly encountered.
I'm sure if there was no blurry font issue with Zed, they would just close this bug report.
Microsoft Edge Version 142.0.3595.65 on macOS does not default to HTTPS, FWIW. Users accessing sites that do not redirect HTTP to HTTPS must specify the full URL, at least in my experience from 2024-2025.
Exercise has always been a mental drain for me. A day when I go to the gym is a day when I give up mental capacity that could have been used for something else. I'll be less effective at work and less organized at home. It's like my IQ's dropped by double digits.
I drink enough water and electrolytes, in case anybody's wondering.
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