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Cake day: January 18th, 2025

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  • If we can never have any choice other than a 2 party system of Republican and Democrat, maybe we could at least start having something like a mixed cabinet, so that the policies and mandates being created are more representative of different ideas on different issues instead of any single ideology.

    I genuinely don’t mean to be snarky here, I promise. I’m sorry to say that you’re literally reinventing congress. The executive branch has become so bloated and overpowered that it sounds reasonable to hold elections for the Cabinet, because it is a group of people that write the policies of the US government. But that just further entrenches the Executive as the central source of power and policy.

    The more appropriate and democratic response is to dramatically downsize the power of the presidency. The only reason Trump is able to do so much damage is because Congress gave the presidency in general most of that power and now specifically refuses to take it away from a senile criminal narcissist.

    The executive has only grown so large because the parties constantly use the Presidency as a scapegoat and a sledgehammer when it should be a figurehead and a scalpel.







  • They seem to be genuinely trying to provide information about a tool that they find preferable to your solution. And you’re not even the OP they were responding to. Nobody in this thread has called you or your solution lazy.

    A bash snippet extension is “an extension [for a code editor] that provides a collection of snippets for bash scripting.” It’s a tool that is purpose-built to tell you bash commands on the fly, but smaller, more efficient, and easier to install than a local LLM.

    The user you are replying to appears to prefer this because it will also tell you the same bash command every time you ask (non-deterministic outputs can be different for identical requests)






  • Wish I could help. I promise, if I could think of a way to help you, I would. On account of the whole external motivation thing, obviously.

    Job searching is a genuine nightmare. Even for neurotypical people, but especially for people particularly sensitive to rejection with limited motivation and poor tolerance for tedious and repetitive bullshit with almost 0 gratification of any kind. Do literally whatever needs to be done here. Scream at the imaginary HR person for making you fill out the same form twice with slightly different wording. Pay a recruiter. Use software. Accentuate your qualities.

    Pay or beg a trusted friend to help. Or just to keep you accountable. Not the guilt-induction of “hey, have you done the thing yet?” No, make an email that you only use for job searching (do that either way, trust me… the self-induced spam is horrible) and give them access (again, only a trusted friend or family). Have them check periodically. Not to induce guilt. To provide reward. Something like “Hey! If you apply to X jobs this week, I’ll treat you to lunch!” or “hey, let’s go see this movie tomorrow night. If you apply to a job today, I’ll buy the tickets. If you don’t, I’m going alone” (note this is why you may need to pay a friend for help lol. Swap in whatever rewards make sense for you.)

    The idea of asking someone to do this will probably feel insane or weak. Lots of things probably make you feel insane or weak though, and those feelings are (usually) wrong. Other people often like to help you as much as you like to help them, even if it doesn’t feel like it because the whole rejection sensitive thing.

    If you manage to pass the job-searching step - and if you’re in a career where this advice makes sense - you can try to keep the job by scheduling meetings to show off things that you’ve done, even though you haven’t done them yet. The meeting will make you accountable for doing it, and it may provide the necessary external motivation. If all else remains the same, it will probably still get done at the last possible minute, so don’t schedule it farther than a week out, and try not to overpromise in the meeting agenda.

    Honestly, if not for the massive personal information required, I would suggest we build a place for ADHD people to swap details and apply to jobs for each other. I think people would be excited to help and energized by the experience of learning about other jobs, and would feel incredibly rewarded by any successes.


  • I’ve just described to you a person that really wanted to learn something, and did it. Put in hours of mental and physical effort. And your response is that nobody wants to learn, and that people only learn what they want to learn? Which is self-evident and vacuous. (Edit: leaving this comment unchanged for the sake of clarity, but apologies for the aggression)

    Inertia and degradation of curiousity is a real issue but my point is that the creators of the walled gardens intentionally discourage that curiousity.

    Most people naturally want to learn. Even into adulthood. But people - like water and electricity - naturally tend toward the path of least resistance. And everywhere they go, walled gardens offer them more and more paths with less and less resistance at every step.

    There still lives a generation or two that ripped apart computers, crashed them with amateur code, bricked them with viruses, reformatted the drives and put it all back together again as kids and adults. They did that because it was something they wanted to learn. It wasn’t easy, or simple. It was hard, and confusing, and risky. Kids of the generations that followed don’t do that nearly as much, even though they could.

    Are those kids inherently less curious than their parents were at the same age? No. At least, not by birth. They’ve just been offered a path of less resistance, and they took it. Does that mean they want that path? No. There’s just so many paths in front of them that the path of technological literacy is lost in the weeds.

