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Welcome to the Kotke Ride Home for Monday, December 28th, 2020.

I'm Jackson Bird.

How your brain takes out the trash while you sleep.

The Englishman who crossed the Alps on a spacehopper.

And a subreddit where over half a million people pretend our world is just one

big MM-R-P-G. Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

Here's a reason to try to get some good rest in if you can take some time off right now,

or to institute a new routine in the new year that will allow you to catch a few more Zs.

So we all know that we need a good night's sleep,

and especially a few rounds of REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep,

in order to process information, move information that we retained into long-term memory, and just generally

keep sharp and stay healthy. Well, researchers last year found that while we sleep, our brains are

physically clearing out the trash by pumping cerebrospinal fluid out of our heads. This task

occurs during slow wave sleep, or SWS, which precedes

REM sleep. Using high-speed brain imaging, the research team found that during slow wave sleep,

quoting Reuters, the blood flow to the brain diminishes, allowing for an influx of clear,

...