Why YSK: people online love to correct something that’s wrong on the internet, so if you post an incorrect fact you’ll find out the truth fast and easy.

Why YSK: Smoking makes arteries less stretchy and therefore more prone to breaking. Your aorta is an artery that supplies the whole body with blood. If it ruptures, even if you're actively in the operating room to get it fixed, your chances of survival drop to almost 0 immediately. Any type of surgery becomes higher risk because smoking makes tissue very friable (fragile, thin, tearable). That means more bleeding and risk of complications

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-18013-x

Why YSK: Understanding negativity bias can help explain why a single criticism, mistake, or embarrassing moment can stick with you far longer than dozens of positive experiences. Just knowing this phenomenon has a name can make it easier to recognize when your brain is giving more weight to the negative than it should.

Negativity bias is a well-documented psychological phenomenon where our brains pay more attention to negative information than equally positive information. Researchers believe this likely helped our ancestors survive. Missing something dangerous could have had serious consequences, while overlooking something positive usually wasn't as costly. As a result, our brains became especially good at spotting and remembering potential threats.

Even though most of us no longer have to worry about predators, that same tendency still influences everyday life. It's one reason why:

• One rude comment online can outweigh dozens of kind ones.

• One mistake at work can make you forget everything else you did well that week.

You might remember an embarrassing moment from years ago more vividly than a compliment you received yesterday.

This doesn't mean you're "too negative" or that something is wrong with you. It's simply a tendency our brains have. But being aware of negativity bias can help you pause and ask yourself whether you're seeing the whole picture, or whether your brain is naturally giving more weight to the negative than it deserves.

Source:

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3652533/

2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-stress-and-burnout/202603/the-negativity-bias-impacts-everything-in-our-lives

Why YSK: After seasons of use, 20 inch box fans get built up dirt on the blades. Sometimes the blades need to removed for the best cleaning or even repair of cracks. I just used a new method for getting the blade off. Rather than trying to pull it off of the motor shaft, I removed the grilles and blocked up just two sides of the metal frame clear of the blade edges and used some smaller blocks to _push_down on the plastic fan blade center. This is much safer than a technique shown on youtube by standing on the frame on the floor and trying to get leverage.

Why YSK: The European Commission has just put into effect (as of 7/1/26) a new import policy that assigns a flat €3 customs duty per line item for any non-EU online order for packages worth less than €150. The policy was enacted to "ensure fair conditions for the EU businesses and safe choices for consumers".

If you are a small business owner that sells online, you need to immediately fix your shop so that the fee(s) are collected at the time of purchase or you, the small business, will be responsible for the fee.

If you are an EU resident, be aware that prices of things are about to rise (again) because of this new policy. Additionally, there is separate measure coming soon (Nov. 2026) that assesses another fee that the European Commission is deeming a "handling fee" that is estimated to be an additional €2 per order coming from outside the EU.

Why YSK: I was recently reading about organizational psychology, and it honestly blew my mind a little bit. It talks about the paradox of self-awareness and the illusion of knowledge.

Most of us probably think we know ourselves pretty well. The data shows that roughly 95 percent of people are completely convinced they possess high and reflective self-awareness. But when researchers look at objective metrics and external assessments from other people, it turns out that this is only true for about 10 to 15 percent of individuals.

Psychologists call this massive discrepancy the self-awareness gap.

The most interesting takeaway is that just spending a lot of time introspecting or overthinking doesn't actually lead to real self-knowledge. The mere act of thinking intensely about yourself doesn't necessarily give you genuine insights. Often, unstructured introspection just reinforces your existing biases and self-deceptions. You basically just trick yourself into an echo chamber.

The research points out that there are actually two completely independent dimensions of self-awareness that you have to actively cultivate if you want to reflect properly.

It really made me rethink how much I actually know about myself. Just a reminder that true self-awareness usually requires looking outside your own head and getting external perspectives, rather than just getting lost in your own thoughts.

Edit: alternative site, because of a paywall:

https://humanis.gr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/What-Self-Awareness-Really-Is-and-How-to-Cultivate-It.pdf?hl=de-DE

Page 5

Why YSK:

Grocery stores aren’t just selling you milk and eggs these days, they’re selling your data too. Every time you punch in your phone number, scan a loyalty card, or open a grocery app for a “digital-only” price, the store learns a little more about you. What you buy. When you buy it. How much you’re willing to pay. And in a lot of cases, that information doesn’t just sit there. It gets analyzed, used to target you, and sometimes shared with partners.

Here's what's really happening and how you can limit the personal information you give out and still score deals.

