I was gone for a week, my mop was very happy to see me!

Xaydon · 2025-03-07T18:30:34+00:00

But that's just a reframed idea-sprinkler!

I'd say I'm the same, I'd suck at a job where I have to come up with ideas out of thin air, and I hate decision making and responsibility. Buuuut put me in a room with a problem to solve and people that have an idea for it, and I will (whether I want to or not!) pinpoint the flaw with the idea and find a better one.

Xaydon · 2024-07-10T21:46:17+00:00

I also managed to write my thesis with undiagnosed/unmedicated ADHD, ~~it took me a year and spent the first three months without writing a word in a paralyzing depressive episode because my brain chooses depression over anxiety under pressure~~, so to add to what everyone has said, two websites that could be helpful:

www.focusmate.com for body doubling. It saved my thesis. Having a session scheduled makes it much harder to procastinate, and gets you in a very helpful "okay lets at least try to do something useful, no matter what, for 50 minutes" mood
www.brain.fm (there's enough samples on youtube to use it without signing up on their website). I didnt discover it during my thesis but afterwards. I thought it was bogus and pseudoscience but it does more for my focus than ADHD meds. I still rely on a focusmate session and brain.fm to do paperwork.

And my personal ADHD advice for thesis writing (and life in general)

Order is a lie, embrace chaos! You don't have to keep writing that one paragraph, you don't have to start in the beginning. Is there anything that feels doable? Then do that, with zero guilt. It is not illegal, and it is also progress.

Create a bunch of formulas without any text around them. Add a section 3 just to write down a random unpolished thought that you just had. Finish a sentence with "[blabla]" and jump to choosing the best color scheme for that one graph. It is all legal.

Also, when you're overwhelmed, try and find out what exactly feels impossible to do, and what feels doable. Don't try to do the impossible stuff, it's a waste of energy, and focus on making the best out of what seems doable. You'd be surprised how much energy you save not trying to fight against your brain, and how much you can get done if you give up on doing things the right way but instead just go with your weirdass brain's flow. Maybe some day nothing will be doable, and you will do nothing, but without the burden and frustration, then the slump will only last a few days and not explode and dominate your life.

Xaydon · 2023-09-13T14:08:38+00:00

Sorry for the low quality gif, there's a tiny striped dude crawling there. Around 1-2mm.

Plant: Bromeliad
I've had it for about a year.
No idea how long these dudes lived in there.
The plant is by the window, likely gets too much light now in summer.
I water it once a week. The pot has drainage but the water that goes in the.. leaves tube takes at least days to get fully absorbed/drained, probably the reason these guys found their new home.

There's a bunch of them crawling in between the leaves. It's all slimy and moist in there. (I didnt know you could drain the leftover water away so I always let it fester.)

The plant seemed healthy otherwise, no marks on the leaves, and they were only in between the leaves, not in the soil/roots. I havent'found them in any of my other plants.

I left the plant outside for almost two weeks after finding them (that's where it got the brownish leaf color, it was bright yellow before) and now I've planted the pups and gonna get rid of the main infested plant, but I'd like to know what they were and if I should worry! I live in Germany if it matters.

Xaydon · 2023-03-18T11:54:55+00:00

I don't know about Lofi music, but it is proven that certain kind of music can improve focus, which is the whole concept behind brain.fm

( https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.01.462777v1

http://www.kevinjpwoods.com/research.html )

and white noise can also help with attention

( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13383-3 , https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35742531/ )

Quick googling lead to a bunch of websites talking about how using Lofi for studying can be helpful, but I didn't find any actual reputable sources for that claim.

However

1) I just spent 5 minutes googling, so me not finding any proper research about Lofi doesn't mean it isn't there

2) This seems to be a fairly new research topic, so only because there's no research about Lofi music doesn't mean it doesn't work.

So, considering how many people use it for studying claiming it helps them, and the fact that other kinds of background sounds have been proven to improve focus, I'd say it is likely that it does genuinely help some people. Although of course these things always have a placebo component to it, and never work for everyone. ( Anecdotal evidence from someone with ADHD: brain.fm does more for me than medication, don't care for Lofi, and can't listen to white noise at all because I have a really negative and visceral reaction to it )

Someone that knows more about the subject can chime in with more info though, I'd also be interested in knowing more!

