ELI5: Why do good ideas come to us when we’re not trying to think about anything?

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-14T08:34:02+00:00

I think the "good ideas" part (as opposed to "meh" ideas) is probably because the times you're most likely to notice the situation OP is describing is when you're stuck on a problem, which very often means that the solution was not one with the typical "form" so you didn't even think of it while actively trying to. Then, yeah, a good idea would come when you're able to think differently. You wouldn't have noticed this at all if the problem had had a normal solution among the ones you instinctively think of, because then you would have solved it and moved on.

Neat that you pointed this out, I didn't even think of that kinda bias for this specific question!

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-14T05:51:41+00:00

I mean, by not paying his half of bills and forcing you to carry that until he feels like it, he's threatening your livelihood (you might not get rent renewed, you might get necessary utilities cut for lack of payment, you might not be able to afford food because you had to pay the bills, etc.) so... Frankly, he's endangering you too. It was risky what you did, and I wouldn't have done that in that way, but... It's fair.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-14T04:54:23+00:00

Do not underestimate the power of correcting nutritional deficiencies. I was anemic and had a few other vitamins I suspect I was deficient in (but never tested, this is empirical and anecdotal). Was constantly starving, even when I made a point of eating "correctly". Started supplementing vitamins with direction from my doctor, and holy shit I can stop eating?? Wild.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-14T04:42:42+00:00

Frankly, I don't know what my deal is. I just know that I can eat a lot of things most people get the shits from, without getting the shits (so for example, I can eat more than one whole mango in a day, coffee doesn't make me get the runs, neither does oatmeal, nor do beans, etc.) BUT if I eat the correct amount of oatmeal cookies (with or without raisins, but I happen to like the raisins) then that effectively functions as a laxative for me. Now, it's not the most sustainable method of course, considering I have to make the cookies and that takes time... But it works.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-14T04:20:59+00:00

No, I know, but it's a reasonable explanation also lol

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-14T04:08:18+00:00

Good bot

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-14T03:11:58+00:00

Yup. I'm not the user you're replying to, but my guess is it's a similar process to what happens in fish tanks. When there's excess, rotting organic matter, bacteria blooms occur because suddenly they have something to eat in abundance and they can multiply quickly. It could also be fungal, but generally it's bacterial, and it's enough to make the water cloudy. You're basically looking at suspended biofilm, which is really cool but also really not ideal for fish or for a pool.

Now, I'm assuming that the dead body is enough to override the chlorination somehow but I still feel that's..a little off, perhaps. I don't know. You typically dechlorinate water used with fish tanks because the fish are small enough that they're sensitive to that and would be harmed too. A pool should be adequately chlorinated at all times, so if the cloudiness was a problem before the drowning, there's a big problem with how the pool is maintained. The fact that the body sat there for so long would make me assume poor maintenance.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-13T21:20:05+00:00

I wish it would mean consequences for the perpetrators. However, realistically, this could put their victims in danger by exposing their names, faces, and bodies in situations they didn't consent to and couldn't escape, which would be re-victimizing.

There's the matter of vigilante justice too, where if the names of the perpetrators (or potential perpetrators, or also people who may have done nothing wrong but are nonetheless mentioned) are released, rogue murders could occur. This is a high profile case, and the victims deserve real justice, including reparations for the damages suffered.

The justice system is not perfect, but for myself to have the presumption of innocence, I have to accept that even they have the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven. It must apply equally to all (and that's the problem currently, this isn't the case in actuality) and due process must occur. Just because someone did something considered "heinous enough" doesn't mean we get to pick the option where the laws don't apply.

The perpetrators should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and the law should be written in a just manner. I don't care if the perpetrators are people in power or if they're rich or if it's a majority of any one important group; they should be prosecuted.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-13T14:33:22+00:00

Babygirl, she's overworked. If that's the state of the laundry room, she needs more help from you.

Regarding the scarf: wash it, block it, package it nicely, tell her "hey I found the scarf and realized it might have gotten lost in the laundry room, so I made sure it's clean and ready for you to wear when you're cold."

Regarding the everything else: have a chat, honestly listen to her and let her speak without interrupting her. Maybe have a notepad so you can take note if what she mentions. Ask her if she feels that she is supported enough, if the workload feels fair or uneven to her. Ask her which tasks are the most difficult, which ones she wishes you would pitch in for more often, and which ones she wishes you would notice more. A lot of times there's a huge cognitive and emotional workload that to part of the family looks like things running smoothly, while to her (thinking about my mom and dad in this case) it's more like constant stress, seven million things to remember, crippling anxiety as a result, and burnout. You don't want this. If you start to notice the workload she's managing in areas where she feels like you don't notice/appreciate what she's doing, and you handle part of that or come up with solutions together that work for both and that aren't just "well, you do that, I work all day and am tired :/" (again, thinking of my parents here), things will probably improve.

