Proud of your restraint! It’s difficult, but you’re doing well!

I didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing.

Finland is very good for people who hate smalltalk.

I love stories like this because it makes me reflect on random people I’ve seen who have stuck in my memory for years who probably never noticed me. Makes me wonder if anyone remembers me for something random like this

It’s a bit more complex.

The bacteria causing this (Streptococcus pyogenes) causes hundreds of millions of illnesses each year, ranging from the mild “strep throat” to the extremely severe scarlet fever. Whilst there have been a few outbreaks of antibiotic resistant strains of this bacterium, that doesn’t appear to be what’s going on in this outbreak, so thankfully the underlying streptococcus infection should be treatable with standard antibiotics.

Unfortunately, the condition that’s actually killing people (Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome (STSS)) is caused by exotoxins released by the bacteria, and killing the bacteria only stops further exotoxins from being produced — antibiotics can’t do anything about the exotoxins that have already been secreted by the bacteria. If you’ve ever wondered why we can’t cook spoiled food to make it safe to eat, this is a large part of why — exotoxins are often better at sticking around than the bacteria that produce them. It doesn’t help that exotoxins are often super potent toxins (Botulism is a particularly potent and well known example).

It’s not clear what causes some cases of Streptococcus pyogenes to escalate and non-eventful cases of strep are common enough that treating every case with antibiotics is implausible. It’s tricky because if symptoms are severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of STSS, then things will have already progressed enough that the exotoxins present s risk to health even if antibiotics are administered. This outbreak of many cases of the severe STSS is concerning because it might indicate that the strep bacteria has evolved to be more deadly, but we really don’t know why there’s such a cluster of severe illness in one place.

You might enjoy Freya Holmér’s videos - I mostly know her for her excellent mathsy video essays, but she has loads of videos about “maths for game Devs” that might be useful.

I wonder what would facilitate people to make their own solutions in this way. Like, I have made a few apps or automation things myself, but if I look at my “normie” friends who don’t have the level of tech familiarity that I do, they struggle with whatever out of the box solutions they can find. Poor IT education is a big part of this, and I’ve been wondering a lot about what would need to change for the average “normie” to be empowered to tinker

Book bundles make things messy, yeah.

Something that I’ve really struggled with is that I wish it were easier to make notes of where you’ve gotten a recommendation from. Like let’s say I’m learning Python and there’s a dizzying amount of books available for that. Someone I personally know and respect gives a glowing recommendation of a book, so I download it and process it’s metadata in calibre or similar. Then a Reddit thread has a dump of free books. I download and import those. Then a blogger I really like recommends a few books, so I retrieve any of those I haven’t got yet and import them. Time passes, and I go looking in my library for a book to learn Python with, and I get overwhelmed by choices and I can’t remember which of them were good and for what reasons.

I have a similar problem with bookmarks, because sure you can add tags, but tags are best when you’ve got a limited vocabulary, to maximise reusability. What if I just want to write a brief note about why I deem this worthy of saving, so that I’m not confused when I’m skimming over bookmarks months or years later.

Something that I’ve found useful is finding ways of leveraging inertia^[1]. A big part of this is using separate devices for different things. Some people find it useful to have a clear divide between work devices and personal, but that’s never worked for me, I tend to separate contexts. I’m getting too abstract, so I’ll bring it back with a few concrete examples:

• If I decide to take a break and do something fun on my laptop, I might sit somewhere out of reach of my charger, which limits me to around 2 hours of battery life. If I have to get up to put my laptop on charge, I find it easier to change task back to working if I’m already up.

• If I am gaming on my PC and want to wrap that up but am at risk of a “just 10 more minutes”, I might order takeout (if I remember to eat), because that’s another forced stop to my task and when I’m up, it’s much easier to honestly ask “is gaming what I want/need to be doing right now” than it is when I’m mid-game

• If a friend I want to reply to has messaged me when I need to work, I may make myself reply to them from my main computer at my desk, because I’m less likely to get stuck doomscrolling on my phone in bed in that world.

Inertia definition below, in case you or anyone else reading this are unfamiliar with it in this context: [1]: a term borrowed from physics, which means basically the same in the neurodivergent context as it does in physics: an object in rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, UNLESS acted on by an outside force. In an ADHD sense, this captures some aspects of task switching; procrastination and task activation; hyper focusing and cycles where you do lots and then crash.

Fuckin’ savage.

Zero consideration given to the possibility that Konsi realized this herself and said it deliberately.

Konsi is so sweet that people underestimate her, but not so sweet that she doesn’t realise how people under-estimating you can be used to your advantage. Like, a few comics ago, when Konsi revealed that she was only wearing a robe while playing poker with Razira - revealing this detail meant Razira got played long before any hands were even dealt.

That’s a hilarious reply, and I can’t think of a witty response to match it

Is that really what you want, to be a part of perpetuating hostility? I legitimately don’t understand why the tone escalated so much: You said use screens less, someone replied to you with a few reasons why that might not be possible for some people, and in your reply to that, you just sort of blew up?

The reality is that most people are less patient than I am and will just downvote and move along. Maybe I should have too, but I thought that your original comment had the potential to seed an interesting discussion. I could say more here, but it’s not my job to convince you of the merits of not being an asshole in a world where that niche is already more than fulfilled. And who am I to talk, maybe negating discussion and getting downvotes are the results you want

I remember a few years back, after I finished my university exams (which were online), I was desperate for a break from a screen, but all of the things I would do to chill out from exams (namely, spending time with friends) was mediated by a screen.

This seems unnecessarily hostile. I think your original comment makes a good point, as does the person replying to you. If you don’t want to be a part of a discussion, then fair enough, but this is an oddly judgemental comment to be making.

I need to try audiobooks. I generally struggle with auditory input, but that’s mostly if I’m trying to dedicate all my focus to it. Games + audiobooks might be my jam

I really love calibre, but agree it can be a bit quirky. Like many ADHD people, I’m my own worst enemy sometimes, when I attempt to do a big import of books and then it’s too much work and my library gets messy. Something I did that helped was I had different tags for different levels of processed. Newly imported books would be auto-tagged “new”. Then I’d batch process them and remove the tag if I fully completed it. Often I’d burn out when I’d discover a book that still had DRM, or was missing OCR (ability to select text within pdf), so I’d add “DRM” or “NoOCR” tags. My workflow works pretty well for me now, because I’ve made it easier to do half a job

I enjoyed reading this rant, I found it very relatable, even though it sounds like we have quite different academic backgrounds. Nowadays, I read a decent amount of non fiction for fun, but I still struggle with reader’s block if I don’t feel like I have a reason to read, like a sort of self-given assignment to be studying for. That’s probably school’s fault too

For me, this might mean studying with the knowledge that when I get antsy and need to task switch, I can do the dishes instead. It feels like a weird form of circuit training

Your comment reminded me of this https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/