    Yes, people only really learn what they want to learn. But the reason people in general are getting less curious over time is because they are being convinced that they want to learn something else, or worse, more often than not they’re being deceived into thinking they’re learning at all.


  • Eh, like almost everything else in human experience it initially started because of daylight and agriculture. Hunters and gatherers had fluid schedules, but farms had strict requirements. Without electricity and with a life built around plants and animals, everyone just has to work when the suns up. With most of the population involved in agriculture and not much else, you’re right - you either woke up or you died.

    Then candles, gas lamps, and eventually electric lights opened up the darkness for meaningful work, while agricultural technology slowly pushed workers out to other fields (heh).

    But out of necessity the hours for schools and markets were originally built around the hours of the fields, and it just stuck.

    Now, don’t get me wrong - I think morning people are playing a hand in perpetuating this issue. They probably get to keep deciding the rules because they keep showing up before us, all energized and efficient and judging us for showing up late or tired. Or something.

    But I would be curious to see if any studies have checked if there’s a correlation between sociopathy/narcissism and sleep phases, I’ll take a look. Or maybe they’re just signalling that they’re early risers as a way of feeling superior to the rest of us.


  • Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.

    Nobody actually wants a walled garden, they just get entrapped in them (“it’s just where my friends/music/content creators are”)

    They then become convinced that they want it, and its reinforced by the walled gardeners (looking at you, iMessage videos and bubbles)

    I know a person who built their own PC (Windows, but still) from scratch for the first time as an adult. Had the money and the opportunity to buy a prebuilt rig in two clicks, but instead researched the market, ordered parts and tools, exchanged a part that didn’t fit the case, learned how to assemble it all by hand, and exclaimed that it was a great experience and would do it all over again.

    And yet at every opportunity still buys an iphone despite the cost because it’s “simple” and they “don’t want to learn” something new. That’s not the actual reason - that’s just stockholm syndrome.


  • Three things are true:

    1. People seek attention, and often lie to get it.
    2. Seeking attention is not unique to GenZ. People screamed for attention in Pompeii and Ancient Greece, leaving graffiti on the walls and yelling arguments at strangers
    3. Many symptoms of neurodivergence appear at first glance to be typical to the human condition. This is not a coincidence - neurodivergents are human, and therefore face many of the same problems that neurotypical humans do.

    _

    The reason autism and other disorders are evaluated as a spectrum is because the human condition itself is a spectrum of experience. We are not simple creatures.

    The reason people are diagnosed with a disorder is often because they have landed somewhere on the spectrum of human experience that involves an abnormal level of difficulty when faced with “normal” challenges.

    Simple or routine tasks, time management, emotional regulation, conversation - humans universally face normal challenges in these areas at times, but neurodivergent individuals face greater challenges at higher frequencies, to the point where it can be classified as a “symptom” because it directly interferes with their life in a way that is not statistically normal - it produces unhealthy levels of stress or emotional instability, impairs social and professional engagements, interferes with their ability to reason or achieve their own desires, etc. etc.

    These symptoms can often be managed or treated. Just as often, they can only be coped with.

    In short, “invisible” symptoms, masking, misdiagnosis, and societal misunderstandings all contribute to this very common idea that the average neurodivergent is just an attention seeker.

    Is it likely that you have come across someone who has incorrectly self-diagnosed? Absolutely. People will lie on the internet. People will lie to your face. People will lie to themselves.

    But it is also incredibly likely that you have come across people with severe symptoms that you had absolutely no understanding of. People who have been driven to the brink of suicide because they couldn’t manage their own mind, people who can convince you they are okay but can’t convince themselves.

    It’s a goddamn spectrum, and people who can’t function at all belong on it just as much as people who can mask, treat, or cope with their symptoms enough to blend in. You don’t get to write off their existence just because their struggles aren’t obvious to you.



  • Not enough attention is given to the literal arms race we find ourselves in. Most big tech buzz is all “yay innovation!” Or “oh no, jobs!”

    Don’t get me wrong, the impact AI will have on pretty much every industry shouldn’t be underestimated, and people are and will lose their jobs.

    But information is power. Sun Tzu knew this a long time ago. The AI arms race won’t just change job markets - it will change global markets, public opinion, warfare, everything.

    The ability to mass produce seemingly reliable information in moments - and the consequent inability to trust or source information in a world flooded by it…

    I can’t find the words to express how dangerous it is. The long-term consequences are going to be on par with - and terribly codependent with - the consequences of the industrial revolution.