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A new game called Airplane Mode asks players to enjoy being a passenger on a six hour trans-Atlantic flight that plays out in real time. This strikes me as almost as amazing as Penn+Teller’s Desert Bus.

Check out these amazing set of features to enjoy:

• Fairly accurate satellite imagery of your flight path.
• Snacks, premium beverages, and meal service (incl. fish option).
• Carry-on bag with a book, headphones, pen, and charging cable.
• Overhead reading light and complimentary aircraft information card.
• Inflight safety video produced by IFC’s in-house team of expert air hosts.
• Randomized events on every playthrough, such as turbulence, bad wifi, and delays.
• Authentic ambient noise—whose baby is that???*
• Inflight entertainment system featuring a flight tracker and hit movies of the 1930s.
• Our award-winning magazine, Stratospheres, filled with articles, crosswords, and Sudoku.

https://gizmodo.com/honestly-a-video-game-that-strands-you-on-a-boring-six-1839717598

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/never-binge-again/201907/how-stop-emotional-eating-coping-mechanism

Stress eating is a thing – and it’s related to how we mentally handle anxiety. Here’s a summary of what the psychologist did with his patient Johnny who was stress eating hot dogs:

I showed him some breathing techniques to help deactivate the sympathetic nervous system, which plays a strong role in producing the feeling one must urgently act on the impulse to overeat.  I also helped him more specifically label his emotions so he might gain more of a sense of control.  I also explained he might be approaching the entire issue with the wrong mindset. 

It’s only when emotions are allowed to become actual behavior that damage to your health (over-eating) is done, and this only happens when some type of rational justification makes it “OK” to act against your previously best laid plans. It turns out that when you make a very specific rule to accomplish an important health goal, there’s almost always a voice of justification that occurs which rationalizes crossing the line you previously swore not to cross.

Turns out, these were the very specific thoughts and situations which were poking a hole in his resolve, justifying crossing the eating goals, and acting on the emotions in a negative way.  To help arrest this behavior, I helped Johnny to label and very specifically dispute each one:

THOUGHT: “This is intolerable!  I shouldn’t have to put up with people like this (usually his boss).  The only way to cope is with more frankfurters.”   
DISPUTATION:  “Almost everyone has to swallow some difficult treatment from their superiors.  Besides, frankfurters aren’t the only way to cope.  I could work it off in the gym, go for a walk, do some breathing exercises, or just sit with the anger until it passes…which is almost always a lot quicker than I think it will be.”

At first, Johnny felt he couldn’t fight these thoughts even though he could identify them.  So I had him carry around a little card with the specific disputations for each one, and I asked him to keep a little journal each morning where he wrote down any new rationalizations he felt brewing in his head.   After a while, these thoughts lost their power, and Johnny indeed stuck with his three frankfurter rule.

Ok – that was funny.

Seoul, Korea’s Cafe 연남동 239-20 has a nifty design aesthetic. The entire place is done up in a black-and-white line art style that gives everything an illustrated 2D look. No detail was overlooked, from the chairs to the coffee mugs.

The series ‘Smarter Everyday’ did a great discussion of the problems of social media – with the actual engineers of Facebook and those researching it. And it is essential people realize the scope and breadth of how manipulated everything you read on social media is. And that outrage and polarization are the key tools they are using to do it.

Facebook: “We delete more than 1 million fake accounts a day.”

“You can go to a company that sells upvotes/downvotes, followers, comments, and views via bots. This one company’s bots were manipulating the upvotes and posting comments for politicians in 2 different countries, a fitness coach, a hair clinic, a rap artist, an immigration company, and the posts relating to the future of shapeware. We see both political and commercial manipulation.

The comments themselves were written by the purchasers and the bot will then upvote/downvote and post them as hundreds of different viewers to the posts. The services are delivered within 15-60 minutes, cost under $10, and are very difficult to detect. You basically have no idea whether the people following, commenting, nor upvoting a post are real or bots.”

After Oregon’s ‘Slightly Exaggerated’ campaign that I wrote about previously, here’s a few more out-takes and additions.

Act fast. Barrett-Jackson auctions in Palm Beach will be selling this beauty on Apr 11-13.

Lot #375 – This Ford Station Wagon re-creation is based on the car in the movie “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” starring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo. It’s powered by a 5.0-liter 8-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission.

And lest you forget the source…

The nonprofit Mental Health America recently ranked Oregon the worst in the country for mental illness rates and how little access to help for it we provide. That study says we have some of the worst rates for homelessness, high school graduations, and child abuse. All of which link to mental illnesses.

Sadly, it is not surprising when you see the masses of homeless camps, mentally ill, and drug addicted wandering the streets in downtown Portland. The famous movie ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’ was filmed in Salem Oregon – which some said was one of the big nails in the coffins for state-sponsored mental health services.

Read some of the sad history of Oregon’s Mental Health services here:
http://www.mentalhealthportland.org/about-2/oregons-mental-health-history/

Other sources:

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/oregon-ranks-worst-in-us-for-mental-health-study-says/283-449141620