MystikIncarnate

He is old.

I mean..... Correlation does not mean causation, but in this case, I'm not sure.

So. I've kind of had two eye opening moments with meds.

I first started with concerta, and it was like stepping into the light. The problems were certainly not gone, but they were at least manageable. I could break out of mental loops that were not productive, and focus on stuff I actually needed to do. I still had a bit of an obsession with being as near-perfect as I could, but I could focus those efforts into things that were actually useful, instead of my mind going in circles.

It improved my emotional state. I was kind of in a long term funk of "everything is meh", and I found myself smiling so much it hurt my face. A lot of that diminished over time, but it hasn't gone away, it's just less intense.

Recently I started on an NDRI, Wellbutrin, which had more subtle positive effects. Immediately I noticed the negative side effects, dry mouth, some GI issues. I stuck with it for a week and most of that has subsided. I dunno if the negatives made the positives more shrouded, or if the positives are just minor in comparison, but I find my emotional state and attitude is more on the positive side rather than sitting fairly firmly in the middle.

As for my usual ADHD symptoms, with the combination of the concerta and Wellbutrin, I have little or no difficulty doing the little routine things that I always had to push myself to do before. The phrase "super easy, barely an inconvenience" applies to all the little trivial tasks I do daily, when before it was always some level of mental effort to get myself to do things.

I feel more "normal" now than I ever have before.

I must say, if this is how non-ADHD (and/or non-executive function disorder) people are, then I get why they don't understand us. This is an easy, quick, and trivial task, it takes no time or effort to do.... But when you have an executive function disorder, the task might as well be "climb Mount Everest" not "fold laundry".

With the most recent news about arm, I wouldn't be surprised if RISC-V got a push from larger fabs.

Bluntly, we've been computing under proprietary/licensed architectures for so long, it's time for a change. Make CPUs open source. Make them cheap.

Oh god, we need to do something.

WE NEED TO SAVE THE BOOBIES!

Hey, I was going to say that.

How dare you!

Good intentions, easily taken wrong.

Look everyone, the corporations are trying to be inclusive!

..... No? Nobody cares? Okay. That seems right. They don't care about us unless we're going to buy their shit, so that seems fair to me.

Eat the rich.

I take it that's not your kink?

.... Not that there would be anything wrong with it, if it were.

I don't mean to, I wasn't exactly looking at a comprehensive list of steam features when I wrote that. I'm sure I missed several of steam's very good features from what I listed.

My main point was, and still is, that the core thing that made steam stand out, has more or less stayed the same throughout its existence. You log in, buy, download, and launch games right from one really easy to use program, it manages all the particulars about product keys and saves, etc. So you can focus on playing the game rather than trying to get the game running.

There's a ton of other really good features that steam and valve in general have introduced, and I'm not trying to diminish the impact of those things.

While other games stores are pulling crap like exclusives to their platform, and requiring dumb shit like invasive spyware "anti-cheating" rootkits, steam has kept the basic formula the same, and doesn't restrict any major publisher from deploying something on their platform. Other developers will still delay making their games available on steam for one reason or another, but steam has been fairly neutral in what's published.

I am aware of some exceptions, so I'm not going to say it's entirely universal that anyone can publish anything to steam, but it's fairly rare that steam is preventing a game from being available on the platform.

That core purpose of steam has always been good. All the other stuff is almost always also good, but the core purpose of having steam installed is the same, or better then, when steam was first released.

The biggest thing that valve did that kept them in everyone's good graces is that steam's core functionality hasn't had any major changes in years. Dare I say, more than a decade.

It's a platform where you buy games, download them, and play them.

In the early days you still had to deal with all the bullshit, including third party launcher installs and crap to get things going, and over time, valve simplified all of that, making it easier than ever to take advantage of the core function of steam: buying, downloading, and playing games.

Literally the only improvement I can absolutely, positively credit them for, is making that entire process, easier, simpler, and quicker, than ever.

Sure, you can chat to people, track achievements, comment on your profile, comment on your friends profiles, buy and sell cosmetics on the market thing, even voice chat and I think they have a way you can stream your game to friends.... Not sure on that last one.

It's like Facebook, FB marketplace, FB messenger, discord, Twitter... And a bunch of other services, all huddled together to make a bastard child with the entire PC video game industry.... That's steam.

But the core mechanic that was always the main reason why steam was great, remains the same.

Except fasting, sometimes to the point of death. Food is available but we can choose not to eat it.

Breathing can also be overcome by willpower and sapience, you can hold your breath as long as you like (until you pass out and you lose your sapience by way of being unconscious, and the autonomic systems engage which continue to respirate for you.

People have a choice to drink the same way fasting works.

Even fight or flight can be overcome. A notable example of overcoming some of the most basic instincts is the self immolation that some people have committed where they simply sit and burn rather than react in any other way (screaming, running, stop/drop/rolling, etc). There was a very public and newsworthy instance of this from a monk, who literally sat there, basically mediating while he burned to death.

Pretty much anything that you feel a drive for, can be overcome, as long as you have the sapience and willpower to overcome it. Autonomic functions are basically immutable, so something like breathing is impossible to stop if you are not conscious to actively prevent it.

Sapience and willpower can overcome any natural drive or desire as we see fit.

I will recognize that getting people to agree to do something on a mass scale is generally impossible. Like herding cats.... It's doubly hard when that thing goes against their more basic desires.

It's been known to happen, but the instances are few IMO. Something like reproduction however, without a law or government mandate, it would be hard to prevent people from making more people and growing the population. Most notable example of this is countries where there are limits on how many children you can have. They're successful, with some fairly horrendous stories of the consequence of non-compliance, and horror stories of what people have done to try to abide by the laws while still having what they desire (perhaps a child of a certain gender?).

One of the natural drives is to have children. Multiple of them. Some, like me and my friends, have chosen not to do that. Sapience > natural drive. Limiting how many children a person may have is difficult, as we've witnessed from the countries that tried it, so making MORE children because we have the room/resources for it becomes a more natural outcome if the population was suddenly cut in half.

Hell, if such a thing happened, and by some miracle my partner and I both survived the culling, I'd have a serious conversation with them about maybe changing our minds on the childfree thing. But that's a discussion that won't happen because Thanos isn't real and can't hurt us.