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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • It absolutely isn’t, and it’s for sure off-topic, but I glad it was posted here rather than somewhere more specialised. People in assistive tech might already know about this sort of thing. I think it’s cool to imagine how different social media would be if we could actually hear each other’s voices, and all the general information about age, background, confidence and humour that the voice can convey. There’d probably be less misunderstandings and trolling, but when it happened it would probably hurt more.

    But maybe op could change the title to an actual thought, “social media might be less awful if we heard each other’s voices” or whatever.



  • 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.


  • Because that’s the logical fallacy of Denying the Antecedent . If “it’s raining” then “the sidewalk is wet”. Knowing that it’s raining tells us something about the sidewalk, it’s not dry, it’s wet. And knowing the sidewalk is dry tells us something, it can’t be raining (because if it was, the sidewalk would be wet).

    But knowing “it is not raining” doesn’t tell us about the sidewalk (it could be dry, it could be wet, maybe it rained earlier, maybe a dog peed on it). And similarly knowing the sidewalk is wet doesn’t tell us anything about the rain.

    So even if “mo money causes mo problems” all that tells us is that someone with mo money will not be problem free. People with no money might also have mo problems, the syllogism doesn’t tell us about that.


  • I don’t know, I actually like the whole flawed idea of vulcan logic. Throughout the different shows we come to understand that ‘vulcan logic’ isn’t some weird alien “their brains work differently” thing. They used to be violent and emotional, and they came up with a social system that helped solve that, and ushered in an age if peace and progress.

    But “logic” isn’t a meaningful method to live a life, it’s a very specific tool for certain types of problems. Even our primitive earth philopshers have identified many problems with thinking that we could live life purely logically, as Hume puts it "Reason Is and Ought Only to Be the Slave of the Passions”.

    So we’re not seeing a bunch of transcendent android minds, we’re seeing the equivalent of a bunch of recovering alcoholics clinging desperately to a worldview that they cannot question, but that is itself “illogical”. So their disdain for other races is partly a consequence of their general directness and not holding back criticism, but also an anxious defence mechanism of people who know that even their indoctrinating school system and constant peer pressure might not be enough if Vulcans feel like it’s okay to like humans or whomever, because that’s only one step away from “well, if they’re doing okay why can’t I fall in love and cry and laugh!” and that way lies bloody civil war and a return to barbarism.








  • Yeah, the jedi were wrong, but the facts really point to “they were wrong to be so lenient”. Sure, if they’d let him become a master he might have had a bit more loyalty. But anakin was already too enslaved to his emotions, and even if they made him a master and condoned his relationship with padme, something else would be the spark that sideous used to turn him.


  • Acamon@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.world"Woke" games
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    16 days ago

    Absolutely this. I can only speak for myself, and I know that some folks are so starved for representation that they are happy with anything and that’s fine, but for me poor representation is just as bad as none at all.

    I’m a guy married to a guy, and I do like to see queer characters and same sex romance options. But playing DA: Origin and crushing on Alastair, only to have the option of Zevran… It kinda feels like the games is telling me “gay men are campy and promiscuous, a sensitive and strong guy like Alistair is clearly heterosexual”. It didn’t make me feel included or represented, quite the opposite.

    Obviously, times change, and sometimes these clumsy first steps are how we get to somewhere better. But as well as disappointing me, I understand why awkward ‘woke’ representation rubs people the wrong way. If I as a queer man find the gay character tokenistic, underdeveloped and kinda annoying then it doesn’t surprise me that other folks would too. And being willing to say “this is good representation, but that is shallow box ticking” would help us all get to better place.