Lettuce eat lettuce

It isn’t just “struggling to focus.” The same way that depression isn’t just “being sad” and anxiety disorder isn’t just “getting nervous.”

When my ADHD is at its worst, I literally become almost illiterate. As in, I read a single sentence, and by the time I finish the last few words, I have completely forgotten the rest of the sentence.

I have to read that sentence 4-6 times over and over before I actually comprehend what the meaning is. The words are being sounded out in my head, but my brain doesn’t store them in short term memory, and certainly not into long term memory.

My brain is too busy processing random other things to dedicate enough attention to the thing I am trying to read. And I’m not taking about Shakespeare or Tolstoy, I’m talking about trying to read a basic email from my manager.

Imagine the feeling you had when you were in school struggling with your toughest subject. Maybe it was math, maybe chemistry, whatever. Remember what it was like when you were focusing as hard as you could to solve a problem on an exam or a homework assignment. Remember that feeling of mental exhaustion? Where it felt like your head actually hurt, you were physically tired from how hard you were focusing? Maybe for the next hour, perhaps even the rest of the day, you couldn’t think hard about anything else?

Well that’s how I feel doing the majority of trivial tasks I have to do all the time. Getting dressed, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting my work bag together, remembering to cash a check or pick up a few groceries. Working out, texting back a friend, responding to emails, scheduling a doctor’s appointment, etc.

I start the day mentally exhausted and foggy, and I end the day even more so. And most of the things that nuro-typical folks do without hardly a thought, I have to expend final calculus 3 exam effort to do.

The most frustrating part? Sometimes, seemingly at random, my brain will just kick into gear and I will be able to focus on something for hours without any effort at all. I can’t seem to cause it to happen, I don’t know where it comes from. But on those rare days, I am a god. It actually makes me depressed, because I always think, “if I could be like this just 25% of the time, I would be unstoppable.”

Learn Linux TV. Great educational channel for all things Linux.

Almost zero, but not because I believe in American democracy. I think the techno-fascist machine will grind forward regardless of Trump being in office.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game theoretic concept, not a psychology experiment, and cops use it all the time to successfully get suspects to rat each other out or provide confessions in exchange for certain plea deals.

Easily smart and slightly below average attractiveness. It’s pretty trivial to boost your appearance by 2-3 “points” with some decent fashion choices, makeup, working out, and good grooming.

Worst case, I use my high intelligence to get a high paying job and use some of the money for plastic surgery.

Pay tribute to your king, bootlicker.

There are two core issues I have with AI generated content:

1. Ownership - All the big players are using proprietary software, weights, models, training methods, and datasets to generate these models. On top of the lack of visibility, they have farmed millions of peoples data and content without their knowledge or consent. If it were up to me, all AI research and software would be 100% open source, public access, non-copyright. That includes all theoretical work in scientific publications, all code, all the datasets, the weights, the infrastructure and training methods, absolutely everything.

2. Lowest common denominator - AI has unleashed the ability for individuals and organizations to produce extremely low effort content at volumes that haven’t been seen before. I hate how search results are becoming totally poisoned by AI slop. You just get pages and pages of sites that abuse SEO to become the top search result and are nothing more than click-farms to generate ad revenue. This is a systemic issue that stems from several things, primarily Capitalism, but also the way we cater to powerful corpos that push this sludge onto us.

I have no issue with AI tools that are actually helpful in their context. For instance, animation software that uses AI to help generate intermediate frames from your initial drawings. Screen reader software that uses AI to help sight-impaired folks with more accurate text-to-speech. AI tools that help with code completion, or debugging.

These are all legitimate uses of the technology, but sadly, all of that is being overshadowed by mountains of sludge being shoved on us at every level. Because those implementations aren’t going to make rich people even richer, they aren’t going to temp investors to dump billions more into AI startups and corpo tech. Helping blind people and indie animation studios is boring and low-profit, therefore in a Capitalist system, it gets shoved to the bottom of the stack while the high-margin slop gets pumped down our throats.

Yeah, I’m confused why this is getting downvoted so hard also.

They’re alright, decent bang for the buck. If you need to quit soda like me, they help.

I haven’t checked the log, but I get my news from several different sources, Lemmy is only one of them.

.ml here, I’m happy with this community. I know the reputation it has, but honestly, I haven’t really seen it. I’m a hardcore leftist, but I’ve been very critical of China, Russia, etc. And I’m not a tankie. Obviously haven’t been banned or had my comments removed.

The mods here seem quite reasonable, and of course if folks don’t agree, there are a lot of other instances.

I used to be a free-speech absolutist when I was young, but then I realized that there isn’t such a thing. Even the few places online that pride themselves on having “no censorship” like 4-chan still have a handful of things that they don’t allow.

Quite frankly, I think those places are pretty nasty overall and I have no desire to emulate them. Racists, Pedos, lgbt-phobes don’t need a platform or to have their opinions elevated or taken seriously.

I wouldn’t think a top university’s physics department is improved by devoting classes and curriculum to flat earth or 7-day creationism. Likewise, I don’t think a forum or server is made better by allowing racists and bigots to have a safe space on it.

Of course, you have to decide what crosses the line, but welcome to real life. There’s a difference between a hardcore neo-nazi who thinks Jews and black folks are literal sub-humans, and your 87 year-old grandpa who unironically calls the employees at his favorite asian buffet, “Chinamen.”

A broken propeller toy wrapped in a ripped up plastic grocery bag.

Few things would make me happier than to never log into an Azure instance ever again lol.

Much of what we do and have built is overpriced and useless bullshit that doesn’t make anybody better off.

We are inventing solutions and products to manage other solutions and products to manage other solutions and products to…etc etc.

Websites used to be static HTML pages with some simple graphics, images, and some imbedded stuff. Now, you need to know AWS for your IaaS, Kubernetes to manage your scaling and container orchestration for the thousands of Docker containers that you use to compose your app written in some horrific pile of JavaScript related web stacks like NodeJS, Typescript, React, blah blah blah…

Then you need a ton of other 3rd party components that handle authentication, databasing, backups, monitoring, signaling, account creation/management, logging, billing, etc etc.

It’s circles within circles within circles, and all that to make a buggy, overpriced, clunky web app.

Similar is true for IT, massive software suites that most people in the company use 10% of their functionality for stupid shit.

I’m all for advancing technology, I love technology, it’s my job and my hobby.

But the longer I work in this industry, the more I get this sick feeling that we lost the train long time ago. Buying brand new $1,500 laptops every 3 years so that most of our users can send emails, browse the web, and type up occasional memos.

I used to call it a “bomb fire” too lol.

When I was little, I thought that “cash back” meant that the clerk literally just handed you money out of the register if you wanted it.

I assumed that most people were honest and only took the cash if they needed it. I didn’t know that it came out of your checking account lol.

Absolutely chadified! ✊

It’s better to buy them food or give them homeless care packs. There are good lists online of things you can give to homeless folks that will help them a lot, socks are a main staple.

I give all three depending on the scenario. I almost never have cash on me, so I don’t hand out money very often just because of that.

It’s important to show them compassion and care. Homeless people are often treated like trash by most people. Saying a kind word to them and giving them a small gift might be the only instance of kindness they experience for days, possibly weeks.