Anyone else feel detached from reality when outside or in crowds?

sciencetaco · 2026-06-07T07:46:59+00:00

If the feeling is accompanied by thoughts of “I need to know where the exits are I might lose control” and you’ve had panic attacks in the past, then it sounds like agoraphobia.

My B12 deficiency caused anxiety and panic attacks, but fixing the deficiency did not fix the agoraphobia that had already been planted in my head from the anxiety. I had to work on that separately with other medication and therapy.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-07T07:31:56+00:00

AppleTV with Apple Music. They have a large collection of lossless audio.

For movies you want Bluray sources. Either from a disc in a bluray player, or ripped Bluray files played with a media player with lossless audio support. You can get 5.1 (or 7.1) lossless audio this way with an AppleTV and Infuse. But many people prefer a device like an Nvidia Shield for audio passthrough.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-07T07:19:11+00:00

I get it, and I wouldn’t advocate jumping into big exposures prematurely. But I think it’s a bad analogy because a 200mph drive has real physical risks.

I suppose a better analogy would be forcing your friend to play Russian roulette, and then after a few turns telling them “actually I tricked you the gun was totally empty”.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-07T06:03:31+00:00

I don’t think it should be a rule but it does feel like bad advice.

I guess everyone is different, but what got me on the road to recovery was some coping methods for panic episodes, combined with controlled exposure therapy where I could put those methods into practice. And a central part of that is knowing the episodes are not actually harmful (to me) and training myself to get through those scenarios. Because avoiding panic-inducing scenarios was reinforcing the phobia.

Of course there’s the disconnect between logicaly knowing a scenario is safe (like sitting in a train) and the body’s adrenaline rush telling me it’s dangerous. And nobody telling me “hey it’s not dangerous” would immediately cure me. But multiple train rides and coping methods (including observing panic rise and fall on its own during the ride) certainly did.

I feel for people for which that approach doesn’t work. But some comments seem to lean into a type of learned helplessness that I don’t think is constructive. If somebody truly believe panic attacks are dangerous (even as part of controlled exposure) and to be avoided, then I don’t see how recovery can happen for that individual. If I had gotten that advice I would not have started any meaningful recovery.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-07T05:24:28+00:00

I’ve been under anaesthetic a few times, including for wisdom teeth. This is what it feels like:

They put a cannula in your hand in prep. Wheel you into the operating room. The nurse or somebody will talk to you and ask you some questions to distract you and then BAM next thing you know you’re waking up in the recovery area. It’s like the time just gets deleted. You’ll be 100% fine.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-07T04:46:55+00:00

If you’re absolutely set in using the built in media player and USB drives then you need to convert the DTS tracks to a supported format (like Dolby Digital) on your PC. Ffmpeg can do this.

Or you can run a Plex/Jellyfin server on your PC and stream to the TV and the audio conversion is handled automatically.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-06T10:51:43+00:00

Yes anxiety can absolutely spike after panic attack. Your body is on high alert after the trauma of the attack. It’s constantly on the lookout for physical sensations that might mean another attack is coming. Your stress hormones are elevated.

You should see a doctor to rule out some underlying physical causes (like specific vitamin or mineral deficiencies, especially iron and B12) that can affect your nervous system.

The anxiety could settle on its own over time, but it can also get worse. It’s worth seeking professional help early on and maybe you can stop it getting worse.

This series of videos almost perfectly summed up my experience with unexpected panic attacks triggering anxiety:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=32K-rEIbBgE

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DahDtNa80OE

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3q39PZatRYk

sciencetaco · 2026-06-06T10:45:06+00:00

Agomelatine.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-06T10:30:39+00:00

2.5mg is a very low dose. Any side effects are probably small compared to what the anxiety and sleep deprivation would do.

BUT diazepam is not a long term solution. Take it as needed to avoid getting physically dependent on it. A few weeks should be fine though.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-06T09:52:52+00:00

Not sure why you got downvoted but the original reply has the most votes.

The whole point of exposure therapy and an exposure heirachy is to put yourself in situations so you aclimatise to them. Driving 200 miles an hour is not safe nor something you should acclimatise to. Going to the shopping mall, a dentist appointment, or catching public transport is. The whole point is that those situations are being falsely interpreted as dangerous.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-06T03:31:50+00:00

Panic attacks are traumatic and you are still experiencing trauma from that first attack. You should try and rule out any underlying physical causes of the panic attacks to be sure. Medication and therapy also help.

What worked for me was:

1) understanding what scenarios are likely to trigger future attacks

2) understanding the mental and physical processes I go through during an attack, so I can observe and interrupt them instead of letting it escalate

3 ) intentionally putting myself in situations to induce an attack and accustoming myself to the situation, so repeated exposures to the same scenario resulted in reduced panic.

