Like any car crash, it’s hard to look away.

Hello there. Been a while.

If you’re like me, in the last year you spent way too much time reading about politics. Some more time spent reading about politics can be useful and educational. The amount I — and I suspect many of us — spent gawking at the disaster that has been the last year was probably unhealthy.

One of the things that suffered most in my life was the time I spent reading other things. More substantial, wide-ranging or thought-provoking things that, say, might spark new ideas or even motivate one to write something themselves. Case in point, you may notice the last week this site was updated. Mostly I stared at the burning wreckage.

But hey, new year, fresh start and all that.

What have you spent less time doing than you used to, now that the world is a never-ending political circus you can’t stop watching and talking about?

Are you better for it and going to continue? If not, what are some of the things you’ve sacrificed to follow the nonsense that you’re looking to get back to?

My main concern if I could stop time: can I still stream Netflix?

When someone says “Time Machine”, everyone thinks of a machine that lets us travel backward and forward through time at will. It’s a mode of transportation in a new dimension.

But what if instead of theoretical time travel, we were talking about theoretical time creation? A machine that makes time, not one that transports you back and forth through it.

How would you want a time creation machine to work?

What would the rules be? Would the world stop while you got to go about your business until you turned it off? Would it merely slow down the whole world so there were more hours in a day?

What would be the most useful or necessary features?

If you were the sole owner of one of these new kinds of time machine, how would you use it?

Bonus topic: people who sleep while cuddling are monsters. T/F?

The New Yorker just finished up a series on the science of sleep, suggesting that essentially, we’re all doing a terrible job of it.

According to the article, not getting enough quality sleep reduces our ability to do all kinds of things well — to the point where most people are never really operating at 100% — and even carries health risks long term.

So let’s say you have two solutions:

1) You can get an injection that permanently reduces the amount of sleep you need in a night by half. You’ll still sleep about as well as you do now, you can just get by with, say, 3.5 hours per night instead of 7.

2) You can take a pill once a week that allows you to fall asleep immediately whenever you decide to, and wake up feeling refreshed and alert. You can do this as many times per day as you prefer, so you could theoretically break up that sleep however is most efficient or practical for your schedule. But, you still need to get the same amount per day to keep from feeling tired, only now you can be sure that you’ll be fully recharged when you wake up.

Which way of sleeping would make your life easier, more productive or more satisfying?

If choosing less sleep, how would you use the extra time? What could you do that you couldn’t now?

If choosing better sleep, how would you schedule your day? How would it affect your daily life for the better?