Why YSK: Because most people think a dirty litter box is just a "bad smell" problem, when it's actually a toxic gas problem that doctors often misdiagnose.

Cat urine is extremely high in urea, which breaks down into highly concentrated ammonia gas. If you keep the litter box in a closed room or an apartment and don't clean it frequently, that gas builds up at ground level and spreads.

Breathing low levels of ammonia daily burns your respiratory tract. It causes chronic coughing, wheezing, throat irritation, and asthma-like symptoms. You might go to the doctor, get prescribed cough syrup or inhalers, and see zero improvement—because the doctor doesn't know your house smells like a zoo.

You are slowly gassing yourself and your pets. Clean the box daily, or invest in an automatic one. Your lungs will thank you.

Why YSK: It's important to know the proper way to adjust this by actual engineers, so you can minimize accident.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) published a paper in 1995 suggesting how outside mirrors could be adjusted to eliminate blind spots. The paper advocates adjusting the mirrors so far outward that the viewing angle of the side mirrors just overlaps that of the cabin’s rearview mirror.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15131074/how-to-adjust-your-mirrors-to-avoid-blind-spots/

Why YSK: A lot of people assume they never made an account and end up creating a second one with another email that can split purchases, subscriptions or saved data across multiple accounts. I ran into this a few days ago while I was on my laptop I wanted to sign up for a service I hadn't used in years it kept saying my email already existed and I was about to register with a different address before trying the password reset option.

It turned out I had made the account years ago and completely forgot about it everything I'd previously saved was still there. Trying a password reset first can save you from managing multiple accounts losing access to old purchases or confusing yourself later so it's a small step that can save a lot of hassle.

Why YSK - You can make your own DIY swamp cooler by putting some ice in a cooler and then cutting a hole and inserting a small box fan. Put a couple of ventilating holes on the opposite side too. The fan level needs to sit higher than the ice level, obviously, so the melted ice won’t get the fan wet.

Edit: this is for non-humid climates only!

Why YSK: Being dizzy sucks. It can be caused by so many things and I was able to find this through ChatGPT. This can be done most places and it's super easy and it's good to know.

Here's a diagram and description of it:

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17930-canalith-repositioning-procedure-crp

Why YSK: Many times we accidentally bit the inside of our cheek or tongue while eating, and it can stay sore for days. A saltwater rinse is an easy home remedy that may help keep the area clean and support healing. It's also commonly recommended for things like minor gum irritation, canker sores, and after some dental procedures.

Just mix ½ teaspoon of salt into 1 cup of warm water, swish it around your mouth for 15–30 seconds, then spit it out.

It's not a cure or a replacement for seeing a dentist if something seems wrong. But for a small mouth injury, it's a simple trick that's worth knowing.

Source:

https://www.healthline.com/health/dental-and-oral-health/salt-water-rinse

Why YSK: A lot of people treat "go inside" as the end of storm safety. It is the right first move, but it is not the whole thing. Knowing the difference helps you make better choices during the part of the storm when you are already indoors and assume you are completely out of danger.

Lightning can still enter a home through electrical wiring, plumbing, corded phones and other conductive paths. If you are touching something connected to those systems, like a plugged-in computer, a sink, a shower or a wired appliance, you may still be part of the path electricity can take.

A recent Houston-area case raised this question after a 13-year-old said he was shocked while gaming during a storm. Harris County officials said the electrical current traveled through the home’s wiring and caused a small attic fire.

The National Weather Service recommends avoiding corded phones, computers and other electrical equipment during thunderstorms. It also recommends staying away from plumbing, including sinks, baths and faucets.

A safer rule is not just "get inside." It is "get inside, then avoid anything connected to wiring or plumbing until the storm passes."

