By David Futrelle
Given the events of the last several days, I’m sure a lot of you are feeling pretty wrung out right now. I certainly am.
One thing I do to get a brief respite from all the terribleness is to flip off the news (which I generally have playing in the background on the TV as I work, probably a bad idea to begin with), fire up the YouTube app on Xfinity, and put on the most extreeeeeeemely relaxing videos I know of, which for me tend to be hours-long videos of sunny beaches with no sound other than the wind and waves and the occasional seagull. When I don’t feel like looking at a beach I turn to videos of woodland streams or rain falling peacefully in the woods.
These videos are good to silently contemplate for a few minutes, or simply to have on in the background. They also make perfect aural backdrops for a meditation session.
So today I though I’d share a few of the videos that have become my standbys when I need a few quiet moments.
If you’ve got any relaxing videos or relaxation/distraction techniques that work for you, feel free to share them below.
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I’d second games – video games, board games, logic problems, maths problems….
not to sound like an incel but there is SCIENCE behind it! The “logical problem solving” area of your brain can’t activate at the same time as the emotional side. So if you want to switch off or control overwhelming feelings, one of the best things you can do is present yourself with a low-stakes yet interesting puzzle of the logic, maths, or spatial type
(personally, I love the Portal games for this – I played them right the way through my last episode of high anxiety)
Happy Halloween everyone x
I like games from Zachtronics when I want to scratch the problem-solving itch. For example, check out Infinifactory, where you have to design production lines for your alien captors. Or his latest, Exapunks, where you have to program simple software agents to work together to achieve various goals.
@Katamount
CADFAEL~!
Loved watching Derek Jacobi’s version of it.
Right now I’m sitting at my desk dressed as a Hawaiian tourist. (really an excuse to be as casual as possible at work)The electric jack-o-lantern also has a plastic lei, a hat and sunglasses. Needed to bring a little whimsy to work – there is snow on the ground atm. 😀
For relaxation I’ll dance to whatever I find on Stingray Music – lately it’s Bhangra, various Latin or middle eastern of various stripes. (They don’t seem to have a Ra’i channel, which is annoying.)
Also listening to https://egyptianhistorypodcast.com/ by Dominic Perry.
@David Thanks for the vids!! Saves me having to try to find nature sounds that don’t have piano playing in the background.
This is good stuff…adorable pet animals always relieve the tension.
I like capybaras…they’re the world’s largest rodent at 150 pounds. They eat a diet of vegetables, so they are not predators. Since they weigh so much, no animal eats them.
The result is that they are very peaceful giant mice, make great pets (they require a pond), get along with human beings, and get along with other animals, be they dogs, cats, goats, ducks, geese, even turtles. They also have a very peaceful face.
You can have them as pets, but you need a permit, space, and a pond, because they’re semi-aquatic.
@Moggie
Oooh, those sound cool!
Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.
*is attacked by a capybara*
@Violet the Nile…look them up on Google. Lots of great pictures.
@ Moggie…LOLOLOLOLOLOL. They don’t attack anybody. Just salad.
@Moggie
Oooh…that reminds me of the documentary on them that just came out…
Rodents of Unusual Size
@Violet, they are! Some of the games aren’t for everybody, no doubt: for example, both TIS-100 and Exapunks involve writing and debugging pseudo-assembler, which I guess even some programmers would find Not Fun. But Infinifactory doesn’t require any programming background. It’s enormously satisfying when you construct a complex assembly line and see it in operation… and then you spend hours refining it, to shave off a few cycles. It appeals to my hacker mentality.
Zachtronics is led by Zach Barth, who wrote Infiniminer, which (to put it charitably) inspired Notch to write Minecraft. Notch got rich, Zach didn’t.
@ Moggie;
that reminds me of an older “documentary”… about rodents of unusual size….
Did somebody mention capybaras?
Seriously, when those two broke out of the High Park Zoo, it dominated headlines in the city for the month that they were loose. This city loves unusual animal stories like the fugitive capybaras or the IKEA monkey.
Cliff Pervocracy had a recent Tumblr post on researching (just for fun) how you’d keep pet capybaras. Turns out it’s much more demanding than keeping, say, guinea pigs.
I garden to relax. Every time trump does something really horrifying, I add something to the garden. Usually tinkering with the hydroponics, or putting in a few new herbs is enough to tamp down the anxiety.
This week was bad. This week was plant a 4×4 of potatoes and charge a pizza oven I can’t really afford bad.
Unusual Animal Stories
I heard about this a few years ago when I accidentally stumbled onto a headline that read “Toads on the move in Philly”…
…
uhhh, excuse me…?
E.T.A. also, this;
Not relaxing exactly, but this made me happy:
Construction workers rescue an owl from a net.
I love how the big, tough construction workers are so gentle with the owl and keep telling it how beautiful it is. That kind of compassion is a strength that the MRAs will never understand.
I always find this helps
https://youtu.be/7f8kahmsJ-s
I always find I feel better after this:
https://youtu.be/7f8kahmsJ-s
That’s the same URL as in the first post.
My favorite jigsaw puzzle site: https://www.jigidi.com/
And a great site for a variety of word games & puzzles, like acrostic & sudoku:
https://www.puzzlebaron.com/portfolio-category/websites/
(I have been on both of them for several years with no problems.)
Also, try Libravox for free out – of – copyright audio books.
Hallowe’en is my favorite holiday. I don’t do costumes or parties, but all the kids & parents wandering the street is like a giant block party and makes me happy.
I buy 2 boxes of potato chips from Sam’s and generally give away 100 bags.
My 19 year old cat (who looks like a Birman) sat on the steps all evening, kid watching (he likes being petted). It surprised me how many kids were afraid of him – some thought he was a dog.
Knitting and other fibrecrafts while listening to youtube countdowns/ top tens (of pretty much anything) or assorted fiction podcasts is my method of choice to relax.
For puzzles, I’ve been a subscriber of nikoli.com for years, but unfortunately they’re closing down the site (unsurprisingly, I suppose, since it’s all Flash-based). So I need to find another way to get my slitherlink / hashiwokakero / norinori fix.
I like the idea of online jigsaws, but they’ll be missing some of the tactile pleasures of the real thing.
Posted this last night on twitter – totally relaxing. An hour of two guys building a small house in the woods, and not one word is said the whole time.
https://youtu.be/iXjP9mEdSNo
Just came across this article on romance novels in which consent is foregrounded, which sounds enjoyable and also relates back to the discussion a week or two ago on consent and sexual fantasies.
Sorry for the double post earlier.