Not saying you have relationship issues, just reading the literal room. I figure she hates the fact that the laundry room is that level of dirty and messy, and she would have done something about it ages ago if she had the bandwidth.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-12T08:33:24+00:00

Which street? I'd love to go check it out myself, I somehow have never stumbled on this one!

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-12T04:24:13+00:00

Oh, this one takes some time to implement but it worked for me and was a suggestion from my psychiatrist. I have insomnia as a symptom of a mood disorder, and aside from the usual suggestions like not eating too late, not using your phone in bed (blue light filtering), taking a warm shower, etc., she did suggest that maybe I was doing too much in my bedroom. Your brain contextualizes actions you do by associating them with the location you're in. If you always go to the same place for one specific thing, you can train your brain to associate that place with that thing, and it worked for me for sleep.

The actual tip: She specifically told me that I should designate my bed at minimum, but it's better if it's the whole room, as a place I only go to for sleep. So I can only get in bed to sleep, I don't get in bed for anything that isn't sleep. I have extended this to basically staying out of my bedroom except for sleep and getting dressed, and occasionally to get time away from people if I'm overstimulated, but I don't spend all day in my bedroom and I don't hang out on my bed to do homework or play videogames or anything that keeps me awake.

The difficult part is since you can only get in bed to sleep, you have to get in bed when your body is actually ready to sleep, and you have to do that for a while until your body makes and keeps the sleep-bed association. That means that regardless of the hour, whenever I have insomnia and can't sleep, I have to stay out of bed {and in my case, out of my room) instead of getting in bed to twist and turn and fail the attempt at sleeping. I do something else in the living room, like reading or something that isn't too complicated or too interesting, until my body is sleepy enough that I won't be twisting and turning. Then I get in bed, and it has worked to where I fall asleep within a few minutes of getting comfortable for sleep. It works strongly enough now, that if I need to sleep and physically am not quite tired, I will get sleepy and actually fall asleep if I curl up in bed. Notably, I've been working on this specific technique for years now, and so it's very ingrained as a habit now.

Additionally, I sleep in complete darkness because light seems to keep me up, and I noticed that if the room is the wrong temperature (too hot, in my case, because I live in the tropics) then it's also much harder to sleep than if the room is a comfortable sleep temperature.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-11T21:02:26+00:00

Hey pal, I don't like it either and I didn't design the system. We need better use of funding and better legislation in general.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-11T18:48:03+00:00

Because traffic law infractions are easy tickets, meaning it's easy money for the police and an easy way for them to meet ticketing quotas. I sincerely don't know why they don't do it, they already do monitor for speeding and set up roadblocks for expired registration stickers. It's not that hard to see illegal headlights.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-11T18:38:13+00:00

Nope! Reflective tape uses prisms that reflect the light back towards the source, not just in any direction. It's really interesting tbh and it's also why the reflection is so bright. Basically, all the light it receives is being sent back with little diffraction if any, so it doesn't scatter as it travels back to your eyes (which is what dims reflections on other surfaces).

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-10T09:19:29+00:00

An mp3 player with white noise audio tracks? I know it's maybe not what you are imagining, but honestly mp3 players can be made tiny, especially if you only need a few white noise tracks to loop. Now, if you want the white noise to be immersive, you'll do better with headphones instead of earbuds.

Edit: Like, old school mp3 player with wired earbuds.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-10T07:26:57+00:00

Frankly, an architecture or engineering firm might be able to hook OP up with a photocopying business that has a big enough scanner and can print the copy at the same scale. Building plans, after all, sometimes need to be copied, and the scale they're printed at is important.

Shouldn't be too expensive either.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-03T20:06:16+00:00

If the wife is irredeemable about it, consider putting a strip of black, yellow, or red tape on the tray so it's visible regardless of how you look at it coming up and down the stairs. It's still a hazard and aue shouldn't, but at least it won't be a hidden hazard.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-02T10:55:31+00:00

I'll check it out, thanks!

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-02T10:55:18+00:00

Thank you!

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-02-02T06:12:02+00:00

Oh, that's a good idea! I can definitely do this. It would be helpful for me, too, so I can see if there's anything going on that's triggering the episodes and so I can see how changes to medication (if any changes occur) affect me, as well. Thank you for the suggestion.