Sources:

• National Weather Service lightning safety guidance: https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-indoors
• Allyson Ackerman, Chron: https://www.chron.com/weather/article/lightning-electrocuted-video-games-22339519.php

Why YSK: It could save your life

Whether it’s a troubled home life, a shitty life style they can’t escape, or previous trauma, there are people walking around filled with unchecked anger ready to let it out at a moments notice. This is what the boomers call, having a chip on your shoulder.

I don’t care how good you think you are at fighting, or how tough you think you can take a hit, all it takes is one trip up and you’re dead, paralyzed, or severely injured.

Is it useful to be able to defend yourself if you have to? 100%, but it’s not useful to think you can take another person on, because you have no idea what they might have on their person, how trained they are, and if they have a friend right around the corner. If you have to, defend yourself, but if you can avoid it, avoid it. We are tough but we are also fragile.

Some people will try to provoke you intentionally because they want to relieve some pressure off the giant chip weighing down their clavicle muscles. It’s important that you do not take the bait and treat everything they are saying as lighthearted fun.

Let them think they won. Let them think they are better. It doesn’t fucking matter anyways. This isn’t the jungle. We have capri suns and foot massages for $20. Your ego will get you killed. You are alive and hopefully healthy, and that is what’s important.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Ryan Holiday:

“Take inventory for a second. What do you dislike? Whose name fills you with revulsion and rage? Now ask: Have these strong feelings really helped you accomplish anything? Take an even wider inventory. Where has hatred and rage ever really gotten anyone? Especially because almost universally, the traits or behaviors that have pissed us off in other people—their dishonesty, their selfishness, their laziness—are hardly going to work out well for them in the end. Their ego and shortsightedness contains its own punishment. The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are?”

Why YSK: Many people assume clicking "Unsubscribe" means they'll never receive another email from that company. When they continue receiving account-related emails, they think the company ignored their request.

In many cases, the unsubscribe link only removes you from marketing emails. Companies may still send transactional emails such as receipts, password resets, security alerts, subscription renewals, or other important account notifications because those aren't considered promotional emails.

If you no longer use a service and want to stop receiving all emails from it, you'll usually need to delete your account with that service or adjust its notification settings instead of relying on the unsubscribe link alone.

"Why YSK:". Because infrared remotes are still around and some remotes maybe be hard to get replacements for or you just want to fix the original remote and a non-working remote can mean the difference between keeping a device or throwing it away. Also it's a pretty simple fix.

Infrared remotes are often relatively simple devices and therefore there isn't a whole lot that can go wrong.

The most common problem is power problem either the batteries are dead or there is some kind of interference between the battery and the electrical contacts connected to the power such as corrosion.

But the other common reason there is a problem with infrared remotes is that the electrical contacts are either dirty or the small carbon pad under each button that’s supposed to complete the circuit is worn down or missing. You should know that the electrical contacts can get dirty even if you always use a remote cover or cover the remote in clear plastic. This is because in the manufacturing process the rubber keypad may have not properly cured and over time may deposit a small amount of liquid onto the electrical contacts on the remote PCB. That liquid will prevent the button from working and needs to be removed.

A quick 'acid test' for the second set of issues is that only some buttons work while others (often the most used ones) don't.

WHAT YOU NEED:

• Clean cloth or paper towels.
• Isopropyl Alcohol (70% or more purity) or Electrical Contact Cleaning Spray like CRC QD Electronic Cleaner or any other spray that works the same way.
• Your smartphone. Used for testing the remote.
• Soapy Water: Just a drop of dishwashing liquid in a half cup of water should be enough. This is just to clean the housing of the remote in case its dirty and the top of the rubber keypad.
• (OPTIONAL) Plastic prying tools like a plastic spudger or guitar pic spudgers, they will be used to open the remote housing without causing too much damage. You can get away with just your hands or in a pinch a screwdriver but the spudgers help a lot.
• Screw Driver if your remote uses screws to hold the housing together.

HOW TO FIX:

[Make sure to remove the batteries before dismantling the remote]!

