What cable companies get away with

I always wonder about ppl that say they got rid of their tv. They seem to look down on others like they're all-knowing and better than the rest of us. Live and let live. Some ppl like reality shows, MTV, TBS, WGN, OPB, etc...

Some people like stalking too, oh wait, "reality tv". :)

Actually, after i heard about a study on how stress and oxytocin operate together, I think I understand why people stalk others. It's actually a human body's need to manage their stress. When stress goes up our brain signals a need for connection. If a certain association (such as a specific person) is made in our brain, it causes a release of oxytocin - and then we feel an unusual urge to be connected to that person each time the stress returns.

That's what happened to me. I saw a tragic accident. i couldn't cry over it because my stress was so high. Around that time I had a guy come into the picture and even though we only casually emailed, I felt obsessed, like interacting with him felt like a drug. And now when I look back I can see that every time I tried to think through the accident, My mind redirected and instead I thought about this one guy because even thinking about him made me feel connection, therefore reducing my stress. What I actually needed to do was accept the painful emotion I was feeling and see the stress as my body's way of telling me that I needed to deal with an inner conflict.

Watch Tedtalk on stress

I just want to add that a great way to catch live local sports for cord cutters is the RADIO. Old school style. I can get all my local NFL/NBA/college football/hockey games for free. And I can "watch" in the car. Lots of smartphones have FM tuners in them so you just need to plug in your headphones.

The thing I really love about it is that most radio broadcasts are local - meaning each team has their own radio broadcast. So the guys calling the game are homers. They're rooting for your team. None of that strictly neutral BS you get in national TV broadcasts. You don't have to hear some talking head fawn over the rival you hate.

We got fed up with this too. Charter Communications kept upping our bills and had shitty service too. We had only basic cable and moderately slow internet for $100/mon and they wanted to raise it again. I had them turn it off rather than go through with that every other month. It turns out that we get more digital channels now for free than we did before. With an antenna we pick up over 100 stations for free and the reception is perfect. We don't get the pay channels, of course, but we didn't get them before either. We do get 8 different PBS stations and all the major networks, which is enough for us. For internet we worked out a wifi sharing deal with (why don't more people do that???) our neighbor for $15/mon and the speed exceeds what we had before. I'm please to be unshackled from the cable sham.