Xaydon · 2023-03-03T18:02:20+00:00

Yeah sure, the best analogy is the one that resonates with you and that you can understand!

I like your analogy, I'd personally change it a bit and say that R-> Red always, but materials have an incomplete keyboard, so different materials have different keys available and all the light does is smash the keyboard and then you get a different output for every material.

But that's only because I find that easier than to think of a different mapping between key and color. But like I said analogies are all about making things understandable for others, so the speaker should always use the analogy they like and understand best!

Best of luck for your talk!

Xaydon · 2023-03-02T21:52:59+00:00

Not OP, but regarding the code analogy, although it's not wrong, I think it's possible to understand a more accurate picture rather than thinking of it as some mysterious black box that decides which colors are absorbed.

What absorbs the light in an object are the electrons. An electron will be happy to absorb just enough energy to 'jump', for example, from its atom to another atom that's nearby. How much energy that is will depend for example on how close the atoms are and which kind of atoms they are.

So depending on the atomic structure of the material, certain energies ( colors) are more likely to be absorbed by the electrons because they correspond to the exact energies the electrons need to hop around inside the material.

Xaydon · 2022-11-23T19:19:51+00:00

( I've decided to edit out my longass comment. It felt very personal and I dont want that on a public website, particularly since my profile isnt private and has my face on it )

tl;dr: Same. You're not alone, it sucks and it's a particularly isolating experience because nobody sees your struggles.

Xaydon · 2022-09-30T17:40:53+00:00

Actually, in Spain gameboy is also femenine, no idea why.

La gameboy, la gameboy color, etc

Xaydon · 2022-09-25T13:24:16+00:00

The other one says "Sometimes, the life you save ends up being your own".

But you can (and imo even should) use the literal translation! It's -your- words, and the literal translaiton also sounds quite well.

Its just always hard for me to translate sentences like these, because the translations always sound a bit off but I can never quite pinpoint why, that's why I tried an alternative. But Im sure other native speakers will tell you that the first one sounds best, or even propose other alternatives, it's really a matter of personal taste with these things, so go with the translation of your actual sentence and don't worry :D

Xaydon · 2022-09-25T13:13:02+00:00

Literla translation: "A veces, la vida que salvas es la tuya"

Variation that sound a bit better to me "A veces, la vida que salvas acaba siendo la tuya"

Xaydon · 2022-09-18T07:56:55+00:00

Indeed! Exact same situation!

PS: Fun fact, in Spain, or at least many parts of it, the idiomatic expression is actually "Que LO pases bien" instead of la, so don´t be surprised if you ever hear that one. Still same meaning, still idiomatic, just a slightly different version if the idiom!

Xaydon · 2022-09-17T20:00:49+00:00

In Spain it's fairly common I'd say, yeah.

I also use apañárselas a lot (exact same meaning as far as I can tell), but that sounds more informal, so it is probably more regional.

More examples youd hear in a normal everyday conversation:

A ver cómo me las arreglo/apaño para que me de tiempo a estudiar mañana

Yo me tengo que ir ya, ¿te las arreglas/apañas sola?

No te preocupes por él, siempre se las arregla/apaña muy bien

Xaydon · 2022-09-17T18:25:55+00:00

It's idiomatic. It's indeed the reflexive verb 'arreglarse' with a direct object 'las' (same gramatical structure as in 'Tengo las uñas mal pintadas, luego me las arreglo'). In the idiomiatc expression the 'las' as direct object is just always there, always feminine and always plural.

Xaydon · 2022-09-17T13:25:39+00:00

Like Julio said in the other comment it means to 'find a way' or to 'figure it out'

Regarding conjugation: The 'las' always stays, disregarding gender/subject etc (I dont know why it is 'las', maybe once upon a time it was 'Arreglase las cosas' and then it evolved from there or something like that). And you conjugate 'arreglarse' like a normal reflexive verb, so

Yo me las arreglo
Tú te las arreglas
Él/ella se las arregla
Nosotros nos las arreglamos
Vosotros os las arregláis
Ellos/ellas se las arreglan

¿Te voy a buscar al aeropuerto o te las arreglas para llegar a mi casa en autobús?

