The news for the last couple of weeks hasĀ been pretty depressing, faith-in-humanity-wise. I’m going to turn off CNN/MSNBC for now and put this video on instead.
Or maybe this one:
Feel free to share your own chillout/de-stressing techniques — videos, music, books, meditation techniques, whatever. Or any other brain bleach you want to pass along.
Consider this another open thread for uplifting stuff. No trolls, MRAs, etc.
Thanks. I really needed this right now.
I’ve been watching tiny knit creatures interacting.
I don’t blame you, David. Not one iota.
Here’s some other soothing stuff that I’ve posted before:
Miniature ice cream
Miniature Cup Noodles
ORCARA Miniature blindboxes: Fast Food unboxing video
HMS2 Original: Flower Shop build
This made me smile today
For me, the saving grace this weekend is that the British Grand Prix is on. Formula 1 at Silverstone is magnificent.
I’ve recently discovered the cool jazz of Ryo Fukui to be great for falling asleep to. Hope it can help you guys as well.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrr3dp7zRQY?rel=0&w=420&h=315%5D
I had some pizza and I’ve poured a glass of wine. Pretty soon day one of the USA Gymnastics Olympics trials will begin. I’ve also been playing various match three girly girl not a real game games.
@WWTH: I like one called Sailor Moon Drop, though it’s been getting next to impossible to finish levels recently, and I’m only on level 25. : P
I imagine it’s one of those marketing ploys to get you to spend real money to buy upgrades and gems so you can get five extra moves if you’re right there at finishing the level.
How about a train trip through Kootenay Valley?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu7AYYcefUg
Maybe you want some Sigur RĆ³s to accompany?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAmt29QykFXnuIqQoEEnEFg
Do not operate heavy machinery.
Just when I thought I couldn’t handle the news, crap in the family and everything else this shows up on my porch, filthy and half starved.
http://i.imgur.com/NbPmQ7T.jpg
So I’m focusing on the new rescue. I can’t hide from the world just yet, Kimchee needs to be cuddled, cleaned and fattened up.
Watch as PES makes fake guacamole!
@clever: Kimchee is very cute. Hope s/he thrives under your care.
I don’t know if anyone here is into synthwave but this video is super relaxing.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv1XUyRqcGU&w=854&h=480%5D
PI,
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind actually paying a few dollars up front and then being able to earn boosters through game play rather than buying them. If a game becomes impossible without buying stuff, I uninstall and buy a new one. There’s one called Gems Fever that’s free, has lots of lives so you can play a while and you can skip a level after a few tries if you get stuck. The graphics aren’t that impressive though. I recently got a Wizard of Oz themed one I like.
@Loquora – That is so adorable!! Where did you find it?
Relaxing music: I recommend Music in Twelve Parts by Philip Glass. (My mother begs to differ, saying the stuff is annoying, but that’s OK.) I also like his Metamorphoses (piano pieces) or Glassworks (hey, if you have a punnable name…)
A little bit of good news to balance out the depressing stuff: a prison guard in Texas had a heart attack and a group of inmates broke out of their holding cell to help him.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/texas-inmates-break-free-from-cell-to-help-jailer-who-suffered-heart-attack-if-he-falls-down-im-going-to-help-him/ar-BBu6lMG?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
I go for walks in nature. Lots of walks. Good for the soul.
@cleverforagirl
Adorable! I swear, cats can just tell when somebody needs them.
On a very related note: My mum’s been doing it tough lately, between my sister and I’s health issues, her own health issues and a couple of her cats passing from old age – well, a pair of ferals (presumably brothers) showed up at her door the other day and quickly made themselves at home. Exactly what she needed.
Cats are like angels. Fluffy angels.
Does anyone know what it means when only the Wi-Fi goes out? The phone, cable, and the internet connection on the desktop computer are all fine but the Wi-Fi light went out all of a sudden and there’s no connection. I power cycled the router myself and Comcast did it twice. They’re sending a new one out but it’s going to take 5 to 7 days and I’m going to have a real hard time without my laptop for that long. First world problem, I know. Anyone got advice? I don’t know if I trust Comcast’s assertion that the router is shot but I’m not technologically adept.
