selune

Edit: It's a "pronunciation dictionary". Ppl just record how they say words and indicate their geography. Super useful for languages like English where there are a lot of regional varieties. And you can contribute too to the dictionary of your language. :)

I'm no affiliated w/ it btw, just really love this website, have been using it for years.

It's amazing to realize that somebody from a totally different culture, continent, language, was slouching over the same problems as I was, maybe even at the same time.

Anecdotal: a friend of mine used to play some casual mobile game for quite some time (Candy Crush or something), she told me once that when she was giving birth she involuntarily started to "play" the game in her mind when the stress and pain became too strong, she said it helped her both to distant herself and to focus. :)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201723

Videogames may help with anxiety. They may be used as a healthy alternative to otherwise compulsive behaviors (self-harm etc) and just as a general coping technique battling anxiety episodes[0] and also offer a healthy distraction for people suffering from PTSD[1] but it's not a 100% safe route, sometimes videogames may trigger even more anxiety, sometimes people will fall into compulsive/obsessive territory and develop an addiction (which will basically start a vicious loop of anxiety-compulsive gaming-more anxiety-more compulsive etc). I really like this article - [2], it looks broadly into the issue which is multi variable.

[0]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292142434_A_Randomi...

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201723

[2]: https://slate.com/technology/2015/11/how-video-games-can-tea...

P.s. Regardless of their effectiveness as a psychotherapeutic tool, videogames which are dealing with mental health as their main theme and exposing these issues to wide audiences, are obviously very needed and important.

P.p.s. Hellblade is amazing, breathtaking and everyone should play it. Yes.

I would advise your wife to try volunteering (for whatever cause she finds important) if she hasn't already. I've started volunteering at a local NGO after switching careers and it's easily my favorite time of the month, gives me lots of energy and peace of mind, wish I could do it more often.

So until the author has worked for a couple of years in the field, he comes off as a little bit... naive. I don't mean to come off as condescending, I hope he finds happiness in his new profession.

I'm sure it'll work out when I gain more experience. :)

I was a child psychologist (specializing in development and planned to go deeper into social work) and it was/is the biggest passion of my life, so switching to tech feels weird to put it mildly.

IT is fantastic, don't get me wrong, I would not go back.

I don't know where you're from but if you're from postsoviet countries you should know how freaking difficult it is to oppose the system and, in case of Russia, also dangerous.

If you mean the popularity of Putin then propaganda and general low level of education of populace.

TL;DR: It's not that good.

[1] https://edri.org/estonian-eid-cryptography-mess-750000-cards...

People are given lots of distractions though - so many controversial, absolutely absurd laws have been introduced in the past few years everybody talks about (about fighting homosexual propaganda, forbidding adoption for foreigners, blasphemy laws and so on). Internet restrictions are like a drop in the sea of craziness and not even the most relevant one for the majority, or controversial, or loud.

Everything largely depends on a particular circle, industry, level of income. Arab Sheikhs don't party with CEOs from Valley, Russian oligarchs or Hollywood producers. I believe how you're expected to dress for 300k position in Facebook would differ from the expected look for 300k position on Wall Street.

I'm all for controlling our inner consumerism but I often find tremendous lack of self-awareness in the discourse. Nobody says MTG fans are "not clever" or shallow or manipulated by the system because they have an expensive hobby. Tourism, cars, good houses, good furniture, art, videogames, eating out, going to concerts, collecting vinyls, having pets - are all absolutely unnecessary for humans and can be considered as luxury from point of view of those who cannot afford these things.

People buy and do stuff because they like it and can afford it and that's it. You're not more enlightened or clever for not doing one unnecessary thing but doing some other.

I don't ever eat in restaurants/cafes and don't have a car. I'm not smarter than majority of Americans, I'm just really shy and don't mind using public transport, so these things are inefficient for me, but they might be efficient in providing some entertainment, comfort, novelty experience, social signalling for those with different preferences.

Most people who buy expensive clothing are actually doing it as a hobby, esp those that are being talked about in the article - people who are heavily invested in influences and celebrity culture, they find luxury to be fun and it allows them to hang out in circles of people with similar interests. So it does fulfill functions: aesthetic, social, entertainment etc.

The source is in Russian from a zoologist who studied wolves: https://sovet.blocknote.info/articles/443/serdtse-volka-semy...

Some behaviors are instinctive, some are taught, some are the result of emotional conditioning (hence people taming and domesticating animals).

It's just signalling to your crowd.

This method is believed to be highly imperfect though as not all animals rely on visual perception as their main info channel. So some animals that do not pass the test may be self-aware, we just don't know how to research it properly.

Some people believe Google or news outlets to be objective depictions of reality, I think, we just tend to oversimplify and not look too deeply into things that are not our primary concern.

[1] https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/orangutans-pl...

Most mammals would react to fresh corpses of members of the same species, most would feel what we would call sadness when loosing a member of tribe, parent etc. But feeling emotions towards bones? That's pretty complex IMO.

I've also read somewhere about instances of elephants "burying" other elephants via covering their bodies with leaves. I'll edit and add a source if I manage to find it.

[1]: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1497634.htm

[2]: https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/12-facts-ch...