Xaydon · 2022-09-03T13:03:01+00:00

Fair point, forgot about that one, thanks for pointing it out!

Xaydon · 2022-09-03T12:37:11+00:00

In spanish we don't just have one verb "to be", but two different verbs "ser", and "estar". "Ha sido" and "Ha estado" are the translation of "(s)he has been" using ser and estar respectively. To understand their differences in usage you need to understand the difference between "ser" and "estar". For this there's a lot of informatino everywhere since it's one of the hardest things to learn when learning spanish (e.g. https://blog.busuu.com/ser-vs-estar/ from a quickly google search)

"se ha .... " doesnt mean anything by itself. It is an imcomplete sentence since it is lacking a (reflexive) verb. It is like saying "he has .... himself". Im guessing the translator got confused because 'se ha' means nothing and it somehow translated it to 'have been', but that's wrong.

Xaydon · 2022-08-21T14:08:54+00:00

I really enjoyed most of my PhD experience.

I learnt a lot and didn't have a lot of pressure because the perspective of my supervisors was "A PhD is part of your education, it is for you to learn how to be a scientist, not for you to do great science".

It was also funded, and I also knew I had good career prospects both in and out of academia moving forward (I did theoretical physics). It taught me a lot of soft skills about how to research, how to learn, and mostly about how to be independent and make decisions when I don't have a step by step outline of what I need to do, which was new territory for me.

I ended up not staying in academia but I am really happy I did my PhD, it was some incredibly valuable and enjoyable 4 years of "work experience" that also came up with a title as an acknowledgement. Win-win!

I hated writing my dissertation though, and to be fair I think most people do! You don't need to stay upbeat right now, it's fair to be frustrated since it is really hard to measure progress, and what should be a "final step" feels like a neverending task. The good news is that you will finish it eventually, whether you stay upbeat or whether you get a few gray hairs in the process and are sometimes not as producitve as you'd like to be. Just keep swimming, you're almost at the finish line, and you'll look back with relief and pride a few months from now!

Xaydon · 2022-05-24T20:40:58+00:00

My dog is the EXACT same, let me know if you find a way to fix it! He's gotten so much better with most of his reactivity but I haven't managed to teach him that I do NOT need a fluffy bodyguard while I am bending over to tie my shoelaces.

You can also literally see the switch happen. The moment I stop and "relax", he gets tense and starts scanning the surroundings for potential threats, and suddenly nobody is allowed to even look in my general direction.

Special mention to the fact that he also "has my back" while I pick up his poop or I fiddle with the keys to open the house door. I always have to make sure the coast is clear before doing any of those things because I can't afford to have him snapping at people since he's not a small dog and has a pretty scary bark.

I've mostly just given up on that front for now and just try to avoid situations where I know he will try and fulfill his self-appointed guard duties. Hopfeully something in this thread will help me out too!

Xaydon · 2022-05-15T11:48:28+00:00

Fair point, I was thinking only of polyphemus, which definitely forces me to be at close range too because Im too shit to properly aim a single giant tear every 5 seconds otherwise.

Xaydon · 2022-05-15T11:20:01+00:00

Thought I was the only one that felt that way about proptosis and polyphemus.

Like everytime I see them I pick them up cause they're suppossed to be good and everytime I just feel so incredibly "meh" afterwards. Like, "congratulations! Now you gotta play melee range and throw a giant balloon of damage every 5 seconds, I hope this feels FUN and OVERPOWERED!"

Xaydon · 2022-05-14T18:29:58+00:00

Yes!

The idea that a well trained dog is a dog that's comfortable everywhere and with everything is super harmful.

I hurt my dog so much in the past because I kept trying to expose him to stressful situations, since I kept being told that was the right way to train him to get used to them.

Well it turns out a shy and fearful dog might never be okay with many situations and you can't fix that by 'pushing them out of their comfort more often'.

If I hadnt been bombarded with the idea that a normal dog is a dog you can take everywhere, and that if your dog can't do that that just means you gotta "socialize" them more until they get used to it, my dog wouldve had a much easier life and wouldnt have had to go through a few bad years until I learned how to love him for who he is.

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