You have thin soles so you can tell where you are in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

don’t even know enough to care in the first place.

but ultimately it’s the user who decides to use the service, and how to use it.

So you admit they don’t have access to the knowledge needed to make better choices for their digital security. Then immediately blame them. I think your bias from the point of view of a one that is already more informed on this sort of thing. If they don’t know they need to know more, how can they be expected to do any research? There’s only so much time in a day so you can’t expect people to learn “enough” about literally everything.

Corporate has clarified that they use the ingredient Not Bugs^TM

“It’s definitely Not Bugs^TM!”*

Oh man, every time someone asks a question along these lines I always think of the movie Hank and Mike. I found it in a discount bin at a grocery store probably a decade ago so I took a little time to actually look into it more this time. I knew it was Canadian and unlikely a big hit, but apparently it was just so poorly received. It made less than $17,000 of the $2M it cost, and it’s real tough to find anyone even reviewing it. I even struggled to find the music from it. (The one song is badass). And it’s got a couple B-tier actors that I remember doing a great job, and I think Joe Mantegna really went for it in his role as the god Pan. Chris Klein kills it in this song.

The crude humor kinda puts people off I think but the satirical aspects cut a little deeper than the movie needed to. And probably when I discovered it I was depressed and had a drinking problem and the overall mood of it really felt at home to me at the time so I was able to just live in those aspects of the film and really absorb the more subtle message. It’s definitely absurd in many points but there’s a lot of heart in it.

Also sure, Mamoa is a big guy and fit, but he’s an actor, right? Not a fighter?

It’s kind of like how Nick Offerman said in an interview once. Everyone sees him as this manly man because of the roles he plays and because he wood-works. But he’s from a real “country” family. A rural farming community where everyone was self-sufficient and real “manly” men type. He’s the one who wanted to be an actor who never has to work with his hands again.

What I’m saying is those men have jobs where they protect people from physical violence with physical violence. Jason Mamoa pretends to hit people on camera.

Jesus fucking christ. You know how water works, right? It fits the form of the container it’s in. It’s an simplified analogy to explain what that other guy linked to. We (well, you) see a universe fit to our kind of life, but the reality is that we developed to fit the universe.

You remind me of this guy I saw the other day claiming that a whole bunch of rocks that are vaguely shaped like body parts might be fossilized body parts.

He just kept saying “I’m not saying it definitely is, but imagine if we don’t understand the world, and it’s maybe this way? Crazy right?!”

It’s such cowardly bullshit. If you want to believe a thing because it sounds nice to you, don’t half-ass it and throw qualifiers on it. You brought it up, and then when challenged the tiniest bit, backed down with a “I’m not saying that’s definitely true… but maybe…?”

and that doesn’t match our expectations.

What expectations? Actual scientist, using facts, don’t have expectations of alien life. We don’t know the probability of life existing anywhere but here because we have nothing to compare it to. We have the one universe with the one data set available to us. Until we discover alien life, we should have no expectation for it. Do I think it’s likely there is life elsewhere? Yes. Does that mean I expect it? No. We don’t have enough information about the cosmos to even start to calculate whether it should happen.

I had a roommate once who believed that the stuff from the Alvin the Maker book series was real. The magic and shit. I asked if he had anything that led him to believe that or if he just really liked the books and wanted it to be. OF course he didn’t have any evidence or real reason for it. He just wanted it to be so, so he decided that he was going to believe that thing.

You’re doing that. Stop it. Be a grown-up here and stop believing in make-believe and believe things only when we have sufficient (or in your case, I’ll take any) evidence.

Have you heard of the puddle analogy?

A small amount of water sits there, it this hole in the ground it finds itself in. It looks at this cavity, observes how perfectly it fits the contours of their liquid body. It’s perfect! Every nook and cranny seems to be formed to fit the puddle perfectly.

“This hole must have been made for me! It’s too much of a coincidence that, with all the ways a hole could form, this one formed perfectly to fit me!”