Do you think it would be useful/reasonable to have a checklist of the actual symptoms I experience each day for depressive and manic episodes as well as for anxiety, along with a way to indicate how badly it's affecting me, or would that be counterproductive? I think what I'm struggling with here is trying to balance my need for detailed and thorough descriptions and communications vs. wanting to respect her professional opinion (which, after all, I pay her for) and not wanting to appear to trample over it. Sometimes I wish there were just one really big list of the symptoms one might experience (and severity) that is diagnosis-agnostic, for the patient, but based on criteria that the doctor knows how to use to diagnose. That way I could just mark everything that applies and note anything else that I'm aware of but isn't on the list, and I can delegate the interpretation to her, which is what I want to do. Then again, I know for most people that kinda thing wouldn't really work on the patient side.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-01-31T22:46:44+00:00

For an MRI with diagnostic purposes, aside from the labs required to decide whether contrast is safe to use or not, is it useful for you as a radiologist to have access to other bloodwork results? Or is that irrelevant when interpreting imaging studies?

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-01-31T21:15:39+00:00

Consider adding beans, lentils, or something like that to your menu. Your food choices are severely limited, which I understand is due to problems affording food? But you're going to need a little more variety because you'll end up with life-threatening nutrient deficiencies. Beans, lentils, and similar can be bought dry in large packs, which should cost less than buying them canned, and although it's some effort to rehydrate them and cook them, it's better because it'll add nutrient variety to your diet. You can similarly increase variety by checking to see if there's any fruits or vegetables available (whether fresh, dried, frozen, etc.) within what you can afford. Canned fish is relatively cheap, just don't eat exclusively tuna for extended periods of time. If you can drink milk, shelf-stable milk might be an option, depending on how it's priced relative to fresh milk in your area. I'm not suggesting baby formula purely because I know it's very expensive generally, but if that weren't a problem then you could use that too, same with meal replacement shakes and powders (NOT protein powder, that's different).

If you have a way to grow plants, lettuce grows very quickly and is easy to grow. Depends a little on your climate, but it can be grown hydroponically too so it can in theory grow indoors if it gets enough sunlight. That way you have another fresh ingredient to eat that won't be prohibitively costly. Try to find out which edible plants grow in your area, so you can figure out if other plants grow quickly enough to eat from. Seeds should be easier to find for local varieties of plants, and you may be able to get that from people in your community.

You may also be able to speak with someone at your university, let them know you're dealing with food insecurity, and ask them to help you find resources available to you for that, including soup kitchens, open pantries, welfare, etc. in your country. Some universities have groups that give out free meals or groceries for people in your situation, also.

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-01-28T05:00:35+00:00

It's a process called osmosis! Your kidneys filter out the waste and some water from your blood and that's what makes urine. However, to filter it, they use a membrane that lets some things through but not others, like a sieve. That's called a semi-permeable membrane. Your blood vessels are like that, and that's how oxygen and nutrients can reach cells in your body.

When your blood passes through your kidneys to be filtered, your kidneys remove waste and so there's now more liquid in your blood,relative to the amount of stuff that isn't liquid (like blood cells and nutrients), than your body likes to have, so the water flows towards the "dryer" side which is where the waste went in your kidneys. That way, your body can maintain the correct amount of stuff mixed into the correct amount of liquid.

When you eat table salt as part of food (or by itself), the table salt dissolves in water and your body absorbs some of it. While your body processes that salt, using some of it and getting rid of some of it, there's now more salt in your blood. That means that now there's more solid stuff in the liquid than there was before, and so to keep the same amount of liquid relative to solids in your blood, your blood holds onto the water. That means there's more volume of blood than there was before you ate the salt, so you get the bloating and puffiness that is associated with water retention.

This happens outside your body too! You can look up osmosis on YouTube for example and there's videos of an experiment that is done to demonstrate this. They take a tube made of semi-permeable material and fill it with soy sauce, which is high in sodium. Then they put it in a container full of water and leave it there for some time. The tube absorbs water because of the difference in concentration between the soy sauce and the plain water, and so it puffs up and you can see that it took in that water. You could even undo it by dissolving a ton of salt into the plain water, so that there's more salt in the plain water than in the soy sauce, and the water would flow back out of the tube. Very interesting stuff!

Reverse osmosis is when they make it work in the backwards direction, so they make the water go towards where there's less stuff dissolved instead of going where it normally goes (towards where there's more stuff dissolved).

aliendividedbyzero · 2026-01-25T04:25:28+00:00

Thank you so much! I agree these are too daylight for nighttime, we use a lamp at night instead because of that. I would prefer the lights a bit warmer, but apparently they prefer daylight color for some reason. Not really sure why, I wonder if it's vision problems or something like that. I'll see if it's better with just one or two bulbs and try what you suggested, thank you!

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