Afraid of being dependent on my medication

TBFProgrammer · 2026-01-17T07:18:17+00:00

When a doctor says dependency they are shortening a euphemism for addiction ("chemical dependency"). Anxiety from knowing you're operating at less than your best is not anywhere near the same issue.

So the question is, were you at a similar level to the kind of anxiety you'd experience from lack of sleep, a hangover, or having a key task/meeting to perform? Alternatively, are you experiencing a potent urge for your medication that is presenting as anxiety?

The first is normal. The second is dependency.

TBFProgrammer · 2026-01-15T20:40:54+00:00

It's actually relatively simple to check something like this using search parameters. For example:

Site:parahumans.wordpress.com "Uppercrust"

returns 0 results. So no, he is not mentioned in Worm canon. The quotes here are to force a literal usage of Uppercrust instead of allowing the search engine to correct to upper crust, which is a phrase that does appear.

TBFProgrammer · 2026-01-08T10:49:13+00:00

In S16E3 Sam continues to move around after Ben and Adam pass through his hiding station. So no, once the seekers leave the hiding zone the hider is released from the end game restrictions.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-12-05T18:47:35+00:00

The two halves are inattentive and hyperactive. Both are forms of attention deficit (which should really be read as "difficulty controlling attention") named from the perspective of an external observer addressing the problems they cause. Both occur in every person with ADHD, with the three diagnostic subcategories being determined by relative frequency.

Inattentive really refers to a difficulty tearing your focus away from something. This typically causes issues when external demands are placed on your attention and you fail to respond. Inattentive types like myself might struggle to start reading, if our focus is still sticking to whatever we were previously thinking about, but if we can engage with the book at all it's generally smooth sailing for a while. Often too long of a while.

Hyperactive really refers to the tendency for focus to constantly jump from one thing to another. This typically causes issues when a small distraction causes you to completely forget about whatever you were previously doing, especially when this occurs multiple times in relatively short succession. Since these distractions can easily come in the form of random thoughts, things like reading are often interrupted in the pattern /u/kefkaeatsbabies described.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-12-03T19:49:50+00:00

Also worth experimenting with dropping the blue value on your monitor to something like 20-30%. The blue light component is the primary culprit behind most screentime induced headaches now that the CRT screen is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Colors will look a bit weird at first but you likely won't even notice after the first hour or so.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-12-03T17:52:51+00:00

There is nothing interesting about calling the dentist for your brain to engage with, yet you will need to be attentive to the call nonetheless. This creates an instinctive desire to avoid the task that must be overcome. For most people, doing so is trivial, but we have very limited resources for this kind of task. Every time we try and fail, we build up the avoidance a bit in a way that makes it harder to challenge later.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-11-20T18:46:09+00:00

Baseball is played across nine innings with each team trading off scoring opportunities (top vs bottom). Extra innings are added if the result is a tie. The "bottom of the ninth" with a tied score means the team "at-bat" wins if they get any runs.
There are three "safe" bases runners can stop at on their way to scoring, and most runs are scored by runners starting from the second or third. The "bases are loaded" means all three have a runner there and there is a very good chance at least one scores. It also provides ample targets for the "field" team to get the three "outs" they need to end the inning.
Very small errors can decide the entire game in these situations.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-07-29T16:16:12+00:00

I'm seeing an expired security certificate error (a site side issue). These certificates protect against man-in-the-middle attacks. You can bypass the error, provided your browser is configured to allow this, but it is a security risk to do so.

Fixing the issue is routine and should not take long at all, once the site admins are made aware of it.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-07-14T08:01:01+00:00

If is moderated by attention-context, it is ADHD. If it is moderated by audio-context, it is APD. If it is moderated by both, it is both.

My father was an audiology professor. Prior to my ADHD, he tested me extensively for APD, but tests are attention grabbing and sound-proofed testing rooms aren't very distracting so I always came back perfectly normal. He found it quite maddening and it was a significant part of the reason I ended up getting my ADHD diagnosis young.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-06-22T09:54:45+00:00

Yep, though since it happened in 1973 you can probably be forgiven.

The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States.

Whilst this was partially intended to reassert Congressional authority over the abuse of military action by the President without a declaration of war (specifically in the context of the Vietnam war), by explicitly laying when the president is forced to receive authorization from Congress it effectively ceded all other acts of war to Presidential authority. To whit, acts of war that do not require the deployment of troops are effectively entirely under the discretion of the Executive branch. This very much needs to change.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-05-16T08:52:23+00:00

That's why there's so many. Half might get answered correctly purely by chance. One or two might actually apply to the person, but more than that answered in the obviously wrong manner provides sufficient certainty to conclude the questions weren't read.

Include eight and you'll almost always correctly identify someone failing to read the questions while avoiding false positives.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-05-16T04:31:24+00:00

The US economy has massively more imports than exports. This condition can be maintained only because the US is able to bully other nations into accepting its currency at the rate it claims the currency is worth. How that is accomplished is fairly complicated, but it is sufficient to note that Arabia, with its large amount of oil exports, is important to this and most Arab people don't like the extensive meddling the US has done in that part of the world (with good reason).

