No caffeine after 2

Take magnesium glycinate and threonate and hour or so before bed (threonate helps me sleep but it can cause vivid dreams)

Make sure you’re comfortable in the bed both in terms of bed firmness/softness and temperature

Use a fan to regulate temperature and create white noise

Create a regular bedtime ritual (brush, floss, skincare, etc) and stick to it

Chamomile tea can help relax

I’ve also found drinking some cool/cold water right before attempting to sleep can help, because your body temperature drops as you go to sleep. I’m also a hot sleeper, so that also helps to cool down my core.

Make a regular sleep schedule and stick to it as much as possible

Write down any persistent thoughts, journal emotions, or create a to-do list from whatever might be running through your mind. Getting that out of my head and onto paper helps to alleviate any anxiety and can help stop my brain from planning and running amok while I’m lying there.

I turn off all the lights and only use some color-changing LED lights an hour or so before bed. White lights are too bright and can keep me from sleeping. Red is darker, yet still bright enough to see where I’m walking. Red lights are also best for night vision, if you go stargazing, make sure you have red flashlights, because white light will destroy your night vision for 20 minutes or so.

I also use a screen dimming app on my phone to bring the brightness down lower than the brightness setting will allow. On Apple devices, this is a regular setting in accessibility called “Reduce White Point”. Android still hasn’t figured out how to mimic that well and the best app I’ve found is Screen Dimmer Plus. It basically puts a Grey layer over whatever images show up on your phone and will mess with screenshots taken and it doesn’t change anything with the top 1/4" of the screen. The Reduce White Point setting on ios doesn’t mess with screenshots and changes the brightness for the whole screen. It’s one of the big disappointments I’ve had with android.

Get Blackout curtains to block light from the windows

Don’t exercise too close to bed. I also can’t take showers or baths too close to bed because they will disrupt my sleep.

Slow breathing and closing your eyes will lying in bed can help if you’re restless. I’ve also found that if I’m having a particularly hard time falling asleep that getting out of bed and reading a book or fiction story before returning to bed can help.

Choose something light and calming to watch as the last thing before you turn off your TV. Nature documentaries like Planet Earth or a light comedy can help you unwind and be a little more calm than watching an action, horror, or drama movie/TV show.

Another thing I’ve read about if you’re restless is to work your way uo your body squeezing your muscles for a few seconds. So start with your feet and flex them a couple times for a couple seconds, then go uo to your calves, all the way up to your eyes. The flex and release is supposed to help release any muscles that are still clenching from the day.

Spending time in nature during the day is supposed to help calm the mind and body, so finding 20-30 minutes to walk around a park could be helpful.

Don’t stress out about not falling asleep. Lying there with your eyes closed with relaxing breaths is supposed to be restful for the body

Potassium might help you relax and I think it’s also supposed to help with blood pressure if you’ve been consuming too much sodium. Not 100% sure on that, but I figure getting blood pressure under control can help you get better quality sleep.

I’ve heard there are people that do something similar to get on those reality shows about fat people’s lives or the weight loss competitions. I guess some think it’s easier to gain 100 more pounds and then get on the TV show to lose 400 pounds than it is just to lose 300 pounds themselves.

I think the pandemic will definitely have an effect. If I recall correctly, Fox News changed gears and started promoting the vaccine after realizing that their base was dying at a faster rate than Democrats.

It could have been a co tributing factor to Georgia voting for Biden in 2020 and could be a reason why Biden was closer to winning TX than Hillary was.

Florida is hard to say, because a lot of retirees move there. So while the Republicans there may have been hit harder during covid, those may have been replaced with more Republicans moving in to retire in the sun.

Kind if reminds me of the scene in The Truman Show when they talk about the cereal to the hidden camera.

If you don’t believe the official counts, than where would you go for a source?

We were only 600,000 votes away from a Biden victory in 2020 because we didn’t have enough voters. TX has pitiful voter turnout, even with 2 weeks if open polls, with polls required to be open at least 12 hours a day on the weekday.

In 2020, even with what’s called amazing turnout, with a voting age population of 21.5 million, 17 million were registered, and 11.3 million cast a vote. Then in 2022, when we had the entire legislative branch, almost all of the executive branch, and a good chunk of the judicial branch up for election, only 8.1 million people voted.

Even with these numbers, Biden still received more votes in TX than he did in NY! There’s potential for us to get some better representation, if we can just get more people to get to a polling station (usually open 7AM-7PM during the second week of voting).

We need more people to turnout this year, not only to keep Trump from our electoral college votes, but to kick Ted Cruz to the curb. There is a lot in the news pushing people away from the pills and making people mad at the DNC just like in 2016 and its really scary because those tactics helped keep people from casting their vote.

Turnout number source https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/historical/70-92.shtml

Only other place I can think of off-hand is the local library for rentals. Half Price Books and thrift shops will have some for sale, but I’m not sure how much lower they may be from Amazon’s rental fee.

The rejection of fanaticism went out the door along with E Pluribus Unum in the 50’s when the Christian nationalists forced their religion on the national motto. Then over the next decade black people were lynched and attacked with fire hoses when they were asking for basic rights.

They also started conversion camps where they emotionally and sometimes physically and secually abuse minors in conversion camps to attempt to change sexual orientation.

I believe it was Nixon who helped foem fox News to pull the Republicans further right and we’ve been seeing the consequences of that.

Basically the fanaticism has always been there, but with the internet and social media, it’s easier for them to make their voice heard.

There are even public schools still using corporal punishment, although the school has to have approval from the parents.

How’d y’all communicate with builders? Do you say this building has 0 floors to say that it’s si gle story and say that it has 1 floor to mean that it’s 2-story?

If it’s a waltz conducted in 1, do they require that the big beat is within the tempo constraints or that the 3 beats in the measure comply with the tempo restriction?

That’s not how tempo works. The Music played is still at a tempo of 170 beats per minute.

You wouldn’t win if you were pulled over going 50 mph on a 40 mph road by saying that you were stopped at lights for 10 minutes and thus your average speed for the last half hour or whatever is under 40 mph.

No, we don’t get letters in the mail about elections. The options are news, radio, or look it up yourself outside of social media. With streaming so popular, people don’t see near as many ads as they used to on their TV. That leaves social media as the biggest informer of upcoming elections and to hear about issues.

Here in the US, minimum wage is still just $7.25. I don’t think they are going to do anything about it anytime soon. We have a hard enough time rallying people to slow rise of authoritarianism

Lol, nobody is calling that music phat.

FreeTaxUSA is one of the sites listed.

I’ve also used Tax Hawk for a few years and it’s been free.

I wasn’t aware that their site was promoting Intuit software.

They have had a list of websites that will file at least federal taxes for free. Some have free state returns as well, however, your Adjusted Gross Income must be less than $79,000.

https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/

Not to mention that OP really means the word “phat”, which seems to have come from the 60’s or 80’s meaning sexy and attractive. It has nothing to do with a person’s weight.

I remember that it was like that when I was in school, but have only come across 5 or so analog clocks in schools over the last 10 years. They even have digital clocks in the hallways. I’ve also not been inside elementary schools, so idk if analog clocks are still present there.

Interesting, I’ve worked in several districts around the state and in the last decade haven’t come across students that can tell time from an analog clock.