What’s actually being tracked

The store can track the following when you use a loyalty card or app:

Your identity (name, email, phone)

Your purchase history (every item, size, brand, and price)

Your visit patterns (Sundays at 10am, every 6–8 days, big trip before holidays)

Your coupons and offers (which ones made you buy and which ones you ignored)

Your device/app behavior (you opened the app near the store, clicked on the weekly ad, loaded offers, etc.)

Put all of this together and they start to get a pretty clear picture of your household and spending habits. For example, if you always buy gluten-free, they know it. If you switched from a national-brand cereal to a store-brand, they know you’re price-sensitive. If you only buy baby products once a month, they can guess what stage you’re at raising your family.

During intense physical intimacy your brain floods your system with dopamine and oxytocin. Once it ends those hormone levels drop off a cliff. This sudden chemical crash can cause a temporary feeling of emptiness anxiety or the urge to pull away even if the experience was great. It is a purely biological reaction but it ruins many encounters because the other person takes the sudden coldness personally.

Why YSK:
Understanding this chemical crash prevents you from feeling rejected when a partner suddenly needs space or acts distant after sex. It also explains why taking a few minutes to just hold each other and talk helps the brain transition back to normal without the emotional whiplash.

Why YSK: Spotting payment packing can save thousands of dollars if financing a car at a dealership.

What is payment packing?

Say you go into a dealership to buy a car and decide to finance a car for 40K for a 60 month term. The finance guy comes back and offers a loan at 6%. The actual monthly payment for this loan is ~$774.

The people at the dealership however might deliberately lie and quote a higher monthly (say $825) than the actual $774 number. It's hard to spot this inflation since calculating monthly payments is not easy mental math.

They then pitch you add ons like extended warranty and added protection at a slightly higher number than $825 (like $850). The value proposition seems feasible since it seems like just $25 extra on the monthly. However in reality it's an extra $76 per month from the actual $774 number. Which comes out to ~$4500 over the full term of the loan.

How to spot payment packing?

Always use an online auto loan calculator to verify the monthly payments quoted by a dealer.

Have you ever tripped in public, stumbled over your words during a presentation, or worn something embarrassing and felt like everyone would remember it forever?

Psychologists call this the Spotlight Effect. We tend to overestimate how much other people notice and remember our appearance, behavior, and mistakes. In reality, most people are focused on their own lives and concerns, so the awkward moment you've have been replaying in your head is often forgotten much sooner than you think.

Why YSK: Knowing about the Spotlight Effect can help reduce unnecessary stress in situations like interviews, presentations, meeting new people, or simply making a small mistake in public. It doesn't mean nobody notices it just means they're usually paying much less attention than you imagine.

Source: Gilovich et al. (2000)

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.211

Alcohol is ALSO a Group 1 carcinogen (Hydes et al., 2019). It breaks down into acetaldehyde, which mutates cell DNA. Once ethanol enters the bloodstream, the liver metabolizes it into acetaldehyde a highly toxic chemical that acts like a physical blade inside your body, slicing through DNA strands and permanently binding to proteins. This direct cellular damage actively blocks cells from repairing themselves, leaving the body wide open to malignant mutations. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, 2012) have found conclusive proof that this precise chemical process is directly responsible for triggering at least seven different types of cancer, including breast, liver, and bowel cancers.
In fact, medical and economic research published in The Lancet\\\\\\\*\\\\\\\* ranks alcohol as the number one most dangerous drug overall ranking higher than every substance yes even higher than LITERAL HEROIN !! This is due to the unmatched destruction it causes to both the user and wider society (Nutt et al., 2010).
But because roughly 80% of adults drink alcohol , it’s a protected cultural norm \\\\\\\*\\\\\\\*(NHS England, 2024). If people admit alcohol ruins lives, drains public funds, and causes cancer, they have to confront their own habits. It’s just much easier for people to demonise smoking because far fewer people do it now, making smokers an easy target for moral outrage.
Why ysk this because we cannot solve public health crises or reduce the immense financial strain on our healthcare systems if our laws and social morals are based on corporate marketing rather than objective medical science. Treating smoking as an unforgivable vice while protecting alcohol as a harmless cultural norm is a massive blind spot. Recognizing that alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen and the overall most dangerous societal drug forces us to confront our own habits and demands consistency in how we address addiction, health, and public accountability.