Oh, and Kimchee is gorgeous. You should feel flattered he or she has deemed you a worthy servant š
This story is being spread all over social media right now. For those who’ve not seen it, it’s a black woman’s story of an encounter between her and a cop following the multiple killings in Dallas. It’s very heartwarming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKM0P9gWx7k
a peep
Zero 7’s discography always helps me calm down and relax.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs, my cousin died Tuesday night, so the family is wrecked, and I just wasn’t dealing. Yesterday, mum spotted a kitten running in the street a few blocks over, but we just couldn’t catch it and what do you know, Kimchee shows up to our porch that night.
Cats always seem to know when we need them and when we’re best prepared to spoil them. (We haven’t sexed Kimchee yet, it’s a very skittish little feral and we want to wait til it’s a little more comfy)
@weirwoodtreehugger, I can’t say for certain since I’m not there, but make sure they reset the router from their end, and call at a different time to see if you can get someone competent. (All else fails, try to get bumped up to tier 2, since right now you’re probably dealing with some people reading from a script who otherwise have no clue what they’re dealing with. Failing that, I would demand an rma and a new router, b/c fuck them.)
Finally the translating is starting to pay off. I can’t believe the sheer amount of time it took for me to not only do a hack job translating, but also cleaning the image and redrawing the manga page. It’s still a work in progress but at least I’m almost finally making my small goal real.
Before.
http://i.imgur.com/Fo3WMLq.jpg
After.
http://i.imgur.com/xnX698j.jpg
Soon I’ll be able to make this finished. And then I can continue my efforts as a side hobby to my real goals.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
It could be various things. The router could be broken, in which case it’s cheap and easy to replace it; or the phone line could be damaged, in which case it’s very expensive to fix it. It sounds as if Comcast is hoping for the first, and I don’t blame them.
The advice I would give you is to see if you have the same problem with any other gadget. Do you use your home wifi with anything except the laptop? A phone, perhaps, or a work laptop?
The kittie are so lovely! Animals always help me: specifically dogs in costumes(some lovingly home-made):
http://ghk.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/12/55094deb36e29-16-seal-dog.jpg
http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2010/6/28/17/enhanced-buzz-27484-1277759304-2.jpg
http://minionhalloweencostume.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hot-dog-halloween-costume.jpg
and my Favorite : Chubbs the Pug š
http://starwarschick.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/banthapug-07-crop.jpg
RELAX.
This water force field
http://i.imgur.com/0XHS6po.gif
This cake
http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/mirror-glazed-marble-cake-olganoskovaa-2.jpg
This corgi
http://themetapicture.com/ding-ding-ding/
Batteries fittng perfectly into a container
http://cdn.twentytwowords.com/wp-content/uploads/batteries.jpg
Loved everyone’s suggestions. For me I guess it’s immersion into animals and music. I basically spent most of the evening on Youtube. I’ve got pretty eclectic (well that’s my word) taste in music. I love Clair de Lune, Birth of the Blues, Dance of the Knights, Boston Pops doing The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag.
One of my favorites is Ode to Scratchy Violins from the 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, one of the most awesome films it was ever my pleasure to enjoy. This is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbCwLxd-X0s. It has to be one of the most incredible all male dance sequences ever put on film. Sorry I don’t have the actual video. I know my posts probably seem dull without any visuals. Guess I’m a little cyber clueless in that area š
Anyway, I shared a lot of what I found here on Facebook, including Harold’s hilarious sloth and the two great stories from Nikki and Commas. Sharing I can do!
@Clever – Thank God u found Kimchee! What a sweetie! I’m rather partial to cats myself š In fact there’s a sweet fur baby who wants me to get off this computer and pamper him. So I will.
Sorry everyone, my original link isn’t working anymore. Here’s a screenshot of the Facebook post I linked to in the original comment.
Also, lest anyone think I was being sarcastic (as I sometimes am), the story is genuinely heartwarming. A black woman in a convenience store is approached by a cop who simply asks if she’s okay. She admits that she’s not and so does the cop. Then they share a teary-eyed embrace. It’s a “restored a little bit of faith in humanity” moment.
If you’re looking for calming nature scenes, I like calm.com. They have a bunch of difference scenes to choose from and it’s continuous. You can even do guided meditation sessions (though you do have to pay to access all of them). There’s also an app if you want it on your phone. I use it for background noise a lot, if music is too distracting.
If you don’t have any fuzzies to love on at home and want to snuggle some, call your local animal rescue center. A lot of them are happy for you to just come in and pet the animals for a while. I like a local no kill shelter called Cozy Cat Cottage. As soon as I walk into the room it is a rush to see who can get in my lap first.