You’re doing that. You’re saying it’s a crazy coincidence that all the right things were in place here for life to exist that led to us being here… but if it wasn’t, then we just wouldn’t have developed as life-forms. Or if the environs were different, life would have developed to fit into that kind of solar system. I think you just like the idea, so you believe it, but I think it’s better to believe things we have evidence for.

Aren’t most(all?) rocks billions of years old? Are we making new rocks?

Oh! Have they fixed their supplying issues? I haven’t had a drink in a while, but for years they were having trouble keeping stock in most stores because they had a distillery fire and had to run with what they had stored. Even after that, any time I’d find a place that would get some, they’d only be able to get a single case in and it would be sold out within a day or 2. I basically had to get lucky and happen to stop by the same day they got it in, but before they stocked the shelves. It was probably solid 5-6 years of never seeing it on a shelf and only getting it if I asked for it and they go it from the back.

There’s a lot of really good pieces of advice here, so I don’t have a tone to add. But there’s a few things that could help and possibly be prepared for.

Be prepared for:

• Maybe having to try different meds before you find the right one. There’s stim and non-stim, and the individuals meds in each category can vary in their effects, so be sure to stick with it while finding the right one. It’s definitely worth it.

• Medication is amazing. It’s a game-changer. But it also doesn’t fix it. It helps with the dopamine and can help with energy and motivation, but a lot of the other issues are still there. I definitely still really struggle with switching tasks that require my brain to change states. That’s why you have to still lean on the tools you develop outside of meds to make your day-to-day easier. Someone posted the How to ADHD Youtube channel. I love her channel and she offers a lot of advice for developing these tools.

• Some days, even with medication, it’s just not there. I’m on a stimulant, so when I’m short on sleep, it doesn’t put me in peak performance that day. It gives me the energy to be normal, but I’m not high-functioning. And some days I sleep fine but I’m still not there and nothing gets done, and that’s fine. It’s okay to just have a day where the thing you do is recharge and do some self-care if you can afford the time.

• If you end up on Adderall, be warned it is sometimes difficult to get. Don’t tell your doctor this, but any time you have a day where you can skip a dose because nothing needs to be done, do it and save that pill. When you get new ones, rotate in the saved ones and put aside the same number of the new ones and try to have an emergency stock for the potential time when you have to wait for your meds. This only works for Stimulants and I do not recommend telling your doctor Non-stimulants require you to take it every day to work, but they’re also less likely to be in a shortage. Stimulants just work when they’re in your system, so skipping a dose won’t lose you any progress. Plus, Stims aren’t great for you long term and you’ll need to take breaks to reset your tolerance, so skipping doses can prolong their efficacy.

Things that could help:

• I’m not a developer, but I am an artist (when I have time), I work full l time, and I’m in school. My meds are in a great place, but that doesn’t mean there still aren’t days I just can’t get anything done. Yesterday I should have been working on a paper due this week, but I had a couple meetings and a doctor’s appointment. When those were done, my brain just didn’t have the remaining spoons to be creative enough to write a paper. But I was able to go over my research and make notes that will help make it easier when I do write it (Hopefully today).

And that’s my best advice. Breaking down every part of what needs to be done, like was also stated here. But also, categorize those into things you need a good brain day for and things that you can just type out, or do without having to engage your brain. Maybe you can’t code, but can you make plans for what you need to code? Write it out and have a plan in place for when your brain kicks in. Then, when it’s time to do it, there’s less in your way and you can probably do more.

• Also, lean into whatever your brain is willing to do at that time. I’m not always going to be in a space to really clean my house, so when I’m in that head-space, I go all out and clean like a motherfucker. If my brain ticks over and I’m in a writing space, I write all the things and get ahead on my work.

• Also, in planning, I find it helps to use a highlighter to color-code them (I keep them written down in multiple places, and on a digital calendar). Pink for most important or urgent, yellow for standard urgency and blue for no real deadline, but I do need it done. And put due-dates next to all of them. On my daily or weekly to-do list I write them out in order of due-dates so I can just do the one closest to the top that fits how I’m able to work.