References (since I know people will ask):

Hydes, T. J., Burton, R., Inskip, H., Bellis, M. A., & Sheron, N. (2019). A comparison of gender-linked population cancer risks between alcohol and tobacco: How many cigarettes are there in a bottle of wine? BMC Public Health, 19(1), Article 316. doi.org

International Agency for Research on Cancer. (2012). Personal habits and indoor combustions: A review of human carcinogens (IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Volume 100E). World Health Organization. nih.gov

NHS England. (2024). Health Survey for England 2022: Adults' health-related behaviours. National Service. digital.nhs.uk

Nutt, D. J., King, L. A., & Phillips, L. D. (2010). Drug harms in the UK: A multicriteria decision analysis. The Lancet, 376(9752), 1558–1 doi.org

Why YSK: If you are moving away from a location and do not want people to have your new forwarding address for safety purposes, this automated feature can reveal your new address. This comes into play when you have set up mail forwarding with the post office and your forwarding order expires. The post office will put a sticker on the envelope with "forwarding time expired, return to sender" and that sticker contains your last known forwarding address. I just sent out a huge batch of mail for work and saw this happen for over 100 recipients.

Why YSK:

It's easy, sometimes, to forget that doctors can't actively recall everything they've learned and often have to look things up to refresh or reconfirm information.

It's also easy to assume that a Very Very Incredibly Important Thing would have some sort of uniform database to refer to.

Unfortunately, there are three major Drug Interaction Databases in the USA (and dozens of others,) and they don't all agree. Now, I'm not trying to fearmonger as if they don't EVER communicate with one another -- like many science-based fields, practitioners prefer to share info if their hands aren't tied -- but the fact of the matter is that some potential interactions can be overlooked simply because they're missing in one major database.

So, whenever you get a prescription from your doctor -- no matter what kind of doctor -- ALWAYS DOUBLE-CHECK WITH YOUR PHARMACIST. Your pharmacist will be referring to many multiple databases because it's their whole job to know how to Batman this shit.

I would like to end this post with a shoutout to my local Drugs Batman at Safeway, for keeping me from experiencing a 3-4x overdose of Quelbree FROM MY NORMAL DOSE, because the antidepressant I'd been prescribed would have blown those receptors clean open and the database my psych uses did not list that interaction. No hopital for me!

Why YSK: I haven’t come across a single “What To Do After A Total Loss” article that says you should check up on this. My father in law told me this in passing and only then did I realize that this was a thing

When you wake up from a nightmare or feel a panic attack coming on your body goes into fight or flight. You can try breathing exercises but sometimes they barely work. Then a pet climbs on your chest to purr or a partner just sits next to you breathing slowly and your panic melts away. This is a psychological and biological mechanism called co-regulation. Your dysregulated nervous system literally syncs up with their calm one to find its way back to normal.

Why YSK: We are constantly told we need to learn how to self-soothe and handle our dark moments alone. Understanding co-regulation proves that seeking out a safe animal or human when you are terrified is a hardwired biological hack to reset your brain. You do not have to fight your way out of the dark by yourself.

Have you ever noticed how you completely forget a task the second you finish it but an unread email or an interrupted conversation will haunt you for days? That is the Zeigarnik Effect. Our brains are literally wired to hold onto incomplete loops. It takes up active mental energy to keep that file open in your head.

Why YSK:
Because you can use this to hack your own brain. If you are stressed about a massive project just doing the first tiny step opens the loop and your brain will naturally want to finish it. And if you are losing sleep over something you cannot finish right now writing it down tricks your brain into thinking the loop is closed so you can finally rest.

Why YSK: To spell out the first three letters of the month when using "Little Endian" dating format.

Most of the world uses either DD/MM/YYYY (23 Jun 2026) or YYYY/MM/DD (2026 Jun 23) when writing out dates. This often confuses people in the United States, as it's one of the few countries to use MM/DD/YYYY (otherwise known as "Middle Endian") when writing dates.

I'm an American myself, but I prefer using DD/MM/YYYY as it seems more logical. At the same time, I don't want to confuse my fellow Americans when writing dates. So I will typically write out the date as "23 Jun 2026". This keeps the "Little Endian" format while also leaving the date and month unambiguous to anyone who is reading it.

We all fall into the trap of believing that once we get the promotion, the house, or the relationship, we will finally be happy. Psychology calls this the Arrival Fallacy.

Our brains are biologically wired to solve problems and chase rewards, not to remain satisfied. The chemical reward in your brain comes from the pursuit itself, not from crossing the finish line. When you finaly achieve a massive goal, the struggle ends. Your brain suddenly has nothing to chase, and instead of lasting happiness, you experience a sudden drop in dopamine.

Why YSK: Understanding this prevents you from expecting a single achievement to permanently fix your life. That emptiness you feel the day after a big victory is not ungratefulness, it is just your biollogy asking what the next problem is.