I use mynoise.net – lots of lovely relaxing noises there to suit all types.
clever — So sorry about your cousin! The kitten looks adorable.
Another good ambient/nature sound site: Ambient-Mixer.com. You can listen to a variety of atmospheres or make your own.
David, I have to say I admire your mental toughness, exposing yourself to all that MRA++ crap day after day. I always enjoy the comments here, but those OPs — to do what you do, I’d need to buy a new computer and get my window replaced about 9 times per week.
I came here because I’ve spent the last two hours on a political blog trying to counter two right-wingers who believe that whites are the true victims of racism in this country and that Obama has a deliberate policy of trying to cause as much racial division as he can. After saying a lot of nasty things to nasty people, I came here to be in a place where people try to be nice to each other so that I could reassure myself that not everyone in the world revels in bigotry.
When I get frustrated by it all, I try to remind myself that human “civilization” as we know it goes back 10,000 years at most, which is just a tiny sliver of time if you can think in geological terms. Just 200 years ago, most people thought slavery was acceptable, taking the neighbors’ land by force if you had enough of an army was normal, and the total subjection of women was the law of nature. It does seem like social evolution — though at a glacial pace viewed from the perspective of one person’s life — is happening, and if we can somehow bring about advances in social cooperation faster than the advances in military tools of destruction, our species might survive long enough to get to a much better place than where we are now.
Buttercup, that water force field may be the most soothing thing I’ve ever seen.
Lately I’ve been collecting and watching some of the Studio Ghibli movies I previously ignored. Secret life of Arrietty is fairly good for a calming movie, but I especially like the theme song.
I’ve also been memorizing this song, the most interesting I’ve ever seen in Disney movies.
http://www.elcielodecanarias.com/galeria/timelapse-de-airglow-o-luminiscencia-nocturna-en-la-palma/
http://www.elcielodecanarias.com/galeria/timelapse-super-luna-llena/
http://www.elcielodecanarias.com/galeria/el-cielo-de-la-palma/
Whatever goes wrong on this ball of rock, the stars are still out there. And even if Brexit means I have to leave this island, at least I lived here for 25 years.
I don’t really do ‘relaxing’. I prefer to replace angry excited with happy excited
My go to is always Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with the ear blasting cannons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu_xEGTTLRM
I hum along and it makes me smile for 15 minutes
Or I watch 2 guys play Thunderstruck on Cellos
Well, thanks to Paradoxy, I’m wasting a lot of time watching people make tiny models of things. Very soothing, though.
Not super relaxing, but a housekeeping note: there’s a gross ad about “unbelievable Indian rituals!”, shot from a porn between-the-legs perspective, in the Taboola thing at the top. It’s from something called BreakAStory if that helps.
I now have my antidepressant medication.
Going to take it now, see how that works. I’m pretty sure I don’t have to worry about being allergic to Bupriopion or something like that.
@Axecalebur I love that 2cellos thing. š
Today I’ve been doing LOTR quizzes:
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/tolkien-vs-jackson-quiz.htm
http://www.absurdtrivia.com/trivia/the-lord-of-the-rings/
@Oogly
G’luck, buddy!
@Fishy
Noice š
Their whole channel is fulla awesome! “They Don’t Care About Us” and “Vivaldi Allegro” (if you’re in a classical mood) are particularly good
@clever:
OMG, that kitty is so darling! And the story reminds me of how my torbie Sasquatch showed up on my doorstep, too…hungry, scrawny, but clean and healthy, very sweet and loving, and already housetrained. I suspect she was abandoned (I live right on the edge of town), but whoever did it is the loser. I’ve gained a wonderful buddy and magickal familiar. She follows me patiently around the garden, watching me at work. When I took her to be spayed, she came up out of the anesthesia purring, cozily stretched out on her heating pad with all fours happily in the air. The vet-nurse called her “a total love sponge”, quite accurately. She sleeps on my legs in the winter, shows concern whenever someone is upset, and is even good with kids; my two-year-old niece adores her. This August will be the third anniversary of her adopting me.
Favorite Scene from my second favorite Anime
I throw in my go to chill music, Frank Ocean
@Axecalibur I can spell, really! I just can’t type. š Or cut’n’paste, apparently….
Just for you. š