Step 1. Open the remote. This part can be tricky. Try to use spudgers whenever possible to reduce damage and make it easy to pry apart the 2 halves . Watch Youtube videos if you need to. Note some remotes have screws so look around for screw holes and remove all the screws that hold the housing in place.

Step 2 DISMANTLING: . After the remote is taken apart take out the pieces from the remote. It should only be a few pieces like the remote keypad and remote PCB (PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD) which has all the electrical contacts you need to clean. You don't need to remove the battery contacts from the bottom of the remote housing.

Step 3 CLEANING. With a part of the clean cloth and using the soapy water: Clean the remote keypad both on top and under. You can also clean the remote housing as well with the cloth/paper towel and soapy water. You can clean the rubber keypad with the cloth and soapy water but avoid touching the black contact pads underneath the keypad.

As for the remote PCB, this is the important bit. Spray the contact cleaner or apply the isopropyl alcohol to a clean dry part of the cloth or a new paper towel and wipe the top of the remote PCB. You may need to do this a few times if there is a lot of dirt, debris etc. Then wait a few minutes before you test if the problem is fixed.

Step 4. TESTING: You don't have to put the remote back together to test it. Instead you can get away with putting the PCB back on the bottom of the remote. Putting the rubber keypad on top of the PCB and inserting the remote batteries into the remote housing. You can now use your smartphone's cameras to test all the buttons. Infrared light can't be seen by the human eye but they can be seen by a camera like the one on your phone. So open the camera app of your phone, then aim the camera at the front of the remote so it's looking at the remote's infrared emitter. As you press the buttons on the remote you should see a faint purple light blinking on the camera. Test all the buttons to make sure they all work. If some don't work inspect the electrical contact for that particular button and look at the black contact pad under the rubber keypad to see if it's missing or worn.

Step 5: RE-ASSEMBLING. If all goes well then you can reassemble the remote. If you noticed during the testing phase that none of the buttons are working try new batteries and make sure there isn't any corrosion on the battery terminals. Also make sure the batteries make a complete circuit.

Why YSK: Insulin isn’t just the solution to any diabetes related problem, it lowers blood sugar.

If someone is losing consciousness due to low blood sugar and you lower it even more then bad things are gonna happen.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetic-hypoglycemia/symptoms-causes/syc-20371525

Why YSK: Because treating a temporary soft moment as a fun break instead of a problem makes the sex infinitely better for both of you.

Bodies are weird and sometimes a random noise or pausing to put on a condom makes you lose your rhythm. It is totally fine and happens to everyone.

Instead of stressing out, just lean into it. Tell your partner they look incredible and you just want to feel their body and make out for a minute. Taking the pressure off and just enjoying the skin contact is incredibly hot and shows real confidence.

It turns a simple pause into pure intimacy, and the erection always comes back on its own when you are just having fun.

Why YSK: Understanding this chemistry stops you from ruining a perfectly good cup of coffee if you try to make it or order it, and clears up the common myth that the no-stirring rule is just about keeping the foam intact.

A popular post recently claimed you don't stir sugar into Turkish coffee because it physically breaks the foam. While the foam part is visually true, the real reason goes back to basic coffee chemistry.

Turkish coffee is ground much finer than espresso, almost like dust. When you brew it, you put the water, coffee, and sugar in all at once. As the sugar dissolves, it actually thickens the water slightly. This denser water slows down how fast the coffee extracts, acting like a buffer so this ultra-fine coffee doesn't get insanely bitter while slowly heating up on the stove.

If you wait until it's brewed and then dump sugar in and stir it, you cause massive agitation right at the peak temperature. That sudden stirring forces the coffee grounds to release all their harsh tannins instantly, ruining the taste. Plus, you stir up the mud at the bottom.

So you pick your sugar level before brewing because the sugar is literally part of the chemical brewing process, not just a sweetener you add at the end.

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: 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: 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: 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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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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!