Rambles that are fluffy, by fluffy
A few weeks ago I learned about armodafinil as an alternate non-stimulant ADHD treatment; this seemed pretty compelling to me because stimulant-based meds have always been troublesome for me for various reasons.
Unfortunately, it’s only off-label for ADHD; fortunately it’s on-label for a bunch of other conditions I have, and the theory of it working for ADHD is that it treats underlying sleep conditions that make ADHD worse, rather than treating the ADHD itself.
There is an open call for commentary on some pendidng legislation. Here is what I submitted:
As an independent musician, I often run into many problems with automated copyright enforcement online. Quite often I’ll upload a music video to YouTube containing only my own original work, but then I get a copyright strike because the drum beat or some incidental noise happened to match something on a major label track. The recourse for this is to appeal the copyright strike, and YouTube almost always finds in favor of the record label, as they have huge amounts of money and I do not.
Similar issues are faced by individual photographers who take photographs of well-known landmarks, being issued takedown notices because their photograph happened to closely match a similar photo owned by Getty Images or the like. For that matter, Getty Images often assumes they own photos that independent journalists put on their articles, when those photographs were taken specifically for the article.
There are also many content creators who create videos which include thorough academic analyses of copyrighted work, completely within the bounds of fair use, but algorithmic copyright detection filters do not understand any nuance when it comes to the difference between analysis and outright copying. In one particularly ironic case, Adam Neely made a video in defense of Warner Media regarding a copyright dispute over a song, and then Warner Media flagged that video – for the part of it which wasn’t even owned by Warner!
The copyright system is also often abused to prevent discussion of important issues, and copyright reporting mechanisms are often used as an end-run around anti-SLAPP measures.
Algorithmic copyright matching needs to come with extreme human oversight. While an algorithmic match can and should be used to inform people about potential infringement, it should never be used as an automated means of preventing access to a work, legal or otherwise.
If you care at all about the garbage clusterfuck that is the US copyright system, please share your comments in advance of the public consultation by February 8, 2022.
When my Leaf arrived, the front camera wasn’t working, meaning the self-driving functionality was nonfunctional. Today I took it to the nearest Nissan dealership to get it looked at, and fortunately it was just that the camera had gotten disconnected somehow. 5 hours and $280 later (most of which will be reimbursed by Carvana) I have a car with level 2 self driving.
And holy moly, level 2 self-driving is weird, in a good way. It can’t handle all driving even in its limited situation (nor should it) but it does an amazing job of maintaining speed and safe following distance and position within the lane. And it always errs on the side of caution; if it doesn’t have a clear view of the lane markers, it turns off (and lets you know!), and goes into lane-keep alert mode instead.
There’s a bunch of road on the way home which has had construction going on for as long as I’ve lived here, and the lanes are all weird. When driving there, the lane-keep alert made sure I was aware I was drifting between lanes, but used a perfect level of tactile notification, which made perfect sense. And when lane keeping became available again, it was so surreal (but cool) to feel the steering wheel automatically turn for me.
It’s a really cool experience, and I feel like it’s implemented in a safe way that’s not likely to have the Tesla problem of just like, you know, randomly swerving into trucks/medians/oncoming traffic.
It handles all of the parts of driving that make me anxious.
Also having the full wraparound camera makes parking much easier.
So anyway. Yeah. I like it.
After the first few days with the ring I was finding my sleep to be pretty awful, and I was noticing that I was waking up quite frequently. Some of it seems to be due to apnea coming and going, but last night while just lying in bed totally awake I started getting “please move” vibrations even though I was definitely breathing, and the ring said my SpO2 was a perfectly-healthy 98%.
But! My heart rate was dropping under 45, which was the configured notification for that.
Today I had to run an errand in Burien, so I got to try the Leaf in somewhat-more-chaotic driving conditions than what I did during my test drive yesterday.
So Carvana arrived today, and delivered my new car and took my old car away. The whole process was really straightforward and simple, and of course they gave me time to do a test drive before committing to the exchange. It was kind of sad to see my Mazda3 go away but I’m sure whoever ends up with it next will make much better use of it than I did.
Anyway! So now I have a shiny black vehicle from the future. It is really fun to drive, but also very different. It’s so weird to turn it on and to not hear an engine rev. It’s weird not having an engine to rev. It moves smoothly. One-pedal mode feels like how driving should have always been, and supposedly it’s better at power consumption so I will probably be using it a lot, at least for my city driving.
I’ve had my current car, a Mazda3, for nearly 6 years. It’s a great car. I like it a lot.
But, there’s a few things I’ve gotten somewhat fed up with on it:
For a while I’ve been thinking about getting an electric vehicle, and recently I got the idea planted in my head that it would be worth switching to a Nissan Leaf.
Anyway, on Carvana, I found a 2018 Leaf SL with all of the safety features I want, and also it still has around 135 miles of range (supposedly) and its battery is still well under warranty, and the cost was only a little bit more than what Carvana said the trade-in value on my Mazda3 was.
So maybe a bit impulsively, I bought it. It will arrive on Friday.
My cost after trade-in is around $1000, and it only raises my insurance premiums by around $8/month. So, yay.
I’ve always had issues where I’ll stop breathing in the middle of the night, but I don’t snore. Sometimes I wake up gasping for air. I’ve suspected central sleep apnea for a long time.
Several years ago I had an in-home sleep study, where they hooked up an SpO2 meter to me and recorded it overnight. There were a number of drops throughout the night, indicative of apnea in general, and as a result I was provided a CPAP machine (on the assumption that it was obstructive, rather than central, apnea).
The CPAP machine didn’t really help much (if at all) and I kept trying to make it work over the next few years. Then due to a change in insurance I needed to get another study to get authorized for continuing the prescription, and they said that the CPAP machine wasn’t helpful for whatever my sleep issue was. I ended up selling it on the used market.
But I was still having apnea issues, and a lack of restful sleep.
Over the past few weeks it’s gotten especially bad, and after someone was evangelizing the Oura ring, I looked into continuous monitoring solutions. I’ve had a cheap finger monitor for years, which has been helpful for spot-checking but is uncomfortable to wear to bed, and also doesn’t record a log, making it less useful for diagnosing issues.
Oura is pretty expensive (and now requires a $6/month subscription plan) and doesn’t do continuous SpO2 monitoring (it only does momentary checks, similar to the current Apple Watch), but perusing other reviews and half-remembering a few videos I’d seen years ago, I eventually came across the Wellue O2ring, which is a continuous monitor which logs SpO2, heart rate, and movement all night long, and can also send a little vibration to your finger whenever the SpO2 drops below a configurable threshold.
Tomorrow at 2:30 PM Pacific Standard Time I’ll be finally premiering the hour-long music video for my Novembeat 2021 album. If you head to the YouTube page you can set up a reminder/notification for when it starts, and during the premiere we’ll all be able to chat live!
This is by far the largest, most ambitious video project I’ve ever done and I’m really excited to share it with the world. I hope y'all will join me!
Here’s some stats and thoughts maybe. I dunno.
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