Oh I didn’t mean to imply that they were connected, the COVID-19 stuff was just a high profile and memeworthy example of how much harm people can cause when they can’t or won’t see a doctor

I’m in a similar boat. Healthcare is free here, but the system is so slow (underfunded) that I joke I won’t get help in my lifetime

Yes, people can do research on their own, and do

I used to be an advocate for people doing their own research for this stuff, but then people started injecting themselves with bleach and horse de-wormer. And that was before search results got sloppified

I’m as gay as they come and think HRT should be accessible to all (as with literally all healthcare), but I agree that it shouldn’t be available OTC. Like, this is a class of medication that people desperately want to work for themselves, and there’s a great risk of confirming biases and downplaying potential side effects.

There’s also massive disinformation campaigns targeting the trans community so this is an especially difficult area to research for DIY and it makes it all the more depressing when that’s the only option available to some

I think the unfortunate reality is that there is no magic bullet solution, no matter how much we wish there might be. All the hacks and medication in the world aren’t going to solve the societal problems that cause us the most distress. Vyvanse might help me fold my laundry, but it’s not going to change that rent is due on the first and if I’m late to work again I’m going to get fired

Depression really is its own bag. I’m not in medicine, but frankly I think it’s more of a symptom than a disease of its own. It’s comorbid with ADHD, autism, PTSD, compulsive disorders, anxiety, gender dysphoria, poor diet, and even just living under the constant pressures of the modern world. We have medications to manage the symptoms, but a lot of the time they’re a crapshoot and without treating the underlying cause you really aren’t likely to show improvement.

I also think treating depression is prone to a cart/horse problem where people confuse cause and effect. Anybody who has suffered from depression probably knows and was infuriated by the advice that if you just get out of bed and exercise then you won’t be depressed. Then one day you get out of bed and exercise and don’t feel so depressed. The outside observer sees the exercise and concludes that it cured your depression. They don’t see the countless hours of therapy, the constant reframing of problems, the restructuring of your life to accommodate self care, the medications that got you to that point, etc

It’s beyond naive to think that some pushups and going for a walk cures depression, but having experienced it for yourself you might even conclude that was the case. But I posit that you were able to get some exercise only because you were less depressed than you were before, and something else had to happen to get you to that point. It’s tempting to look at the data that shows the correlation between people who exercise and people who are depressed and conclude that a healthy lifestyle fixes depression: but another interpretation is that the people who are depressed can’t lead a healthy lifestyle.

Personally I think that’s where a lot of the well-meaning advice is helpful but also totally misses the mark. People will say (or insidiously get paid to say) that something helped them and it brought them out of the funk, but it was probably a myriad of things that working together helped elevate them to a point they could take back some control over their life. There’s a million billion articles about whatever self care fad is a miracle cure, but if it does indeed help then it’s just a piece of the puzzle.

Pessimism aside, self care is pretty important. But it’s also personal, only you know what truly makes you feel better. My experience is that if you do anything specifically to make yourself feel better without forcing yourself, then it probably does help you feel better. We’re tempted to look at the action (taking a bath, reading a book, putting your phone away), but it’s really the intention that helps (I want to feel better, so I’m going to do something to feel better). It’s a mental problem with a mental solution, and while that solution might be mercurial or difficult to take hold of, it’s the best tool I’ve got.

Anyway, rant aside: I also hate that the solution to being depressed is to not be depressed. It’s doubly extra super frustrating that my best advice also boils down to “stop being depressed,” although I hope I’ve framed it in a way that shows that it’s not as simple a solution as it sounds

The best advice I got was that not all advice is going to help all the time. And there’s two sides to that, the first being that as you noted the pop-psychology listicle advice columns are usually too broad or for the lowest common denominator that they fail to help the people they claim to be giving advice for.

The other one that I’m constantly coming to terms with is that the advice that worked for me yesterday might not work for me tomorrow. My specific example: if I don’t have a to-do list I don’t have a hope of getting the things I intended to do done - but often having a to-do list makes the tasks overwhelming and it doesn’t matter if that list is one or one hundred tasks. Pomodoros are fabulous, except when they’re impossible to start. Gamifying is a great hack except when it isn’t.

Incidentally, I’m looking at my to-do list right now, thinking fuck me, why did I write this?

The idea that not everything works is both liberating and a curse. Like, if something doesn’t work then you can just try something else, no biggie. But sooner or later you’ll have a thousand tips and hacks, and choosing which one to attempt to apply becomes a challenge of its own (fortunately there’s tips and hacks for making that choice, unfortunately there’s a bunch and they don’t always work)

The most impactful and enduring strategy for me came from Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. When it works, it works great, especially when my problem was starting a task - any task at all. It was also handy for breaking out of the thought that if I can’t finish something entirely then it wasn’t worth starting. As the saying goes, anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.

It’s not working today though. Maybe tomorrow

The sentence works here, “at the cost of” can refer to the consequences of doing something. So in this case neglecting documentation and testing comes with the cost of communication, inefficiency, etc.