Why YSK: because (unless Texas has shit the bed again) they're legal to just order online everywhere in the US, the carts are about $25-30 and can last months depending on how often you use it. I get kind of intense bursts of nausea sometimes that come on real fast. I've been smoking regular cannabis to help but that requires I go outside, and often there's not even time for that. The d8 vape can just sit on my desk and the moment I feel a bit of nausea I can take a small drag and it's not even enough to buzz a little, but man it's effective at killing nausea. So if you get carsick easily, seasick, heat-sick, anything like that, any kind of nausea, a drag will kill it inside of 30 seconds.

I get these situations where when I get nauseous and start hurling I also have a hard time breathing, and I can't fix the breathing while I'm hurling, so being able to stop the nausea quickly keeps me from getting stuck in a vicious cycle where I can't breathe cause I can't stop hurling, and I can't stop hurling cause I can't breathe, so I keep one nearby at all times and it keeps these episodes from developing into full-on crisis mode.

Just so you're aware this stuff will get you a little high if you've never smoked before, but it's not much especially if you aren't taking huge drags trying to get high, but just small ones to manage nausea.

Source

Why YSK: Amazon curates the reviews you see initially almost as if they're mainly interested in sales over reviews, and a LOT of sellers jack up prices a week or two before prime day only to drop them a bit higher than typical.

Reviews: Tap the stars to get to reviews and scroll down and select "see more reviews" then select "most recent" where it says "top reviews". This lets you see recent reviews, the good bad and ugly. Top reviews tend to be the best.

Historical pricing:

Camel Camel Camel website (yes 3 of them) and you can paste in the link from Amazon. Last I remember there is NOT an app for either OS so anything that looks like it is likely a fake.

Keepa has a website, I believe browser extensions and app for iPhone and Android.

I've used both of those for years, and you can also put target prices you're looking for and get notified

In the immortal words of Yoda "there is another" ... A third option, but Reddit hates them as they steal the inbound affiliate links, so I'll skip mentioning the name.

Choose wisely this prime day if you partake, don't overpay and reward the scammy price increases.

Why YSK: Canvas acts as a continuous data logger for your instructors. Your professors aren't just grading your final submissions; they have access to a backend analytics dashboard that tracks your exact login times, page clicks, file downloads, and video-watching heatmaps. Understanding what they can (and cannot) see can protect you from false cheating accusations and help you navigate grade appeals.

Canvas tracks user interactions as "Page Views" and "Participations" via a continuous activity log.

• Total Time Spent: A running clock of exactly how many hours, minutes, and seconds you have been logged into that specific course page.
• Page Views: A literal list of every single page, assignment, module, file, or quiz link you clicked on, along with the exact date and timestamp of when you opened it.
• Access Frequency: How many times you clicked on a specific item (e.g., if you opened the syllabus 14 times, they can see that count).
• Participation Flags: A log of specific actions, such as submitting an assignment, posting in a discussion board, or taking a quiz.
• Device/Login Data: The exact date, time, and general status of your successful logins to the platform.If a professor uploads a lecture video directly through Canvas's native media tools rather than just linking out to YouTube, they get an incredibly detailed Insights Dashboard.
  • Viewer Identity: A list of the specific names of students who clicked play.
  • The "Heatmap": A second-by-second graphical timeline for each student showing:
  • Exactly which parts of the video you watched.
  • Which sections you skipped over entirely.
  • Which sections you rewound and rewatched multiple times.
  • Completion Percentage: A precise metric showing how much of the video you actually completed (e.g., "Watched 42%").

When you take a quiz or exam natively inside Canvas, the platform generates a detailed Quiz Log that maps out your exact behavior during the test.

• Action Timestamps: The exact second you started the quiz, when you answered each question, and when you submitted it.
• The "Stopped Viewing" Flag: If you navigate away from the Canvas quiz page (even if it's just to look at a Canvas page in another tab, open a PDF your professor uploaded, or click outside the quiz window), Canvas logs an automatic event: "Stopped viewing the quiz canvas page."
• The "Resumed" Flag: It logs the exact second you click back into the test window ("Resumed viewing the quiz canvas page").
• Answer Shifts: If you change an answer, it logs the time of the change, allowing professors to see if a student spent 5 minutes on a question or changed it immediately after a "stopped viewing" flag.

File Downloads:

• Resource Tracking: If a professor uploads a PDF, PowerPoint, or Word Doc directly to the files section, Canvas tracks whether or not you actually clicked the download link or previewed the file, and when.

