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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I think this is a big part of it. Predators are stimulating and demand our attention. For most people spiders and snakes do so in a way that is upsetting, but because mammalian predators are less alien to us (and many resemble the cats and dogs we’ve domesticated) they’re attractive rather than repellent. But while I might find a lion adorable in video, I’m sure if one walked into my garden I’d be extremely fucking attentive.







  • For a long time lots of European music was mostly thorough-composed, where there was little to no repitition. Madrigals (the popular music of the renaissance) were mostly like this, the melody would follow it’s own journey with no chorus / verse or other repetitive structure. I might be remembering wrong, but I think it was early baroque and Monteverdi’s Orfeo that popularised repeating structures, and turns out people love them. If you back and listen to some madrigals, it’s a very different approach to music. (also, there was folks music and all sorts of other traditions, which used more repeating patterns, that seem more familiar to us.)




  • Doesnt work for me. 25 is too long if I’m struggling, and if I start getting into it, a five minutes break spoils my flow. I’ve had more success with “I know you don’t want to do this, so let’s just do as much as we can in 10 minutes”. And sometimes ten minutes is all I need to break a tasks back (writing some email I’d been avoiding), or I kinda get into it and am fine to continue. And if I’m really stressed and just want to escape even after starting, then I go spend some time de-stressing and try something else.



  • Migration isn’t as smooth as it should be. Generally it’s good at transferring Google accounts, messages and phone logs, reinstalling apps, etc. But it doesn’t automatically log you back in to everything, so there’s usually a period where you keep opening an app for the first time since the move and have to set some things up (although I heard that was changing?). No idea about the home screen layout, as I use Lawnchair, and most custom launchers have options to save and back up layouts. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t…


  • Absolutely. Movies are often slow, and because they rely on visual storytelling more than tv, so I can’t even be doing something else while watching them. A trick that worked for me was starting 15/20 minutes into the movie, that way stuff is actually happening rather than some slow setup, and I get the extra challenge of trying to figure out what’s happening and what I’ve missed which keeps my brain busy. Then, if I enjoy the movie, I’ve got an extra 15 minutes to watch later as a bonus!


  • Comfort eating. Before I got adhd meds I had zero impulse control, so I’d eat nothing or eat everything. I would be 75% through a giant bag of snacks, and I’d be actively not enjoying them and wanting to stop, but I just couldn’t. I’d stop and put them away and ten seconds later I’d be back eating, even though I was feeling sick and gross.

    On meds, that’s stopped and I’ve realised that my craving for snacks is all about comfort, stimulus, and self regulation, and nothing to do with hunger. But even knowing that, I struggle to bother with other harder but healthier ways of stimulating and relaxing, when I could just eat crackers with thick slabs of salty butter, or alternate between dark chocolate and salty peanuts. It’s not the worst, but I’m very conscious of that it’s not really about the food and so it feels like a lot of empty calories just to chill me out a little.




  • I’ve had lots of problems in life (late diagnosed neurodiversity), walked out of jobs, changed careers, gone back to uni three times, and had a series of mental breakdowns. But despite all that, because I had a caring family, I knew that the worst that could happen is I’d have to move back in with my parents, which might be. A bit humiliating but would be easy, comfortable and safe.

    This security allowed me to spend two decades fucking up until I got the right diagnosis, medication and a satisfying professional career. I’m extremely conscious that if I’d not had love and support I’d have ended up an unemployed alcoholic, or dead. I have so much respect for people fighting through life on hard mode, but I’m also so glad I happened to get the lucky draw.

    Similarly, being a normal looking white guy is an amazing superpower. Although “invisible disabilities” absolutely have their own challenges, the fact that my problems aren’t easily spotted means that despite being repeatedly terrible at a wide variety of jobs, and a general screw up, I have gotten every job I’ve interviewed for, often massively beyond my actual skills and expertise. And it’s not just the external appearance, the confidence I grew up with from being white, male, straight passing, and middle class, has meant that people just believe stuff when I say it, and take me seriously even if I don’t really know much about whatever we’re discussing.

    Obviously there’s some small amount of individual traits and whole lot of luck (you can still lose a game in easy mode, and sadly I know folks who have) but it so obvious I’m playing with a stacked deck compared with most of the world, that it boggles my mind that people try and deny their ‘privilege’.



  • Aristoles’ Nicomachian Ethics (2300 years ago) basically argues that what makes a person “good” is that they are in the habit of doing the right thing. A villain might do a random act of kindness, and a saint may give in to temptation. If you want to be “good” you need to practice being good all the time so that it becomes second nature, or, one might say, a habit.

    It’s that carefully developed habit of doing the right thing that let’s others know they can trust you to act rightly, and gives you confidence that even in a difficult situation you won’t be a coward or a liar or whatever. Because you’ve built that habit over countless smaller situations, and it’s a reliable part of who you are.