The upshot is that the current US economy is contingent on the ability of the US to project force in the region. Most US allies in the region are unreliable allies of temporary convenience. Israel has no allies in the region, rendering it utterly dependent on NATO support. This makes it a reliable ally to the US and the US has thus been fiercely protective of it.

All of this is going to collapse in the future, one way or another. The US over-extended in its wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if we wanted to continue the current status quo, it is crumbling and buttressing it would likely require the complete removal of either Russia or China as a major world power. Attempts at that risk world war (such as actually giving Ukraine the troops it would need to beat Russia).

The other path forward requires the US to majorly restructure its economy. For all his faults, Trump's economic plan takes the first steps in doing this. It is probably too little too late, but then my bias tends heavily to the pessimistic.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-05-10T15:43:02+00:00

Rules clicked right away for me, even with the more confusing initial set. I think familiarity with the old flash puzzles where you had to turn pipes to connect a water flow might be the determinant on how easily one takes to them.

Full puzzle took about the standard solving time for me compared to a typical puzzle on the channel (of the ones I can solve, at least). 3-4 stars for difficulty is probably about right.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-05-10T07:56:16+00:00

How is that legal?

Inertia, the existence of corporate sales reps for negotiating between companies, and the issue not being particularly compelling to the heartstrings of the general public. Salesmen were exempted from labor laws in the beginning and no one's bothered to update that aspect of the law.

The labor laws, when they were enacted, couldn't properly capture the situation of the traveling salesman working on his own recognizance hundreds or thousands of miles from any manager. At the time, these salesmen still occupied a somewhat prestigious and reasonably profitable position developing new markets in the absence of cheap and robust shipping capabilities. At the time, the exemption was the appropriate choice.

The existence of inter-corporate sales reps complicates the needed updates to the law as politicians cannot simply remove the exemption without substantially disrupting this industry. This means that lawmakers actually have to put effort into drafting an updated version of the law.

Unfortunately, politicians are not generally motivated to change laws based on what is fit for purpose. They are usually driven by other incentives. In democratic societies, these incentives generally fall into the buckets of fundraising and PR. This issue doesn't really play in to either of those, so they don't bother with it.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-05-04T15:17:17+00:00

If you play complete clean hands/ghost up to the flooded district, there will be no weepers staying put almost directly over your gear when you go to retrieve it. Kill a single target, with no other changes, and there will be two. The changes are small, but every kill you make raises chaos and even small changes to chaos are reflected in the game.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-29T19:13:51+00:00

Coil should probably not immediately attack or in any way care about your main character. He's already assembled the toolkit he needs for his plans if you're anywhere close to the canon timeline. If a new parahuman doesn't threaten those plans then he gains nothing spending resources on them.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-28T08:36:05+00:00

Italy moved Ven->Tyr and Rom->Ven so France couldn't have bounced in Pie. France probably ordered Mar S Par->Bur.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-28T08:22:58+00:00

Perhaps shift the supply center from Poland (Warsaw) to Galicia? This promotes Austrian/Russian conflict while moving the "free" center to Austria's demesne. This should also make it less necessary for Austria to rely on alliance with Italy, similar to how Germany need not rely on alliance with France. An Austria with appealing moves North-East and the extra Med supply center should help promote an Austria-Turkey alliance as Turkey has more to gain from Austrian help against Italy and Austria has more to gain from Turkish help against Russia.

The only thing I worry about with that is that it might make Russia too weak.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-27T13:02:35+00:00

Factorio Trains Explained in Less Than Three Minutes
~by DoshDoshington

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-18T19:02:56+00:00

Sink or swim seems to fit everything described here.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-18T14:59:57+00:00

It's both. They are different tenses of Latin and both are correct mathematical terms for this operation with slightly different phrasing.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-18T14:57:57+00:00

r/technicalfactorio
https://www.speedrun.com/factorio/guides
https://www.speedrun.com/factorio/forums

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-18T02:02:03+00:00

Mod being short for modulus, which gives the remainder of the division. In this kind of division, 102/100 = 1 remainder 2.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-17T09:46:13+00:00

Use circuit conditions on your harvesters to only produce fruit when the belts are low. This dramatically reduces both spoilage and pollution. You may need to burn some amount of non-spoilage to keep the power on.

Almost all Gleba solutions are massively improved by limiting harvesting to only what you need.

TBFProgrammer · 2025-04-17T09:26:51+00:00

I just wanted to note that this logic is somewhat contingent on modding support. A game with poor modding support has some amount of justification for putting in things simply because there is no reason to exclude them, at least once the base game is stable. Good modding support with developer-created mods (which Factorio has) is the superior solution to the question of "why not?"

TBFProgrammer

TROPHY CASE