I think about this one a lot. IIRC the gist was “Don’t tell anyone. Get a lawyer. Don’t tell anyone. Get rid of most of it.”

I hope you wrote this light-heartedly, because it made me laugh and helps me understand autism a little better.

This is how I think of it too. My body will die but my influence will continue, so I try to have a good influence.

Everyone realizes this is a joke acronym, right? Or am I dumb for thinking that needs to be pointed out?

Sekiro had several of the hardest bosses for me. God I love that game.

An attempt at humor?

If I may ask, how are you able to take a 75% pay cut and still pay your bills?

This is great. Some people think the goal of meditation is to maintain focus on one thing without getting distracted. It’s common, then, for a meditation practice to feel frustrating and discouraging; yet another activity for them to fail because they can’t stay focused. It might help to think of meditation as “practice of returning.” Through this lens we assume that we WILL get distracted, and once we notice we’ve gotten distracted, we practice returning to our breath/blank space, etc.

Ah, another interesting book I can recommend is called Crazy Like Us, about the globalization of the Western concept of mental health. They talk about execs at GlaxoSmithKline trying to figure out how to market antidepressants in Japan. In Japanese culture sadness and depression were seen as a normal part of the human experience. Like you said, the pharma guys had to get clever to convince their Japanese market that depression is an illness, and they had the treatment.

I mostly disagree that diagnoses are helpful to therapists. Or rather, most diagnoses are not helpful to me. I can look at them as shorthand, so if a client has MDD in their chart I have a broad sense of some of the symptoms they’re experiencing. But I can just as easily, you know, ask the client what’s going on. There are a small few (ASD, bipolar, schizophrenia, OCD) whose symptoms are so discrete and disruptive that specialized treatment can be life-changing. Outside of those few, if insurance didn’t require it, I would never assign a diagnosis again.

I’m a licensed mental health professional but I don’t specialize in ADHD. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and take stimulants every day.

ADHD is mostly genetic, but IMO the increase in diagnoses is partly due to the information overload from the digital age we’re living in. There are simply more things distracting us, more cognitive demands, such that even “normal” brains will struggle to keep up.

I want to point out, too, that the DSM has serious issues with validity and reliability. Some of the criteria are so subjective as to be useless, and two providers diagnosing the same person can arrive at very different disorders. Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-IV (we’re on DSM-5 now) wrote a book called Saving Normal where he criticizes the APA’s trend of pathologizing basic human experiences. With each DSM edition the diagnostic criteria get more broad, to the point that I can argue that any given person meets criteria for SOME disorder. If everyone is disordered, then what’s normal anymore? How is that helpful?

Most of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD describe someone who isn’t a “good student” or a “good employee.” It doesn’t consider context. If someone fucking hates their job, I’m not surprised they struggle to complete tasks that require sustained mental effort. Kids are reminded every day that the world is burning, so of course they’re distracted from their math homework. I’m not saying people aren’t suffering from what we call ADHD, I’m saying that it’s a normal human response to the state of the world right now, so why are we calling it a disorder?

Edit: a word

They have a handful of dumb screens, like you’re describing, at Best Buy. Somehow they’re thousands of dollars for a normal sized TV.

I’m sure there are folks here who have listened to a lot more Sam Harris than I have, but I’ve listened to several audiobooks and probably 40-50 hours of his podcast. He has some smart things to say about neuroscience and mindfulness, but my god he has some toxic, middle-school-ass takes on Islam. I haven’t heard that quote before, but I’m not surprised he said it. He’s Ben Shapiro with a PhD who makes deliberately obtuse, reductive, bad faith statements about Islam and Muslims.

For the record, I’m a white atheist. I think religion has been the source of immeasurable violence in the world. I don’t think anyone should be shot over something they say or draw, but to declare “end of moral analysis” is ignorant.

Frozen grapes. Once they’ve been out of the freezer for a couple minutes, they thaw into little slushie bubbles.

Popsicle brand makes sugar free tropical flavored, and they’re delicious.

I think this is a little prescriptive. There might be some truth in this but everyone needs to find acceptance on their own. Sometimes running works just fine.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems more realistic to say:

1. Playing the same game twice is unlikely because of the number of possible games, OR
2. It’s possible the same game has never been played twice, OR
3. After a certain number of moves, it’s very possible to create a never-played game

I’m certain I’ve played the same game multiple times, because I suck at chess and I fall into the same obvious traps over and over.

I agree that it’s a beautiful love story in a vacuum, but in the context of a larger society I think Nick Offerman’s character was a psychopath. With so many people suffering around him, he chose to hoard weapons and resources, and set up booby traps to avoid having to share with anyone. That’s essentially what the ultra-rich are doing today in response to the climate crisis, and nobody is romanticizing it.

Succession has some of the best screenwriting of any TV show or movie, IMO. S3E08 “Chiantishire” stands out to me. So much of the dialogue is passive-aggressive or euphemistic. S4E09 “Church and State” is also an absolute marvel, with the main scene being shot with 8 cameras simultaneously, and showing some of the most powerful performances in the series.

Samsara was the first movie to be scanned in 8K. It’s stunning in 4K, so I think I would also enjoy it in 8K.

The last time I was a passenger in my brother’s car, I remembered that he tends to drive in a way that makes me feel unsafe, like what OP described. Unreasonable acceleration, tailgating, swerving. He laughed when I was physically bracing myself and said his partner does the same thing. I told him I just won’t be in a car when he’s driving anymore. Of course, it’s easier to do because I don’t see him too often.

IMO when I’m driving, I not only have a responsibility to keep my passengers safe, but to make them feel safe. I might feel safe because I know I’ll brake in time, but my passengers don’t because they’re not controlling the vehicle.