Most importantly, I want to stress how important it is to find habits that work for you and keep it up after you get medicated. Most of the tools I use I developed over years of struggle before getting a diagnosis, and without them, even the meds wouldn’t be enough.

And that Youtube channel is genuinely great. She works hard to find the best information according to science and also recognizes that the same things don’t work for everyone (unlike so many ADHD self-help stuff out there) so she doesn’t offer THIS ONE TRICK TO FIX YOUR ADHD!!! She offers a variety of tools that have been shown to help so you can find the one(s) that help you.

Low blood pressure, low blood sugar, maybe dehydration? When you miss out on sleep, are you in bed trying to sleep and unable? I know for me, low blood sugar will give me headaches, and if I’m awake longer with less sleep my body has expended more energy than normal and needs that extra fuel to function properly. I always wake up starving if I was up late without eating later. When you sleep, your body, obviously uses less stored nutrients to operate. If you’re not changing your routine with eating and drinking and you miss out on sleep, you may need water/food. Or it could be stress from lack of sleep tensing you up or you’re sleeping at a weird angle because your schedule is off and your body didn’t use it’s muscle memory and get you into a better position.

Basically, you’re going to want to pay attention to the things you’re doing (or not doing) besides losing sleep. Eating/drinking, physical exertion, how does the rest of your body feel when you wake up?

Do you have a degree of social anxiety? Over the years I’ve noticed that multiple sources of sensory input get overwhelming when I’m stressed. If I feel in control and “calm” I can just mentally filter it all as a single background noise but if my anxiety is real bad or I’m upset about something else I feel like I’m being assaulted from all sides.

If I’m at a bar with friends I’m comfortable with and we’re relaxed and chatting then I’m fine. The music and myriad of conversations all just become a single background noise. Drinking probably helps.

If I’m struggling to accomplish some task and it’s really getting to me, any noise from multiple sources puts me on edge and I’ll do pretty much anything to stop it.

And if it’s not an anxiety thing for you, it might just be that it’s from multiple sources. Sensory overload isn’t usually a physical thing, it’s how our brain interprets it, which means our state of mind or even our perception matters. The music you listen to you know is coming from one place: your headphones/speakers. You know it’s meant to work together so your brain can file that away as a single thing to comprehend. A noisy party with 20 different conversation that you know are all separate? Your brain is trying to view them all separately and ADHD can make you want to interpret all of them.

I think that last bit is most likely and could just be the basic of what your brain is doing. But for me personally, stress triggers my brains inability to filter all background noise as a single “noise” because it’s on high alert fight-or-flight mode and on the lookout for dangers so it’s taking everything in that it can to locate the danger.

I think something like that coffitivity thing could help you acclimatize you to it if you’re looking to change your reaction. Train your brain to view that kind of noise as a singular source and not 100 different sources. And with the internet being what it is, there’s almost definitely something out there that will imitate whatever environment you’re wanting to adjust to.

As a wage slave, even spelled out like that it doesn’t sound great to me. I don’t care about how impressive the company is beyond it’s ability to pay me. “Hey, you did a good job of making my company look good enough to hire people better than you.” I’m not sure exactly how to put my discomfort with it into words, but being told I did a good job of improving the company’s image just feels like a pat on the head and a “good boy.” My goal here isn’t to help you, it’s to get you to give me money. Compliment me with a raise, not telling me how much more money you’re making because of me. Bragging to employees about quarterly profits only actually cheers up the ones who drink the company koolaid at every job they ever work at. For the rest of us it means that we won’t be out of a job because the company went under. I got an extra 2 hundred dollars from my salary this year from that and the guy announcing it got a hundred thousand dollar bonus. Great.