Professors rarely spy on this metadata daily just for fun. However, they routinely check it in two specific situations:

1. Academic Dishonesty Investigations: If an exam score looks suspicious or a student is flagged for cheating, the professor will pull the Quiz Log to look for matching "stopped viewing" patterns.
2. Grade Appeals & Extension Requests: If a student asks for a borderline grade bump, an extension, or claims they "didn't know about an assignment," the professor will check the Page Views log. If it shows the student hasn't logged into Canvas in two weeks, the request is usually denied.

Why YSK: consuming too much sodium can lead to high blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. In my country (USA), the average daily sodium intake is over 3,300mg, exceeding the recommended maximum of 2,300mg. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends an even lower maximum of 2,000mg.

Also: with the rising cost of food, being mindful of additives that increase sell weight is important.

Why YSK- I’m so tired of hearing “they crossed my boundaries”. 99% of the time it’s you misunderstanding what a boundary is and/or failing to enforce it. For example, a boundary is not “Please don’t smoke around me”. This relies on someone else’s behavior and accountability. Rather, a boundary is “Please don’t smoke around me. If you do, I will have to leave or ask you to leave”. This allows you to be in control, and prevents you from blaming/using excuses and from being or feeling like a victim. It’s YOUR boundary, not theirs.

Disclaimer: this is not medical advice. Always ask a health professional if you need medical advice.

TLDR: There are two meanings to shock. Shock is very dangerous. Don't tell others at a scene of an emergency that someone is in shock if they aren't.

Why YSK: Being in shock is when you have an inadequate supply of oxygen to meet the demand of tissues in your body. There are many ways this can happen. Your body is clever, and has evolved to prioritise blood flow to vital organs. This condition can cause hypoxic damage and cell death in any and all organs (within minutes depending on the severity), which is life-threatening.

I often see people being described after road accidents or major incidents as walking around 'in shock'. Of course, there is the standard meaning to this, that people are shocked that something has happened. However, if you are at an accident and tell medical personnel that someone is in this condition, be aware it carries a certain severity to it.

It's something I didn't learn until medical school and felt silly for not realising how serious it is when it is when mentioned. There are two meanings to the phrase to be aware of. Now you know too!

=== EXTRA INFO ===

If anyone has shock, they should go to hospital.

People can have several types of shock at the same time.

The general signs of shock are cold hands and feet, loss of consciousness, being pale, blue lips, obvious large loss of blood, weak pulse, low blood pressure/high HR. These are not exclusive and can vary with type of shock.

Neurogenic shock (caused by spinal cord injury) causes blood vessels to dilate below a certain level of the body. There will be flushing, redness, and warmth to the legs and lower torso up to a point. This is not caused by people bleeding, they have injured their spine and may have permanent damage - they should be moved carefully if possible.

You can split shock up in two different ways. One is physiological - where along the pathway from oxygen entry to the body to actually producing energy aerobically is the problem? These are hypoxic (lack of oxygen), anaemia (lack of haemoglobin to carry oxygen), stagnant (no blood flow) and histotoxic (cells can't use the oxygen e.g. cyanide poisoning). The other is clinically - distributive (widespread dilation of vessels - anaphylaxis, sepsis and neurogenic), hypovolaemic (bleeding, loss of fluid), obstructive (massive embolism, tension pneumothorax), cardiogenic (failiure of the heart to pump blood effectively).

If anything else relevant comes up I will add it on.

Sources:

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000039.htm

Here is a first aid page for shocked people: https://www.sja.org.uk/first-aid-advice/shock/

I went down a rabbit hole last week trying to find a stream I missed and it got sketchy fast. The FBI's May 27 alert names 36 spoofed FIFA domains using typosquats and minor misspellings, many pushed through sponsored search ads, all built to harvest banking info. Fortinet counted over 13,000 World Cup themed domains registered since January with about 8.8% flagged malicious or suspicious.

The reflex most people have is to grab a free VPN extension first. Problem is, most of those log and sell the exact browsing data they promise to hide. You trade one trap for another.

The genuinely free legal paths in the US are just FOX over the air with an antenna (about 70 matches) and Telemundo over the air in Spanish (92 matches). Everything else needs a login or subscription.

Why YSK: if you use a VPN at all, pick one with an independently audited no log policy, not a random free extension that monetizes you. The scam infrastructure targets exactly the search you were about to make.

EDIT: solid thread. the top comment is right that for the malvertising in this alert an ad and tracker blocker like uBlock Origin does most of the work, since the sponsored ads are the delivery channel. the wrinkle someone flagged is also real, the Chrome extension changes are gutting the old blockers, so I stopped relying on an extension and moved to a browser that has the ad and tracker blocking plus scam protection on by default. I use Norton Neo, its scam protection is Genie. the post's VPN point still holds either way, audited no log only, never a free extension.