đ smarter, not harder.
welcome to samâs brain drain, a weekly collection of thumb-stopping things to tap, read, & watch.
đ good morning.
do you ever feel like youâre living in a film, somewhat disassociated from reality? someone is clearly directing you, & yet no matter how hard you look, you just canât quite see the cameras?
on the agenda this week:Â horseradish, working smarter, & brain baths.
âĄïžÂ tag me on instagram or twitter if you enjoy this week's brain drain!
đ earworm:
âand we said
this has only just begun
in the end
time forever favours the young.â
iâve been listening to a lot of sydney-based duo, vallis alps this week. theyâre currently producing a new album, which has me very excited. young is my favourite track from their debut ep, which is four years old now.
when vallis alps took the australian music scene by storm with the release of âyoungâ on their debut self-titled ep at the beginning of 2015, it was a sucker punch to the heart for many who found themselves asking âwho in the world are these guys and how are they making me feel all the feels right now?â
after that release, it was never going to be a question of talent when it came to the electronic/instrumental duo, but whether they were going to be able to follow up such a massive debut with more of the same.one canât help but think that despite everything theyâve achieved, weâve only just scratched the surface of what vallis alps are capable of.
- the interns.
stream now:
listen to the track on spotify or on apple music.
đ word of the week:
âantipodalâ.
relating to or situated on the opposite side of the earth.
the spot you're farthest from right now is called your "antipode."
as i've written before, every point on earth has an antipode directly opposite to it on the earth's surface. the antipode is the place you'd get to if you dug a hole directly through the center of the earth and came out the other side.
- ken jennings, condé nast traveler.
đ€Ș mildly humorous:
outtakes from the twitter-sphere.
đ§ brain candy:
đ new office hours.
work smarter, not harderâright?
in recent years, american educators have been paying increased attention to their studentsâ sleep needs, with growing debate about delaying school start times. now a number of businesses are following suit, encouraging their employees to work when their bodies are most awake.
âitâs a huge financial burden not to sleep properly,â dr. roenneberg said. âthe estimates go toward 1 percent of gross national product,â both in the united states and germany.
at the denmark offices of the pharmaceutical company abbvie, employees design work schedules that take advantage of their biological strengths. a nine-hour training program helps them identify when they are ripe for creative or challenging projects, typically mornings for early risers and afternoons for late risers.
lower-energy periods are meant for more mundane tasks, like handling emails or doing administrative chores. workers save commuting time by avoiding rush hour traffic, and can better mesh their personal and professional lives â for example, by getting their children from school in the afternoon, then working from home in the evening after the kids are in bed.
read more via the new york times.
đŽÂ brain baths.
a new study in healthy young people found that large amounts of cerebrospinal fluid (csf) squirt through the brain every 20 seconds during deep sleep.
it was this idea of csf as a brain washâcombined with recent evidence showing that sleep is important for clearing toxic metabolic waste products from the brainâthat led boston universityâs laura lewis and colleagues to investigate what csf does during sleep.
the team recorded neuronal activity, blood levels, and csf flow in two men and 11 women while they wore caps with eeg electrodes and slept in an fmri scanner for up to two and a half hours. the researchers knew from previous studies that when people are awake thereâs some pulsing of csf associated with breathing, heart rate, and other motions of the bodyâa finding they also confirmed in this study. but in their sleeping subjects, they saw large waves of csf flow into the fourth ventricle of the brain about every 20 seconds. plus, the csf dynamics were coupled to the brainâs electrical activity.
read more via the scientist.
thatâs all for this week.
i hope you hold me accountable to keep this interesting đ.
đ see you next monday!
đŠ¶ footer:
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đ read more of my posts:
âïž burnout.
đČ growing old.
đȘÂ a whirlwind.
âïžÂ don't take it for granted.
đ€Â i did not write this.
đ crime in space?
đ an eye for an eye in hong kong.
đŠÂ green means go.
đ¶ââïžÂ everywhere, everywhen.
đșđžÂ a note on death.
𧠠life's ebb & flow.
đ new emoji?
âĄïžÂ the power of aligned incentives.
â°Â 176 days to the year 2020.
đĄÂ rising from the ashes, again.
đ something new.