I’ve worked in loss leader departments before and have always liked it, but my salary wasn’t dependent on tips so… But getting a job in a part of a business where your department itself doesn’t bring in money, but it’s existence brings in more money for the company just by existing can be great short term. You don’t have to worry about KPIs or much more than just doing a good job. Then, inevitably, the company gets bought, or someone new comes in high up who only wants to see numbers go higher and can’t see the forest for the trees. They see an department losing money and they don’t believe the statistics around loss leaders, so they scrap it or make efficiency more important, which means the department can’t focus on doing a good job anymore and it becomes just like every other job, except it’s functionally impossible for that department to make money.

Back when I cooked I worked in a string of grocery stores who would have fresh prepared food available. They’re meant to run at a loss. Hot fresh meals in a grocery store just isn’t going to break even. People aren’t going to wait like at a restaurant so food always has be be prepared and ready to go pretty quickly. It’s a pretty good gig. You get to cook a variety of things as the menu changes all the time, and customers tend to be pretty appreciative there. It felt a lot like catering, but with less stress and more appreciation. But an exec always ruined it at every place I worked. I’d hop around a lot since, for some reason, there were multiple grocery brands in the area that did it. Eventually I just left the whole industry.

I know this was a joke, but it’s actually them showing you that they trust you enough to show you their most vulnerable spot. Cats can snuggle against you or sleep in your lap if they like you, but they get something out of that exchange. Showing their belly is purely letting you know you’re trusted. It’s like a hug.

One could argue that domestic cats proliferation throughout the world is from human action as well. Their natural habitat certainly wasn’t the south of Wales before we stepped in and took them all over the world for them to evolve into different types. My understanding is that most house cats evolved from desert dwelling cats.

I’m not familiar with how it works in France, but I’m just brainstorming plans to avoid it in the future. Are they able to send it directly to a pharmacy and not give the scrip directly to you? If so, is it also possible to try to get in a few days early for an appointment for your check-in and they can just send it off on time? In the States I only have to do a mandatory check-in once a year with a doc and visit a nurse practitioner every 2 months and she just has it scheduled to send the new prescription every 30 days. It is more convenient, but I have to trust that they don’t forget and I have to panic call their office.

I do the same thing. I also get 2/day and do my best to time it and get as much as I can before the first is out of my system so I can save the 2nd. My very first refill was late due to a mix-up and I was 5 days without with a lot to do in my life. Since then I’ve been saving whenever I can to have a fallback stockpile.

Your mentioning fried eggs reminds me of a time I had a coworker who was telling me about the breakfast he made for his kid every weekend: fried pork roll slices and scrambled eggs. I asked why not fried eggs since it would probably be better with that meal. He said he could never get through frying an egg without it breaking and just turning into scrambled eggs anyway so he’d given up years ago. So I gave him some tips I learned in culinary school. Make sure the oil is already hot, Crack the egg into a separate bowl ahead of time, and either use a small pan or tilt the pan to the egg and oil are in one “corner.” He came back the next day and he said it worked wonders for him and he’d been able to fry an egg for the first time in his life.

So maybe that sort of thing? Like, focus a lot on those tiny little tricks that aren’t necessarily in recipes or even required but make the job so much easier.

I think it’s definitely worth looking into. ADHD doesn’t have the stigma these days like it used to. More and more people are being diagnosed with it now, not because it’s over-diagnosed but because we know more about it than we ever have. 20 years ago when I was first diagnosed (and subsequently lapsed taking my meds until recently) it was seen almost entirely as a focus thing. Now we know it affects so much more. Poor executive function has an effect on both mood and our interactions and relationships with others. Impulse control can be an issue. I know the inability for my brain to easily switch tracks meant that I would get hung up on stuff that most people were able to just move on from easily. Since being medicated my mood is vastly improved. It’s not from the serotonin boost completely but more in the way that I don’t get stuck in a specific mindset that I can’t move on from.

And like I said, it’s super normal now. Social repercussions are almost nil and once you get your meds figured out, your day-to-day could only be improved. I still do all the things I used to, but now I’m able to find the motivation to get things done that I had been avoiding before. I clean more often and I don’t put things off.