Jeff Do retweeted
Great article on increasing solitude of our societies, in this case US but same probably in EU to a lesser extent:
"Derek Thompson's essay "You Are No Longer Invited to Dinner" argues that Americans have largely stopped having people over.
The headline stat comes from combining the old DDB Needham Life Style surveys Robert Putnam used in *Bowling Alone* with a new replication by Data For Progress.
The share of Americans who host friends or family at home at least monthly fell from 42% in 1975 to 12% in 2026, roughly a 70% drop. Most other forms of socializing also fell by double digits over the last 30 years, including cards, bars, sporting events, and volunteering. The decline in hosting was steeper than the much-discussed drop in church attendance.
He rules out two comforting explanations. People haven't just moved dinners to restaurants, since solo dining is rising and face-to-face socializing is down overall. They also haven't replaced parties with other social activities. Exercise and travel are up, but exercise is mostly solitary, and time spent at home has jumped sharply since the 2010s.
His explanations:
1. Harried dual-earner households. As societies get richer, leisure starts to feel like work, and planning a dinner party is basically unpaid project management. Women historically ran the family social calendar. When they moved into paid work, men didn't take over that job. He admits this can't be the whole story, because total leisure time has actually increased.
2. Intensive parenting. Parents, especially fathers, now spend far more time with their kids, and that time comes out of evenings that used to go to hosting adults.
3. Shrinking friend networks. Close friendships are declining, most sharply among people without college degrees, so hosting is becoming a luxury good. People who never host skew toward independents and non-graduates. He speculates that weaker social ties may lead to weaker party attachment, rather than the other way around.
4. Home is too comfortable. Americans spent almost two extra hours a day at home between 2003 and 2022, much of it on screens and short-form video.
His closing idea is a "Lump of Leisure" theory, a twist on the Lump of Labor fallacy. Technology hasn't made human work unnecessary, but it has made other people less necessary for fun. Social leisure turns out to be finite and easy to displace.
He frames this as a coordination failure rather than a personal one: a dinner party requires schedules, cleaning, food, allergies, and the risk of a dull evening, while TikTok asks nothing of you.
A footnote adds that if everyone gets a bit busier, the difficulty of coordinating a get-together rises multiplicatively, so small increases in individual busyness could produce large drops in socializing overall."
derekthompson.org/p/the-deat…
Jeff Do retweeted
One of the most underrated health habits?
WALKING.
Especially after meals. It’s free, accessible, and something you can start doing today.
Jeff Do retweeted
ADHD is closely linked to a delayed body clock.
Early evidence suggests correcting this delay can also improve ADHD symptoms.
Up to 78 percent of people with ADHD have a body clock that runs late, and moving that clock earlier has been linked to fewer ADHD symptoms. A 2025 paper by two Canadian doctors pulled the evidence together and laid out a treatment plan.
Melatonin, the hormone that tells your body it's time to sleep, starts rising about 45 minutes later at night in children with ADHD and about 90 minutes later in adults. Brandon Luu of Queen's University and Nicholas Fabiano of the University of Ottawa gathered this research in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Sleep problems affect up to 80 percent of adults with ADHD and up to 82 percent of children.
People with ADHD also tend to have a flatter, later daily cortisol rhythm, and some studies have found a smaller pineal gland, the tiny gland deep in the brain that makes melatonin. Their body clock genes show weaker daily swings too.
Melatonin and bright light therapy have both moved the body clock earlier in children and adults with ADHD. Early studies link that shift to fewer ADHD symptoms, and sleep programs for children have improved symptoms, sleep, and daily functioning.
Screening every ADHD patient for sleep and body clock problems is the first step in the plan the authors propose. After that come a fixed wake-up time, bright light in the morning, less light and screen time at night, regular daily routines, and low-dose melatonin for people whose clock is clearly running late.
The paper is a perspective piece that summarizes earlier research, and much of the treatment evidence is still early. For the large group of people with ADHD whose clocks run late, the first steps it recommends are about light, timing, and routine. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4145…
Jeff Do retweeted
You are one walk away from a better day. In a University of Illinois study, kids who walked for just 20 minutes paid better attention and scored higher on a school test afterward, compared with the same kids on a day they sat still.
Twenty children aged 9 and 10 came into Charles Hillman's lab on two different days. On one visit they rested before taking some tests. On the other, they walked on a treadmill for 20 minutes at an easy pace, the kind where you can still chat, and then took the same tests. The results came out in the journal Neuroscience in 2009.
After the walk, the kids made fewer mistakes on a focus test where you have to ignore distractions and pick out one thing. Sensors on their heads showed their brains putting more effort into paying attention, and they did better on a standard school test too.
Zero training happened beforehand, so nobody had time to get fitter. With only 20 kids and one session each, the study can't say how long the boost lasts or whether adults get it too. A short, easy walk right before something that needs your focus costs nothing to try. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1935…
Jeff Do retweeted
there's a therapeutic technique called behavioral activation which can be a little confusing in therapy speak, but i found these memes that explain it in examples very well ^_^
Jeff Do retweeted
Flossing is an awkward and time-consuming chore. Few of us do it even though we know we should. Dyson engineers and scientists have spent well over a decade understanding oral care regimes and how nasties build up in the mouth. Our research has shown that people consistently miss the areas where plaque forms: the gaps between teeth
We wanted to solve three fundamental problems: how to see those gaps, remove plaque, how to improve cleaning performance while brushing.
By combining a camera, machine learning, precision fluid dynamics, advanced brushing technologies, connectivity and WiFi, Dyson CameraJet™ introduces an entirely new way to keep your mouth healthy.”
— James Dyson, Founder and Chief Engineer
dyson.co.uk/discover/news/la…
Dyson trained an AI on 470,000 dental images and put it inside a toothbrush. With a camera. That flosses for you. In real time.
It's called the CameraJet for $499. Launched today.
A 100,000-pixel macro lens sits inside the brush head. It takes 28 images per second while you brush. The AI detects gaps between your teeth and within 100 milliseconds fires a precision jet of mouthrinse directly into the gap.
It's computer vision doing your flossing. While you brush. Automatically.
Only Dyson would look at a toothbrush and think it needs a camera, a machine learning model, and a jet engine.
Jeff Do retweeted
6 Simple Steps to Improve Your Life:
1. Sleep
2. Exercise
3. Don’t eat garbage
4. Talk to a friend
5. Be productive for a few hours
6. Repeat every day for years and years and you’re set.
Jeff Do retweeted
I finally fixed my insomnia after 10+ years.
Dozens of people have said the same thing fixed them.
Screen time destroys people's sleep. A night time walk is proven to fix many of the problems.