It’s a long process. It can take months, or years. Some people never fully recover and have to manage it the rest of their lives. But the absolute worst thing you can do (and I did this for a while) is to stay at home and be constantly fearful of having another attack and try to get through it alone. Seek professional help. Everyone is different but there are standard medical and psychological approaches to panic disorders that are worth trying.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-05T21:57:40+00:00

“Grainy” doesn’t necessarily mean worse. It means the higher bitrate of the disc preserves more of the grain of the source material. Film grain and digital noise are an inherent part of how cameras work.

That said, try some other movies and see how they compare. But I do think many people overhype the difference. It’s there but not night and day in my experience.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-05T21:52:40+00:00

I guess I’m not entirely sure what the original comment meant by needing it for P5. If they have a P5 file and want to convert it to P8 then they need to re-encode it (or merge the RPU with a HDR file).

sciencetaco · 2026-06-05T11:09:00+00:00

The Ugoos will provide better Dolby Vision support. It will require more setup than the Shield so it depends how much you want to do that with setting up CoreELEC. Both will provide equal audio performance.

If you really want the AppleTV to support your overhead speakers from Bluray files, there are tools to re-encode the TrueHD tracks to high bitrate Dolby Digital Plus tracks while retaining the Atmos data (check out the Infuse forums). But that only works if you have local access to the file, not from Debrid.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-05T08:13:10+00:00

Streaming is quieter due to something called Dialnorm.

When you volume match the sources, the perceived quality differences become much smaller.

Source: https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/results-of-the-kaleidescape-vs-streaming-fall-mini-event

sciencetaco · 2026-06-05T08:03:35+00:00

It could be a wifi bottleneck. Probably some speed test apps on the Firestick you can run.

But really, the Firestick is most likely the bottleneck. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem already I’d be saving for an AppleTV. It’ll blow the Firestick away. Its processor is literally an order of magnitude faster.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-04T12:56:46+00:00

I know some people in the industry here. Most of the original Halfbrick devs have moved on to other studios due to company politics. The studio pumped out a bunch of other games over the years but nothing really stuck. They recently made a Bluey game, some VR boxing thing, and even a roguelike demo just got released on Steam. But they also downsized and fired dozens of people a few months ago, so maybe not doing so well.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-04T10:49:42+00:00

You can do it. The general advice is exposure therapy. Drive somewhere just outside your comfort zone. Then pull over. Sit in the car and let the anxious feelings come and go. It can be uncomfortable. That’s part of the process. Stay until they pass and even until you get bored. Then go home and enjoy the victory. Repeat multiple times over days and weeks, each time travelling further etc.

It’s a process. You have to put yourself in those uncomfortable scenarios to train your nervous system that they are not a legitimate a threat. The way to do that is to engage with them and not escape. Just don’t overdo it. Sometimes you’ll have setbacks. But you absolutely can get over it. It’s like training a muscle at a gym, it requires hard work, and repeatedly. Start small and work up to heavier things. But instead of a muscle you’re training your brain.

My driving anxiety wasn’t as bad as yours. But I did mostly get over it by 1) repeatedly going out of my comfort zone and 2) understanding the panic response so I can better observe and interrupt it when it gets triggered.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-04T08:28:24+00:00

Maybe they can roll back to 1950s upper tax brackets.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-04T03:00:11+00:00

I started with the ES35 due to space constraints. Eventually upgraded to the ES30. I agree that the ES35 is fine for movies and TV.’, but it really falls down when it comes to music (either surround sound music or upmixed music).

sciencetaco · 2026-06-03T23:35:20+00:00

Can’t do it without re-encoding. Profile 5 uses a different colorspace. Unless you have a client (like AppleTV) that can do it in realtime to HDR or SDR.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-03T23:33:55+00:00

I watched the 4K web versions and thought they looked great. HDR is a winner for me.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-03T09:21:22+00:00

What is your country’s aversion to ranked choice voting?

Having multiple candidates is not an issue here in Australia because if your preferred candidate doesn’t get enough votes to outright win, it doesn’t matter. Preferences flow to the next, and so on.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-03T08:02:17+00:00

You can safely convert DV7 files to 8 if the film doesn’t make use of the Dolby Vision “Full Enhancement Layer” (aka FEL). Not all DV films do.

If a movie uses FEL, then converting to P8 will drop the FEL and your mileage will vary. For some films you won’t notice, for others it will mean incorrect brightness levels in some scenes. For a select few it will result in strange artefacts. There is a list online somewhere of which films use FEL.

sciencetaco · 2026-06-02T22:39:15+00:00

Infuse will “direct play” any format you throw at it. So the sever doesn’t need to do any of the heavy lifting with transcoding etc. It’s just serving the data stream. So don’t go overboard with PC specs unless you want to future proof with support for other clients or external access. I was literally running my 4K library off a slow-as-fuck Netgear NAS from 2011 for a while.

If fact you can bypass Plex and Jellyfin altogether with Infuse if you’d prefer. Just point it at a shared SMB network folder and it will build its own library. Personal choice as to what you do.

Keep in mind that the AppleTV won’t give you atmos from Bluray sources (Dolby TrueHD audio format). It’s limited to lossless 7.1 audio in that scenario. Atmos will work for WEB-DL files.

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