Incidentally as you allude to with their workforce aging out, Proton is prioritizing making money at the cost of their sanity

There is no long-term strategy though. Line’s gotta go up in time for the fourth quarter, if it tanks next year that’s next year’s problem

I’m sorry you’re going through that hon

When I came out to my parents, dad said “don’t expect me to understand it, but I’ll always love you.” I think he thought that was a good thing, but shit, that hurts. And like, what’s not to get - your boy isn’t a boy, it’s not fuckin’ rocket appliances

The thing that really burns me is that I wouldn’t accept that kind of behaviour from friends or strangers. Why the fuck does our own family feel like it’s okay to deny who you are? The people who claim love, but won’t give basic respect, and somehow they make you feel like you’re the one who’s wrong.

People can react absolutely gracelessly when they’re surprised by something like that. My parents got better with time, and if yours love you then I hope they will too. Sending hugs your way

Definite mixed feelings because on the one hand that trigger warning ruins the punchline, on the other hand the punchline can ruin somebody’s whole day

People are obviously more important than jokes. I wonder if there’s a happy medium like tagging it NSFL or Black Humour or something like that: a warning that you might find it upsetting without revealing the essence of comedy

A 10% fine is nothing, that shit should get you disbarred

The article mentions that the clips are only seconds long for the opening, having not played the game myself I assume it’s a montage to establish mood while being narrated over. Filming would be prohibitively expensive for something that could use stock footage instead

I can’t say for sure, but I feel like they’ve taken a similar approach with other CoDs, particularly for historical conflicts like WW2, maybe some footage from Vietnam for a Cold War entry. Usually this doesn’t draw ire because it’s archive footage of an actual war used to show a ‘war is hell’ message

The backlash here seems to come from two points. One is the recency of the event which surviving family would still be mourning. The other is that this isn’t conflict footage, it’s a civil tragedy framed as warfare. This crowd crush was the deadliest mass casualty event Korea had seen in about 30 years

The use of footage where people are killed for the purpose of entertainment is in bad taste on the best of days. CoD has been frequently criticized as being propaganda and while I don’t agree that killing pixels turns people into monsters, having actual human deaths alongside it just feels wrong

Aside, the note about conservative politicians urging the prime minister to play this work of fiction as a way of fearmongering to prevent reconciliation with North Korea is truly disgusting

I’ve heard a story - possible urban legend - about police using a welcome mat to justify entering someone’s home without a warrant

Your security is only as secure as the interpretation of a bloodsucking leech, but honestly I’d rather take my chances with the vampires

Dude, I know we’re all thinking it, but you can’t just say something like that

Yup, you got it

This sometimes feels counterintuitive because in traditional media more blue means more pigment, typically means a darker colour. If I was mixing paint I might be inclined to say that the navy blue is bluer than, say, a sky blue. And if you’ve ever tried to mix all the colours in your palette, you’ve probably wound up with a really muddy brown or even black

But digital colours are mixed with light, so as you add more colour the result is brighter. Which is why if you add all the light (#FFFFFF) you end up with white and if you use no colour at all (#000000) you end up with black

Well if you take the midpoint between two colours you’re going to lose some of what made them the original colours, especially where these two are so far removed from each other

I missed your question between Blue 0000FF and Navy 000080, but basically what’s happening is that the brighter blue has more blue and the darker blue has less blue

When you convert a colour to a hex code, it has three channels for Red, Green, and Blue. Pure blue is R-00 G-00 B-FF. These numbers are expressed as hexadecimal either for historic reasons or because they fit nicely into two characters, but basically it ranges from 0-255. You might think 80 for navy blue is on the lower end, but it’s actually near the midpoint as 170 (this trips a lot of people up)

Pure black is #000000 and white is #FFFFFF. You could also look at that as R-00 G-00 B-00 and R-255 G-255 B-255. What’s happening to turn the blue into navy blue is essentially that you give it less blue, and since there’s less colour overall the swatch becomes darker

I made a little game about this stuff if you want to mess around with colours. I assumed anybody who looked at it is probably familiar with how hex codes work, but if someone isn’t then it might be informative

I don’t know if colour theory works like this exactly, but you could take the average of the three channels: #583780

He calls it an “anti-technology smear campaign”, and claims that it’s akin to Valve forcing developers to list their political affiliation, i.e. whether they vote Republican or Democrat

Billionaires and false equivalencies, name a more iconic duo

I mean, if we’re going to compare apples and oranges, how about with a metaphor that makes sense? Like how if you sell food you have to list the ingredients used

Pretty poor manners considering that it was a dinner given in their honour: for being outstanding in their field

I think you’re going to be hard pressed to find a dictionary with an entry for that

Words are just words, I don’t want to get rid of any of them. It sucks that people will use slurs, but sometimes the affected group will take it back to use it themselves

Plus as long as there’s low hanging fruit for bigots, they’ll make themselves easy to identify because they’ll be using the slurs with vitriol

If I had to choose, I’d much rather eradicate the bigots

Yeah, just ask the paramilitary goombas nicely if they could start enforcing your rights, that always does the trick

During the remote work era it was a bit of a bummer that there were no more snow days

Now that we’re in the return to office era, does that mean we get snow days again? Fuck no, you can work from home those days (but only those days)

Makes sense, standards are typically lower in dictatorships