• 1 Post
  • 51 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle
rss
  • You better believe it. It’s a non-stimulant, meaning you won’t get any instant focus changes like the TV might dramatize. Nah, this stuff takes multiple weeks to start to kick in, meanwhile you get all the standard medication side effects. However, it’s a subtle but distinct difference when you finally have the agency to say “no, I don’t want to watch youtube anymore, I’m going to sleep”. And then you go to sleep. And then you get distracted for maybe 6 minutes but THEN you go to sleep. Only six minutes! I don’t even remember how I felt before, but that’s the thing. It feels more normal than abnormal, it’s a lifestyle changer.

    Psychiatrists. They know not to give me stimulants after I didn’t sleep for 3 days on Adderall. Thanks science for having alternatives.


  • Welcome to Atomoxetine! I remember starting them and gaining the inexplicable ability to predict what time it is before checking my phone. I’m glad some of the non-stimulant medications helps. Just remember to stick with both your psychiatrist AND your therapist. You will gain new capabilities that bring you closer to neurotypical, meaning new thinking techniques like scheduling and habits may become easier. If you think your medication is starting to stop working, therapy was the solution for me.


  • I JUST learned what “self care” actually is. So, I have ADHD and anxiety and probably depression, so I have had medications for all three. Notably my anxiety medication almost immediately removed my social anxiety, etc. But I still felt listless, not knowing what to do with myself, letting my apartment get unacceptably dirty. I get a new therapist and he’s got a specialization in “Men’s Issues”, right? And so he listens to my plight and he says “you care about everyone else, why not focus on doing things for yourself?” He specifies that it’s not selfish to do things for yourself, and WOW. I look at my desk, I’m unsatisfied? Cleaned, wiped away. Dirty dishes? Get em outta of the sink and onto the drying rack? Making my bed because I think it looks nicer. I’m amplifying my dissatisfaction into action. It’s awesome.

    And the best part? He’s using Men’s Issues techniques and he NEVER mentions it as self care. He knows I’m a smart guy, and (stereotypical) guys don’t like these “mental health” buzzwords peppering women’s magazines. He simply says: “Do things for yourself because YOU want them.” THIS IS WHY YOU NEED THERAPY WITH MEDICATIONS! You can’t use your newly modified brain perfectly, you need help. And the right therapist can change everything.





  • Ah, this got a good writeup by news piece. I first learned about this from Medlife Crisis’s The Epidemic of Fake Disease. Statistics about anything as big as cancer diagnoses are beyond complex, and honestly it would take a gargantuan effort of science communication to get this out to the general public. It’s… sobering to know that mortality is not morbidity and that harsh side effects create the most important optimization problems of patients’ lives. I hope that if (or maybe when) I get confronted with a similar diagnosis, I can face the numbers and the odds with as much of a level head as possible.


  • Yooo, they still got the classic cab at Arcade Odyssey down here near Miami. Some guy walloped my ass real bad at it, so I can imagine you can get really good at it. The singleplayer is hard as balls, and you have to be real tactical. Duel wielding joysticks is surprisingly intuitive, but you really have to mind your startup, execution, and cooldown times for both weapons and your movement, meaning conservative play and taking cover is imperative. I can’t believe I found reference to it on Beehaw.

    Arcades with real arcade games need to make a comeback (damn you D&B for only having DDR). Sadly they’re all Japanese and Korean, so you gotta look for smaller arcades or Round1. Rhythm gamers have lots of machines to play these days, so go hunt some if they’re nearby.



  • There’s two views I see here from a software engineering perspective: multi-targeting devices with different specs can get really hard, and that modern development consumes resources in excess.

    View 1: If you design a device that won’t catch up to modern expectations (limited, shared memory being the factor here), don’t expect to run all of the games. Some (or most) games will demand a certain level of resources. Microsoft either expected their status to swing their will upon the developers or were willing to help but just flopped on predicting what would be needed over the device lifetime. It’s a hard job, balancing developer need and cost. The hardware developers did their best. This comes down to

    View 2: It’s an old coot viewpoint, but goddamn are modern computer programs are bloated pieces of mess. This is NOT an insult to the game developers, but it is to the OS and the engine developers as a whole. The entire programming industry has assumed that bigger more betterer computer always gonna come in a year or so. So now we have gigabytes of unused HQ textures in game downloads for no reason. Windows OS with Chrome takes gigabytes of RAM to display a webpage. We went from ultra strict data streaming to CPU rates for Crash Bandicoot to an NVME SSD shoveling half a terabyte a second when you want it in the Xbox Series X. This has left those who cannot afford strong PCs (note: most of the third world) and now consoles from playing the latest and greatest games. Developers leave them behind by grasping at the end of Moore’s Law. If BattleBit can produce good gameplay with 256 players on a raw potato, AAA game engines should try and appeal to everyone now.


  • Best wishes to his family. At home, drawers and other furniture tragically crushes babies once every two weeks in the U.S. If you have small children, as part of your baby/childproofing, buy and use anti-tip or furniture straps to prevent this kind of thing happening.

    As for occupational hazards, this is a stark reminder of the risk behind storing large amounts of anything, including grain silo entrapment, flammable material storage, and even the Beirut explosion. I can legitimately say that manufacturing flour is perhaps the most dangerous food to produce at mass scale. As for weight, ss soon as over 100lbs/50kg goes over your head, make sure you have sufficient structural stability in your shelf.


  • You might be surprised to hear that Konami, famed for focusing casino machines, was actually mistranslated on also focusing on arcade machines. There’s still a whole rhythmgame scene, but unfortunately it’s mostly centered around Japan. That’s where DDR, beatmania, Gitadora (the series Guitar Hero/Rockband ripped off) are, including newer series like DanceRush and Maimai and whatnot. If you ever visit the higherscale independent arcades, you might find some unsanctioned imports with some even emulating the online functionality (with gacha, ofc…). Otherwise, your only hope in the states is Round1, which host official imports, and D&B which only has DDR.

    To add on to the other commenter, check out Osu!, ADOFAI, Rhythm Doctor, Hifi Rush, and a whole bunch of apps if you don’t want arcades.




  • My favorite part about the microchip production line is that it all depends on one company (ASML) in the Netherlands and their R&D. They make double digit quantities of EUV machine and that’s it: they dictate the entirety of “easy” technological speed advances in computing.

    And then they ship to a micropseudonation being threatened by the most powerful Eastern country just thousands of kilometers away. That’s where the chips are actually produced.

    And this entire process is predicated on quantum physicists banging together light waves that literally turn chip design into a probabilistically modeled engineering problem.

    What fun!

    Shoutouts to Asianometry for having the best videos on all sorts of the chip design process. He covers a ton of other stuff but his interests just about align with mine so I’m a huge fan.




  • My BF failed their exam that would have given them enough credit to not have to take a final semester. COVID and a lack of support for their mental health makes this their 6th year of college. Sadly, this means a few more months of long distance relationship, but at least he isn’t at risk of being kicked out for being trans.

    …For now. I’m fully prepared to make the drive and extract him from a bad situation. We’re feeling better than expected, though, since now the dread of the test looming over his head is gone.